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| October 2002 |
KILLING ME SOFTLY Toxic Waste, Corporate Profit, and the
Struggle by Eddie J. Girdner and Jack Smith “What’s
refreshing about Killing Me Softly is its insistence on viewing
evnironmental problems as intrinsic features of our social and economic system
…. It provides a convincing case both against the economic system that
causes environmental destruction and in favor of struggles that can stop the
spread of the destruction.” The political economy of toxic waste was summed up by Lawrence Summers—then chief economist at the World Bank, later U.S. Treasury Secretary—in his notorious claim that poor people live in environments that are, from an economic point of view, not sufficiently polluted. In its ceaseless search for profit, the toxic waste industry now routinely endangers the health of people around the worlds and the planet itself. Girdner and Smith’s Killing Me Softly examines the growth of the toxic waste industry and the economic logic behind its expansion. It gives a hard-hitting account of the damage it has done throughout the United States. It focuses in particular on the struggle of the people of Mercer County, Missouri, against the plans of Amoco Waste-Tech to establish a huge toxic waste landfill in the county. It shows how the persistence of ordinary people in a poor and politically marginalized area could prevail against the predations of corporate power. Although race and ethnicity play a crucial role in deciding which communities are targeted for toxic waste dumps, Girdner and Smith argue that the critical cleavage within the United States and globally is that of class. The struggle for environmental justice has an important role to play in empowering poor communities and bringing them into a larger movement for social justice. Preface Chapter One — The Toxic Political Economy
Chapter Two — Wasting America: Capitalism, Waste, Chapter Three — Environmental Justice, Democracy,
Chapter Four — The People’s Struggle Against Amoco Chapter Five — Lessons from Mercer County
Chapter Six — Wasting the World: Enclosure, Accumulation About the
Authors JACK SMITH teaches English and Philosophy at North Central Missouri College. His fiction and reviews have been published in a number of literary reviews. He is co-editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern. If you have any technical comments or suggestions, about this web site, please send e-mail to Our Webmaster at mrwebmaster@monthlyreview.org.  |
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