Downtown Miami, Florida, during a protest on May, 31, 2020. Photo by Tverdokhlib/Shutterstock.
By Susan Messer
On Friday, June 12, in the days following the murder of George Floyd and the international protests spurred by his death at the hands of a police officer, and also while we are all still in the dark shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, I spoke on the phone with Ana Garcia Doyle, One Earth Film Festival Director and founding member of Green Community Connections. We had lots to cover—how she’s continuing her work during these troubled times, how the upheavals and inequities around us intersect with that work, and how the One Earth Film Festival reflects on and responds to those inequities.
“The environmental movement in its best and broadest sense is about justice.” —Ana Garcia Doyle,
Director of One Earth Film Festival
Q: What’s keeping you busy these days? What, if anything, do you want to say about “these days”?
A: Green Community Connections is in its third year of partnering with BUILD Chicago, an organization that has been serving Chicago’s at-risk youth for 50 years through gang intervention, violence prevention, and youth development programs. One part of this partnership is the Austin Grown program, which employs 25 students over the summer, to learn how to farm at a garden on BUILD’s campus at Laramie and Harrison, and how to harvest and cook the foods they grow. https://www.greencommunityconnections.org/recent/2019/9/1/growing-a-brighter-future-in-austin
Last summer, the group built a chicken coop, and this year, we had plans to install solar power. We’ve just learned, however, that the whole program has to become virtual because of the pandemic. The farm is still happening, but we can’t let any youth in right now. So with only two weeks to go, we have to adapt. It’s very disappointing—how can anyone farm “virtually”?—but if we’re creative, and we can figure something out, perhaps our program can become a model for other programs that have to adapt to the limitations we all currently face.
Q: Let’s talk about the criticisms of inequity that have been leveled at the environmental movement. I’m thinking specifically about the film by Natalie Shoultz, which won an honorable mention in the 2020 Young Filmmakers Contest: https://vimeo.com/401073204
In it, we see that the leadership we mostly hear about in the environmental movement has been white, educated, and middle class, and that the agenda has been racist and classist. What is your response to this film?
Markus Spiske/Unsplash
A: It’s a hard, beautiful film. But, yes, I agree with Shoultz and am happy the jury recognized it with an honorable mention. What she says in the film has been true. The actual fact is that those who have fewer resources often take the brunt of environmental degradation and pollution. But their voices and faces are now being heard and understood and seen. At long last, people are recognizing that the crucial focus of our environmental movement cannot be LED bulbs and recycling but breathable air and drinkable water. What we say about the environment must be placed in a context of justice, of anti-racism. The environmental movement in its best and broadest sense is about justice.
Q: In what ways have you aimed toward equity with the One Earth Film Festival (OEFF)?
A: The first year, we piloted the festival in the Oak Park/River Forest area only, and we learned that we were meeting a need because people turned out. They cared, beyond our expectations. So the next year we expanded into Chicago. But we didn’t want to be centered in one place—say, the Chicago Cultural Center or a mainstream movie theater. We wanted to work at the grassroots (we sometimes say deep roots) community level. We wanted there to be representation. We partnered with the Austin neighborhood, and later expanded into Englewood, Bronzeville, South Shore, Waukegan, Little Village, and other communities.
We’re not yet in every community, but we do have broad representation in many front-line neighborhoods. Every community has its own needs and its own work. We use the films to bolster the work each community is already doing. We don’t want to come in from outside and tell folks what to do. Our efforts will fall flat if we’re not learning from them. An important goal of the OEFF is to amplify the voices of each community, expose others to those voices, and thus expand their reach.
Q: Tell me about some films in the OEFF that you think told the story of environmental justice or injustice especially well.
A: When we started the festival 10 years ago, we weren’t seeing films that represented a wide range of voices and justice concerns. But such films have become more prevalent and more available, and we look very hard for them. In 2018, we showed “Rise: Sacred Water, Standing Rock,” about the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and their fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. https://www.oneearthfilmfest.org/films-az-2018/rise-sacred-water-standing-rock?rq=sacred%20water
Another film we showed in 2018, “Fly by Light,” tells the story of a group of DC teens who head into the mountains of West Virginia for eight days, to experience the healing power of nature and, perhaps, to break the cycles of violence and trauma that mark their lives. https://www.oneearthfilmfest.org/films-az-2018/fly-by-light?rq=fly%20by%20light
This year, we had four screenings of “Cooked,” about the Chicago heat disaster of 1995, which links the heat wave’s devastation back to structural racism. https://www.oneearthfilmfest.org/films-az-2020/cooked-survival-by-zip-code?rq=cooked
An environmentalist who hasn’t been working from a justice framework might ask “What do these films have to do with classic environmental topics?” Well, the fact is that everything is interconnected. Climate change disproportionately impacts low income communities and communities of color. What do we do about this? How do we help our frontline communities? We curate the content so we can have these kinds of conversations.
Q: What do you think we can learn from George Floyd's death and the subsequent protests? What, if any, is the connection with the environmental movement?
A: One of the cancers in our culture is othering—that is, viewing so many issues and peoples as “other,” as not my business, not my problem. This is one of the root causes of racism, and what the environmental movement must see and address. The murder of George Floyd, police brutality, the disparate impact on communities of color—these are problems we’ve fed. What we can learn from them is that they connect back to the environment, the way we treat and have treated our planet and its people.
I heard a talk by Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and she kept using the term disposable. I kept wondering, “Why is she using that word?” It’s a word I use all the time in the context of environmentalism, but how did it fit with her subject? And then I realized it’s because we dispose of people the same way we dispose of possessions in this consumerist, throwaway society.
Q: Do you see a connection between everything that’s followed from George Floyd’s death and the pandemic?
“Absent the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder might have evaporated like so many others have. But now, when so much has crumbled before our eyes, it seems we have to be more ready to see and listen.”
A: I do think it’s connected. People wouldn’t be listening so closely to what happened to George Floyd if we weren’t coming from a place of “forced stillness.” Every person in every country has been affected by the pandemic, so we’re all connected now. So much of the usual noise has stopped, allowing us to truly hear about the George Floyd murder and the disparate impact of both the pandemic and police brutality on communities of color. We are now listening because we’re coming from a place of loss, from a place of feeling united, afraid, uncertain. Absent the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder might have evaporated like so many others have. But now, when so much has crumbled before our eyes, it seems we have to be more ready to see and listen.
Q: What goals or plans do you have to continue the work you've started toward equity?
A: When we show our films, we create programming and discussions around them. We present action opportunities, and we ask people in the audience to make a commitment to act. We have been very intentional that because we have this platform, we must give the microphone to voices and faces and organizations that aren’t usually heard and seen. As much as possible, we want folks who most directly suffer the consequences of environmental damage to help facilitate and guide these conversations.