PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN

Tuesday, June 18, 2024; Randy Cunningham’s home in the West Boulevard neighborhood: Storyteller and activist Randy Cunningham holds a copy of his new book, Where We Live: Environmental Activists’ Fight to Save Their Communities.

by Chuck Hoven

   (Plain Press July 2024) Community Activist and Storyteller Randy Cunningham has published a second book titled Where We Live: Environmental Activists Fight to Save Their Communities. The book features stories gathered by interviewing people who often have been thrust into becoming activists because the communities where they live are subjected to an environmental catastrophe.

   Cunningham interviewed people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Missouri who shared their struggles to address the ravages of environmental disasters perpetuated by arrogant uncaring industries upon communities in rural settings, small towns and big cities.

   The stories are lessons in how people, through community activism and democratic action, have addressed existential threats to the communities in which they live. Cunningham says a lesson he hopes the book imparts is “the most important thing about activism is that it is absolutely essential to democracy.” He notes that people who have spent their lives silent, find a voice when their community is threatened.

   The stories told in the book involve heartbreaking tales of destruction wrought by industry on communities throughout the Midwest, and government regulators that are unresponsive until pushed by communities that have rallied to address the tragic circumstances with which they have been forced to live.

   The stories include the fight against pollution by a lead smelting plant in a Missouri town just south of where Cunningham grew up in Crystal City, Missouri. Cunningham says he remembers people that worked in the lead smelting plant that were given the day off work and said it was because “I got leaded.” That meant that the lead levels in their blood were too high, so they were instructed to take time off until the levels dropped.

   Cleveland area based stories of environmental struggles are also featured in the book including efforts by Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing to make rental housing in Cleveland safer for children, a successful effort that stopped the City of Cleveland from creating a garbage burning plant at its Ridge Road Transfer Station, an effort in East Cleveland to clean up a toxic dump on Noble Road, an effort by residents in Geauga County to protect their park system, a battle in Moreland Hills by residents who wanted to put solar panels on their house, and a group in Broadview Heights called Mothers Against Drilling In Our Neighborhood that aimed at banning gas injection wells in Broadview Heights and the transportation of injection well waste through the city.

   Other stories involve residents dealing with the impact on their communities from coal mining companies doing mountain top clearing, oil and gas companies engaged in fracking, clear cutting of forests, and challenging the practice of prescribed burns in the Shawnee State Forest..

   The stories gathered by Cunningham tell of the courage of people taking action to try to get their government to address environmental abuse that threatens or has already devastated the community where they live. Cunningham says, “I don’t think there is any hope for the environment without democracy.”

   Cunningham says he began interviewing people for Where We Live in 2008 and spent 15 years working on it. Cunningham sees this book as an extension of the first book he wrote, Democratizing Cleveland: Community Organizing in Cleveland 1975 -1985. He hopes the book will be read by those in the activist community, especially those in the environmental activist community. The descriptions of the tactics used by the environmental activists in the book will be useful to organizers no matter what issues they are working on.