Blue and Green

This book is about the struggle over the future of work and the environment on the edge of the global economy. It traces the history of conflict in an industry that is not widely known, but sits at the epicentre for the global supply chain: short-haul trucking responsible for moving the mass of imports from enormous cargo ships to warehouses and retailers around the country. The book’s specific focus is on the largest and most important campaign at the nation’s largest and most important port complex, which straddles the border of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. Over nearly two decades, labor and environmental groups—bound together in a pivotal “blue-green” alliance—carried forward a monumental campaign to transform working conditions for drivers and environmental conditions for communities. At bottom, the book tells a story of the unceasing resolve of courageous people seeking to make lives better for some of the most marginalized members of society: immigrant truck drivers barely scrapping by as they deliver goods to be sold by some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world; residents of neighbourhoods whose poverty consigns them to inhale the noxious residue of global trade. How law serves as a tool in their struggle is the book’s central question.