On Wednesday night, we opened the 15th annual One Earth Film Festival with a room full of energy, intention, and collective purpose. Our Executive Director Ana Garcia Doyle welcomed us as Generation We, grounding the evening in both urgency and connection. In the face of a growing climate crisis and the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, she reminded us that coming together, across stories and communities, is how change begins.
Honoring the legacy of Jane Goodall, we were invited to center the voices most impacted, embrace storytelling as a tool for change, and commit to the cultural shifts needed to build a more just and resilient world.
Full Opening Night Remarks + Toast Speech from
Ana Garcia Doyle, Executive Director of the One Earth Collective
Good evening. I’m 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!
