Environment
Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico. Video still by John Acosta, courtesy of the Diverse Peoples, Arid Landscapes, and the Built Environment editorial team
To promote comparison and synthesis across reports, American Roundtable is organized around five broad themes: Public Space, Health, Work and Economy, Infrastructure, and Environment. Editors of each report were given wide latitude to interpret each theme. Collected below are features that address topics and issues related to the Environment.
Africatown’s Environment: The Race and Justice Narrative
Ramsey Sprague, Vickii Howell, and Renee Kemp-Rotan demand environmental justice for a community, long battered by industrial encroachment and pollution.
Rivers Continue on, and the Mahoning is No Exception
Charles Frederick takes us on a journey down the Mahoning River.
Field Notes: The Mahoning River as Urban Reinvention
Quilian Riano explores efforts to remove industrial dams in Northeast Ohio
cdcb: A Unique Community Development Model
Nick Mitchell-Bennett and Edna Oceguera describe a holistic approach to financial well-being and affordable housing.
The Threat of Fracked Gas Exports in the Rio Grande Valley
Bekah Hinojosa campaigns against the development of fracked gas pipelines and terminals.
Thunder Valley CDC: Liberation through Language, Lifeways, and Spirituality | Pine Ridge
Tatewin Means and Kimberly Pelkofsky discuss Thunder Valley’s whole-community approach in creating different pathways to liberation and healing.
Cheyenne River Surface Ownership
Annie Coombs and Zoë Malliaros map the complicated history of surface land ownership on the reservation and its inequitable consequences.
From Prison to Farm: Lifting Up a New Generation
Noran Sanford discusses GrowingChange, a nonprofit empowering North Carolina youth.
The Land is Our Identity
Jorden Revels shares his story of environmental activism.
A Coastal Ecology: The Foundation of Place
Barbara Swift charts the complex systems of climate and ecology of the Southwest Washington coast.
Visual Essay | Lower Rio Grande Valley
Filmmaker John Acosta offers glimpses of life in New Mexico’s Lower Rio Grande Valley.
“Water is Life (Oliver’s Song)” | Otero County
Lyla June and Oliver Enjady present their song and poem “Water is Life (Oliver’s Song),” a testament to water’s central importance in Mescalero Apache culture.
Environmental Cartography: Confronting Memorials, Monuments, and the Past
Elizabeth Kaney and Kerri Arsenault reimagine Rumford’s tourist map to confront its hidden histories of resource extraction, pollution, and industrial development.
Present Ghosts: River Valley
In this graphic series, artist Nina Elder reinterprets archival photographs of the River Valley to look past its industrial development.
Vacant Lots to Urban Farms: Food Justice in Appalachia
Rebecca Kiger shares a photographic essay documenting urban farm Grow Ohio Valley.