Even when they didn’t realize the work they were doing would have an environmental impact, community organizations in San Diego were so focused on improving living conditions for people decades ago, that their work rippled out into these different areas. “I credit the work of activists and advocates, environmentalists (even those who didn’t know they were environmentalists at the time) in our communities. All of the social organizations and grassroots work, I say you’re all environmental justice organizations because we constantly have the burden of proof to show the data about our health disparities and high mortality rates in our region,” says Janice Luna Reynoso, executive director of Mundo Gardens, a local nonprofit that works on community gardening, food accessibility, and community outreach. “In a sense, we’ve had to really make our voices be heard, historically, whether it was asking for a park 54 years ago at Chicano Park, instead of the junkyards. Or, it was The Black Federation advocating to stop the expansion of the 252 freeway and prevent more homes from being demolished or overtaken by eminent domain.” In the years since, the work that started with these earlier organizations has evolved to include advocacy from groups like Mundo Gardens, the Urban Collaborative Project, the Green Corridor Project, along with partnerships with municipal entities such as Caltrans, SANDAG, and local city governments. Last week, members of participating organizations and agencies met in National City to further their work in environmental justice, sustainable development, and partnership. Part of this includes the potential for a future park site to reconnect National City and southeastern San Diego at Division Street and Palm Avenue in National City. The local coalition was selected in 2023 to join the Community Connectors program with Smart Growth America, a national organization that works with local communities to improve development. Their Community Connectors program helps repair the harm created by infrastructure that has literally divided communities. Earlier this year, the group of San Diego organizations was one of three winners for California’s “Reconnecting Communities: Highways to Boulevards” pilot program to convert underused highways into spaces that reconnect communities. Reynoso is joined in conversation by Vernon Sukumu was the founder and director of The Black Federation, a coalition of local Black organizations in San Diego that advocated for employment, housing, and equity issues during the 1970s and ’80s. They each took some time to talk about the importance of environmental justice work and its connection to equity for people in communities that have historically been ignored. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. ) Q: Your organization is partnering in work to connect people in historically underserved communities to address issues of environmental justice, sustainable development, and partnerships between community organizations and government agencies. Can you talk a bit about how areas like National City and southeastern San Diego came to be historically underserved, and in what ways these areas have been underserved? Reynoso: You can go back to redlining. Historically, the availability of lower-cost housing in southeastern San Diego and National City. Also, in National City we see a history of farming and agriculture at that time. There was an influx of industrialization on the west side of the city, which has impacted the health of residents on the west side of National City, as well as some of the harmful freeway impacts here on the east side, where we’re connecting the green corridor where National City meets southeast San Diego. The story, all the time, is redlining. It could be San Diego or other communities throughout the nation that have this makeup of Brown and Black community members, the disinvestment was there, which means it was a more affordable place for those who were able to acquire homes. Then, you have folks who were displaced throughout history, like with the proposal of the 252 freeway displacing families from southeast SanDiego. We’re looking at the harmful impact, the disinvestment, and recently the neglect that led to the flooding of thousands of residents and hundreds of homes in National City and southeast San Diego earlier this year. These same communities have been historically redlined, discriminated against, disinvested, over policed, and over polluted. Sukumu: I don’t know of a place in America that I’ve been to, read about, heard about (and I came from Louisiana) that in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s wasn’t deliberately underserved-from housing to employment to police treatment. You name it, we were underserved in Black and Brown communities. I remember when I went to Bakersfield for the first time, I thought Louisiana was the only place they grew cotton. I knew they grew it in Texas, but I’d never been there, so I’m in Bakersfield for the first time and I see all these cotton fields. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, these White people will see me and make me go pick some cotton.’ This was in 1960 and I saw Black people picking cotton in Bakersfield. Then, in the 1990s, it was people from Latin America in those cotton fields. Our communities being underserved is just a condition of racism. They are systematically and institutionally underserved. Jobs was one of the primary ways, there was nothing more important than work. We couldn’t work and we wanted to. Police brutality was another way. Housing here in San Diego was a way in which communities were underserved. For instance, in southeast San Diego there were very few apartments. There were apartments downtown, a few along Imperial Avenue that we could rent, but as the city grew they moved us out of there. So, there were not a lot of apartments that were developed as housing. Q: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency talks about environmental justice as the fair treatment and involvement of all people in decisions and government activities that affect the health of people and their environment, including protecting folks from the effects of climate change, environmental and other burdens, legacies of racism and other forms of systemic inequality, and creating equity in access to healthy environments. Can you talk about some examples of what this has looked like in National City and southeastern San Diego? Reynoso: Recently, I’ve participated in the steering committee to hold the Port of San Diego accountable, in a roundtable discussion with other stakeholders, to really advocate for clean water and lower emissions and pollution coming from the military. I think