Juan Jhong-Chung on environmental justice, international solidarity, and building the future

"I think that in the case of my particular experience doing activism in Peru and in the US, there is a lot that we can learn from each other."

Juan Jhong-Chung is the Climate Justice Director for the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC), a statewide coalition of grassroots and community organizations that advocate for just environmental policies at the local, state and federal levels. Juan holds dual master’s degrees from the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) and the Urban and Regional Planning Program at the University of Michigan. He also holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University. Juan uses his skills in science, technology, policy, and planning to advocate for climate justice and systems change. He is passionate about creating ecological futures that center the lived experiences and knowledge of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as well as other historically marginalized groups. Juan is a queer immigrant born in Ica, Peru of Indigenous Chanka and Cantonese Chinese ancestry. He now lives in Detroit, where he conspires with other organizers to win a Green New Deal.

This interview has been condensed and edited for content and clarity.

How did you get involved in climate and environmental justice work?

I always think about it in two streams. There is one that is just my personal life experience growing up in Peru, growing up in a community that has suffered the effects of climate change. I grew up in a town called Ica and we get a lot of flooding from El Niño, anytime there's this cycle of warming in the Pacific Ocean. It's a really arid area, but every few years we get rains and when it's really intense, there's a lot of flooding. The other stream that got me into climate justice and environmental justice activism was definitely through graduate school. That is more the technical experience, finally learning and understanding about environmental policy, about environmental injustices, more from a scholarly perspective. So having those two things was very valuable for me.

Can you say a little bit more about your background in Peru?

The way that I think of it now is not necessarily how I've thought about it my entire life, because there's been a process of constructing and deconstructing my identity. I was born and grew up in Ica. For Peru, it's a relatively large, urban-ish area. There's a lot of agriculture in the area as well. I come from a very poor family that changed its fortunes because of just random luck. My parents were chicken farmers and I grew up helping them butcher chickens and sell in wet markets. But the area where we grew up experienced an economic boom and the farmland that my parents owned basically shot up in value, and we were able to join the middle class and then the upper middle class really quickly. Despite all of that, I think that I was always rooted into understanding where my family was coming from, from that socioeconomic background and also our racial background. On one side we're Indigenous Chanka people, and on the other side we’re the descendants of Chinese immigrants that came to Peru in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

So there's always been that awareness of race and class. But I was not always super conscious of all of that. I did really well in high school. I was actually first in my class and I had always dreamed for some reason of studying abroad, learning about other cultures. Originally my goal was to study abroad and then come back to Peru and help my community. Back then I thought that the way to do that was definitely through technology. I went to undergrad for electrical engineering and quickly I discovered that technology was very much co-opted for [laughs] economic purposes, for capitalism. Very little of it was actually supporting true development of people. So in college, I started questioning what I thought was my role in terms of this desire that I've always had to help my community and other communities like mine.

After I graduated from college, I was a software engineer for a few years and I was always debating, I really want to do something related to the environment, but I thought I had already chosen a path that I couldn't get out of. And my parents had some financial difficulties, so I was able to support them financially as a software engineer. I was making a relatively good amount of money, but the work was completely unfulfilling. What I decided to do was just take a chance. I had saved some money and I thought, I think I want to go to grad school and just jump into something that I've always been passionate about, which is the environment.

I was taking a big chance because I had not made any connections to environmental justice or climate justice activism before then. I ended up going to SEAS, and from there I met you and I decided to get involved with campus activism around climate, with environmental justice activism. And I think that in one way or another I learned a lot more from my peers at SEAS than from the actual classes, just learning from what people's backgrounds were and all the different areas of organizing and activism around these issues. It motivated me to get more involved, and from there I was very involved in campus activism and I got to meet folks that were involved with the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, where I ended up finding a job in 2020 during the pandemic. And that's where I am right now. 

How are you thinking about the sort of national landscape right now when it comes to climate and environmental justice? How can we build the sort of power that can actually force national policies that we need?

