Building Healthy Communities from the Ground up

Mission and Vision

We are parents, youth, aunties, uncles, and grandparents. Our elders and ancestors migrated to California looking for refuge from Jim Crow laws, U.S wars, and so that future generations might have a brighter future. Our families made home in places like Richmond, Wilmington, Bakersfield, Ventura, and Fresno. We built community with people who spoke different languages, but shared similar histories.

But over the past 100 years, fossil fuel executives turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, land and bodies. They set up giant oil refineries, dirty gas-fired power plants, and drill sites next to our homes and schools.  Oil and gas lobbyists bought off politicians and rewrote our state’s climate policies to pad their profits. We saw more and more of our loved ones get sick with asthma, heart disease, and cancer.

Our communities are coming together to fight back.

To build a California where our families are safe from toxic pollution, asthma, and cancer. Where we can walk, bike, and commute to work easily. Where our air, water, and skies are free from the poison of oil wells and massive refineries.

Our Vision for a Healthy California

The California Environmental Justice Alliance is a statewide, community-led alliance that works to achieve environmental justice by advancing policy solutions.
We unite the powerful local organizing of our members in the communities most impacted by environmental hazards – low-income communities and communities of color  – to create comprehensive opportunities for change at a statewide level to alleviate poverty and pollution.
Together, we are growing the statewide movement for environmental health and social justice, with a membership that includes  35,000 Asian Pacific American, Latino, and African American residents in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles, Inland Valley and San Diego/Tijuana area.

In our vision for California:

  • Families breathe clean air, drink clean water and can access healthy, safe housing.
  • Communities are powered by sustainable energy.
  • Our elected representatives and regulatory agencies protect the health and futures of working families, including Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Asian immigrant families, and not the profits of big polluters.

We work for a democracy that values the needs of our most vulnerable communities and holds polluters accountable. Our work is grounded in the belief in a just transition away from extractive, dangerous industries and towards a care-based and sustainable economy.

We believe a healthy economy starts with healthy communities, and that means realizing an economy where all people have jobs that are not toxic, that support our families, and keep our neighborhoods resilient. We believe that transforming our most vulnerable communities can help build a healthier, more prosperous California for everyone.

Our History & Accomplishments

CEJA was formed in 2001. Our grassroots, community-based members recognized the need for a voice in statewide environmental policy but realized that they would be more effective and stronger if united.

Since CEJA’s inception, we have mobilized thousands of people to California’s Capitol at critical policy junctures. We have  engaged Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American, and immigrant residents to fight for strategic policy victories California’s regulatory agencies.

Through organizing, member-to-member education, and strategic campaigning, we are building power for a world beyond oil and gas and a climate future for all Californians.