OG. Original Gangster. An accolade for the coolest and most “with it” guy or gal on the block. The OG behind the Chicago-based organization “Share Your Soles,” Mona Purdy, was seeking a new headquarters for her expanding non-profit that recycles thousands of hardly-used American sneakers and other shoes discarded for the latest fashion.
Our online lives leave invisible footprints. Every email, photo upload, and streamed episode consumes electricity somewhere in a server farm — electricity often generated by fossil fuels. The good news? You can shrink your digital carbon footprint without giving up technology. By making mindful changes at home and at work, you’ll use devices, data, and energy more efficiently.
Digital habits feel invisible, but they carry real environmental weight. Every streamed video, stored file, and unused device quietly draws energy from data centers, power grids, and manufacturing supply chains. The good news is that small, deliberate changes at home and at work can measurably reduce your carbon footprint without sacrificing convenience or productivity. What follows is a practical path from awareness to action.
Good evening. Happy Earth Day! On behalf of our Board of Directors, staff, and festival planning team, I want to welcome you to the 15th annual One Earth Film Festival Opening Night Screening & Reception!
Tonight, we join “all together now” as GenerationWe.
We do this in the face of our climate crisis, when more and more folks are – and will be endangered; I use this term intentionally, to refer to the current administration’s recent repeal of the Endangerment Finding, an important 2009 EPA determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
We come together as GenWe also in the spirit of hope and determination that was embodied by pioneering conservationist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and hero-in-our-times, Dr. Jane Goodall, who passed just last fall.
As we stand all together now, I invite us to – ourselves – embody 3 things:
Embodying the notion that the voices, experiences, and solutions of the most vulnerable among us must be centered – this especially means young people, and those who will feel (are already feeling) climate change’s impacts most disproportionately
Embodying the understanding that seeing our way to a more just, resilient planet will take different modalities – not only science and facts and research and data (all very important), but also stories and creativity and connections and reflection and compassion and community
Embodying the resolve to enable the kinds of cultural and mindset shifts that are required to practice and bring about new worlds. As author Arundhati Roy wrote: Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
So, as you hang onto your cocktail cups, in all of your patience (thank you!) I would like to invoke Dr. Jane Goodall’s own words as we make an interactive, collective toast. She said: “Hope is (not) simply passive wishful thinking; real hope . . .requires action and engagement.” So please turn to someone next to you, preferably someone you do not already know, and complete this sentence: I toast to . . . then complete the sentence with an action you want to take on environmental issues. Let’s take a minute to do that. I toast to . . . (Call everyone back.) Wonderful! Now let’s wrap up all of that action + engagement, raise our glasses, and toast to HOPE!
Film Poster for Whose Water? & Kate Levy
Water is life, but who controls it? Who gets access? And who is left behind? Whose Water? takes audiences inside frontline communities across the U.S. fighting for safe affordable water and exposes the systems that determine who has the power, and who doesn’t.
One Earth (OE): Water access is becoming one of the defining environmental issues of our time. What motivated you to explore this story in Whose Water?
Kate Levy (KL): In 2014, I began working with Flint activists to help expose high levels of lead in their water… residents were being labeled as pariahs. At the same time, I was documenting mass water shutoffs in Detroit. A few years later, advocates working toward federal legislation for the human right to water asked me to help tell stories from across the country. Because I had been documenting water issues alongside activists, I was able to explore how these crises are part of a larger system.
OE: How does Whose Water? reveal the intersection of environmental justice, community rights, and water policy?
KL: When the state displaced Flint’s locally elected officials and switched to a corrosive water source to cut costs, it showed how deeply water systems are tied to democratic power. That became the lens for the film: a community’s ability to govern itself is directly connected to its access to water. You see this play out in every location we visit. If you live in a city, ask: does your community have a water affordability program? If not, who’s working on it? In rural areas, look into who is protecting groundwater from pollution or industrial expansion. Across the country, communities are organizing through testing, legal action, and grassroots advocacy.
