Our Work

Frontline communities live with multiple sources of pollution in their neighborhoods decade after decade. Since 2022, our members have fought that accumulation through a proposed city ordinance, a county environmental justice policy framework , and a recently passed state law.

When a metal shredder was pushed out of a wealthy North Side neighborhood, it applied to reopen on the Southeast Side. Residents organized, testified, and stopped the permit.

Frontline communities disproportionately breathe dangerous polluted air, making residents sick, but the official data was too thin to prove it. Our members now run monitors in their own neighborhoods, and the readings are public.

For twenty years, environmental enforcement in Chicago neighborhoods that needed it most fell short in lifting the burden of pollution. We track what the city actually does, holding officials accountable for the impact they have on our neighborhoods.

Chicago's environmental justice movement is decades old, and most of it was never written down. We are recording it, from the organizers who started this work to the ones carrying it now.