Environmental Injustice: Race, Class, and Toxic Inequality | The Path to Today

Join us for the first event in a three-part series exploring the intersection of racial inequality and the environment. Part 1 delves into the systemic roots of environmental racism and confronts a critical question: Why are communities of color and low-wealth populations disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards?

“America is segregated, and so is pollution,” says Dr. Robert Bullard, widely recognized as the father of environmental justice. The same structures of racism—shaped by the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and segregation—that have defined the nation’s history also determine who lives near landfills, highways, toxic waste sites, and areas vulnerable to climate change.

Dr. Bullard will be joined by Jacqueline Patterson, former Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, and Kendra Pierre-Louis, climate reporter and journalist. Together, they will trace how historical and structural injustices have shaped the unequal environments where people live, work, and play.

The series is moderated by Vann R. Newkirk II, senior editor at The Atlantic and host of the acclaimed podcast Floodlines.

This series is presented with generous support from Con Edison.

Participants

Dr. Robert D. Bullard is a distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy and founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University.  He is also co-founder of the HBCU Climate Change Consortium and the National Black Environmental Justice Network.  He received his Ph.D. degree from Iowa State University. 

Professor Bullard is often called the “father of environmental justice.” He is a proud Viet Nam Era U.S. Marine Corps Veteran. He has written 18 books, his latest The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities (2023). 

In 2008, Newsweek named him one of “13 Environmental Leaders of the Century.” In 2019, Apolitical named him one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People in Climate Policy, and Climate One presented him the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication. In 2020, WebMD gave him its Health Heroes Trailblazer Award and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) honored him with its Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award.  In 2022, he was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Georgetown University and the University of Johannesburg.  That same year he received the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, California Arts and Sciences, and he received Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society’s Horizon Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to environmental law and policy, and the John E. Gould Medal from the American Geographical Society. And in 2024, he received the TIME Earth Award, Museum of Science (Boston) Bradford Washburn Award, Urban Land Institute Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Clark University, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine. 

Jacqueline Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. The mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project is rooted in a Just Transition Framework, serving as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with the resources to actualize visions.

Prior to the launch of the Chisholm Legacy Project, Patterson served as the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program for over a decade. During her tenure, she founded and implemented a robust portfolio which included serving the state and local leadership whose constituencies consisted of hundreds of communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice. She led a team in designing and implementing a portfolio to support political education and organizing work executed by NAACP branches, chapters, and state conferences.

Patterson has dedicated her career to intersectional approaches to systems change. Working with frontline communities from Kampala, Uganda to Kansas City, USA to Kingston, Jamaica, her passion for social justice led her to serve as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United; Senior Women’s Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid; Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health, Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University, and U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica.

Patterson holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the Advisory Boards for Center for Earth Ethics, Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship, and the Hive Fund for Gender and Climate Justice, on the Governance Assemblies for Mosaic Momentum, and Collectrify, as well as on the Boards of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, the Bill Anderson Fund, Movement Strategy Center, the Just Solutions Collective, the National Black Workers Center Project, and Ceres.

In March 2024, Patterson was honored to be named as one of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year as well as receiving the TIME Magazine Earth Award.

Kendra Pierre-Louis is an award winning climate reporter. She has worked as climate reporter with Bloomberg, a senior climate reporter with the Gimlet/Spotify podcast How to Save a Planet, as a climate reporter with The New York Times and as a staff writer for Popular Science.  She is also the author of the book, Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet.

Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at the Atlantic, and the host and co-creator of narrative podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week. For years, Newkirk has covered voting rights, democracy, and environmental justice, with a focus on how race and class shape the country's and the world's fundamental structures, in print and audio. Newkirk was a 2022 Andrew Carnegie fellow, and was a 2020 James Beard Award Finalist, a 2020 11th Hour Fellow at New America, and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Magazine Editors's ASME Next Award. In 2021, Newkirk received the Peabody Award for Floodlines. In 2024, Newkirk was named Journalist of the Year by the Washington Association of Black Journalists.