In this article, we argue for new conceptual framework to evaluate the range of environmental activism in already-gentrifying neighborhoods, and to recognize the agency and resilience of long-term residents. Our category of gentrifer-enhanced environmental activism is meant to account for attempts to forge coalitions (however uneasy they may turn out to be) between long-term residents and gentrifiers. This includes attempts by long-term residents to mitigate environmental gentrification by “schooling” gentrifiers in communities’ longstanding concerns and needs, framing these concerns as common cause rather than allowing for the takeover of local environmental politics often associated with environmental gentrification. We use the example of the fight to clean up Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn as a case study in how environmental veterans made strategic alliances with gentrifiers who brought new resources to the area in order to achieve the political pressure for change. and promote more just sustainabilities.