Facing the Climate Gap: How Environmental Justice Communities are Leading the Way to a More Sustainable and Equitable California

October 2012
By:Ellen Kersten, UC Berkeley
Rachel Morello-Frosch, UC Berkeley
Manuel Pastor, University of Southern California
Marlene Ramos, Columbia University

Learn more and download the report >>

Cooling the Planet, Clearing the Air: Should climate policies give extra credit for maximizing short-term health benefits?

by James Boyce and Manuel Pastor

Learn more and download the report >>

Near-roadway pollution and childhood asthma: Implications for developing "win-win" compact urban development and clean vehicle strategies

September 2012
Environmental Health Perspectives
By Laura Perez, Fred Lurmann, John Wilson, Manuel Pastor, Sylvia J. Brandt, Nino K�nzli, and Rob McConnell

Learn more and read the article >>

Putting Faith First: Traditions and Innovations in Organizing within Religious Communities

by the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
April 2012

As the world of organizing shifts towards a more "transformational" model that connects with the soul of organizers and the soul of the nation -- middle America -- faith-rooted organizing offers a deep way to engage people of faith in social movement organizing.

"Putting Faith First: Traditions and Innovations in Organizing within Religious Communities" provides a brief overview of this innovative model and the opportunities and challenges facing faith-rooted organizers, as well as its intersection with research.

Learn more and download the report >>

L.A. Rising: The 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today's Movement Building

By Manuel Pastor and Michele Prichard
with Jennifer Ito and Vanessa Carter
April 2012

Something remarkable has happened in Los Angeles since the 1992 civil unrest – the region transformed from one whose residents were frustrated enough to burn down a city to one where innovative social movements have worked together to win living wage laws, community benefits agreements, better mass transit, improvements in land use planning, new college and career pathways, and so much more. Can the nation look to Los Angeles – or better put, the lessons from the social movement building that took root here – for a way forward from our current national economic crisis, racial unease, and political divides?

A new report co-authored by USC PERE’s Manuel Pastor and Liberty Hill Foundation’s Michele Prichard, LA Rising: The 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building tells a story about the twenty-year arc of organizing that emerged from 1992, identifies ten major innovations that occurred, and offers lessons for both funders and movement builders in the current moment.

Learn more and download the report >>

A Snapshot of Social Movement Moments, Los Angeles, 1980-2012

L.A. RISING: The 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building identifies ten lessons for movement building based on our interpretation of a twenty-year arc of social justice organizing in Los Angeles. Those conclusions were drawn from a sample of organizations and a subset of their work. We ask for your patience with our partial coverage – our sins of omission are not sins of commission – in both the report and the chart inside, which presents a matrix of key themes, organizations, and events. Time, space, and resources simply did not allow for full coverage of all the great work that has taken place in Los Angeles.

We ask for your assistance in filling the gaps by emailing information on your favorite “movement moment” to pere@dornsife.usc.edu . A better world is possible – and, with your help, so is a better chart.

Download the chart now >>

Koreatown: A Contested Community at a Crossroads

By Jared Sanchez, Mirabai Auer, Veronica Terriquez, and Mi Young Kim
Prepared in collaboration with the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA)
April 2012

A new report by USC PERE and the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA) takes stock of changes in Koreatown over the past two decades, lifts up new challenges, and charts the possibilities for the next twenty years.

Get more information about the report and download >>

Beyond the Count: Leveraging the 2010 Census to Build New Capacities for Civic Engagement and Social Change

By Jennifer Ito, Barbara Masters, Rhonda Ortiz and Manuel Pastor
Funded by The California Endowment
December 2011

A recent report from (PERE) and funded by The California Endowment (TCE), looks at how California Counts – the coordinated, statewide strategy itself – built and strengthened capacities to engage disenfranchised Californians beyond the count.

Download get more information about the report >>

Empowering LA’s Solar Workforce: New Policies that Deliver Investments and Jobs

By JR DeShazo, UCLA Luskin Center; Manuel Pastor, USC PERE; and Mirabai Auer, USC PERE
November 2011

A hard-hitting academic study jointly authored by UCLA Luskin Center and USC PERE research teams finds that Los Angeles has a significant workforce trained and ready to contribute to solar economy jobs, but that city leaders have so far failed to enact policies that would take advantage of this resource and put city residents to work.

