Interracial and interclass environmental justice activism in gentrifying neighborhoods

Scholars have paid much attention to interracial and interclass coalitions in labor and communist movements. However few studies have examined diverse coalitions within the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice is an interesting case of interracial and interclass mobilization because its origins and impacts are fixed within low-income communities of color. Previous studies have also neglected the role of gentrification in contemporary grassroots mobilization. This study uses grounded theory to analyze 16 months of participant-observation of the No North Brooklyn Pipeline Alliance (No NBK). Results indicate that White activists use antiracist discourse to distance themselves from problematic White people and White-serving institutions. I argue that activists transform the concept of ‘Whiteness’ from a strictly racial category into a combined racial and political category that is selectively applied to White people who uphold White supremacy. Results also indicate that activists with advanced technical expertise attempt to recruit laypeople by refuting their credentialed knowledge in favor of folk expertise. This study reveals how gentrifying environmental justice organizers manage race- and class-based tension in gentrifying neighborhoods. More broadly, these findings demonstrate how social movement organizations interpret and address barriers to coalition formation caused by differences in social positioning.