Protesters march outside of 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, United States, on April 2, 2025.<\/span>Melissa Bender\/NurPhoto\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>Grist<\/a> and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration<\/em><\/p>\n Tucked inside the<\/span> Altgeld Gardens public housing project on Chicago\u2019s far South Side, there\u2019s a yellow brick wall filled with hundreds of names. It stands as a memorial to the friends and family members in this community who died, often due to disease or other health complications.<\/p>\n The Gardens, as it\u2019s commonly referred to, stands closer to the Indiana border than Chicago\u2019s downtown and is wedged between toxic landfills, old steel mills, chemical factories, and an oil refinery. The housing development was built for Black veterans returning from World War II.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear exactly how the memorial wall first began.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople just started putting up names on the wall for the people who died of cancer and other respiratory problems,\u201d said Cheryl Johnson, who runs the local nonprofit People for Community Recovery.<\/p>\n Environmental justice was born here. Johnson\u2019s mother,\u00a0Hazel Johnson<\/a>, originally from New Orleans, is celebrated as \u201cthe mother of the environmental justice movement<\/a>.\u201d Her lifelong fight to make city and federal officials confront how poor, Black, and Latino communities face disproportionate exposure to pollution turned Altgeld Gardens into a launchpad for the national movement.<\/p>\n When President BIll Clinton signed the first executive order recognizing \u201cenvironmental justice\u201d in 1994, Johnson was standing right next to him. Now, 30 years later, Johnson\u2019s legacy is under siege.\u00a0<\/p>\n President Donald Trump struck down Clinton\u2019s executive order on his first week in office. In the 100 days since, as part of a plan to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, from the federal government, the Trump administration has launched a campaign to dismantle environmental justice protections and programs across the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like we\u2019re going back to the era where people denied the existence of environmental injustice and communities were really on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Changes have included an emergency order making it easier to\u00a0fast-track fossil fuel projects<\/a>\u00a0while sidelining community opposition; challenges to congressionally appropriated funding for\u00a0climate and environmental initiatives<\/a>; elimination of the EPA\u2019s Office of Environmental Justice; and deep cuts to the\u00a0federal workforce<\/a>\u00a0responsible for\u00a0protecting communities<\/a>\u00a0from pollution.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Debbie Chizewer, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental legal group Earthjustice, the Trump administration\u2019s message to environmental justice communities across the country is loud and clear:\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re not going to do this work anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Chizewer added that the Trump administration isn\u2019t just making it harder for the federal government to respond to environmental racism, but also for communities to advocate for themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s targeting bedrock civil rights protections, Chizewer said, going after Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin under any programs that receive federal funding.<\/p>\n In the past, environmental justice groups fighting industrial pollution have used the provision to get the federal government to intervene in local issues. In Chicago for example, Cheryl Johnson was part of a civil rights complaint that resulted in a\u00a02023 settlement agreement<\/a>\u00a0requiring the city of Chicago to fix zoning policies that concentrated heavy industry in poor and minority communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n The national success of the legal tool may be fleeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Trump\u2019s Department of Justice terminated a\u00a02023 settlement agreement<\/a>\u00a0that required Alabama\u2019s officials to update a failing septic system which released raw sewage onto lawns in Lowndes County, Alabama. The Justice Department said it was ending the settlement as part of its mandate to end \u201cillegal DEI and environmental justice policies<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe DOJ will no longer push \u2018environmental justice\u2019 as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,\u201d assistant attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release.<\/p>\n \u201cI was not surprised,\u201d said Catherine Colman Flowers, a Lowndes County environmental justice activist who helped file the civil rights complaint that secured the\u00a02023 settlement<\/a>, given the Trump administration\u2019s track record. Alabama\u2019s Department of Public Health agreed to continue funding the septic replacement program until funds run out.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the long term, Colman Flowers said the decision to end the settlement means \u201ca lot of families will not get sanitation and will still be living in America with sewage on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n President Joe Biden had appointed Colman Flowers to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, whose mission was to provide poor and minority communities a direct line of communication with the White House and a mechanism for raising awareness of environmental justice issues in their local communities. Earlier this month, she received an email from the EPA notifying her that the Trump administration had disbanded the council.<\/p>\n The ongoing silencing is increasingly evident in the Great Lakes region, where Trump\u2019s \u201cnational energy emergency<\/a>\u201d has fast-tracked federal review of the controversial Great Lakes Tunnel, a massive fossil fuel project that would replace a segment of the Line 5 pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac separating Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.<\/p>\n Nearby\u00a0Indigenous communities have voiced concern<\/a>\u00a0for years that any potential leaks from the proposed pipeline tunnel, which is projected to traverse their land, could irrevocably impact their life on the Great Lakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no national emergency,\u201d said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community on Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula, noting that the United States is the world\u2019s largest producer of\u00a0oil<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0natural gas<\/a>. Critics of the project maintain that only about\u00a010 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the natural gas products that run through Line 5 stays in Michigan, while the overwhelming majority continues on back to Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo see it steamrolled ahead effectively silences the tribes vocalizing their concerns or sharing any of that reasoning with the decision-makers,\u201d said Gravelle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin invited industrial polluters to seek exemptions from federal rules on air pollution, a move Ana Baptista, an environmental policy professor at The New School in New York, called \u201ca cue to industries that they have free rein.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n President Trump will then\u00a0decide<\/a>\u00a0whether heavy industry, oftentimes located near environmental justice communities, will be able to leapfrog standards for toxic pollutants like mercury, arsenic, and ethylene oxide.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like we\u2019re going back to the era where people denied the existence of environmental injustice and communities were really on their own,\u201d she said. The only difference this time around, Baptista added, there\u2019s now more than 30 years of empirical evidence documenting how poor and minority communities are stuck with the brunt of pollution and its dangerous health effects.<\/p>\n Back on the South Side of Chicago, where the environmental justice movement took its first steps, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson surveyed the Altgeld Gardens Memorial Wall on Earth Day, calling it a potent reminder that the ultimate goal of any good policy is \u201cto create equal environmental protection for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayor Johnson introduced an ordinance named after Hazel Johnson to the Chicago City Council earlier this month that would require the city to investigate the pollution impacts of new industrial projects before approving them.<\/p>\n \u201cEven with the attacks coming from the federal government, we\u2019re going to do everything in Chicago to protect working people.\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt also is an effort to double down in our work to ensure that environmental justice prevails.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump\u2019s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the United States, and is made possible through a partnership with Grist and\u00a0<\/em>WBEZ<\/em><\/a>, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Chicago-Wall_JRF.webp\")
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