[1] CCSCLA works to involve community members in identifying social, economic, and environmental areas of concern to them, and give them the tools necessary to engage with institutions, such as industries or political leaders, to enact change.
[1] The Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles was founded in 1985 by Robin Cannon and Charlotte Bullock in order to form a group to protest the construction of a waste incinerator known as the LANCER within the predominately low income, colored community.
Since dismantling the LANCER, CCSCLA has broadened its mission, fighting to better the communities of South Central LA with a number of programs that still exist today.
This includes campaigns fighting against environmental hazards in the community, alleyway clean ups, affordable housing projects, and youth programs.
This understanding, that poor and colored communities are disproportionately being exposed to environmental hazards, has been brought about by dozens of studies completed in the last thirty years.
[3] President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice in 1994 adopted the work of the movement and created federal government policy.
In this way CCSCLA was able to organize local business owners, lawyers, and legislators into a collective force invested in fighting for environmental justice.
[6] CCSCLA first mobilized in response to the proposed construction of the LANCER incinerator, and were pushed to use this community based approach because of the denial of support from mainstream environmental groups (MEGs).
In the summer of 1985, Robin Cannon and Charlotte Bullock established CCSCLA is response to the proposed construction of the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery (LANCER) municipal waste incinerator.
[6] According to the research the teens did, the building site of the school was located on toxic land and was to be placed across from a former plant which was put on the Superfund cleanup list.
[6] The Concerned Citizens helped shed light on over 12 other school sites around Los Angeles suffering from similar problems of officials' oversight in constructing in polluted zones.
Their efforts garnered the attention of their senator at the time, Tom Hayden (D- Los Angeles), who involved himself with the problem of building schools on contaminated grounds on a federal level.
This situation brought the movement of environmental justice to light within the south central LA community, and set an empowering example for young people to have the ability to educate themselves and stand up to federal officials ignoring their concerns.
Block club participants submitted a petition to the city of Los Angeles demanding that alleys be cleaned, closed to traffic, and fenced off with access only to residents of these communities.
CCSCLA also entered into a pilot program with the city of Los Angeles to train community residents, including those formerly incarcerated, to do alley clean up and pothole repair.
The youth received national acclaim for their efforts in Time magazine which published an article titled "Don't Mess Around with the Toxic Crusaders".
[17] ACYFC, founded through a partnership between CCSCLA and Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches (LMC) is an effort to bring the community together and provide a positive extracurricular activity for youth.
Mothers in these communities explain that they and their children already face pre-existing health conditions unable to be addressed because of the cost and accessibility of the current healthcare system—conditions such as asthma, influenza, cancer, heart disease, and/or pneumonia.
[5] Ailments of community members are magnified through added health problems caused by pollution in the environment of south-central inhabitants (such as trash-burning from incinerators, chemical exposure from power plants, etc.).