Pamela Chiang's experience organizing Laotian residents in refinery-dominated Richmond, California, is similar. Folks just don't have a vehicle for talking about stuff. The Summit confirmed that organizers of color had developed a different approach to environmental organizing. In many cases the traditional approach to cleaning up the environment did not go far enough. But for us, it's also about Laotian refugees still fishing to feed their families.
Clean water is too narrow.
Workers are being exposed inside the facility to toxic chemicals, and then the poisoning of the ground water is happening outside the facility. In the next decade the principles would come to serve as a guide for a rapidly developing, decentralized, grassroots movement based on a fundamental commitment to racial justice. In 1990 Bullard assembled a list of 250 organizations to invite to the Summit. Since that time, he says, the number of organizations working on environmental justice has at least doubled. In the wake of the Summit, the environmental justice movement seemed to gather steam.