On a cold winter morning outside the Berkley Community Center in Norfolk, Jay Boone is bundled up and ready to work, watering rows of plants in raised wooden garden beds.
“We have about three different types of collards out here,” Boone said. “We have cabbage, we have brussels sprouts, broccoli, kale, a lot of the green leafy vegetables.”
Boone, who lives in Berkley, spearheaded this community garden as head of a local organization called Keeping Us Secure and Prosperous, or KUSP. She said she started it after seeing a need for community-building and fresh produce options.
The area feels the environmental brunt of surrounding industrial sites that can contribute to pollution, and is vulnerable to flooding, she said.
“Those things can be a hassle when you are just living in the space – but even more so if you are trying to provide green spaces and produce food in the same soil that these things are happening,” Boone said.
KUSP is now getting a boost from a partnership with local institutions interested in enhancing environmental justice.
It’s part of an initiative launched by Norfolk State University and the nonprofit Elizabeth River Project that they call an “environmental justice incubator.”
Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a history professor at NSU and the university’s endowed professor of Virginia Black history and culture, said the project’s goal is to help historically marginalized communities impacted by their environment in a meaningful and lasting way.
“You can help clean up the creeks and the waterways, but we've seen them cleaned up before, and it's like a one and done,” she said. “What hasn't been done is, let's get at the systemic issues going on.”
The federal government defines environmental justice as equal treatment of all people when making decisions related to the environment.
Advocates raise issues like polluting facilities deliberately built in communities of color and flooding in vulnerable areas that cuts off access during storms.
Newby-Alexander said to work toward justice, officials first need to look to the past. For example, maybe those neighborhoods have limited access because they were purposefully segregated by highway infrastructure.
“In order to fix a problem, you have to first acknowledge how problems got to be a problem, and then you have to engage in some reparative justice,” she said.
The team is working with historically Black communities on Norfolk’s Southside on projects like the Berkley garden.
Over the next year, they plan to draft a list of best practices that officials all around the country could follow when conducting environmental justice work.
“We're not telling you exactly how you can fix it, but we're telling you there are things that you need to think about,” Newby-Alexander said.
The most important lesson, she said, is to put the community’s needs first and acknowledge its history, rather than coming in with preconceived solutions.
“If you fail to acknowledge what they've been trying to do, what they've succeeded in doing, then you have actually gone in and immediately disrespected that community.”
Ru Williams, environmental justice coordinator for the Elizabeth River Project, said she’s seen the importance of that message.
For example, she wanted to get young people on the Southside more engaged with the river and hosted a fishing event, but many kids seemed hesitant to participate.
So the next time, they started with just letting kids play basketball. After a while, some went down to the dock and tried some fishing, too, Williams said.
“The kids felt more welcome if there was something else that was familiar and was comfortable to them,” she said. She took away that “it’s not necessarily just physically being in the community (that’s important), but recognizing that we all come from different places.”
Meanwhile, local leaders are also advocating for environmental justice at a higher institutional level, like at a recent roundtable held at NSU with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Newby-Alexander told the government representatives not to think about the topic as only greenery and scenery.
“We keep thinking of the environment as trees, bushes and water,” she said. But “the environment is where people live. It’s their homes, it’s what surrounds their homes.”
She said that’s why the incubator team includes NSU academics across many different disciplines – many of which may not typically be associated with the environment.
That includes Solomon Isekeije, an MFA professor of fine arts. He said it’s critical to teach students and young people in the community to think holistically, and with creativity.
“Everything fits into environmental justice,” he said. He thinks about aspects like helping “redefine the narratives that are associated with our watersheds and our rivers.”
Chinedu Okala, an artist and associate dean for NSU’s College of Liberal Arts, said people need to look past just science and atmospheric conditions.
“It's the social, it's the political, it's the economic,” he said. “And particularly for me, it is always a direct evaluation or interrogation of our commitment to upholding human dignity.”
Boone, in Berkley, said she hopes to see progress continue.
“It's as simple as clean air and green grass, but it goes deeper than that as well.”
