Past Harms, Future Visions is a collaboration between North Braddock Residents For Our Future (NBRFOF) and faculty and students in the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon. The website documents the story of NBRFOF’s campaign against fracking, situating it within the industrial history of the region, as well as a local and ongoing history of community action against environmental and social injustices. It is intended as an archive or resource for activists, organizations, designers, and residents, by making available many of the documents and materials from the campaigns against fracking at Grandview Golf Course and Edgar Thomson Steel Mill. It also brings together the conversations and collaborations of CMU students and local residents, about how they envision different futures for the community, in spite of, against, and beyond the legacies of toxicity.
Over the years NBRFOF has received advice, assistance, resources and shared power from numerous collaborators and supporters throughout our neighborhoods, municipalities, adjacent towns and cities, and at the state and national level. It is through these collaborations that we were able to resist the “done deal” of natural gas extraction in our communities. We would like to use this space to acknowledge all the community members who put themselves at risk by protecting the place they live. A special shout out goes to Megan McDonough, lifelong Mon Valley resident and the PA State Director of Food and Water Watch who told us we can win this and constructed the strategy to do it. Below is a partial resource list of organizations who make our work possible.
The collaboration between NBRFOF and CMU, and this website, benefited from multiple forms of support. It was developed through funding from the CMU Center for Shared Prosperity, CMU School of Architecture, and the Imagining America, Leading and Learning Initiative (LLI). Thank you to Hilary Muerer, Muffinman Studios, for the work on the design and development of the site. We are additionally indebted to the ongoing guidance and generosity of a number of community members and collaborators:
Braddock Mayor (Former) Chardae Jones
Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Environmental Integrity Project
Fairshake Environmental Legal Services