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GoGreenNation news

Florida Climate Activist Nicholas Vasquez Rallies in Gainesville During 800-Mile State-Wide Walk

Maia Botek
News Feed
Thursday, July 29, 2021

Embarking on an 800-mile walk across the state of Florida, Nicholas Vazquez is a 23-year-old climate activist using unconventional tactics to raise awareness for climate change.

Nicholas Vazquez leads and speaks to members of a symbolic ‘die-in’ at the Gainesville City Hall on July 27, 2021.

Embarking on an 800-mile walk across the state of Florida, Nicholas Vazquez is a 23-year-old climate activist using unconventional tactics to raise awareness for climate change. Vazquez arrived in Gainesville on July 27, one of nine stops on his journey to Tallahassee. He has just reached the two-month mark for the walk, which began on April 22 out of Miami, Florida. Upon his arrival to Gainesville, Vazquez organized and spoke to activists on the steps of the Hippodrome Theater before hosting a more demonstrative protest at the Gainesville City Hall.

Just after 6 p.m. on July 27, Vazquez stood at the steps of the theater in a woven pair of brown slippers reading off a black iPhone to a small, but enthusiastic, crowd of supporters. Vazquez spoke candidly about his experience with Extinction Rebellion, a UK-based climate organization that he represents, and his expectations for the walk across the state, including the need for Governor Ron DeSantis to declare a climate emergency. Among the issues Vazquez wanted to call attention to were crop failures, water shortages, sea level rise, increased carbon emissions, deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and global temperature elevations, at one point exclaiming, “Siberia is on f—ing fire!”

Many of Vazquez’s words about the urgent need for climate action were met with affirmation and small chants from the group of around 15 supporters who had gathered around the steps of the theater. Following the conclusion of Vazquez’s statements, the group organized themselves with various signs and posters demanding action and marched for four blocks north on Southeast First Street until reaching the Gainesville City Hall. Many of these signs and materials were supplied by Anne Hemingway Feuer, a member of Extinction Rebellion who had driven to Gainesville from Miami in order to hear Vazquez speak. Feuer credits her environmental activism as one of the ways she overcame her depression about the environment and pointed toward the value of motivating others in the fight for climate awareness.

Later in the evening at the Gainesville City Hall, Vazquez and a handful of supporters partook in a symbolic ‘die-in’, collapsing on the steps and front lawn of the building after reading an imagined climate-change-related cause of death. Though only certain members of the group participated in the act of lying down and ‘dying’, others placed flowers to memorialize the symbolic deaths and outlined the bodies lying on cement in various sticks of chalk that were distributed. Although no city officials or the mayor of Gainesville appeared at the event, Vazquez remains hopeful that his tactics will create the necessary impressions across both local and state governments. In 2019, Vazquez and other Extinction Rebellion activists successfully convinced Miami Mayor Francis Suarez to declare a climate emergency, and Vazquez is expecting a large amount of publicity and coverage upon his arrival and hunger strike in Tallahassee.

To continue following Nicholas’ journey across the state please visit https://xramerica.org/walk-with-nick/, and make sure to follow Cinema Verde’s social media outlets! Nicholas will be in Gainesville until July 30 and is looking to connect with the people of Gainesville during his last few days. On August 10th, 2021, Nicholas will be in Jacksonville, Florida, beginning his March Against Treason to the state’s capital and hopes many people will join him on the trek along I-10.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of
Maia Botek
Maia Botek

Maia Botek is a third-year journalism major and Spanish minor student at the University of Florida who has grown up in South Florida throughout her entire life. As the daughter of a Jamaican father and part-Norwegian mother, an understanding of cultures, diversity and the world around her has always been an important facet in Maia's life which has resulted in a love of the environment, travel and education. She loves spending time outdoors and with friends, especially at the beach, which she loves. Maia is interested in utilizing journalism to educate others on the importance of the Earth's natural resources and ensuring a sustainable and equitable future for all.

