The Rape of Mother Earth: Gender, Race, and Nature in Environmental Justice Protest

Following Mei Mei Evans’ (2002) call to critically investigate how some constructions of nature preserve hegemonic power, this paper interrogates race, gender, and ethnicity in 1970s radical urban land rights protests. I focus on a particular tactic of urban renewal protest in which activists illegally converted four-dozen privately-owned vacant lots into accessible gardens they called “People’s Parks.” Historians have documented Berkeley’s People’s Park – the icon of the guerrilla gardening movement – as the nexus for local activism (W.J. Rorabaugh, 1990) and a catalyst for the broader environmental movement (Warren Belasco, 2006, Adam Rome 2014). Digging deeper, my paper builds on the work of Annette Kolodny (1975) and Philip Deloria (1999) who have illuminated how park creators employed gender and ethnic stereotypes to gain support. Through posters and performances, activists constructed urban green space as a passive, fertile woman in need of saving from the rape of bulldozers. Many white activists “played Indian” through gardening to ally with people of color while also portraying them as “naturally” eco-friendly. Yet the varied work, voices, and legacies of women within this transnational movement have been ignored: members of the Zoe Bayliss sorority converted a UW Madison-owned lot for Earth Day; Laura Rodriguez fed gardeners tamales at San Diego’s Chicano Park; and Liz Christy organized a community gardening group in New York that remains active today. Taken together, this paper uses the People’s Park movement to offer insight into the contemporary roles women play in urban place-making as tactics of environmental justice protest.