by Salim Muwakkil

About the author: Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, a biweekly progressive journal.

A government sting operation that allowed illegal dumpsites to operate for years in several of Chicago’s predominantly black neighborhoods has triggered outrage from city residents and sparked renewed interest in the fledgling environmental justice movement.

Operation Silver Shovel, the FBI’s colorfully named but tawdry caper, featured a government informant, or “mole,” who reportedly bribed aldermen and other city officials to look the other way as he illegally dumped thousands of tons of waste material—some of it hazardous—into their jurisdictions. According to officials at Chicago’s Department of the Environment, more than 3 million cubic yards of debris have been dumped illegally on eight sites, and the cost...