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Tribes Celebrate the End of the Largest Dam Removal Project in US History

The largest dam removal project in U.S. history has been completed near the California-Oregon border

The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed Wednesday, marking a major victory for tribes in the region who fought for decades to free hundreds of miles of the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border.Through protests, testimony and lawsuits, local tribes showcased the environmental devastation due to the four towering hydroelectric dams, especially to salmon, which are culturally and spiritually significant to tribes in the region.“Without that visioning and that advocacy and activism and the airplane miles that they racked up … to point out the damage that these dams were doing, not only to the environment, but to the social and cultural fabric of these tribal nations, there would be no dam removal,” said Mark Bransom, chief executive of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit entity created to oversee the project.Power company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962. But the structures halted the natural flow of the waterway that was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast, disrupting the lifecycle of the region’s salmon. At the same time, the dams only produced a fraction of PacifiCorp’s energy at full capacity — enough to power about 70,000 homes. They also didn’t provide irrigation, drinking water or flood control, according to Klamath River Renewal Corporation.Since breaching the dams, anadromous fish regained access to their habitat, water temperature decreased and its quality improved, explained Michael Belchik, senior water policy analyst for the Yurok Tribe.But tribal advocates and activists see their work as far from finished, with some already refocusing their efforts on revegetation and other restoration work on the Klamath River and the surrounding land.Here’s a look at just a few of the many tribal members at the center of this struggle for dam removal:When Karuk tribal member Molli Myers took her first major step into the fight for Klamath dam removal, she was six months pregnant, had a toddler in tow and was in a foreign country for the first time. It was 2004 and she had organized a group of about 25 tribal members to fly to Scotland for the annual general stockholders meeting for Scottish Power, PacifiCorp’s parent company at the time.For hours, they protested outside with signs, sang and played drums. They cooked fish on Calton Hill over a fire of scotch barrels and gave it out to locals as they explained why they were there.“I really felt an urgency because I was having babies,” said Myers, who was born and raised in the middle Klamath in a traditional fishing family. “And so for me I was internalizing the responsibility to take care of their future.”The initial trigger for her to act came two years before that when she saw some of the tens of thousands of salmon die in the river from a bacterial outbreak caused by low water and warm temperatures.“Looking back on it now I wonder where would we be if that hadn’t happened," said Myers, 41. "Looking back on it now I can say, ‘Was this our creator’s call to action?’”She spent the next two decades protesting and flooding state and federal meetings with tribal testimony, including waiting with other tribal members at the doors of a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting at 4 a.m. in 2007 to ask Warren Buffett what he was going to do about the dams. PacifiCorp was at that point part of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate.Today, those same children with her in Scotland are 21 and 19, and with the dams gone Myers said she sees the hope they and her other three children have about the future.“They can do whatever needs to get done because they saw it happen, they lived it, so now there’s no impossible for them," she said.For Yurok elder Jacqueline Winter, her feelings on the newly free-flowing river are more complicated. The 89-year-old’s son, Troy Fletcher, was the tribe’s point person for dam removal for two decades, testifying in front of the U.S. Congress and presenting to state and federal regulatory committees. But his true power came through his ability to bring people with radically conflicting viewpoints — from farmers to commercial fishers to tribal members — together. Winter said that came from his belief that everyone living along the river are relatives and deserve to be heard. “We’re all family. None of us can be left hurting and all of us have to give a little,” she said was his message.But at 53, the former executive director for the Yurok Tribe died unexpectedly from a heart attack, nearly a decade before that vision of a free-flowing river would finally be realized. Winter said when she saw the dams breached last month, it felt like his spirit was there through those he touched and she could finally let him go.“His vision became reality and I think he never doubted it,” she said. “He never doubted it. And those who worked closely with him never doubted it.”Former Klamath Tribes Chairman Jeff Mitchell’s work since the 1970s for dam removal came out of the belief that the salmon are their relatives.“They were gifted to us by our creator and given to us to preserve and to protect and also to help give us life,” said Mitchell, chair of the tribe’s Culture and Heritage Committee. “As such, the creator also instructed us to make sure that we do everything in our power to protect those fish.”The Klamath River’s headwaters lie on the tribe’s homelands in Oregon, and members once depended on salmon for 25% of their food. But for more than a century their waters have not held any salmon, he said.Mitchell and other tribal members’ fight to bring them back has cycled through several forms. There were the years of protesting, even gathering carcasses of fish after the 2002 fish kill and leaving them on the doorsteps of federal office buildings. There were his days of walking the halls of the state Legislature in Salem, Oregon, meeting with lawmakers about the millions in funding needed to make dam removal happen. Today, he said he feels like they achieved the impossible, but there’s still more work to do.“I’m happy that the dams are gone and we have passage,” he said. “But now I’m thinking about what are those fish coming home to? And that’s really the focus now, is how do we get the parties to start taking restoration actions and making that the top priority in all of this?”Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Activism
Culture
Energy

