The global freight transportation system is a major driver of air pollution, health disparities, and environmental injustice, especially in frontline and fenceline communities of color located near ports and inland ports, rail yards, warehouses, and highways. Despite decades of grassroots organizing, decision-making power over freight and environmental policy remains concentrated in polluting industries and regulatory systems that marginalize community voices. Without a strong, connected movement to build power, reduce emissions, and hold decision-makers accountable, the harm will only worsen. 

A network of frontline and fenceline community leaders, environmental organizations, labor, academia, and other community power building stakeholders.

1. Building a resilient national organizing infrastructure 
• We build the connective tissue that allows the network to: 
• Engage in national campaigns without losing local focus
• Access peer knowledge, scientific analysis, technical tools, and legal strategy
• Have visibility and collective influence beyond their organization
2. Translating frontline and fenceline priorities into coordinated campaigns and tangible wins
• We advance a frontline and fenceline-led campaign agenda by:
• Coordinating across campaigns to advance zero-emission solutions
• Elevating community-led data for policy change
• Supporting strategic engagement among frontline and fenceline leadership and decision-makers 
3. Shifting public narratives to center justice and community leadership 
• Frame and disseminate a cultural narrative that centers frontline and fenceline wisdom
• Build media, storytelling, and educational content that shifts mindsets around environmental justice, freight, and community health

• Frontline and fenceline communities experience measurable improvements in air quality and health outcomes due to reduced freight emissions.

• A national network of intergenerational frontline and fenceline organizations effectively leads the reshaping of the freight transportation system to ensure environmental justice and community well-being.

• Increased community civic engagement and growing knowledge about the negative impacts of the global freight transportation system.

Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing

1. Be Inclusive
Our movement must embody diversity at all levels, requiring thorough planning, hard work, and conflict resolution to develop alternative policies and institutions against neoliberalism.

2. Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing
We must continually build and strengthen our base to ensure credibility, strategic effectiveness, mobilization, leadership development, and sustained energy for our daily work.

3. Let People Speak for Themselves
We must ensure that voices of those directly affected are heard by providing ways for spokespersons to represent them responsibly, clarifying organizational roles and representation, and assuring accountability within our structures.

4. Work Together In Solidarity and Mutuality
Groups working on similar issues should act in solidarity and support each other, emphasizing the importance of communication, strategy, and resource sharing for stronger relationships and broader impact.

5. Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves
We need to treat each other with justice and respect at both individual and organizational levels, developing just relationships through clear decision-making, shared strategies, resource distribution, and coordinated accountability across diverse skills.

6. Commitment to Self-Transformation
As we change societies, we must shift from individualism to community-centeredness, embodying the values of justice, peace, and community we advocate for. We must “walk our talk.”

1. Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.

2. Environmental Justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias.

3. Environmental Justice mandates the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things.

4. Environmental Justice calls for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water, and food.

5. Environmental Justice affirms the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self determination of all peoples.

6. Environmental Justice demands the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes, and radioactive materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production.

7. Environmental Justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation.

8. Environmental Justice affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards.

9. Environmental Justice protects the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care.

10. Environmental Justice considers governmental acts of environmental injustice a violation of international law, the Universal Declaration On Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

11. Environmental Justice must recognize a special legal and natural relationship of Native Peoples to the U.S. government through treaties, agreements, compacts, and covenants affirming sovereignty and self-determination.

12. Environmental Justice affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and provided fair access for all to the full range of resources.

13. Environmental Justice calls for the strict enforcement of principles of informed consent, and a halt to the testing of experimental reproductive and medical procedures and vaccinations on people of color.

14. Environmental Justice opposes the destructive operations of multi-national corporations.

15. Environmental Justice opposes military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms.

16. Environmental Justice calls for the education of present and future generations which emphasizes social and environmental issues, based on our experience and an appreciation of our diverse cultural perspectives.

17. Environmental Justice requires that we, as individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of Mother Earth’s resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations.