Our services
Environmental Justice Legal Services
The EJLS program anchors ACE’s organizational and coalition work with a robust legal framework
EJAN: Environmental
Justice Assistance
Network
EJAN provides legal and technical support to low-income residents and communities of color who are suffering from environmental injustices such as polluted air, unsafe water, and more.
Toxic Tours
Learn about the history of environmental justice and the development without displacement campaign in our neighborhood
Environmental Justice
Legal Services
The EJLS program anchors ACE’s organizational and coalition work with a robust legal framework grounded in federal and state civil rights and environmental laws. Our staff attorney collaborates with non-EJLS staff and members to ensure that legal arguments and campaigns are grounded both in the law and in the lived experiences of staff and community members. Our work on DERO, both historically and in the present day, proves how powerful our organizing and theory of change can be.
EJLS and other ACE staff actively participate in legislative and regulatory advocacy locally and statewide on environmental justice, transit, housing issues and other related policy matters.
For more information about EJLS
Please contact (617) 442-3343
- Making Environmental Justice a Legislative Priority: ACE is co-leading efforts to pass legislation to better protect EJ communities, people of color, and low income residents of Massachusetts. Current EJ bills would define environmental justice populations in Massachusetts and provide designated communities with greater access to the state regulatory processes that are meant to protect them against excessive pollution and degradation. These bills are currently in the Committee on Ways & Means.
- Bolstering Residents’ Rights to Address Discrimination in State Court: Our Staff Attorney spoke at a briefing in January in support of civil rights legislation that would allow individuals and groups to sue in state court under a disparate impacts theory of discrimination. This type of case used to be a tool commonly used by environmental justice communities, but a bad Supreme Court decision in 2001 has made it all but impossible for claims to be brought on the federal level. Unfortunately, the bills were sent to study but we are gearing up to support them in the next legislative session.
- Making Fair Housing a Reality in Boston: ACE continues to be a member of the Community Advisory Committee for the Assessment of Fair Housing and is working to hold the Mayor and the City of Boston accountable for the lack of fair housing in Roxbury and throughout the city.
Ejls victories
Environmental Justice Assistance Network (EJAN)
EJAN provides legal and technical support to low-income residents and communities of color who are suffering from environmental injustices such as polluted air, unsafe water, and more.
Are you eligible for support through EJAN?
We help those who:
- Live in a low income community and/or community of color
- Are experiencing a significant environmental problem affecting their environment, health, safety, culture, or quality of life
- Are a group of residents who are willing to work together and be assisted and/or represented by an attorney or other professional
The purpose of the Environmental Justice Assistance Network (EJAN) is:
- To respond to the legal and scientific needs of communities on the front line of environmental hazards- linking experts in law, policy, science, community organizing, and other relevant fields with community, faith, and municipal leaders in environmental justice communities; and
- To build the capacity of historically underrepresented groups to hold decision-makers accountable and meaningfully participate in decisions affecting their health, safety, environment, culture and quality of life.
We do this by matching people in need of pro-bono assistance with people willing to provide the information, expertise, and skills necessary to inform and win campaigns for environmental justice and climate justice. We provide training to both sets of partners to facilitate effective, rewarding, and accountable partnerships.
For more information about EJAN
Contact Denise, EJAN Coordinator, at ejan@ace-ej.org
EJAN addresses important and unmet needs for environmental justice concerns in New England. By empowering community members and groups through access to pro bono legal and scientific expertise, communities will develop the capacity to advocate for themselves more effectively. Often, residents who have sought relief from specific hazards in their neighborhoods go on to become proactive advocates for system-wide changes. In the past, communities we have assisted have gone on to advocate for projects such as converting the public bus fleet from diesel to cleaner alternative fuels, cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields, and promoting a resident-centered vision of sustainable communities.
More broadly, EJAN’s work will demonstrate how environmental justice concerns should be considered in all decisions around siting new infrastructure and development. Community involvement is essential to environmental justice and equitable community development.
