The increasing interest in funding nonprofits and initiatives that are focused on environmental justice is incredibly encouraging. For those that have asked us previously, we are sharing a list of organizations that are advancing work in this space in the Los Angeles area. Feel free to click through, do your own due diligence, and let us know who else should be on this list:
California Environmental Justice Alliance
The California Environmental Justice Alliance is a statewide, community-led alliance that works to achieve environmental justice by advancing policy solutions. They represent approximately 20,000 Asian Pacific American, Latino, and African American residents in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles, Inland Valley and San Diego/Tijuana area. The Alliance combines organizing, movement-building, and strategic policy advocacy.
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) builds grassroots power to create social and economic justice for low-income, women and women identifying, immigrant, black, and brown communities in Los Angeles. To do this, SCOPE organizes communities, develops leaders, collaborates through strategic alliances, builds capacity through training programs, and educates South L.A.’s residents to have an active role in shaping policies that affect the quality of life in the region.
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ) is an environmental health and justice non-profit organization working towards a safe and healthy environment for communities that are disproportionately suffering the negative impacts of industrial pollution. Through grass-roots organizing and leadership building skills, EYCEJ works to enable under-represented communities to be heard, which in turn influences policy change, policy makers and agencies that can institute health protective environmental justice policies that are in the best interest of local, regional, and statewide residents.
Friends of the LA River
Founded in 1986, Friends of the LA River (FOLAR) is a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to ensure a publicly accessible and ecologically sustainable Los Angeles River by inspiring River stewardship through community engagement, education, advocacy, and thought leadership.
Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) works on social justice change through the lens of environmental health and justice. The primary focus of their work is to build power within low-income communities of color. The work of CCAEJ consistently focuses on those most affected by environmental health hazards: low-income communities of color and recent immigrants who live, work, learn and play closest to rail yards, industrial areas, toxic waste facilities, intermodal facilities, freeways and other areas at greatest risk for environmental health hazards.
Communities for a Better Environment
Founded in 1978, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) is one of the preeminent environmental justice organizations in the nation. The mission of CBE is to build people’s power in California’s communities of color and low income communities to achieve environmental health and justice by preventing and reducing pollution and building green, healthy and sustainable communities and environments. CBE provides residents in blighted and heavily polluted urban communities in California with organizing skills, leadership training and legal, scientific and technical assistance, so that they can successfully confront threats to their health and well-being.
Liberty Hill
For Liberty Hill, environmental justice is a cornerstone of social justice. They currently have three programs in place to fight for a safer, healthier, greener Los Angeles including Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling, a coalition of community organizations on the frontlines of ending oil drilling in residential neighborhoods, a groundbreaking environmental justice policy known as Clean Up Green Up, and assuring that Los Angeles’ most disadvantaged communities are at the forefront of California’s efforts to address global warming.
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