Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore

by Nicole Fabricant

Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other chemical industries in their neighborhoods, residents face elevated rates of lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses in addition to heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular disease, all of which can lead to premature death. Fighting to Breathe follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality in their city. For more than a decade, student organizers stood up to unequal land use practices and the proposed construction of an incinerator and instead initiated new waste management strategies. As a Baltimore resident and activist-scholar, Nicole Fabricant documents how these young organizers came to envision, design, and create a more just and sustainable Baltimore.

Genres: Nonfiction, School, Sociology, Environment

265 pages, Paperback

Published December 13, 2022

Reviews

[John]

Enjoyed! The author has a distinct perspective and writes well and covers interesting material. I would have personally liked to see a lot more tea spilled about the internal divisions that got in the way of the movement's success after 2016 and a bit less pedagogy, but pedagogy is what some people are into. As an anthropological account of a movement in South Baltimore, this book mostly succeeds, but it turns out I'm more interested in reading about Anthropology itself as a historical subject than read any product of anthropological study.