Newsom and state court judge throw wet blanket on Inland Empire warehouse boom

A judge tosses San Bernardino County's approval of a warehouse complex and Gov. Gavin Newsom reins in warehouse development with a new law.

In summary A judge tosses San Bernardino County’s approval of a warehouse complex and Gov. Gavin Newsom reins in warehouse development with a new law. It’s been a rough couple weeks for warehouse developers in the Inland Empire. Two weeks ago a San Bernardino Superior Court overturned the county’s approval of a massive warehouse complex on more than 2 million acres in the community of Bloomington. Then on Sunday Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that reins in warehouse development statewide by tightening building standards and restricting diesel truck routes in neighborhoods.  The new law is likely to have a big impact in the Inland Empire, which already includes 4,000 warehouses that sprawl over nearly 40 square miles. Those facilities bring jobs, but also air pollution, noise and traffic. Environmental activists applauded the court case reversing the Bloomington warehouse approval. Developers of the Bloomington warehouse complex proposed building three new distribution centers, including a cavernous facility of more than a million square feet. Their plan involved buying and demolishing more than 100 homes. A coalition of nonprofits sued San Bernardino County and the developer in 2022, saying officials missed the mark on environmental standards. On Sept. 17 Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez agreed. He overturned the project approval and its environmental impact report, ruling that it failed to offer reasonable alternatives or properly analyze impacts on air quality, noise, energy and greenhouse gas emissions. “We are very happy that the judge has looked at all the evidence and agreed” the environmental review was inadequate, said Alondra Mateo, a community organizer with the San Bernardino-based People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, which sued to stop the project. The demolition of homes that carved away a swath of the community goes beyond typical development concerns, Mateo said: “It’s not just an environmental impact; it’s a cultural impact, it’s a mental health impact.”  Then on Sunday Newsom approved the warehouse law authored by Inland Empire Democratic Assemblymembers Eloise Gómez Reyes and Juan Carillo. The law passed in the final hours of the legislative session in August, provoking criticism from all sides. While advocates for the logistics industry panned the law as a job-killer, community groups say its public health protections aren’t strict enough. Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, described the law as bad policy “created in a smoke-filled room without experts.” He predicted it will hurt jobs in  the Inland Empire and other parts of Southern California. Environmental groups weren’t any happier. The law requires warehouse loading docks be set back 300 to 500 feet from to sensitive sites, including homes, schools and playgrounds. That’s not enough of a buffer to protect nearby residents, Mateo said, arguing that the ideal distance should be about one kilometer, which is more than 3,280 feet. Reyes has said the law offers a starting point that local governments can expand on to protect public health. Mateo maintained it gives developers an out, enabling them to comply with the letter of the law by meeting minimum limits. Lawmakers acknowledged the law will require amendments. The critics are ready to go. Industry groups say they’ll press for more flexible rules, while environmental groups want stricter ones. “If anything we’re going to push even harder,” Mateo said.

Activism
Energy
Government

Who Are the 2024 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Fellows?