Download get more information about the report >>

Chris Benner
Associate Professor, Community and Regional Development
University of California, Davis

Manuel Pastor Jr.
Professor, American Studies & Ethnicity and
Director, Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
University of Southern California

In recent years, analysts have pointed to rising inequality in the U.S. as an underlying factor in both our social fragmentation and economic underperformance. This book argues for the possibility of “just growth” – a framework in which the imperatives of equity are coupled with strategies to shore up the economy – and suggests that much can be learned from efforts to link prosperity and inclusion at a metropolitan or regional level in the United States.

Read more about the book and sign up for up-to-date release information >>

America’s Tomorrow:Equity is the Superior Growth Model
November 2011

Sarah Treuhaft
Angela Glover Blackwell
Manuel Pastor

In the last year, PolicyLink and USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) have been working together to research and write about a simple premise: growing economic inequality is bad for all of us.

We are pleased to announce the first report based on this partnership, America's Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model.

Read the report and find more information about the work >>

Manuel Pastor, Jennifer Ito, and Rachel Rosner
October 2011

Transactions – Transformations – Translations: Metrics That Matter for Building, Scaling, and Funding Social Movements, a report that provides an evaluative framework and key milestones to gauge movement building. Aiming to bridge the gap between the field of community organizing that relies on the one-on-one epiphanies of leaders and the growing philanthropic emphasis on evidence-based giving, the report stresses three main insights.

Visit us on the web to learn about these insights and to download and share the report >>

PERE and Affiliate Researchers release new article in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

“Playing It Safe: Assessing Cumulative Impact and Social Vulnerability through an Environmental Justice Screening Method in the South Coast Air Basin, California”

Read the article here >>

By James L. Sadd ¹, Manuel Pastor ², Rachel Morello-Frosch ^3,4,*, Justin Scoggins ² and Bill Jesdale ³

1. Department of Environmental Science, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 94001, USA;
   E-Mail: jsadd@oxy.edu

2. Program on Environmental and Regional Equity, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA; E-Mails: mpastor@college.usc.edu (M.P.); scogginj@college.usc.edu (J.S.)

3. Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; E-Mail: bill.jesdale@gmail.com (B.J.)

4. School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA
   * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: rmf@berkeley.edu;
   Tel.: +1-510-643-6358.

Regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and state authorities like the California Air Resources Board (CARB), have sought to address the concerns of environmental justice (EJ) advocates who argue that chemical-by-chemical and source-specific assessments of potential health risks of environmental hazards do not reflect the multiple environmental and social stressors faced by vulnerable communities. We propose an Environmental Justice Screening Method (EJSM) as a relatively simple, flexible and transparent way to examine the relative rank of cumulative impacts and social vulnerability within metropolitan regions and determine environmental justice areas based on more than simply the demographics of income and race. We specifically organize 23 indicator metrics into three categories: (1) hazard proximity and land use; (2) air pollution exposure and estimated health risk; and (3) social and health vulnerability. For hazard proximity, the EJSM uses GIS analysis to create a base map by intersecting land use data with census block polygons, and calculates hazard proximity measures based on locations within various buffer distances. These proximity metrics are then summarized to the census tract level where they are combined with tract centroid-based estimates of pollution exposure and health risk and socio-economic status (SES) measures. The result is a cumulative impacts (CI) score for ranking neighborhoods within regions that can inform diverse stakeholders seeking to identify local areas that might need targeted regulatory strategies to address environmental justice concerns.

To mark the Rosenberg Foundation’s 75th anniversary, leading social justice advocates and thinkers look into the future.

"Justice in California"
Read the report at   http://issuu.com/rosenbergfoundation/docs/justice_in_california

Including:

• “The Remaking of California” by Dr. Manuel Pastor 

• “Immigrant Rights: Bucking the National Trend” by Mina Titi Liu & Thomas A. Saenz

• “Smart About Safety” by Benjamin Todd Jealous & Lateefah Simon

• “Sowing Change in the San Joaquin Valley” by Hugo Morales

• “Securing Justice for Farm Workers” by Dolores Huerta

• “An Economy that Works for All of Us” by Madeline Janis

• “Building a Real Progressive Movement for Change” by Eva Paterson

• “Bridging Racial and Ethnic Divides” by Maria Echaveste

• “One, Larger Vision for Justice” by Kate Kendell & Stewart Kwoh

Making a Market: Multifamily Rooftop Solar and Social Equity in Los Angeles
April 2011
By JR DeShazo, Director, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation;
Manuel Pastor, Director, USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (USC
PERE); Mirabai Auer, USC PERE; Vanessa Carter, USC PERE; Nicholas Vartanian,
UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