those policies and laws are starting to connect with what communities have been asking for and fighting for. This pilot program with Caltrans, “Reconnecting Communities: Highways to Boulevards,” is an example of that. It’s time that that healing and that investment that goes along with that, the need for redress, is happening, but we’re constantly having to be at multiple tables. I’m constantly having to advocate for these basic things, like clean water, clean air, clean soil, clean food because we don’t have it. So, it’s really creating these natural-born activists and advocates. Not because we want to or because it’s cool, but it’s really a matter of those of us that want to do more than just complain or be affected by it, seeing our families and loved ones affected. It’s a way for us to take control of our own health, of our own destiny, and try to make it better for our community and for future generations, and to honor the work that’s been done before us. Sukumu: I think this (conference) is one of the first steps in this organizing effort. I’m 85 now and probably until I was 65, our focus was on letting us in. We really didn’t do a lot of work around the environment because when White people came to us and talked about it, one of the things we said was that we were just glad to get a job, don’t talk to us about not working at a dirty plant. Now, that was narrow-minded on our part, but that’s what we understood. I think that now that more people are educated and understand more about the environment, and what happens when you live in a bad environment, they begin to understand why it’s important to raise these issues. Through the years, I’ve looked at our lives as just being able to survive after slavery, to getting a job and going to school. Now, I believe we’re in a period where a lot of Black folks are talking about the environment and it’s because we are stuck in the worst environmentally harmful neighborhoods. Poor people, period, actually. Another problem in San Diego is we are not fulfilling people’s needs with mass transit. Q: Can you talk a bit about your work with The Black Federation, which was founded in the early 1970s and dissolved operations in the mid-1980s? Sukumu: The Black Federation was a coalition of all of the Black organizations in the city. Basically, what we tried to do was to help coordinate some of the functions that we might have been duplicating, or overlapping, and try to fill in some of the gaps. For instance, we opened one of the first shelters for battered women. We also participated in anti-gang violence work with other organizations. We worked with young people to try as hard as we could to tackle that, to do whatever we could to cut down on the violence that went on. We also did some work in employment, job placement. A lot of people came to us for that. We were instrumental in stopping freeway 252 and working on that. When those things were fulfilled and there was no more money for poverty programs, it turned to having to fight over a small amount of money (with other organizations) because there was no more state or federal money available for these programs. I didn’t need to fight with them about doing the same thing that we were doing. By the time I left the organization, we were involved in police training. We spent time going to every police class and helped them try to understand all of the simple kind of things that they would lock Black people up for, or feel threatened by Black people because they hadn’t been raised around us. Q: What kind of sustainable development are we seeing in these neighborhoods? For example, can you talk about the work in establishing the new park in National City through the state’s “Reconnecting Communities: Highways to Boulevards” program? Reynoso: What was good to see, on my end in applying for grants at that time, was the language of acknowledging and naming environmental racism. Is your work culturally relevant? Are you working with communities that have been underrepresented? Things like that. I was like, ‘Wow’ because sometimes you wonder if your story, if the disparities of your community, will fit into these grants and it seems like this one made it very accessible. It felt like we might have a chance of getting this one. We did get into sharing those things and we named and acknowledged the work of The Black Federation that has really been going on for over 50 years. This work is advocating for basic rights, basic access to health, to not be displaced, to not have to experience further harm. This grant will set us up in a successful way to continue work really grounded in community outreach and community voice. It’s a planning grant for the region and it involves the National City green corridor, Groundwork San Diego-Chollas Creek, and making sure that we have a beautiful, vibrant area and really engage the community. Q: What kind of progress has been made in your environmental justice work that you find encouraging? And, where would you like to see greater growth/improvement? Reynoso: We started off small, as a grassroots group. We weren’t even a 501(c)(3) when we started the first community garden. We’ve had some upsides and some barriers in our beginning stages because of past leadership in National City, and now that is shifting and there’s been a show of confidence from the city to the work that the community has advocated for. We’re seeing that elevated and respected and honored, and it feels really good because we went through a phase of being told “no” and now we’re being asked what we want to see. It’s because of the trust that has been built and grown with the community, but also those in decision-making positions and government agencies seeing that this is authentic and that it’s for a good reason. Seeing folks in leadership that look like us, or who have been through similar challenges and disparities, and are now in leadership positions to make a difference. It’s a win for the community and I hope that continues to grow and really be grounded in true values of health, wellness, and equity for all. Sukumu: The fact that we’re having a discussion about it, and the fact that we understand that what used to happen when we would bring up these topics is that people would say things like, ‘I need a job, I have to work. I have to feed my family, don’t tell me anything that’s going to go against that,’ but as we become more educated, more people are talking about cleaning things up. Like I said, I believe that planting more trees is one thing that’s helpful for all communities, certainly for poor communities. So, people are learning and understanding that. The problem is that, how much time does a very poor person who has a family, have to do that?