Earth Day Special: There’s No Environmental Justice Without Worker Justice
Our Community Engagement and Education Director breaks down what exactly a Just Transition is and why it’s so important to communities like ours.
Foreword
Growing up in Hammond, virtually everyone I knew had a connection of some kind to the heavy industry that has come to characterize Northwest Indiana. All my friends knew someone who worked at the steel mills or the BP Whiting Refinery. For thousands of NWI families, these industries have traditionally been seen as providing good-paying, union jobs.
At the same time, everyone has experienced the negative side effects of these industries. Pollution is a ubiquitous part of daily life. You can smell it in the air, you can taste it in the water, and you can see it rising from smokestacks. Depending on where you live, it may even be in the soil your children play in.
When I was growing up, I never heard anyone use the term “sacrifice zone.”It wasn't until years later, when I became involved in the environmental justice movement, that I became familiar with this term.
Imagine my shock when I realized that my hometown, the place I grew up, the place the people I love to call home, is considered a “sacrifice zone”. That’s to say, a place where the health and even the lives of local residents are considered a “price worth paying” to keep the wheels of the economy turning.
Now, as a teacher in the community, I go to school every day and stand in front of classrooms filled with students who trust me to tell them what’s right. What do I tell them about the fact that far-away leaders of industry and state bureaucrats decided our entire communities are expendable? How do I explain that once we stop being useful to corporations, they’ll pick up and go, leaving poisoned soil and contaminated water behind for our communities to deal with, without even the benefit of industrial jobs?
I love my community and the people in it. That’s why I decided to fight for a Just Transition because I believe that the hard-working families of NWI don’t just have a rich past, but a vibrant future.
As a first step, I hope folks will sign our petition to protect Lake Michigan and then read on to learn more about what a Just Transition is and what you can do to make sure every tomorrow is better than every yesterday.
In Solidarity,
Mike Santos
JTNWI Community Engagement and Education Director
What is a Just Transition?
As the world gets closer and closer to climate catastrophe, the framework of a Just Transition has emerged as a common theme within the environmental justice movement, but what exactly is a Just Transition, and how can it guide us in our fight for a better world?
Just Transition is a framework with the goal of bringing about a transition from the carbon-based, extractive economy of today to a regenerative economy that includes protections for workers and reparations for communities that the fossil fuel industry has harmed.
According to Climate Justice Alliance, a Just Transition “also represents a host of strategies to transition whole communities to build thriving economies that provide dignified, productive, and ecologically sustainable livelihoods; democratic governance, and ecological resilience.”
A framework developed by Movement Generation with Climate Justice Alliance’s Our Power Communities Campaign
Its Role in History
The concept of a Just Transition was popularized in the 1970s and has its roots in the work of the late Tony Mazzocchi, a progressive leader in the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union (later absorbed into the United Steelworkers). Mazzocchi famously noted, There is a Superfund for dirt. There ought to be one for workers.” This concept has taken on a more holistic meaning across the movements for environmental and climate justice.
Mazzochi’s words still ring true today and raise the question - as we move forward in remediating former fossil fuel extraction sites, cleansing the water and soil of toxic chemicals, should we not also be supporting workers and their communities who have suffered harm from the fossil fuel industry?
Just Transition History and Context by Climate Justice Alliance
A Region in Transition
While we organize locally to bring about the necessary shift to curb greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the disastrous effects of climate change, Northwest Indiana needs a plan to address the inevitable impacts to workers and frontline communities from the decommissioning, cleanup, and end-use of fossil fuel sites. Amid declining steel prices, a glut of new capacity overseas, and increasing international pressure to reduce carbon emissions, the steel industry is beginning to alter facets of its operations locally at the U.S. Steel mills and Cleveland Cliffs’ mills, which contribute to the highest concentration of toxic emissions in the state and, cumulatively, in the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a deep impact on the oil industry as well. From March to August 2020, the oil, gas, and chemicals industry laid off more than 100,000 workers in the U.S. alone - the fastest rate of layoffs in the industry’s history. BP accounted for a significant number, announcing the layoff of 15 percent of its workforce, including at the BP Whiting, Indiana plant, the largest BP refinery in the world and the biggest refinery in the Midwest. These disruptions signify a new normal, a sign that the post-fossil fuels economy is on the horizon. As a region built on steel and radically shaped by the fossil fuel industry, NWI deserves to reap the benefits of this new economy.
Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal, East Chicago, IN
Campaigning for a Just Transition
Our Work in Michigan City, Indiana
In Indiana, 7,730 megawatts of coal power will come offline over the next decade. NWI’s utility, Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), accounts for a fourth of these retirements. In Michigan City, the decommissioning of NIPSCO’s coal-burning plant between 2026 and 2028 risks an estimated loss of 120 jobs and $3.6 million in tax revenue. The community has been home to the Michigan City Generating Station for nearly a century, which has provided power to hundreds of thousands of people across the region. NIPSCO announced in 2018 its plans to phase out the utility’s last remaining coal plants in Michigan City and Wheatfield, but many questions remain unanswered, including:
What will be done to support the workers and their families impacted by NIPSCO’s closures?
What will become of the sites and the communities surrounding them?
How will the community be involved in the decision-making process?
We saw this transition taking place and, like many in our communities, began asking questions and making demands. It was against this backdrop that our organization, Just Transition Northwest Indiana, was first conceived.
One immediate challenge that arose was the question of what would happen to the toxic coal ash along the lake when the plant was decommissioned. We could see that NIPSCO had no intention of cleaning up its mess. This led us to start our Protect Lake Michigan Campaign, calling for a complete clean closure in which all of the toxic coal ash at the site would be removed and cleaned up.
If no action is taken, it’s a matter of time before the facility’s aging outer seawall breaks, spilling 2 million tons of toxic coal ash, containing carcinogens like lead, arsenic, mercury, and molybdenum, into Lake Michigan and Trail Creek. This scenario would be disastrous not just for Michigan City but for every one of the millions of people who live in the four states bordering the lake and the complex ecosystems that depend on it.
Clean drinking water is a human right that must be defended against the profit-seeking motives of corporate polluters like NIPSCO. A Just Transition would mean NIPSCO committing to a full clean closure and cleaning up the toxic mess it has left behind at the Michigan City Generating Station. Anything short of this would be an injustice for the people of Michigan City and Northwest Indiana, for whom Lake Michigan is their primary source of drinking water.
Another issue that has emerged is what will become of the Michigan City Generating Station after it is decommissioned. If what has happened in other frontline communities is any indication, there is a strong chance that NIPSCO could sell the site off to private developers whose only concern will be lining their pockets at the expense of the community. This is a process known as gentrification.
gen·tri·fi·ca·tion
the process whereby the character of a poor area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process.
These unanswered questions led us to begin planning our Reclaim Our Communities Campaign this year, which calls for a community-led process to determine the future of the Michigan City Generating Station site. We are calling for the property to be acquired by the city and, with the meaningful input of residents, transformed into something that benefits the public.
For the people of Michigan City, especially those in Ward 3 on the city’s West Side, who have lived under the shadow of the coal plant their entire lives, a Just Transition requires corporate polluters like NIPSCO to be held accountable and for workers and their communities to be included in decisions about their future.
NIPSCO Generating Station, Michigan City, IN
What You Can Do
The idea of a Just Transition raises larger systemic questions about how we organize our economy. Our current economic system is based on extraction, exploitation, and relentless consumption. It puts profit over people by consigning hundreds of millions of people worldwide to live in the shadow of coal plants and oil refineries.
Moving forward, we want to empower people to envision alternatives to economic exploitation. This is a necessary first step in building a new, better world. The Just Transition framework calls on us to imagine how we can reorganize our economy to create such a world. It necessarily prompts us to consider things like community control of energy and worker cooperatives that keep communities intact even through shifts in industry. Such institutions would be the foundation of a regenerative economy based on caring, ecological and social wellbeing, and democratic governance. This means what we regard as “building the new” and supporting the work of re-skilling initiatives like the Soul Power Project led by our partners at the LaPorte County branch of the NAACP, which connects underserved communities in the region with opportunities for training and high-paying, union jobs in the solar energy sector.
The work of our organization, Just Transition Northwest Indiana, is just one local effort that is part of a much larger movement for social change taking place all over the world. Climate Justice Alliance, a collective of over 70 different frontline groups of which we are members, has been a leading voice in the movement for a Just Transition.
Join us if you think our fight to save the environment, protect worker dignity, and protect communities is worth winning! Sign up for our newsletter and, if you are able, consider donating to support our local organizing. But above all, we need boots on the ground. If you are interested in talking to your neighbors about the importance of a Just Transition and helping us organize for change here in NWI, we want to hear from you.