The story goes that solar panels are a luxury available to affluent single-family home owners or by economies-of-scale at commercial and government sites. Turns out that the story isn’t quite right: Across Los Angeles, multifamily buildings where tenants are renters—often lower-income renters – have high solar potential. Tapping underutilized rooftop assets in this market could add over 1.4 mW of sustainable energy, thereby both greening the region and the wallets of economically distressed communities.
In Making a Market: Multi-Family Rooftop Solar and Social Equity in Los Angeles (link), PERE and UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation, examine how a solar energy program could be designed in a way to ensure that lower-income Angelenos benefit, too. Using mapping technology, the research team pinpoints LA neighborhoods with both high solar potential and high economic need. Resulting policy suggestions include creating a solar Feed-In-Tariff program or increasing net-metering programs for multi-family buildings.

The executive summary was released at the Los Angeles Business Councils’ annual Sustainability Summit held at the Getty Center on April 12, 2011 to an audience of local government officials, policy makers, and non-profits. A full version of the report will be released in June.

Download and share the Executive Summary >>

Hidden Hazards: A Call to Action for Healthy, Livable Communities
December 2010

While governments have come a long way with environmental protection, gaps in data collection and cumulative impacts persist – and are directly impairing the health of communities. Given the severe and disproportionate health risks in low-income communities, more effective policy and regulation is also needed. The Los Angeles Collaborative for Environmental Health and Justice’s latest report, “Hidden Hazards: A Call to Action for Healthy, Livable Communities,” makes progress toward achieving these goals.

To demonstrate the holes in regulatory agencies’ databases, the Collaboration engaged in “ground truthing.” That is, academic researchers worked with community members to collect data about the proximity of toxic facilities to those people most vulnerable to toxic exposure. Ground-truthing combines local knowledge, community-based data and standardized governmental information to provide a more complete and accurate dataset about toxic pollutants at the local level.

The result: new evidence on the clustering of toxic facilities and elevated air pollution and health risks in six Los Angeles neighborhoods. Not only are there more hazardous sites than regulatory data suggested, but these hazards are located too close to schools, health care facilities and daycare facilities.

In the report, the authors do urge regulatory agencies to enhance data collection but they also get down to practical policy priorities. They put forward an 11-part policy agenda for how local governments can utilize their land use powers to reduce health inequities. The policies fit into a three part framework: preventing further increases in cumulative impacts, mitigating existing hazards, and revitalizing communities by investing in local businesses and green technologies.

The impact of these policies will not be kept within the six neighborhoods profiled – actions we take to make vulnerable communities healthy will transform all of Los Angeles into a more health and livable city and region.

Download and share the report >>

Connecting at the Crossroads: Alliance Building and Social Change in Tough Times
December 2010
By Manuel Pastor, Jennifer Ito and Rhonda Ortiz and Commissioned by Public Interest Projects

America is facing tough times. While Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election ignited hope for change, the economy remains stagnant and a conservative wave has captured the attention of media and voters. Now more than ever, alliances of progressive grassroots organizations that are deeply rooted, broadly intersectional, and highly effective are critical for building and sustaining a movement for social equity.

With support from Public Interest Projects, Connecting at the Crossroads contributes to understanding the inner workings of such alliances and how to support them. The report focuses on a particular set of alliances: groups of independent base-building organizations that believe in building long-term connections across geographies, constituencies and issues as a key movement-building strategy. Based on a review of the literature and a scan of the field – including nearly 30 interviews with key leaders and a June 2010 convening of movement organizers – the report aims to narrow the gap between the work of alliances and philanthropic support for their efforts.

Learn more about the project and download the report >>

Photo by Kris Price / SEIU

California Dreaming
By Manuel Pastor
December 3, 2010
Huffington Post

In an Op-Ed for the Huffington Post, PERE director Manuel Pastor writes about the political opportunities for California Republicans in supporting the Dream Act. A November 2010 LATimes/USC College poll found that The Dream Act has widespread support amongst Californians. Latinos are the most enthusiastic -- but white voters are 75 percent in favor and even 68 percent of Republicans support such an approach, with nearly half of those interviewed strongly supportive. Over one fourth of the young people likely to meet national Dream Act requirements are Californians -- and they include valedictorians, heads of student government, and others whose skills are needed by a state working to regain its economic footing. Support from California Republicans would therefore reflect a statewide mandate -- and help more than half a million young Californians realize their dreams and contribute more effectively to the state's future.

