Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Search results

Cinema Verde Presents: In His Own Home
Cinema Verde Presents: In His Own Home

Now Playing | Heavily armed officers of the University of Florida police department in Gainesville, FL, responding to a 911 call from a neighbor who heard screams, break into the campus apartment of Ghanaian graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong. Clad in SWAT gear and ready to attack, they see the disabled doctoral student, sitting with a metal table leg in his hand and within a minute of entry, shoot the unarmed man in the face. Adu-Brempong, who because of childhood polio, needed a cane to walk, and had been suffering from mental illness, now has severe facial injuries, and is charged with resisting arrest. He is guarded outside his hospital door, his legs shackled together when going to the bathroom. The officer who shoots Kofi, and who had previously been caught cruising through town throwing eggs at residents of a Black neighborhood, is not suspended or fired. Student protests lead the administration to drop charges but calls for revoking SWAT-like teams on campus go unheard. Kofi’s shooting is not an isolated incident but part of an ongoing pattern of police brutality against Blacks and a stark reminder of the dangers of increasingly militarized campuses nationwide. In His Own Home came out of outrage by a small group of concerned community members committed to seeing social justice happen on a local level. This documentary is an educational and organizing tool, especially calling for our communities to be safe from violence by racist and over-armed police.

GoGreenNation News: Youth at the forefront of climate change litigation
GoGreenNation News: Youth at the forefront of climate change litigation

Young climate advocates are challenging the U.S. government in court, demanding accountability for climate change inactions.Ruxandra Guidi reports for High Country News.In short:Young activists, including a notable 23-year-old plaintiff in the Juliana v. United States case, leverage legal battles to hold the U.S. government accountable for climate negligence.These legal challenges, rooted in the Atmospheric Trust Litigation principle, assert the government's failure to protect the constitutional rights of its younger citizens.Historical context shows that youth have always been pivotal in driving significant political movements, emphasizing the enduring power of young voices in societal change.Key quote:“There are simple things you can do in your own homes, like not let the water run, or turn off the lights when you’re not using them. You could teach these things to your children. Every choice we make is for or against our future.”— 6-year-old Xiuhtezcatl MartinezWhy this matters:The impact of youth activism is undeniable. It has reinvigorated older generations of environmentalists, brought climate issues to the forefront of political debates, and even influenced the strategies of nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups. Their call for action is not just about reducing carbon emissions or protecting natural habitats but encompasses a broader vision of social justice, equity, and intergenerational responsibility.Youth environmental activism has moved us forward in many ways—but to maximize this impact we need coalitions that learn from the past in order to prepare for the future.

Cinema Verde interviews Malini Schueller
Cinema Verde interviews Malini Schueller

Cinema Verde presents an interview with Director Malini Schueller about her film "In His Own Home" in which heavily armed officers of the University of Florida police department in Gainesville, FL, responding to a 911 call from a neighbor who heard screams, break into the campus apartment of Ghanaian graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong. Clad in SWAT gear and ready to attack, they see the disabled doctoral student, sitting with a metal table leg in his hand and within a minute of entry, shoot the unarmed man in the face. Adu-Brempong, who because of childhood polio, needed a cane to walk, and had been suffering from mental illness, now has severe facial injuries, and is charged with resisting arrest. He is guarded outside his hospital door, his legs shackled together when going to the bathroom. The officer who shoots Kofi, and who had previously been caught cruising through town throwing eggs at residents of a Black neighborhood, is not suspended or fired. Student protests lead the administration to drop charges but calls for revoking SWAT-like teams on campus go unheard. Kofi’s shooting is not an isolated incident but part of an ongoing pattern of police brutality against Blacks and a stark reminder of the dangers of increasingly militarized campuses nationwide. In His Own Home came out of outrage by a small group of concerned community members committed to seeing social justice happen on a local level. This documentary is an educational and organizing tool, especially calling for our communities to be safe from violence by racist and over-armed police. Our full catalog of video interviews and streaming films is available to members at cinemaverde.org.

Cinema Verde Presents: Mentawai - Souls of the Forest
Cinema Verde Presents: Mentawai - Souls of the Forest

