The modern environmental justice movement is rooted in the galvanizing recognition that our fates are linked to the places we live and work…and that often for people of color, those places are ignored, under-resourced, and overly burdened with polluted air, water, and soil. And yet these places are also home to the environmental justice community’s pride, strength, and motivation. Place holds multiple meanings. In the sciences, we often describe an organism’s place in its ecosystem with two parameters: its habitat (physical location) and its niche (role in the community). From those two dimensions, a complexity of interactions emerge which define sources of both resilience and vulnerability. Our human ecosystem is no different.