Visit the Huffington Post and read the op-ed: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/manuel-pastor/california-dreaming_1_b_791795.html>>

The Color of Change: Inter-Ethnic Youth Leadership for the 21st Century
November 2010
By Manuel Pastor, Rhonda Ortiz, Jennifer Ito, Veronica Terriquez, Vanessa Carter, Jennifer Tran, and Teresa Cheng

While the nation will become “majority-minority” shortly after 2042, it will be much sooner – 2023 – when the majority of youth will be people of color. Unfortunately, racial gaps in economic and academic outcomes persist – and preparing a better future for all of America requires addressing this challenge.

The Color of Change: Interethnic Youth Leadership for the 21st Century suggests that one approach to securing that better future involves seeing youth as the progenitors of change and not simply the recipients of services. We argue for equipping young people with the tools to change – and hold accountable – the institutional structures that can facilitate or impede their success is critical. And we suggest that the rapidly changing demographic dynamics mean that young leaders will need special skills at working across the usual boundaries of race, geography and generation.

Based on a wide range of interviews with actors in the field, and feedback from a convening that brought together forty organizers, experts, and foundation staff, The Color of Change looks at youth organizing through a social movement lens and offers specific recommendations for the field, including taking risks on new leadership, healing generational divides in movement organizations, seeing community colleges as sites for strategic intervention, and moving towards an integrated service delivery and civic engagement model.

Read more about the report and download the executive summary>>

PERE Director Manuel Pastor and PolicyLink President and CEO Angela Glover Blackwell on “Building a Stronger America by Investing in Boys and Young Men of Color”

With America hemorrhaging talent – and all the weaker for it – Angela Glover Blackwell and Manuel Pastor argue that the nation needs to refocus efforts on the success of young men and boys of color. Their rationale is not altruistic but pragmatic: given the rapidly changing demography, the nation’s future depends on the ability of these young people to meaningfully contribute to refashioning the economy and society. Part of the current problem, they argue, is that schools, the criminal justiceand even the economy have become less forgiving of youthful mistakes – and boys and young men of color are bearing the brunt of these social policies. Moving ahead will require new policies, but it will also require new politics — particularly the courage to declare that America cannot afford to ignore the crisis of young men of color and the understanding that addressing this crisis is essential to building a broad-based transformational coalition around equity and opportunity.

Blackwell and Pastor offer these thoughts in “Let’s Hear it for the Boys: Building a Stronger America by Investing in Young Men and Boys of Color,” the lead chapter for a new book, Changing Places: How Communities Will Improve the Health of Boys of Color. The volume, edited by Christopher Edley Jr. and Jorge Ruiz de Velasco of the UC Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity, was supported by The California Endowment and published by the University of California. It documents health disparities for boys and young men of color, why race and place matters, and what we can do about it.

Read it for free here: http://bit.ly/feHD25

Alliance for a Better Community resident-driven research uncovers relationship between place and health; PERE supports research efforts

Last month the Alliance for a Better Community (ABC) released their new report "Places, Spaces and People: How the Urban Environment Impacts Health." The report is the result of a community-driven research project wherein Boyle Heights and East LA residents and stakeholders identified key health concerns in the community, and developed strategic solutions. The resulting policy ideas are both significant and doable: they stress the importance of schools as epicenters for healthy living and focus infrastructure improvements on creating buffer zones around both schools and parks.

This report continues in PERE's tradition of building university - community partnerships. PERE supported the research and helped to frame the final report in the broader context of health and place. In his forward, PERE Director, Manuel Pastor, reflects on how national trends towards creating healthy places - including First Lady Obama's Let's Move! initiative and the National Healthy Food Financing Initiative – set a strong framework in which ABC's work can move forward.

