Ecofeminism and environmental justice: Bridges across gender, race, and class

The ideas in this article come from my involvement in various political projects over the years, from many conversations and discussions. I have added personal experiences as separate but connected sections, in italics, focusing on pivotal learning experiences that have shaped my analytical framework and guided my decisions about new projects. I hope these snapshots from this personal journey give a sense of this ongoing process. My very partial accounts of significant projects and people en route cannot tell the whole story of course. While I include specific examples to make more general points, there is a much longer story behind the projects; but that is not my purpose here. This paper focuses on the potential for making closer connections between ecofeminism and the environmental justice movement, both of which are complex and fluid perspectives, with significant internal variations. Here I emphasize the differences between them as a way of understanding how to make stronger links, which, in turn, will lead to a stronger movement for a sustainable future.

I began to think about ecofeminism after spending a couple of years in the early 1980s as part of a wide network of women involved in Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp in England. I first went to the camp in February 1982. The women were planning their first major action for the spring equinox when they hoped that two hundred women would come to blockade the eight gates of the base for a period of twenty-four hours. The fact that this was an all-women's camp was an invitation to me, and I found myself thinking, could I do this? Like many in Europe, I'd been horrified at news that speculated about the possibility of nuclear war in Europe. Reagan had come right out with it: The United States was preparing to fight and win a limited nuclear war in Europe. I didn't want to believe he was that stupid. I'd blocked it out, turned the page, and got on with my life. These women had taken action. Over the next couple of years I recorded women's stories, wrote flyers and press releases, shared in fund-raising and organizing meetings in London, and participated in various actions, starting that spring equinox. Though I never lived at the camp, I thought of Greenham as my political home. I went there with an understanding of class and class inequality as well as British imperialism. At Greenham I learned about sexism, heterosexism, and systems of male violence. I started reading ecofeminist work and came to think of Greenham as an example of ecofeminist practice. Given this beginning, ecofeminism for me has always included a strong antimilitarist strand and an activist approach.

Starting in the fall of 1981, a growing network of women in Britain protested the escalation of the nuclear arms race, specifically the siting of U.S. nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham Common, sixty miles west of London.' Women maintained a continual presence at the gates of this U.S. Air Force base, and many thousands participated in nonviolent protests that were imaginative, colorful, and assertive, with powerful artistic and ritual elements. They combined a deep concern for a life-sustaining future with political confrontation and public education. U.S.A.F. Greenham Common has since been closed and the cruise missiles returned to the United States, partly as a result of persistent activist opposition, partly due to political changes between the West and the Soviet bloc that resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the 1990s a small group of women still stayed on at Greenham, campaigning for the demilitarization of the land, formerly common land open to public use.

Like the U.S. Women's Pentagon Action, where thousands of women surrounded the Pentagon in November 1980 and 1981, Greenham women identified militarism as a cornerstone of the oppression of women and the destruction of the nonhuman world.2 They protested massive military budgets; the fact that militaries cause more ecological destruction than any other institution; the widespread, everyday culture of violence manifested in war toys, films, and video games, which is an important factor in the construction of a militarized masculinity3; the connection between violence and sexuality in pornography, rape, battering, and incest; and the connections between personal violence and violence on an international and planetary level.

Women involved in this campaign came from all parts of Great Britain and from many other countries. Some were drawn to Greenham because of their involvement in feminist spirituality; others were members of trade unions or the Labour Party. Some were active in community organizing or the antinuclear movement; others had never been politically active before. They ranged in age from their teens to their seventies. Most were white; many were lesbian. This mix made for what Ynestra King calls a "yeasty brew," with great power and creativity as well as disagreements, contradictions, and tensions.4 There were arguments, for example, about who could speak for camp women; about the visibility of lesbians who played a key role in sustaining the camp after the first year; about the role of a London office set up to support the camp; and about money. Some of these arguments were resolved for a time; sometimes they caused women to withdraw. The Greenham network was dispersed and anarchic in the best sense of the word, relying on each individual woman's sense of responsibility. There was a lot of room to initiate actions and projects without every decision needing agreement by the whole network. In any case this would have been impossible as time went by and the network grew nationally and internationally. The original camp at the main gate has been maintained into the 1990s. Many other camps, some lasting only a few days or weeks, were also established from time to time at the other gates and at intermediate points along the nine-mile perimeter fence. The fact that there was no single physical focus at Greenham made decentralized decision making both practical and appropriate. It also allowed for the various camps to have their own emphasis, a reflection of diversity not disagreement. Another way to resolve tensions was to avoid setting up competing options: not either/or but both.