The John D

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Tuesday its 2024 class of fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant."The 22 fellows will each receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want. They were selected from nominations in a yearslong process that solicits input from their communities and peers. Fellows do not apply and are never officially informed that they’ve been nominated unless they are selected for the award.The interdisciplinary award seeks to “enable” people with a track record and the potential to produce additional extraordinary work, said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program.Loka Ashwood, 39, Lexington, Kentucky, a sociologist at the University of Kentucky who studies how environmental issues, corporations and state policy intersect to harm rural communities and reduce their trust in democracy.Ruha Benjamin, 46, Princeton, New Jersey, a transdisciplinary scholar and writer at Princeton University who studies how new technologies and medical research often reinforce social and racial inequality and bias.Justin Vivian Bond, 61, New York, an artist and performer who, in their long career as cabaret singer, has stood up for civil rights, offered solace and humor to members of the gay community and inspired other transgender artists.Jericho Brown, 48, Atlanta, a poet at Emory University whose lyrical work explores contemporary culture in part through vulnerable self-reflection and experimentation in form.Tony Cokes, 68, Providence, Rhode Island, a media artist at Brown University whose video works often use text and fragments from contemporary culture to communicate social critique, including of police violence and torture.Nicola Dell, 42, New York, a computer and information scientist at Cornell Tech, who has studied how technology can be used for intimate partner abuse and has developed tools and programs to help survivors of such abuse. Johnny Gandelsman, 46, New Paltz, New York, a violinist and producer who has revisited classical works using different styles and techniques while also elevating the work of contemporary composers. Sterlin Harjo, 44, Tulsa, Oklahoma, a filmmaker whose work, including the television series “Reservation Dogs” that he co-created, is grounded in the daily lives of Native American communities.Juan Felipe Herrera, 75, Fresno, California, a poet, educator and writer dedicated to expressing the shared experiences of the Mexican-American community through often bilingual work that crosses genres and draws on both contemporary events and the cultures of pre-colonial societies. Ling Ma, 41, Chicago, a fiction writer whose often surreal or speculative stories build from and shed light on contemporary experiences of alienation, immigration and materialism. Jennifer L. Morgan, 58, New York, a historian at New York University whose work focuses on enslaved African women, revealing how the wealth of slaveowners and the growth of the economy was built on their exploitation and reproductive labor. Martha Muñoz, 39, New Haven, Connecticut, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University whose research investigates what factors drive the rates and patterns of evolution. Shaikaja Paik, 50, Cincinnati, a historian of modern India at the University of Cincinnati whose work explores caste discrimination and its intersection with gender and sexuality in the lives of Dalit women. Joseph Parker, 44, Pasadena, California, an evolutionary biologist studying rove beetles at the California Institute of Technology and the evolutionary origins of their symbiotic relationship with other species. Ebony G. Patterson, 43, Kingston, Jamaica and Chicago, a multimedia artist who has created intricate, layered, immersive works using a wide range of materials to explore social histories, sometimes juxtaposing vibrant landscapes with objects of mourning. Shamel Pitts, 39, Brooklyn, New York, a dancer and choreographer whose collaborative work with the artist group TRIBE, which he founded, imagines futures free from oppression, especially for members of the African diaspora. Wendy Red Star, 43, Portland, Oregon, a visual artist who draws on archival material to challenge colonial narratives and center the perspective of Native Americans. Jason Reynolds, 40, Washington, D.C., a children's and young adult writer, whose genre-crossing books often reflect the experiences of Black children and who encouraged children to tell their own stories as a former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.Dorothy Roberts, 68, Philadelphia, a legal scholar and public policy researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, who researches the racial inequities in child welfare systems and health systems that have denied agency to especially Black women over their bodies. Keivan G. Stassun, 52, Nashville, Tennessee, a science educator and astronomer at Vanderbilt University who has championed the recruitment of science students from diverse backgrounds, including neurodiverse students, in addition to his research on star evolution. Benjamin Van Mooy, 52, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studies plankton and the critical role they play in sustaining marine life.Alice Wong, 50 San Francisco, a writer, editor and disability justice activist who founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014, among other campaigns, to bring attention to the experiences of disabled people and the discrimination and obstacles they face. Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Activism
Culture
Health

