The environment, overconsumption and well being: Justice Camp 2010

Last week Karri and I participated in Community Justice Camp in Hamilton, Ontario. An initiative of the Anglican Church of Canada, Justice Camp seeks to bring people together from across Canada to explore, promote and expand our knowledge of various issues of social and public justice, and Christ’s calling for us to participate in these activities. This year the focus was community development and how we can build community through our work in various aspects of justice.

The week began with some preliminary discussions of the importance of community building, through the work of charity and justice. Then we were divided into immersion groups and spread out across Hamilton and the surrounding areas visiting various charity and justice initiatives. These immersion groups included poverty, housing, environmental justice, welcoming the stranger, building neighbourhoods, empowering communities and coalition building, food security, and Aboriginal justice.

I participated in the environmental justice immersion group. Environmental justice is an area in which I feel I have so much to learn. It is also an area that we at CPJ hope to expand in our work for public justice in Canada over the coming months.

Personally, I always viewed environmental justice as being separate from the other issues, dealing mainly with our relationship with creation and not necessarily with other people. But as we visited more and more people and organizations my view changed completely, and the connection between environmentalism, overconsumption and the need to promote well-being became clearer than ever.

We began our immersion experience by visiting Environment Hamilton, a local NGO which has several campaigns in connection with environmental concerns across the city. Hamilton is known for its mills and factories and one of the initiatives of Environment Hamilton, the Good Neighbour Campaign, is to build better relations between the Arcelormittal-Dofasco steel factory and local residents.

Environment Hamilton works to mobilize local residents to speak out about the toxins and carcinogenic chemicals, like benzene, being emitted in large quantities in the air and how companies like Dofasco need to invest more in safety measures so to reduce these emissions and protect neighbourhoods around the factories, and their own workers.

Neighbourhoods around factories such as this one in Hamilton are more often than not low income neighbourhoods. Many residents cannot afford to move to another area, and in the meantime are breathing air with a greater concentration of chemicals than people even just across town.

Organizations like Environment Hamilton are not calling for the termination of mills and factories in the area, but for responsible, good measures of control and better relations between the company and the neighbouring community. But, as was emphasized in our visits with this group, other local groups, people from the community, activists like Mike Balkwill, and national organizations like KAIROS, what it often comes down to is the maximizing of economic growth –not people.

With Mike Balkwill, an independent community organizer and environmental educator, we talked about developing our own “green” actions and movements, and on a large scale, investing in things like “green jobs.” But it’s still not enough. Without a restructuring of society into one that puts other people and community development before growth and profits, we will fall into the same circumstances.

All of this was overwhelming and at times very discouraging, but it also brought hope – hope that our work to change our society is important – hope that in starting small and building communities we can make a difference.

There is so much more to report on from the experience from Justice Camp – way too much for just one post, so look for more updates and thoughts over the next few weeks!