Past Presentation | The last indigenous people of Mentawai, a small archipelago south-west of Sumatra, are fighting with creative resistance to preserve their ancient culture and rainforest. A culture on the verge of extinction - with the latest geopolitical developments, the destruction of their habitat reaches the point of no return. Smashing the hopes of thirty years of democratization in Indonesia, Jakarta in relapse to authoritarian rule is enforcing deforestation in Mentawai. In collaboration with investigative journalist Febrianti and indigenous foundations, our film portrays indigenous culture, history and resistance up to the most recent developments in geopolitical of Indonesia's growing environmental degradation. Connect with all your heart and senses: see, feel, touch, smell life in the jungle. The cinematic and compassionate camera conveys an intimate and sensual experience of the indigenous life on Mentawai with its beauty and vulnerability. Three shamans are the main characters in the film, hunter-gatherers in a culture predating even traditions of weaving or pottery, archaic traditions with their own complexity. The film portrays daily life of the indigenous tribe, their spiritual cosmos and their commitment to preserving their own culture and natural habitat. Logging companies threaten the fragile eco-system of the islands. Rare historic footage and archive materials tell the story of decades of oppression of the indigenous culture – but also of the resilience of our main characters and the last tribes living in the jungle. The main character, Father Laulau had been a leader in this struggle for decades, meeting the governor on Sumatra in a key point of history. The latter part of the film explores the geopolitical context and shows a new generation joining our main characters in the fight for the preservation of both their environment and culture – as part of a larger movement in Indonesia. The project started by indigenous initiative: Martison Siritoitet from Indigenous foundation Suku Mentawai (http:/sukumentawai.org) invited director Joo Peter to Mentawai and a long-term collaboration started including also Mentawai Indigenous Education Program (http://IEFprograms.org) The film is one of a planned series of films celebrating the diversity and richness of the Indonesian indigenous culture.

Cinema Verde Presents: Impossible Town
Cinema Verde Presents: Impossible Town

Past Presentation | After observing exceptionally abnormal rates of cancer in his Minden patients in the mid 1980s, Pakistani-born oncologist Dr. Hassan Amjad became the southern West Virginian town’s greatest champion, advocating fiercely for recognition of the persistent risk to human health caused by carcinogenic PCBs left from the mining industry. Some thirty-five years and three EPA clean-up attempts later, Minden remains largely ignored even as its population has dwindled from over 1200 to just under 250. When Hassan passes from a massive heart attack at the age of 70, his unsuspecting daughter Ayne, also a physician, inherits his decades-long advocacy efforts overnight. Grief-stricken but spurred by her father’s mandate to “help others” at all costs, Ayne hatches an ambitious plan to relocate the entire town to a 97-acre plot of land purchased by her late father as a retirement site. As she mobilizes allies in Minden and beyond, she is surprised to discover that her biggest challenge is an attachment to home that makes the town’s most endangered residents reluctant to leave. When a global pandemic unexpectedly thrusts Ayne into a powerful state government position, she sees an opportunity to move past her stalled relocation efforts and expand her locus of impact well beyond Minden. Ironically, the more Ayne pours herself into this new role, the more distance she creates from her closest allies – the Minden activists that have been involved since her father’s work began some four decades earlier. What’s more, her new work requires that she abandon her private practice and her hopes for a family of her own, subsuming her identity almost completely. As pressures mount on all sides – the creeping sickness of Minden’s aging residents, the growing sense of futility around achieving meaningful change in the cancer-stricken town, and the never ending political stresses associated with working at the state level – Ayne enlists the help of her personal lawyer to build a class-action lawsuit against the EPA in a last-ditch effort to help. Minden’s activist residents bristle at the new attorney’s aggressive approach, and this partnership implodes in dramatic fashion when small town gossip leads to accusations of fraud. Left with few options, Ayne feels stuck between a deeply ingrained mandate to “help others” that is the legacy of her late father and the increasing realization that she is sacrificing her own life in an attempt to do so. With the cathartic acknowledgment that her father’s death continues to haunt her, she must choose between her sense of duty and her own happiness. IMPOSSIBLE TOWN shows us tireless social and environmental struggle through the eyes of a cast of characters that complicate common rural Appalachian stereotypes. Dr. Ayne Amjad alone is a study in contrasts: a devout Republican with a strong activist bent, a daughter of immigrants who is a pillar of her largely white community, and a wealthy physician-turned-public-servant who spends her time advocating for her disenfranchised and low-income neighbors. With Ayne and the rest of our cast, nothing is as it seems. In addition to adding to the breadth of stories about how environmental catastrophes disproportionately affect the poor, IMPOSSIBLE TOWN has much to say about our complex relationships with home – the connections we form with the places we’re from, and the difficulty we have in letting go of those places, even when they’re killing us. Through the ambitions of Ayne and other Minden activists, the film explores the persistent modern American fantasy that complex issues are best solved through singular heroes and miracle solutions rather than the decidedly grittier work of slow and patient social, political, and legal exercises. Most poignantly, IMPOSSIBLE TOWN is an ode to the way we commune with our parents long after they’ve left this plane, their aspirations and legacies lighting our paths to unanticipated destinations, their absence leaving a painful void in our lives that never fully heals.

