MNEJT Mourns the Passing of Karen Clark

The Minnesota Environmental Justice Table mourns the passing of our dear friend and ally Karen Clark, one of the most consequential environmental justice leaders Minnesota has ever known.

Karen lived in South Minneapolis for close to sixty years, most of it in the Phillips neighborhood. She was elected to the Minnesota House in 1980, becoming the first openly lesbian person elected to any state legislature in the country. She held the seat for 38 years.

Years of public health work showed her how closely poverty, race, and pollution tracked with who got sick, and that understanding shaped her leadership. One of her first major bills, the Worker’s Right-to-Know law, gave Minnesota workers the right to be told when they were being exposed to toxic chemicals on the job, and to be protected from them. In 2008 she passed a law requiring polluters seeking air permits in her part of South Minneapolis to account for the pollution already burdening the neighborhood, not only their own emissions. Nothing like it existed anywhere in the country at the time. It was the foundation for the 2023 statewide cumulative impacts law that MNEJT helped pass.

She was a true trailblazer. Long before the data was public, she built the maps herself, documenting how pollution fell hardest on communities of color and low-income neighborhoods when people in power didn’t want that on paper. After leaving office she carried that work into the Women's Environmental Institute, which she co-founded, and ran its certified organic farm north of the city. She stood with the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute through their long fight for the Roof Depot site. She also spoke against the HERC for decades and has been a  leader in the Zero Burn Coalition’s work to finally close HERC – participating in countless planning meetings, County Board meetings, actions, and recently at a MN Senate oversight hearing to call on MPCA to stop protecting HERC.

Karen believed the people forced to live closest to pollution are the ones who should decide when it ends. She spent her life handing those communities the tools to make that decision, and she gave us a partner who never had to be talked into the fight. 

MNEJT Co-Founder and Executive Director Nazir Khan reflected on what Karen meant to the environmental justice movement in Minnesota.

“Karen was such a source of strength and inspiration during the hunger strike to shut down HERC. It wasn’t surprising though: she was the lioness of our EJ movement in Minneapolis. She identified and mentored so many leaders; she fought and won so many battles; she carried the torch high and far, showing us there is a path forward, but that we must be bold to make that path. And she did it all with a warmth, kindness, and humility that brought out people’s humanity. As the climate emergency intensifies, as frontline communities are sacrificed more violently, we must pick up the torch she carried. MN EJ Table is committed to that. We are deeply saddened but we will honor Karen by continuing to make the path she led us down.”

To her wife Jacquelyn, and to all who share our grief, we send our love.

Rest in power, Karen.

Help carry on her legacy: chuffed.org/project/188769-karen-clark-memorial-fund