About EJAN
An earlier iteration of EJAN, formerly known as the Massachusetts Environmental Justice Assistance Network (MEJAN), operated from 1994 and was paused in 2015. EJAN is relaunching this May through a collaborative effort by Alternatives for Community & Environment, Boston University School of Public Health, Conservation Law Foundation, and Slingshot. Currently, we operate only in Massachusetts, but we plan to expand to other New England states as our network of volunteer experts grows.
Toxic Tours
Why does Roxbury have a children’s asthma hospitalization rate that’s nearly six times higher than the state average? Who’s making environmental decisions for us?
Join us in Dudley for a walking tour that shows how environmental racism and classism have impacted our community and how residents have won changes for a healthy and sustainable neighborhood. Learn about environmental history, what we’re doing now, and how you can make a positive impact on our community and environment.
FAQ
The tour lasts about two hours, and we can adapt the route for your availability. Meet us at the ACE office, 2201 Washington Street (rear entrance), and we’ll start the tour with a short discussion of environmental justice before heading out to see Dudley.
Our tour season is generally from April through October, with a winter hiatus from November through March. We are sometimes able to work with groups who want an early spring or late fall tour. We do not recommend winter tours, even for groups who are willing to brave the elements, because we’ve found that the cold seriously erodes people’s ability to concentrate. (Even when the coordinator of the group really wants everyone to pay attention.) On occasion, we may arrange for a winter indoor tour, which takes the form of a slideshow presentation. However, indoor tours are in no way an equal replacement for the outdoor walking tour.
Contact us a month or two before you would like your tour to be scheduled. For April tours, contact us in February.
Tours during the day are best, as it will be easiest to see the sites during daylight hours. During times of the year when there is less daylight, we may occasionally hold tours in the late afternoon that end after sunset, if that is what works for you. Again though, it’s not ideal for the best tour experience.
Yes, we are sometimes able to hold tours on weekends or holidays. If you are interested in a weekend or holiday, we invite you to contact us far in advance of when you would like a tour, so that we are able to work this into the schedule of tour leaders.
We highly recommend that your group check weather reports and dress appropriately for being outdoors for two hours. You may reschedule your tour for weather-related reasons if that is a concern. We are generally pretty hardy and will lead tours in the rain, but we may reschedule with you if we do not feel that it is safe for tour guides to be out in certain weather conditions.
It’s important to dress appropriately for chilly and/or rainy New England days. If it is cold, we recommend a warm coat, boots, scarves and gloves. If there is rain, we recommend raincoats, rain boots and umbrellas. Participants who do not have rain gear may want to consider bringing extra clothes, socks and shoes to change into after a rainy tour.
We invite all groups to join us. If you are a teacher in Boston Public Schools, contact us about a Teacher Toxic Tour or to find out how you can bring your students on a tour to learn about environmental justice.
We are happy to work with the size of your group. Here are some general guidelines: Groups of 15 people or less are an optimum size. While we are able to accommodate larger groups, we find that people tend to have a better experience in groups that are no bigger than 25 people. The larger a group, the harder it is for everyone to hear the tour leaders, and the longer we spend walking and waiting for everyone to assemble.
We can sometimes break a very large group into multiple groups for concurrent tours. This will take more coordination and most likely require more than two hours.
We are happy to work with you to accommodate the needs of your group. Some groups have rented vans and buses to use for a driving tour. It’s not the same as a walking tour, but it’s better than an indoor tour. If some of your participants are not able to walk for two hours, we can arrange for you to have a map and a tour itinerary, if you would like to drive some people between stops.
Yes, you may leave bags and other personal items in our office if you do not wish to carry them with you. If members of your group arrive via bike, we recommend taking bicycles up to our office to be stored, rather than locking them on the street.
We ask for a sliding scale honorarium, from $100 to $500 an hour, with the higher end for businesses and universities, and the lower end for Boston Public School classrooms. Toxic Tours take about two hours. For residents of EJ neighborhoods (particularly those who are low-income), we may waive honorariums or arrange for an exchange of volunteer hours.