Mexico's Sheinbaum Takes Office, Making History as First Woman President

By David Alire GarciaMEXICO CITY (Reuters) - When Claudia Sheinbaum takes her oath of office on Tuesday, formally becoming Mexico's first woman...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - When Claudia Sheinbaum takes her oath of office on Tuesday, formally becoming Mexico's first woman president, she will adopt a new government logo that nods to the aspirations of young girls."A young Mexican woman will be the emblem of Mexico's government," Sheinbaum wrote a day earlier in a post on social media, unveiling the logo showing a young woman in profile hoisting a Mexican flag, her hair pulled back into a ponytail not unlike the incoming president's signature look.Sheinbaum has embraced her historic feat in one of Latin America's more socially conservative countries, which until now has been ruled by a series of 65 men since winning its independence from Spain two centuries ago.The former mayor of the sprawling Mexican capital, Sheinbaum has been bolstered by the popularity of outgoing leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, her political benefactor going back nearly a quarter century.But as the former climate scientist steps out of her predecessor's shadow to lead the world's largest Spanish-speaking nation, Sheinbaum will also face doubts and opposition from critics alarmed by the outgoing president's 11th-hour reform drive.Enacted last month, the reforms included a judicial overhaul that will over the next three years replace all of the country's judges with new jurists elected by popular vote."Our hard-won democracy will be transformed, for all practical purposes, into a one-party autocracy," wrote former President Ernesto Zedillo in a Sunday guest essay for Britain's Economist Magazine.Critics of Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum fear their ruling Morena party has too much power, and that democratic checks on executive power will be undermined.The judicial overhaul's implementation will fall to Sheinbaum, who will also face a widening government budget deficit that could crimp popular welfare spending and costly crime-fighting initiatives at a time when the economy is only expected to grow modestly.The 62-year-old Sheinbaum promised continuity on the campaign trail, and now faces the balancing act of advancing Lopez Obrador's state-centric economic polices, especially over natural resources such as oil and minerals, while also making progress on issues seen as his weak points like the environment and security.She also makes history as the first president of Jewish heritage in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.Sheinbaum's inauguration caps an unlikely four-decade climb that has taken the daughter of activist academics to the presidential palace.Six years ago, she made history as Mexico City's first elected woman mayor. Until she stepped down last year to run for president, Sheinbaum was known as a data-driven manager, winning plaudits for reducing the megacity's homicide rate by half, by boosting security spending on an expanded police force with higher salaries.She has pledged to replicate the strategy across Mexico, where drug cartels exert widespread influence.Sheinbaum has also promised to continue generous social spending on old-age pensions and youth scholarships, even though the government's 2024 fiscal deficit is estimated at nearly 6% of gross domestic product.While she has expressed interest growing renewable energy projects, she has also said she will ensure the dominance of Mexico's state-owned oil and power companies while opposing any privatizations.In 1995, Sheinbaum earned her doctorate in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and then pursued an academic career, including a stint on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which later shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.She launched her political career in 2000, when Lopez Obrador, then-Mexico City's newly elected mayor, tapped her to be his environmental chief, tasked with improving the smoggy capital's air quality, highways and public transport.Sheinbaum served as the chief spokesperson for Lopez Obrador's first campaign for president in 2006, which he narrowly lost.In 2015, she was elected to run Mexico City's largest borough, Tlalpan, and became the capital's mayor three years later. That was the same year that Lopez Obrador's third bid for the presidency ended in his own triumph, winning by a margin of more than 17 million votes.Last June, Sheinbaum bested her mentor's margin of victory, polling more than 19 million votes ahead of her closest competitor, who was also a woman.(Reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Christopher Cushing)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.

Activism
Climate
Energy

To Save the Sea review – Brent Spar oil rig resounds with song in a Greenpeace musical

Tron, GlasgowNearly 30 years on, environmental activists’ occupation of the North Sea fuel store gets an ambitious, heartfelt musical treatmentThis time last year, Just Stop Oil protestors interrupted a performance of Les Misérables. They reasoned a musical about rebellion was the right place to protest about the impending climate catastrophe. To Save the Sea is also a musical about resistance, but there is no cause for a skirmish. It makes the environmental point brilliantly enough on its own.Written and directed by Isla Cowan and Andy McGregor for Sleeping Warrior, it is a through-composed tribute to the Greenpeace occupation of the Brent Spar oil store in 1995. In today’s pessimistic age, the action stands as a beacon of climate activism; for all its precariousness and near defeat, it made a difference. Continue reading...

