Introduction. Reclaiming toxic land for alternative development ; Organization of the narrative ; Author's note
Chapter 1. Failed Development in Baltimore's Toxic Periphery : A History. Guano arrives to the pristine farmlands of the Peninsula ; Zoning for nuisance industries and dumping the Patapsco Sewage Treatment Plant on the Peninsula ; Community in Old Fairfield and Wagner's Point ; The political ecology of energy needs : Coal and big oil engulf the Peninsula ; Booms of the World War II era, busts for black laborers ; Subpar and environmentally toxic housing for black defense workers ; Wastelanding in the 1980s and 1990s ; The students respond
Chapter 2. Free Your Voice : An Origin Story. Free Your Voice program description ; The Problem Tree, the power cube, and ethnography ; "Root shock" on the Peninsula ; Terrel Jones's story : Multiple displacements led to root shock ; Crystal Green's story : Searching for meaningful community ; Jimmy Brown's experience : From the back to the front of Free Your Voice ; Concientización and connecting the personal to the communal
Chapter 3. Fighting the Nation's Largest Trash-to-Energy Incinerator. Phase I : Education and outreach ; Phase II : Using experts, along with history and the arts, in protest (2013-2014) ; Making connections : Fairfield houses and environmental displacement ; Arts and performance in movement building : The Crankie ; Arts and performance in movement building : Free Your Voice at the Board of Education ; Phase III : Civil disobedience as a law enforcement tactic ; The future of the FMC site
Chapter 4. "Whose Land? Our Land!" : Land Trusts as Fair Development. Architects go back to school : Neighborhood Design joins Free Your Voice ; But what is a land trust? ; A history of failed development ; A tale of two South Baltimores ; The 20/20 campaign and the origins of SBCLT ; An experiment in building land trusts ; Community control of land and fair development for the future
Chapter 5. Compost! Learn So We Don't Have to Burn : Zero Waste Is Our Future. Transforming Under Armour City Garage into a zero-waste future ; Free Your Voice builds a zero-waste coalition ; Zero-waste forum at the University of Maryland School of Social Work ; BRESCO gets dirty and Free Your Voice students take to the streets ; Scenes from Blockadia ; Toxic entanglements : Infusions of capital set the stage for BRESCO to win ; Re-strategizing zero-waste work
Conclusion. Where are we now? ; Why this story of youth organizing matters
Postscript : A Letter of Confession to the Activist Scholar. 1. It's not teaching for the sake of teaching or writing for the sake of writing. Everything we do can advance a political and social change agenda ; 2. Building long-term and meaningful relationships not because there is an "exchange value" for the academic but because we are aligned with movement values, goals, and objectives. Collective processes yield co-constructed narratives ; 3. Turning the lens toward the university and dismantling our own hierarchies of oppression and exclusion. Organizing to rethink and redesign the public university for the public
