New York’s South Bronx was once a getaway for the rich; now the defining landmarks of the community are power plants, landfills, and parking lots.
Where some might see hopelessness, though, resident Omar Freilla sees opportunity. Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives to salvage reusable materials from trash and demolition waste, creating a neighborhood that is healthier both environmentally and economically. In a virtual walking tour featured on this page, Freilla discusses his vision of creating hundreds of jobs out of the abundance of “things that nobody else wants.”
What constitutes “the environment” in American environmentalism? The iconic images of the movement — California’s redwoods, Yosemite’s Half Dome, the arches at Zion — suggest one answer: the environment as wilderness, a pristine domain to be protected from human incursion. This week’s focus on systemic change takes us to a place where people live near the freeway or next to a power station or miles from public transit; a land where the neighbors include landfills, oil refineries, nuclear-waste repositories, factory farms. This is a whole different kind of environment — but one that is no less American, and no less deserving of a movement to protect and transform it.
