From Awareness to Action
April 5, 2025
Black Evanstonians testify about ecological harm and a blueprint for change
“It should not be this way, and it will not always be this way.” In a few words, the Minister Candace Simpson powerfully summarizes a theological proclamation regarding the Church Street Waste Transfer Station in Evanston that creates noise and air pollution for the city’s 5th and 2nd wards. For several weeks, the Garrett PhD student has been interviewing Black community members who live near the transfer station, asking how that proximity has affected their lives. “A place that’s handling waste near where humans breathe, drink water, play, or grow food impacts every system,” she says. “And it’s difficult to live where you’re watching your city treat people differently depending on where they lay their head at night.”
This research project was made possible by a generous grant from the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion program, designed to gather community testimony about how the waste transfer station affects nearby residents. The grant application was co-authored by Dr. Kate Ott, the Jerre and Mary Joy Stead Professor of Christian Ethics, and the Rev. Dr. Andrew Wymer, Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship, who sought to both amplify neighbors’ voices and better quantify their experiences. Inspired by how citizen scientists “mattered” once-amorphous ills like car emissions into measurable data, the overarching grant pursues “Faith Mattering” to record the station’s longstanding effects. “By doing ecoautobiographies with folks who live in these communities, we are helping make sure their experiences of environmental injustice are ‘mattered’ concretely,” Ott says. “When we record how it affects them, how they think about this on a daily basis, it can guide us in how to respond.” This is particularly relevant for concerns like air pollution, where contamination is not as visible as it might be in an ocean or river. “Environmental racism expressed in molecules in the air isn’t something you can see,” Dr. Wymer explains. “The goal of this grant is to create a broader awareness to folks in these neighborhoods’ lived reality.”
A theme that repeatedly arises in Minister Simpson’s conversations is how racial politics guide who city planners decide should live near what other people throw away. “Every person I’ve spoken with has made the unprompted connection between race and where we put undesirable things,” she says. “I keep hearing the question, ‘why is this happening to us?’ followed by the admission that we know why it’s happening.” These feelings are intensified by the knowledge that Evanston isn’t even using the waste transfer station for its own garbage. “The fact that your city doesn’t care enough that you live in the vicinity of a transfer station where people come from outside to dump their trash is loudly heard by Black and brown Evanston communities,” Dr. Ott adds. “Years ago, the city did a study on air quality around the station and found that it’s causing problems, but not enough for them to claim that they must do something about it.”
The report in question concluded that nearby air quality was polluted in a way that can increase the likelihood of cancer and cardiovascular diseases like asthma. It’s a story Minister Simpson has heard as well. “I’ve heard a good number of folks talk about breathing problems,” she shares. “But even more talk about how quality of life is harmed by the smell and sound of big trucks coming down the block. We’re shaped by evolution to be disgusted by smells that aren’t good for us.” Despite these issues, however, she’s also heard a multitude of vibrant stories about why Black Evanstonians love their home. “There’s so much pride in the community and growing up here,” she says. “If it were as simple as ‘Well, I’ll just move elsewhere,’ then people would leave, but what I keep hearing it that it should not be this way for us or anybody else. For me, that’s integrity: To say this is not right, and maybe I could move but I’m not going to, because then what happens to this place?”
It’s why Minister Simpson also creates space so folks can share their visions for the city’s future. “A prophetic dream comes across in every interview,” she says. “There is a muscle being developed in speaking out, a deep passion for making our neighborhoods as God intended them to look.” Inspired by other places in Chicagoland that won hard-fought changes to public infrastructure, there’s fierce determination in the righteousness of this campaign. “Bearing witness to the physical, material disparities that shape people’s lives is a starting point,” notes Dr. Wymer. “Then it becomes a question of what are we going to do? How will we keep bearing witness in more loud and disruptive ways to try to move the needle and make change.”
It’s crucial work for Garrett as an institution with professed commitments to ecological justice, racial equity, and the city it calls home. “Institutions of higher education should invest in the material lives of those who live in the neighborhood,” Minister Simpson says. “Especially when it relates to choices that affect people’s short and long-term health, listen to tension between people’s pride in their town and the shame that it isn’t the way it could be. That shame isn’t theirs; it belongs to the people who made these decisions.” Garrett may not have been actively involved in the choice to build this waste transfer facility, but the institution is also embedded within the local community that has long been shaped by stark racial disparity and discrimination. This project reflects the efforts of Garrett community members to be aware of local history and join in the longstanding struggles for environmental justice in our community. Already, there are plans to expand the work this grant started. Dr. Ott reports, for example, that they also recently received a small grant from the Unitarian Church of Evanston to purchase air quality monitors, which will be made available through the library of things at the Evanston Public Library. “We’re hosting a training on April 5th for folks in the community,” she says. “We’re hoping to work directly with faith communities to make sure that there’s outdoor air quality monitors near the waste transfer station, but this willallow anyone in Evanston to collaborate for a citizen science approach to air quality monitoring.”
When waste transfer facility-sized problems feel intractable, storytelling can bring communal change closer. “The muscle of advocacy is so important,” Minister Simpson says. “There is a sense of frustration, but also a very strong determination to speak up about these things—an enthusiasm to testify, to say, ‘this is impacting my life, children’s lives.’” In this effort, theology can become a method for proclaiming what people deserve. “My hope is that people feel this struggle is not theirs alone,” she adds with reverence. “If God is good in the way we say She is, then She cares about who we are in the cosmic sense, but also what we see, what we smell, what we taste, feel, and hear.” That love for our humanity’s particularities is at the gospel’s beating heart, but it’s also a crucial component to nurture agency that leads to transformation. As Minister Simpson has heard from the community’s testimonies, this is what should determine the 5th and 2nd wards’ future: “We get to say what kind of life we want.”