Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
Little Village, known as La Villita, is a neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. It is one of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods and home to one of the largest Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American communities in the Midwest.
A century of industrial land use has left Little Village with legacy pollution, ongoing toxic emissions from factories and diesel trucks, aging water infrastructure, and among the least green space per capita of any neighborhood in Chicago. The community bears a disproportionate burden of environmental harm while having had limited power over the land use and policy decisions that created those conditions.
Residents of Little Village have organized for decades to change these conditions, including closing coal plants, reclaiming contaminated land as public green space, restoring transit access, and building community-controlled food systems.