S1E9: Justin J. Pearson on campaigning to stop a pipeline headed for a Black neighborhood in Memphis

Craft of Campaigns

You’ll hear about how Justin’s grandmothers’ stories inspired him to fight (9:02), the history of Boxtown in Southwest Memphis (11:31), what happened when two oil companies proposed to build a pipeline through that part of town (13:30), and how they tried to avoid answering questions until they started to get blowback for calling the neighborhood “the point of least resistance” (16:27), why five people at a rally against the pipeline decided to start a new organization (18:13), how going door to door and working the phones helped them finally find homeowners who wanted to take on the companies (21:56), and partnered with largely-white climate groups and legal advocates to point of leverage to stop the pipeline (31:33), and even though the companies’ put a local NAACP leader on the payroll (35:15) ended up finally activating local elected officials to get involved (36:29) and even national influencers like Al Gore (39:46), what it felt like to “get the call” they had won (56:48) and how they successfully passed new laws to keep out future pipelines (58:15).

Justin J. Pearson is President and founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP) and co-founder of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline which is a Black-led environmental justice organization that successfully defeated a multi-billion dollar company's crude oil pipeline project that would have poisoned Memphis’s drinking water and stolen land from the community. He is the Co-Lead and the Strategic Advisor for the Poor People's Campaign: National Call for Moral Revival. And one week ago he won a special election to replace Tennessee State Representative Barbara Cooper, who passed away last year and was an early ally to MCAP in their campaign. Next week he’ll become one of the state’s youngest elected officials.
Read a summary of this campaign on our website or at The Forge.

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