Looking Back, Moving Forward, is a 2-day virtual conference critically examining the past, present, and potential future roles of the law and legal strategies to advance environmental justice (EJ) policy and action.

The conference takes as its starting point the 30-year struggle by the renowned EJ group CRCQL (Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living) to shut down the nation’s largest waste incinerator in Chester, PA.

Drawing on the lessons learned from CRCQL’s ongoing organizing against environmental racism, our panelists expanded the conversation to explore new and exciting approaches to EJ law and policy-making being used by grassroots EJ movements more broadly.

The conference’s three exciting panels bring together EJ activists, attorneys, and scholars to reflect on the ways that communities, organizations, and thought-leaders are exploring creative and visionary strategies for moving EJ policy and action forward. Some of the topics include multi-racial and cross-class coalition-building, community, solidarity and just transition lawyering, and recent steps such as the formation of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the Justice40 initiative to include the voices, perspectives, and expertise of environmental justice communities in the federal policy-making process.