COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Authentic community engagement
involves the employment of participatory practices characterized by mutual learning. Communities are informed by organizational or public agency representatives about programs, technical issues and opportunities and those representatives are in turn educated by a community’s awareness of the issues as they affect a local population based on their own research, experience and expertise. Prioritizing partnerships with communities at every stage of the decision-making process including policy development, determining core issues and remediation strategies, proposal formulation and selection, project implementation and the tracking and reporting of data may seem a tall order for most public agencies. It is, however, an ideal which can be made far more feasible through partnerships between public agencies or other applicants and grassroots organizations well-versed in EJ issues. This report refers to grassroots organizations as groups that are committed to partnerships with communities and pursue development or advocacy in a manner determined by the communities for which they advocate. What these organizations have in common is a belief that no external entity or authority can truly serve the needs of a marginalized community without direction from those intimate with the local landscape and direct experience of the hardships of living and working there. There is a vast network of grassroots EJ advocacy efforts across the state. Statewide coalitions including the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)— which also works locally in the East Bay—have grown out of the work of many experienced and accomplished grassroots EJ organizations, including the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) in the Inland Valley areas of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties; Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment (CRPE) in the San Joaquin Valley; Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) in the Central Coast counties; Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and Communities for a Safe Environment (CFASE) in Wilmington (CBE is also in the East Bay); East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ) in the City of Commerce; Pacoima Beautiful; People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights (PODER) in San Francisco; Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) and TRUST South LA, both in South Los Angeles.
