# The Quest for Environmental Justice - Author: [Robert D. Bullard](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard.md) - Quotes: 10 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice ## Quotes > No community, rich or poor, urban or suburban, black or white, should be made into a sacrifice zone or dumping ground. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/no-community-rich.md) > The 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit was probably the single most important event in the environmental justice movement's history. The summit broadened the movement beyond its early focus against toxics to include issues of public health, worker safety, land use, transportation, housing, resource allocation, and community empowerment. The meeting also demonstrated that it is possible to build a multiracial grassroots movement around environmental and economic justice. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/the-1991-first.md) > The environmental justice framework shifts the burden of proof to polluters and dischargers who do harm, who discriminate, or who do not give equal protection to racial and ethnic minorities. Under the current system, individuals who challenge polluters must prove that they have been harmed, discriminated against, or disproportionately affected. Few affected communities have the resources to hire the lawyers, expert witnesses, and doctors needed to sustain such a challenge. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/the-environmental-justice-framework.md) > In 1990, my book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality chronicled the convergence of two social movements-the social justice and environmental movements-into one, the environmental justice movement. This book highlighted African Americans' environmental activism in the South, the same region that gave birth to the modern civil rights movement. What started out as local and often isolated community-based struggles against the siting of toxic waste and industrial facilities blossomed into a multi-issue, multiethnic, and multiregional movement." [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/in-1990-my-book.md) > The (environmental justice) movement has come a long way since its humble beginnings in Warren County, North Carolina, a rural and mostly African American community, where a proposed landfill for disposing of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) ignited protests that resulted in more than five hundred arrests. These protests prompted a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. This study revealed that three of the four off-site, commercial hazardous waste landfills in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 4 (composed of eight southern states) happen to be located in predominantly African American communities, although African Americans made up only 20 percent of the region's population. The protesters of Warren County put the term "environmental racism" on the map. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/the-environmental-justice.md) > Waiting for government to act is recipe for disaster. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/waiting-for-government.md) > With its bottom-up approach, this movement has re-defined the term "environment" to include the places where people live, work, play, and go to school, as well as brought attention to how these things interact with the physical and natural world. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/with-its-bottom-up.md) > The environmental protection apparatus is broken and must be fixed. The environmental justice movement has set out a clear goal: to fix this protection apparatus by eliminating unequal enforcement of environmental, civil rights, and public health laws. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/the-environmental-protection.md) > Poor people and poor communities are given a false choice between having, on the one hand, no jobs and no development and, on the other hand, risky low-paying jobs and pollution. In reality, unemployment and poverty are also hazardous to one's health. This jobs-versus-unemployment scenario is a form of economic blackmail. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/poor-people-and.md) > Students and young people have fueled every social movement in the United States, including the civil rights, environmental, antiwar, women's movements. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-d-bullard/the-quest-for-environmental-justice/students-and-young.md)