The promise of equality—all people receiving the same treatment by a government throwing off the tyranny of a repressive regime that was indifferent to the ruthless extraction of wealth from people who had no say in their society—is what drove the creation of our country. Its incredible power in breathing life into our nation’s birth is counterbalanced by the fact that the United States has never been a country of equality, not for a single day. For at least the last 50 years, our chance of achieving equality has never been as squarely attacked as it has been during the first week of Trump’s second administration.
The history of our country can be told as a long, painful story of different communities fighting to achieve that equality. Through generations of suffering, this story has its elements of incredible victories and advances: the abolition of slavery, union protections for farmworkers, voting rights for all, marriage protections, Tribal sovereignty, the Civil Rights Act.
This centuries-long struggle more recently led to a newer movement that channeled those passions into fighting for equality in our environment. The environmental justice movement deployed many of the same strategies of those upon whose shoulders its leaders stood as community leaders fought to reduce pollution burdens and increase access to environmental benefits in their communities. These leaders continue to work to fix the racist policies that have concentrated air pollution in communities of color, where the kids get far sicker because of the dirty air they breathe every day. Tribal members to this day struggle to cleanse their lands of the toxic and radioactive contamination from mining and military operations from decades ago. Rural white communities in Appalachia and farming areas out West work to rid themselves of the straight-piping of their sewage into the same local creek where they fish for food and their kids dip their toes on hot summer days. The strategies deployed to right these wrongs can be simplistically grouped as practicing equity and advancing justice toward one day achieving a society of equality.
Equity strategies seek to close the gaps that exist even today in terms of the benefits and protections that are unequally distributed across our country. Justice strategies cut to the heart of the systemic and structural underpinnings of our society that drive those inequitable gaps to exist in the first place.
Both of these are important and must be advanced simultaneously. Equity without justice results in constantly closing gaps that reopen as soon as you turn your back because their root causes remain. Justice without equity removes the causes of the gaps but doesn’t ever close up the gaps. Without practicing both, we are cementing persistent inequality in our country—generations of disinvestment, diminished access, lack of protection, sick kids, and sicker adults—into a permanently unjust, unequal, and divided society. Despite the rhetoric, President Trump’s executive orders seek to turn our collective clock back to an era of such inequality and freeze it in place for our future. They do not lift up equality and freedom. They return oppression and division.
In my lifetime—and as a former EPA official—it is arguable (and I would gladly have that argument) that the single-most powerful achievement of our government to advance both equity and justice was President Biden’s Justice40 initiative. With the stroke of a pen, Justice40 moved the earth underneath our government at all levels, from Washington, D.C., to the farthest-flung city council. Justice40 instantaneously catalyzed a conversation that EJ advocates had long sought to provoke in the halls of government among elected, appointed, and career officials. What do you mean communities aren’t benefiting from our programs? Who are they? Where are they? How long has it been that way? What caused this? What can we do about it?
Not only did Justice40 broaden the conversation on environmental justice, but it also helped close inequitable gaps and change unjust systems at all levels of our society and in every corner of our country. Most important, Justice40 created real change on the ground. State officials modified equations that dictated where water infrastructure money should flow. Local planners connected dots between tree canopies, concrete, and deaths from heat waves. Transportation officials considered the costs and benefits of building an extra lane of suburban highway versus updating bus fleets and adding more stops. Emergency response officials engaged the most climate-ravaged communities to innovate adaptation strategies and build resilience hubs. The benefits of our government started spreading into communities—rural white communities, urban Black communities, Alaskan native villages, and so many others—that had scarcely, if ever, enjoyed them before.
Those who fought for Justice40 to be among President Biden’s earliest actions, alongside others who worked to unlock its ambition and turn it into a detailed, workable, accountable program, were disappointed by the lack of progress at its implementation as a policy. I lived through most of that long attempt, and it was a slog.
As an ambition, Justice40 has had an immeasurable impact in transforming our society. One reason why it is immeasurable is that Justice40 as a policy failed to capture and quantify its successes and has not lifted up all of the stories of change on the ground that were brought about by it. A lot of lessons are being learned from that experience. We will come back in the future with even greater ambitions, along with improved policies. For now, we will continue to work with state and local officials whose eyes, minds, and hearts have been opened to the responsibility we all carry to confront our shared past, to grasp the realities of the here and now, and to join in the long struggle to achieve a United States that will one day live up to that original ideal of equality. No executive order can undo that.
