Episode 7: The Racial Environmental State with Keith Miyake

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, we are joined by Keith Miyake, a professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and Labor Studies at UC Riverside and a core member of the UC Ethnic Studies Council. Keith talks about how their moorings in STEM and ethnic studies inform and sharpen their research and organizing, including within the university, and how their work as an environmental engineer in Southern California helped inspire their new book, The Racial Environmental State: Contested Spaces of Resistance, published in June 2026 by the University of Washington Press. In this discussion, Keith addresses how activists and organizers have engaged with the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) process in ways that exceed the parameters of the racial environmental state, opening up the possibility of redistribution of resources, the elimination of borders and prisons, challenging settler colonialism, and the forging of unlikely solidarities. They explore the pros and cons of working with the state in pursuit of racial and environmental justice and wrestles with how abolitionists can craft new relationships rooted in radical notions of democracy.  Keith’s book can be purchased through the University of Washington for a 40% discount until July 11 with the code warm26.