It's a big question to untangle, but I see two strategies. There is that defensive strategy that I was sharing with you. The idea that whoever is in the White House, whoever is in Congress, that we need to ensure that they don't do more harm. So constantly watching out for any legislation that could potentially harm EJ communities with carbon offsets, carbon credits, with other false solutions. That's one thing that we have to do to protect ourselves. And then I think the more interesting question is: what is that visionary aspect? How do we create political power to change things at the national level? That is something that we need to do collectively as a movement. So it doesn't just rest on MEJC or any one organization or organizer. But I think overall the movement is starting to realize that we need to elect more champions. We need to elect people that are openly and actively envisioning a world that moves away from an extractive economy, from a fossil fuel economy. We need people like Rep. Rashida Talib, who is a champion for EJ causes. She is an openly socialist Democrat. We need more people like that. 

Shifting gears a little bit, I've seen you being pretty active in Peru politics Twitter. What's been going on in Peru?

I actually have not been active for the past two or three months since this was my last semester in grad school and I had a little bit less free time. But there's been a lot of political change in Peru and it's been a little bit of a mixed bag. In 2020, we had presidential elections in Peru and I was involved through the DSA International Committee. I went to Peru as part of an observer delegation, and my Twitter just exploded from one day to another and I got a bunch of followers. It allowed me to have a little bit of a platform to share my political views and my vision. In particular, I like to talk a lot about anti-racism, about environmental racism, environmental justice.

Through that experience I was pretty active in supporting a leftist candidate, Pedro Castillo, who is now the president of Peru. During his campaign, he was a part of what I would call a pretty radical campaign because he is an Indigenous person who was a teacher for many years, who lived in a rural area of Peru. This type of candidate had never gotten so much attention before. Peru has traditionally been very right-leaning, very conservative, since the 90's very much took a neoliberal path. And race relations in Peru are a taboo subject. People don’t like to talk about that. There is a lot of internalized racism. A lot of us are Indigenous or have a degree of Indigenous ancestry, and we still don't like to talk about that. We prefer to refer to ourselves as mestizos, prefer to bring out the European side if you have it. So for that reason, I thought that Pedro Castillo’s campaign was just so radically different. And his agenda was very much a leftist, socialist agenda.

So I was pretty active during his campaign, and unfortunately once he got into power, it has slowly taken a more centrist turn. And I would even say in some issues he's taken a more right-wing approach. It's really disappointing. It honestly de-energizes me, and I think a lot of other friends that were involved during the campaign also feel extremely disappointed and de-energized. Recently, President Pedro Castillo was taking stances supporting someone like Bolsanaro in Brazil. At that point, I think that it's hard to believe that you have a leftist agenda.

But who knows? There are still a few years that remain. Honestly, I think the most that I can see is that he has some centrist reforms. Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of good stuff coming from that front. But also, to be fair, I have not looked into Peruvian politics in a few months [laughs]. Things change from day to day.

How do you think about building international solidarity between movements? Whether it's the US and Peru, or anywhere else. Are there any good examples that come to mind? 

A good way to build international solidarity in general is reaching out to movements around the world and sharing lessons. It's really valuable for people anywhere to learn about these struggles and the strategies that other people are using to challenge power. I think that in the case of my particular experience doing activism in Peru and in the US, there is a lot that we can learn from each other.

And I think unfortunately the right knows this. A lot of the narrative that you see in the US coming from the far right is being repeated and spread out in Peru, and they have the advantage that they can pour lots and lots of money into disinformation campaigns. You see the same fear-stoking that the right is doing here in the US in Peru. An example that comes to mind during my time when I was in Peru with DSA was “Con mis hijos no te metas,” which means “Don't mess with my children.” It's this really conservative group that is trying to frame any gender justice issues into creating the same fear that you see here in the US, that you're trying to brainwash children, you’re trying to indoctrinate them into ideologies, and it's really sad. There is a lot of right-wing money from the US, from other parts of the world, going into Peru to support those types of campaigns. So you see a lot of that.

