Protesters march outside of 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, United States, on April 2, 2025.Melissa Bender/NurPhoto/AP

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

Tucked inside the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on Chicago’s far South Side, there’s a yellow brick wall filled with hundreds of names. It stands as a memorial to the friends and family members in this community who died, often due to disease or other health complications.

The Gardens, as it’s commonly referred to, stands closer to the Indiana border than Chicago’s downtown and is wedged between toxic landfills, old steel mills, chemical factories, and an oil refinery. The housing development was built for Black veterans returning from World War II. 

It’s unclear exactly how the memorial wall first began. 

“People just started putting up names on the wall for the people who died of cancer and other respiratory problems,” said Cheryl Johnson, who runs the local nonprofit People for Community Recovery.

Environmental justice was born here. Johnson’s mother, Hazel Johnson, originally from New Orleans, is celebrated as “the mother of the environmental justice movement.” Her lifelong fight to make city and federal officials confront how poor, Black, and Latino communities face disproportionate exposure to pollution turned Altgeld Gardens into a launchpad for the national movement.

When President BIll Clinton signed the first executive order recognizing “environmental justice” in 1994, Johnson was standing right next to him. Now, 30 years later, Johnson’s legacy is under siege. 

President Donald Trump struck down Clinton’s executive order on his first week in office. In the 100 days since, as part of a plan to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, from the federal government, the Trump administration has launched a campaign to dismantle environmental justice protections and programs across the United States.

“It feels like we’re going back to the era where people denied the existence of environmental injustice and communities were really on their own.”

Changes have included an emergency order........

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