To download the report, click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37810822/Places-Spaces-People-How-the-Urban-Environment-Impacts-Health-in-Boyle-Heights-and-East-LA

Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America's Future
June 2010
By Angela Glover Blackwell, Manuel Pastor, and Stewart Kwoh

Even after the election of America’s first black president, racial inequity continues to plague the nation. Barack Obama’s election ushered in a new era of hope, but measurable gains for people of color more broadly remain scarce: We still fail to graduate more than one-quarter of young black men from high school, and nearly a third of all African American, Latino, and Southeast Asian American children live in poverty. By as early as 2042, the United States is projected to be a nation with no single racial group as a majority. It is no longer just the future of racial minorities that is worrisome; the nation itself faces peril if the new, broader majority fails.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE BOOK AND HOW TO PURCHASE >>

Reducing Poverty and Economic Distress after ARRA: Potential Roles for Place-Conscious Strategies
By Manuel Pastor, Margery Austin Turner
April 2010

Growing up poor is a challenge—and growing up in a poor neighborhood is even more challenging. Because community distress undermines individual outcomes and trajectories, place-based strategies have played a role in anti-poverty efforts. The notion that we need to think of distressed neighborhoods in a broader metropolitan context, is relatively new. We argue that this approach—considering place in metropolitan context, seeing neighborhoods as a platform for mobility, and understanding the critical role of organizing—could move the needle on poverty. The new administration understands this framework, but applying it across agencies and programs requires conscious effort and commitment.

Learn more about the report and download at the Urban Institute >>

Minding The Climate Gap: What's at Stake if California's Climate Law isn't Done Right and Right Away
By Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello-Frosch, James Sadd, and Justin Scoggins
April 2010

Minding the Climate Gap: What's at Stake if California's Climate Law isn't Done Right and Right Away details how incentivizing the reduction of greenhouse gases—which cause climate change—from facilities operating in the most polluted neighborhoods could generate major public health benefits. The study also details how revenues generated from charging polluters could be used to improve air quality and create jobs in the neighborhoods that suffer from the dirtiest air.

• In California, children in poverty, together with all people in poverty, live disproportionately near large facilities emitting toxic air pollution and greenhouse gases.
• People of color in the state experience over seventy percent more of the dangerous pollution coming from major greenhouse gas polluters as whites, and the disparity is particularly sharp for African Americans.
• The racial differential in proximity to pollution is not just a function of income: people of color are more likely to live near these polluting facilities than whites with similar incomes.
• Continuing to move forward with California’s climate law presents the opportunity to save lives and bolster California’s economy by focusing pollution reductions in neighborhoods suffering the worst public health impacts.

Download the report:

Executive Summary
Full Report
Fact Sheet

News about the report:

Who loses if California's Climate Law is Halted?
By Rachel Morello Frosch and Manuel Pastor
April 14, 2010
The Huffington Post

In the Green Technology Revolution, How Can We Best Reach the Summit?
By H. Fields Grenee
April 28, 2010 03:04 AM
The Atlanta Post

Looking Forward: Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State 2010

In collaboration with the California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC), data analysts from the Program for Environmental & Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) helped to produce the report Looking Forward: Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State 2010. The report provides a comprehensive data profile of the economic contributions of immigrants to California – specifically examining six regions within the state where immigrants comprise a substantial share of the population and have played an integral role in the development of the metropolitan area.

The results highlight the unique and overwhelming contributions of immigrants to the social and economic fabric of the state of California, illustrating the ways in which immigrants are intertwined with the success of the state’s powerful regional economies. The report complements past and current research by further dispelling the myth that immigrants are a drain on the economy, showing that immigrants are a vital part of California’s economy and society.

Some key findings for California include:

• Immigrants and their children make up 41% of California’s population. Of all children in California, 48% have at least one immigrant parent.
• In California, a full 19% of the voting-age population is non-citizen. Immigrant voters and their children could represent 29% of all future potential voters in California by 2012.
• Immigrant households make up 27% of the total household income in California, and thus represent a substantial share of all spending power in the state.
• Immigrants comprise more than one-third of California’s labor force (34%) and contribute about 32% of the state’s GDP. They figure prominently in the agriculture, manufacturing, and repair and personal service industries.

