Environmental Racism and the Fight to Stop a Drive-Thru
According to Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, ”Environmental Racism is the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color.” It is tempting to view Environmental Racism as a product of the past. Many point to past rules, regulations and policies that place highways, power plants and hazardous waste plants in the heart of Black and brown communities. Often the conversations and policies around Environmental Justice speak to repairing past harms. What we discovered in New Rochelle is that the past is prolonged and that the fight against environmental racism is an ongoing battle.
On June 15, 2021, just weeks after the City of New Rochelle declared a Climate Emergency, the same City Council approved a zoning change to allow drive-thru businesses next to multi-family homes. This special zoning was put in place to support the ambitions of a real estate developer to build a Starbucks drive-thru adjacent to the Peter Bracey Apartment complex and an emergency family shelter. It was such an outrageous disregard for the health and well-being of some of our most vulnerable citizens that dozens of people including doctors, environmental justice attorneys, members of the City’s own Ecology and Natural Resources Advisory Committee (ENRAC), as well as residents who rarely attend either a City Council meeting or Planning Board meeting, came out to urge the City to reject the change in the zoning.
The Razing of A Black Community
The reasoned appeals of citizens fell on deaf ears as the Planning Board followed the City Council and did an unanimous vote to approve the plans for the Starbuck. After these unanimous vote of the City Council and Planning Boards, we began to take a look at the history of targeted zoning in New Rochelle. It led us to do a deep dive into the history of Pugsley Hollow, one of New Rochelle’s first Black communities dating back to the 1800’s.
This historical review informed us that the egregious actions of the 2021 City Council and City Planning Board was in keeping with racially motivated and policies of the City of New Rochelle going back over a century. It was not by accident that the community of freed Blacks who lived in the section known as “Pugsley Hollow” was also where the railroad yards were placed. It was not an accident that downtown businessmen who wanted gas lights but did not want the gas tanks had them moved to where there were Black churches and homes. (See Herbert B. Nichol, Historic New Rochelle 1938, p.101.) It is not an accident that the exit for I-95 literally demolished the remnants of the century-old Pugsley Hollow.
What started as an effort to stop a Starbucks drive-thru has become a movement to learn from the past and engage the broader New Rochelle community in an ongoing conversation about the type of city we want for all our residents.
Environmental Racism Trolley Tour
In October 2021 we organized a guided tour of New Rochelle’s three main black communities, for the purpose of understanding what was systematically destroyed and/or rezoned to allow for commercial and light industry, would engage the community in a similar way. So we hired Dolly the Trolley. Our goal is to have our friends and neighbors look with new eyes at what has been done, what is being done, and what is being proposed, in order to understand the impact on the health and well being of the current and future residents.
Realizing that no tour could possibly tell the 300-year plus history of African Americans in New Rochelle and their struggle to live with dignity and raise their families in safe and healthy environments, we created webinars to share what we have learned. These short learning modules have expanded the conversation and connected a diverse group of community members.
While it is too soon to tell the impact on our efforts, what is clear is that long absent voices from the past are having their stories told and committed anti-racists have also now become environmental activists.
Related articles
