Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities

Abstract

[Excerpt] My goal in this book is to examine the formation of labor-environmental alliances that focus on health issues. Health concerns are increasingly a common ground on which blue-green coalitions are developing across the United States. Activists from both movements often see health issues through different lenses, which lends a particular slant to how they approach potential solutions for reducing exposures to toxics. The coalition framework emphasizes the fundamental link between occupational and environmental health, providing an internal cohesion and a politically persuasive agenda based on the centrality of health-related issues. By engaging labor and environmental activists in a common dialogue regarding the need for cooperative action to reduce the risks of community and workplace exposures, blue-green coalitions are creating new opportunities for progressive social change.