The full report and detailed regional profiles can be downloaded from: https://caimmigrant.org/contributions.html

Press coverage of Looking Forward: Immigrant Contributions to the Golden State:

La Prensa San Diego: New Report Details California Immigrant Contributions / PDF

San Ramon Press: Half of Bay Area children have one immigrant parent / PDF

Vida En La Valle: Report: Immigrants' contributions to economy abound / PDF

Fox Reno: Report: Immigrants Contribute Greatly To California / PDF

SF Appeal: Study: Half The Kids In The Bay Area Have An Immigrant Parent / PDF

Photo Credit: Neil Parekh / SEIU Healthcare 775NW

Breaking the Bank / (Re)Making the Bank: America’s Financial Crisis and the Implications for Sustainable Advocacy for Fair Credit and Fair Banking
By Manuel Pastor, Rhonda Ortiz, and Vanessa Carter
February 2010

One of the biggest crises facing contemporary America is the wave of foreclosures and the broader financial meltdown. At the same time, the crisis has created the potential for change, particularly given the brewing advocacy around returning the benefits of our financial sector to consumers, not the financial elite. Advocates have argued not just for curbing the excesses of sub-prime mortgages, but also for limiting the impacts of payday loans, cash checking, and other predatory lenders, as well as revamping the Community Reinvestment Act and establishing a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Will this advocacy lead to sustainable change in the financial sector? Building on our earlier work on financial deserts in Los Angeles (Banking on LA) and our work on social movements (Making Change), we analyze the emerging advocacy with an eye toward the long-term potential for creating a financial justice movement. We suggest that organizers have made great progress but that it may be important to further popularize the financial equity frame, offer a viable economic model with accompanying pragmatic policies, and find intersections with the economic justice movement on a whole.

This paper was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and organized by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University. For the full set of papers on “The Future of Fair Housing: Fair credit, fair housing & integration into opportunity in the aftermath of the housing crisis,” see http://kirwaninstitute.org/research/projects/future-of-fair-housing.php.

To download this report click here.

The Climate Gap: Inequalities in How Climate Change Hurts Americans & How to Close the Gap
By Rachel Morello Frosch, Manuel Pastor, Jim Sadd, and Seth Shonkoff
May 2009

By now, virtually all Americans concur that climate change is real, and could pose devastating consequences for our nation and our children. Equally real is the “Climate Gap” – the sometimes hidden and often-unequal impact climate change will have on people of color and the poor in the United States.

This report helps to document the Climate Gap, connecting the dots between research on heat waves, air quality, and other challenges associated with climate change. But we do more than point out an urgent problem; we also explore how we might best combine efforts to both solve climate change and close the Climate Gap — including an appendix focused on California’s global warming policy and a special accompanying analysis of the federal-level American Clean Energy Security Act.

Download the report
Executive Summary
Full Report: fast download web version / high quality version
Working Analysis of Waxman-Markey
California Fact Sheet
National Fact Sheet
Press Release

Justice in the Air: Tracking Toxic Pollution from America's Industries and Companies to Our States, Cities, and Neighborhoods
By Michael Ash, James K. Boyce, Grace Chang, Manuel Pastor, Justin Scoggins, and Jennifer Tran[Ash, Boyce, and Chang are from the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Pastor, Scoggins, and Tran are from the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at the University of Southern California]
April 2009

Click here for the full report.

With climate change threatening our way of life, dirty air triggering asthma, and industrial pollutants causing cancer, the nation is more motivated than ever before to take a hard look at the problems we face and seek new approaches that can better secure the future of the planet and save lives.

This report contributes to that lofty goal. In it, we go beyond tracking the country’s biggest industrial polluters. And we go beyond saying which regions have the dirtiest air. While important, that's been done before.

Instead, this study is one of the first to track, which states and metropolitan areas have the biggest gap between the health risk from toxic pollution faced by people of color and the poor compared to their proportion of the population. The results confirm what many Americans of color and low-income Americans have known for a long time: clean air is not necessarily an equal opportunity affair.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of our research is a list of the industrial companies whose pollution has the most disproportionate impacts on minority or low-income neighborhoods. Many companies are aware of their impacts on communities and the environment, and many have adopted strategies for becoming better corporate citizens. This report aims to contribute to these efforts by presenting a new measure of responsible corporate performance: whether a company does particularly unequal harm to its disadvantaged neighbors.

To develop this measure, we take data from the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) model, a computer-based screening tool developed by EPA that takes emissions listed in the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and runs them through a series of toxicity factors and an air model to determine the resulting potential health risk. We add to those outcomes an analysis of the demographics of the neighborhoods that are most affected -- and then track back to establish the corporate ownership of the plants in the TRI/RSEI.

To address the disparity issue by state, city, and neighborhood, we offer a series of recommendations, including defending and extending the right-to-know, linking modeling and monitoring, shifting pollution standards to assess cumulative impacts, and encouraging community, shareholder and consumer activism.