This time last year, Just Stop Oil protestors interrupted a performance of Les Misérables. They reasoned a musical about rebellion was the right place to protest about the impending climate catastrophe. To Save the Sea is also a musical about resistance, but there is no cause for a skirmish. It makes the environmental point brilliantly enough on its own.Written and directed by Isla Cowan and Andy McGregor for Sleeping Warrior, it is a through-composed tribute to the Greenpeace occupation of the Brent Spar oil store in 1995. In today’s pessimistic age, the action stands as a beacon of climate activism; for all its precariousness and near defeat, it made a difference.After Brent Spar had fulfilled its purpose, Shell had intended to dump its toxic remnants in the North Sea. Prime minister John Major was on side. The German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was not. The Greenpeace occupation captured the imagination of consumers. Shell had the muscle to dispense with the protesters but not the resources to deal with a boycott. The people won out.To Save the Sea. Photograph: Mihaela BodlovicSpotting the potential of this David-and-Goliath conflict, complete with its high-seas drama, Cowan and McGregor field an eight-strong company in a show that bulges with ambition. Where the activists belt out strident musical-theatre anthems with titles such as One Foot in Front of Another and Bring It On, their opponents trade in comic show tunes, the better to send up their roles as villains of the piece. The songs are clear and catchy, giving not only emotional heft to the activists’ commitment but also a sense of jeopardy – not to mention the sting of satire.It would be great to see the show taken up a scale: it calls out for a live band. But as it stands, it is a galvanising ensemble piece. Staged on a rugged gantry designed by Claire Halleran and dramatically lit by Simon Wilkinson, it has heart, humour and political nous.

Activism
Climate

Suggested Viewing

The Great Divide

Twenty minutes outside of Visalia, amidst the seemingly endless rows of citrus trees, Yolanda Cuevas packs enchiladas with shredded chicken for her husband Benjamin, their adult daughters and two teenaged grandchildren in her modest single-story home. Their house is the first one off the main drag, one of 83 lining the two crumbling roads that comprise the tiny town of Tooleville. Yolanda must wash the tomatoes for the salsa first in the sink and then again with a splash of clean water from a 5-gallon jug. The process is arduous, and though she’s resigned to do it, she’s not happy about it. Along with Tooleville’s several hundred other residents, Yolanda’s family has survived on bi-weekly delivery of water to their homes for the past 12 years. It’s an annoyance for the family, and it’s expensive for the State of California, which has been paying for the replacement water since the discovery of Chromium-6 (the same chemical featured in Erin Brokovich) in the water. The simpler solution would be to consolidate the town’s water system with that of its larger, affluent neighbor to the west, Exeter. And for this purpose, Yolanda has become a reluctant activist, attending community meetings in Tooleville and lobbying for consolidation at Exeter’s city council meetings under the expert guidance of Pedro Hernandez, an organizer with the Leadership Counsel. While Exeter has resisted the consolidation since it was first proposed, organizers like Pedro feel that this could be the year Exeter finally succumbs to the growing community pressure and brings Tooleville into the fold. The decision will echo around the Central Valley and across the state, as hundreds of similar community water systems find themselves in a nearly identical predicament.

Water
Activism
Documentary

CHAO CARBÓN DOCUMENTARY

Mr. Aes Gener is a greedy mega-entrepreneur in the energy business. Through his story we get into the dirty business he has done in Chile and the world with coal, while we see, through archival footage, the damage to people and nature of this obsolete and polluting fossil fuel.

Energy
Pollution
Activism

Wake Up People!

Environmental activists have been camping in Sodros for more than four months with the purpose of stopping the trees from being cut down. In the past few days Chinese company CRBC workers have been showing up at the site accompanied by the police and gendarmerie forces. The activists have been requesting to see the permits and the documentation for the work they are planning to conduct from the CRBC workers. The CRBC workers haven’t shown any of the permits. Also, the work has begun without a construction board being clearly visible, which is mandatory by law.

Sustainable
Social Justice
Nature

Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECO-TERRORIST: A feature length documentary film. A unique look at eco-history from one who was there for 40 years: Peter Jay Brown, and a humorous examination of the word “eco-terrorist” in today’s reality.

Activism
Culture
Documentary

Still River, Silent Jungle

When a novel dam proposal threatens indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon, an Uchupiamona woman named Ruth Alipaz Cuqui must step into the unknown and become a spokesperson for her people. To the Uchupiamona people, the river has its own life and personality, just as a woman does. Returning to her land for guidance, Ruth and her people explore an alternative future for their rivers based on adventure tourism and whitewater rafting. While opposing powers much bigger than her, she must come to terms with how much she is willing to risk to protect her river and her people.

Water
Indigenous
Activism

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