Just Energy: Generating Community Power in Holyoke, MA
Alias, Cyatharine.
2020
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Thesis (M.A.)--Tufts University, 2020.
Submitted to the Dept. of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.
Advisors: Kristin Skrabut, and Laurie Goldman.
Keywords: Environmental justice, Public policy, and Urban planning.
This thesis uses the Just Transition framework to analyze Action for a Healthy Holyoke's (AHH!) campaign to close the Mt. Tom Coal Plant in ... read moreHolyoke, MA. The Just Transition framework states that society can ameliorate its extractive relationship with Earth and redevelop its economy to support this new relationship by transferring decision-making power from corporations to local communities. Drawing on unstructured interviews with key stakeholders from the campaign and archives of relevant documents during and slightly after the campaign (2011-2019), I argue that AHH!'s campaign generally aligned to the Just Transition framework but did not democratize decision-making power. The case study of AHH! suggests that activating a Just Transition framework depends on the leadership of marginalized, local community members who experience the negative outcomes of the extractive relationship with Earth, and that a networked coalitional structure enables activists to respond to the local context and leverage the statewide context to set conditions for activation. The case highlights the importance of increasing community decision-making power and reconceptualizing how community members participate to make decisions to enact a Just Transition vision.read less - ID:
- gf06gh66t
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