We hope that this report contributes to a broader conversation about our environmental challenges and will be of use to those activists, policy makers, and companies who are working daily to protect the environmental health and well-being of all Americans.

Banking on LA
By Manuel Pastor
March 2009

We are pleased to announce the release of a new report from USCs Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE). Banking on LA, a synthesis of several research efforts with a special lens applied to Los Angeles, offers a vision of how a recommitment to providing full banking services in lower-income neighborhoods could create pathways from poverty, rebuild the middle class and strengthen the region.

Being poor is hard enough; being poor and unbanked is worse. Forced to turn to payday lenders, check cashers, and other high-cost financial services, hard-working families see their income depleted and their wealth sapped. In areas like Southeast L.A., non-traditional financial services outnumber bank branches fivefold and Latinos and African Americans are significantly overrepresented in the unbanked population even within the city’s low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.

Why the mismatch? On the one hand, banks often do not see the potential in low-income communities, partly because traditional methods of evaluating local markets do not fully take into account population density and informal economic activity. On the other, low-income consumers do not always see the banks, partly because branches are scarcer but also because fewer people in their social networks have banking accounts and banks do not always successfully publicize starter accounts.

Los Angeles has just formally kicked off its own Bank on LA initiative to address these issues. With the country’s largest unbanked population, the City is working with banks and community groups to publicize accounts, provide financial literacy classes, and create the opportunity for low-income individuals to save and accumulate for themselves and their children. The effort will be tracked with an extensive monitoring system to see exactly what difference it can make. For more information, go to http://www.bankonla.com.

We thank the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Wallis Annenberg Fund for Leadership and Innovation, at the Liberty Hill Foundation, for providing funds for this and the other research pieces related to the Bank on LA effort.

Download the report
web version
high quality version

Making Change: How Social Movements Work - and How to Support Them
By Manuel Pastor and Rhonda Ortiz
March 2009

Social movements are a hidden underpinning of the American story. Using the tools of relationship-building, community mobilization, and symbolic protest, they have helped bring us civil rights, labor protections, and even a healthier environment, sparking people’s aspirations, imaginations, and actions for a better nation.

Why then has funding of these movements been difficult to obtain and sustain? Some suggest that funders often want more immediate and measurable outcomes – moving a nation to live up to its promise is important but hard to quantify. And yet in recent years, there has been renewed philanthropic interest and openness to investing in social movements, community organizing and policy change, and an understanding that this will require a new level of patience and a new set of relationships with grantees.

This document seeks to provide a guidepost to both funders and the field by detailing what makes for a successful social movement, what capacities need to be developed, and what funding opportunities might exist.

The document itself comes from a different model of funder-grantee relationships. The paper from which this Executive Summary draws was initially requested by The California Endowment as its leaders were thinking through the connection between place-based comprehensive change and state-level policy in the Golden State. Thinking that the connection between the two might be social movements and community organizing, TCE commissioned us, the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE), to do a series of interviews with leading organizers – and asked us to write something that would make sense to these activists as well as foundation leaders.

Download the report

Executive Summary
Full Report

Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles: Strategic Directions for Funders
By Manuel Pastor and Rhonda Ortiz
January 2009

The Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and the Center for the Study o Immigrant Immigration on Tuesday released their report, Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles: Strategic Directions for Funders, which stresses how foreign-born and native-born Angelenos can work together for a stronger region. In Los Angeles County, one third of our residents are immigrants, nearly half of our workforce is foreign-born, and two-thirds of those under 18 are the children of immigrants, 90 percent of which are U.S. born. Immigrant integration can be defined as improved economic mobility for, enhanced civic participation by, and receiving society openness to immigrants.

"Southern California's social stability and economic prosperity is directly tied to what happens to our immigrant workers, families and children, said Antonia Hernández president and CEO of the California Community Foundation. We're in this together. So it is in our mutual interest and obligations to help our immigrant neighbors integrate into society...We are investing not just in their future, but in Southern California's as well." Immigrants by their residence add to the local economy, by their labor add to the workforce, and by their background add to the Los Angeles global ties. The report outlines specific strategies to:

• Increase opportunities for economic mobility for immigrants, their families and their communities,
• Enhance opportunities for civic participation by immigrants, and
• Foster openness in society towards immigrants and their families.
  

PERE created the report using both demographic data and collective input from immigrants rights advocates, business and workforce development leaders, planners and government agencies, funders, labor unions, and community builders. The California Community Foundation funded the project.

