Power Politics: Environmental Activism in South Los Angeles (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780813546070)

In the late 1990s, when California's deregulation of the production and sale of electric power created massive energy shortages, a group of environmental justice activists blocked construction of a power plant in their working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhoods. Why did they choose this battle? And how did the largely high school student activists come to prevail in the face of statewide political opinion?

Power Politics is a rich and readable study of a grassroots campaign where longtime labor and environmental allies found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that pitted good jobs against good air. Karen Brodkin analyzes how those issues came to be opposed and in doing so unpacks the racial and class dynamics that shape Americans' grasp of labor and environmental issues. Power Politics' activists stood at the forefront of a movement that is building broad-based environmental coalitions and placing social justice at the heart of a new and robust vision.

Author: Karen Brodkin
ISBN-10: 0813546079
ISBN-13: 9780813546070
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/01/2009
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 09/11/2009 pg. 15