Closing the Cloud Factories: Lessons from the Fight to Shut Down Chicago’s Coal Plants
By Kari Lydersen
Published by Midwest Energy News, June 2014
At the turn of the millennium, the Fisk and Crawford power plants in Chicago had declined from workhorses of the Industrial Revolution to arcane relics – more notorious for polluting the nearby Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods than for providing electricity.
Kari Lydersen tells the story of how a fragmented coalition of neighborhood activists, national environmental groups and city leaders came together to close the coal plants down for good… a groundbreaking victory in the environmental and social justice movements, where neighborhood activists helped spearhead a cause that resonated worldwide.