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I would soon come to realize that the extent of the devastation that took place at Love Canal was not limited to Western New York. The intimate stories of illness heard locally were part of a scenario that was repeating itself across the country and around the globe. Friends who entered my elementary school classroom had moved from that area to a safer community. Stories of illness and disease dominated discussions about friends and relatives they knew from Love Canal who had suffered from various health issues. Stories of high miscarriage rates and childhood leukemia circulated among neighbors and friends.
In my college studies, I began to draw even a stronger line connecting health, toxics, and politics. I started to explore ways that environmental stories were told, by whom, and to what audience. Did how a story was told make a difference in the response it might receive? I adopted a social-constructionist perspective and incorporated frame analysis, popular in social movement literature, in order to explain how the framing of an issue mattered to the type of response that followed.
The ways in which stories are told influence how individuals make sense of a given issue. Frame analysis was a unique perspective through which to analyze this process. Many frames may be created around an issue, but which are maintained, rejected, accepted, and used—and by whom? Recognizing how these consequences are distinguished becomes vital to understanding mobilization efforts focused on such issues.
When Hickory Woods was publicized in the media, I was immediately drawn to the story. I wanted to involve myself in the process of understanding the issues, as well as in advocacy. The intense publicity that Hickory Woods received propelled the situation into local and state headlines almost immediately. It was billed as “Love Canal II” from the start, and residents were able use history in the emerging story of contamination in their own community. The weeks, months, and years that followed developed into a series of stories about pollution in the neighborhood framed by various actors. Media, community activists, government, and scientists all told their own stories about the environmental