San Bernardino and Riverside counties have the most concentrated cluster of warehouses in the world, in no small part fueled by our love for fast delivery.
They’re also the reason why the area has some of the highest levels of pollution in the nation, causing serious health impacts to the largely Latino communities who live nearby, and contributing significantly to the heating of our planet.
So how did this happen? The Inland Empire has a long and often untold commercial history, from the forced displacement of Indigenous people to establish a booming citrus industry, to the U.S. military building infrastructure that would lay the foundation for the explosive growth of the logistics industry.
A theme through it all has been largely false promises of good-paying jobs at the expense of people’s and the environment’s health. But there’s also another consistent thread — the efforts of local community members who have fought, and continue to fight, for a better way.
That’s the story that a two-week pop-up art exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum, and online, aims to highlight.
“There isn’t an inevitability of where we got to today — decisions were made at each step along the way,” said Cathy Gudis, professor of history at UC Riverside and a co-curator of the project with her students and two environmental justice groups in L.A. and San Bernardino: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice.
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