GLST 300 Ecological Justice (Eric Kurtz)

Today, “Love Canal” is synonymous with the struggle for environmental health and justice. But in 1972, when Lois Gibbs moved there with her husband and new baby, it was simply a modest neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. How did this community become the poster child for toxic disasters? How did Gibbs and her neighbors start a national movement that continues to this day? What do their efforts teach us about current environmental health threats and how to prevent them? Love Canal is Gibbs'original account of the landmark case, now updated with insights gained over three decades.

A history of the Love Canal region from the nation's founding and the utopian city planned for the Niagara area to the building of the region's chemistry industry to the environmental disaster at Love Canal and its aftermath.

Thirty years after the headlines, Love Canal remains synonymous with toxic waste. When this neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, burst upon the nation's consciousness, the media focused on a working-class white woman named Lois Gibbs, who gained prominence as an activist fighting to save families from the poison buried beneath their homes. Her organization, the Love Canal Homeowners Association, challenged big government and big business--and ultimately won relocation. But as Elizabeth Blum now shows, the activists at Love Canal were a very diverse lot. Blum reveals that more lurks beneath the surface of this story than most people realize--and more than mere toxins. She takes readers behind the headlines to show that others besides Gibbs played important roles and to examine how race, class, and gender influenced the way people--from African American women to middle class white Christian groups--experienced the crisis and became active at Love Canal.