PERE is a research unit headed by Professor Manuel Pastor and part of the USC Center for Sustainable Cities. The Program conducts research and facilitates discussions on issues of environmental justice, regional inclusion and immigrant integration. PERE conducts high-quality research that is relevant to public policy concerns and that reaches to those directly affected communities that most need to be engaged in the discussion. In general, we seek and support direct collaborations with community-based organizations in research and other activities, trying to forge a new model of how university and community can work together for the common good.

The Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) headed by Dowell Myers and Manuel Pastor has as its mission to remake the narrative for understanding, and the dialogue for shaping, immigrant integration in America. Our intent is to identify and evaluate the mutual benefits of immigrant integration for the native-born and immigrants and to study the pace of the ongoing transformation in different locations, not only in the past and present but projected into the future. CSII thus brings together three emphases: scholarship that draws on academic theory and rigorous research, data that provides information structured to highlight the process of immigrant integration over time, and engagement that seeks to create new dialogues with government, community organizers, business and civic leaders, immigrants and the voting public.

Download the report
Full Report

News about the report
Foundation aims to help L.A. immigrants
The California Community Foundation plans a campaign to help L.A. immigrants become more active citizens by helping them learn English, improve job skills and increase civic participation.
By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times
February 10, 2009

State of the Region: Growth, Equity, and Inclusion in the BayArea
By Manuel Pastor, Rhonda Ortiz, Jennifer Tran, Justin Scoggins, and Vanessa Carter
December 2008

For the last decade, regional business and civic groups has been crafting indices to get a handle on the progress of their metropolitan areas. Many of these indices dwell on innovation and business investment but pay scant attention to issues of inclusion and equity. But making social equity a sidebar rather than a key part of the main show is exactly wrong: the latest research has shown that those metros that make more progress on reducing poverty, segregation, and inequality actually grow faster and stronger.

Because we think that keeping fairness in mind is important for our national and regional economic recovery and because our concern has long been for those fairing the least well, we have been working with Urban Habitat and others to create a regional index focused primarily on inclusion and equity. After all, if we can include all of us, we can meet our challenges; if we can bridge the Bay, we can build the Bay together.

The challenges may seem daunting but the opportunities to work and grow together are there. While gentrification threatens the region, the Bay Area is also home to groups on the cutting edge of equitable and inclusionary smart growth policies. While new leaders need to step up to the plate, organizations like Urban Habitat and Working Partnerships have been busy training residents in leadership and policy development. And while the economy is problematic, community groups have made great strides in securing community benefits agreements, advocating for living wages, and supporting the unionization of workers – and more efforts are needed to refashion education, integrate immigrants, and provide innovative re-entry programs for those that have become caught up in the criminal justice system.

Ten years ago, the Social Equity Caucus (SEC) was founded with a simple set of core ideas – that the region was where the action was, that inclusion was key to metropolitan success, and that to do this right, you needed to include the organized voice and policy ideas of those social justice advocates and community leaders closest to the ground. On this anniversary of the founding of the SEC, it is our hope that this document and the data we offer will help advocates as they continue their work to build a more prosperous, more inclusive and more sustainable Bay Area.

Learn more about the Social Equity Caucus (SEC) and the first ever State of the Region event.

Download the executive summary here.

Affiliated Publications

Cumulative Impacts in East Oakland: Findings from a Community-Based Mapping Study
Communities for a Better Environment
September 2008

The report was put together by Communities for a Better Environment and other partners, the California Air Resources Board, Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California's Program for Environmental and Regional Equity; James Sadd, Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Occidental College; and Rachel Morello-Frosch, who is currently at UC-Berkeley and was formerly an Assistant Professor at the Center for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community Health at Brown University.

The study addresses the environmental effects of toxic pollution, such as idling diesel trucks and pollution from auto-shop repairs and chemical companies.

News about the report
Uneasy Breathing -- Air Pollution in Oakland
By Jane Kay
San Francisco Chronicle
September 23, 2008

Oakland residents test neighborhood air quality
By Alan Wang
ABC 7
Monday, September 22, 2008

OAKLAND: Study Says Industry Causes Health Problems in East Oakland
OAKLAND (BCN)
Monday, September 22, 2008

Groups convene to address environmental concerns in East Oakland
By Kamika Dunlap
Oakland Tribune
Article Launched:09/18/2008 05:11:27 PM PDT