Defunding the Police as Environmental Justice

Policing, rooted in the surveillance of Black folks and used to subordinate minority communities, is often understood as an icon of institutional racism. Environmental racism refers to the policies that create and build on racial disparities, again in terms of the space in which people live. Food insecurity, climate change, and air pollution are the symptoms of environmental racism because they disproportionately impact low-income communities of color. This paper explores the connection between two responses to these forms of anti-Black violence embedded in space: the environmental justice movement and the defund the police movement. It argues that anti-Black violence, through policing, contributes to the normalization of environmental racism that primarily burdens Black and Brown communities. It closes with discussing the contribution that social workers could potentially provide to the environmental field and what a focus on the environment in which people live could mean for social work more broadly.