Similarly, a lot of right-wing fascist language is entering Peru. What you see is this movement called Hispanismo, which is a movement that is trying to reclaim basically that we should be colonies of Spain, that we should go back to those times, that those times were better. They use the Hispanista flag, it's basically an old flag from Imperial Spain and they fly it super proud, very similar to the Confederate flag, knowing that it represents a lot of prejudice and racism and injustice, people still want to use it. I think that the right has quickly understood that using fear-mongering works in many parts of the world and they adapt to the local context of what will get people scared and get them to vote against their own interests basically.

So in the case of the left, we need to figure out how to start talking to each other, sharing best strategies, sharing our struggles. There is an incredible wealth of knowledge that we can share from North to South and from South to North. 

Are there any struggles or strategies that come to mind, or good examples of groups or people, that you've learned from?

I noticed during the last time that I was in Peru that, in the same way that you see this fascist movement with Hispanistas, you also see this resurgent Indigenous pride. You see this movement for racial equality. You see this movement where people are more willing and aware of racial dynamics and inequality and how that is tied to economic inequality.

The conversation around racial inequality definitely has a bigger spotlight here in the US. I think that in Peru because a lot of people have more than one single racial ancestry, it has become difficult to construct and deconstruct those racial identities and racial relationships. But people are starting to do that. People are starting to question this idea that if we are all mestizo, why is there still economic inequality? Why is there still racism if we claim we're all the same race even though people look different? Some people might look more European, some people might look more Indigenous, some people might be Asian, some people might be Black, or have a mixture of all these ancestries. How does that affect power dynamics in Peru? I think potentially there’s a role for social media to keep spreading more awareness of that. That’s become ubiquitous all over the world. I do have some hesitations though because social media can be really toxic, too. So it’s a double-edged sword. [laughs]

[laughs] For sure. Have you seen any connections between the work you're doing in Detroit and what’s going on in Peru?

Absolutely. Detroit, Benton Harbor, Hamtramck, so many places in Michigan are experiencing a lead poisoning crisis. Access to clean water is a huge thing here in Michigan, and access to clean water is also an issue in Peru. In Peru, we're not dealing with a lead poisoning crisis, but we are dealing with very unequal access to clean water in urban areas. In a lot of places in Peru, there are a lot of new urban developments that have basically been forgotten by the government. They were promised that there was going to be water infrastructure and it's never been built or it's taking years and years to build, and people have to pay an insane amount of money for water that basically gets transported in trucks. And then you have to unload that water on a bucket and you end up paying way, way more than wealthy Peruvians would pay for their water bills. So this is a huge issue, access to water. A lot of those disparities again come along racial and socioeconomic lines. I've been trying to connect people between here and Peru to learn about those struggles and the best ways to organize for change.

Very cool. What's something going on that gives you hope or you feel that people are really pushing in the right direction or making progress on?

Something that gives me hope is the work that folks are doing in the food sovereignty movement. Even though I'm not personally involved in it, I always find it super inspirational because people doing food sovereignty work are basically building the new, building that vision of what the future could be if we were not beholden to an extractive economy. Here in Detroit, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network recently broke ground on a food co-op that they’re building in the north end of Detroit. And it took them 12 years. They recently told me, “We've been working for 12 years to make this happen.” It is really cool. It's creating a place for black farmers to sell their products, it's creating a place for urban farmers to sell their products.

That's one example, and I'm sure there are many in other places, where we see people building the new. For me, that is very important because, being someone who is working doing policy, policy can be really draining a lot of times. And, to be quite frank, working with policy is also working within the current system. Which I don't think we need to abandon yet; we still need to use that system to propel us into that next future. But we also need that group of people showing us like “Hey, look, this is the future, this is what we could be doing.”