GoGreenNation News: Environmental Health Sciences, in collaboration with ALTAVOZ LAB, welcome their 2023-2024 Environmental Fellows
GoGreenNation News: Environmental Health Sciences, in collaboration with ALTAVOZ LAB, welcome their 2023-2024 Environmental Fellows

Environmental Health Sciences, which publishes EHN.org, and ALTAVOZ LAB proudly introduce Alejandra Martinez and Wendy Selene Pérez as the 2023-2024 Environmental Fellows. For the past 9 months, the two journalists have investigated how fenceline residents near the Houston Ship Channel are affected by pollution from the massive petrochemical buildout in the region. This spring they’ll undertake an innovative, on-the-ground outreach effort to ensure impacted communities have access to their reporting and to foster dialogue around solutions.Alejandra Martinez is The Texas Tribune’s Fort Worth-based environmental reporter. She joined the Tribune in the fall of 2022. Alejandra was previously an accountability reporter at KERA, where she began as a Report for America corps member and then covered Dallas City Hall. Before that, she worked as an associate producer at WLRN, South Florida’s public radio station. Alejandra studied journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, and interned at KUT and NPR’s Latino USA. She’s a native of the Aldine area of Harris County and speaks fluent Spanish.Wendy Selene Pérez is a freelance journalist with a two-decade career spanning various media outlets in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States. Her work focuses on social justice, victims of violence, government accountability, transparency, and immigration. Wendy’s articles have been featured in El País, Gatopardo, Proceso, The Baffler, Vice, and Al Día Dallas/The Dallas Morning News. She has held positions such as bureau chief of CNN Mexico, editor of Domingo magazine (El Universal), and multimedia editor of Clarin.com. Previously, she served as the chief multimedia editor of the newspaper Mural (Grupo Reforma). Wendy holds a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Diario Clarín-Universidad de San Andrés-Columbia University, with her thesis titled “La Tierra de las Fosas,” a data-driven journalistic investigation. She has been honored with the National Journalism Awards in Mexico (2019, 2022), the Walter Reuter German Journalism Award (2020), the Breach-Valdez Human Rights Award (2022, 2023), the Texas APME 2021 News Spanish-Language award, the ICFJ’s COVID-19 reporting story contest, and received an honorable mention in the Latin American Investigative Journalism Award (COLPIN, 2022).Perla Trevizo is a reporter for the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative. Trevizo is a Mexican-American reporter born in Ciudad Juárez and raised across the border in El Paso, Texas, where she began her journalism career. Trevizo spent more than 10 years covering immigration and border issues in Tennessee and Arizona before joining the Houston Chronicle as an environmental reporter. Her work has earned her national and state awards including the Dori J. Maynard Award for Diversity in Journalism, French-American Foundation Immigration Journalism Award, and a national Edward R. Murrow for a story done in collaboration with Arizona Public Media. She was also honored as the 2019 Arizona Journalist of the Year by the Arizona Newspaper AssociationALTAVOZ LAB is a mentorship organization designed to produce collaborative projects to strengthen reporters at community outlets that serve Black, Indigenous, immigrant and other communities of color in the U.S. with the goal of publishing stories that will enable local audiences to participate fully in democracy. "We want to invest in journalists who tell stories not only about but for marginalized communities in innovative ways, fostering collaborations between local publications and Spanish-speaking outlets to deliver information where it can have the greatest impact,” said Valeria Fernández, founder and executive director of ALTAVOZ LAB which started in 2022." This collaboration between Alejandra Martinez and Wendy Selene Pérez is a powerful example of what's possible when we center our journalism on those most impacted by public policies, striving to serve them."The fellows will bolster community networks and bring information about the health and environmental consequences of the expansion of petrochemical projects in Texas to audiences who normally do not have access to such information. Their work will be published in both English and Spanish Support of the ALTAVOZ LAB environmental fellowship is a crucial component of Environmental Health Sciences’ commitment to increasing access to environmental health and justice reporting in Spanish through our EHN en Español initiative. Stay tuned for our upcoming reporting projects.

GoGreenNation News: Environmental justice advocates find hope, healing and community in Pittsburgh
GoGreenNation News: Environmental justice advocates find hope, healing and community in Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH — Environmental justice advocates gathered last week to celebrate progress and chart a path to the future while focusing on healing, self care and mental health. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the Environmental Justice Summit highlighted the need for self-care and connection among researchers and advocates working to advance justice. Exposure to pollution and anxiety about climate change can negatively impact mental health and people who work to right injustices face the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout. “Advancing justice is emotionally difficult work,” Dani Wilson, executive director of the Cancer and Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania, which coordinated the event alongside the University of Pittsburgh, told EHN. “Taking care of ourselves and each other is critical to fostering moments of joy and connection that help us stay in the movement.” Over three days, attendees strategized about how to advance environmental justice in the greater Pittsburgh region and how to foster resilience with tools like meditation, storytelling, community-building, yoga, crafting and cooking. The event also highlighted the importance of humor, connection and optimism. “This is a social movement,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the nonprofit think tank UrbanKind Institute and newly-appointed director of the Department of City Planning for Pittsburgh. “That means that as part of this work, we’ve gotta have fun with our friends. We’ve gotta stay connected and be able to laugh.” On Friday, Dr. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist, professor and director of the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health at the University of Maryland, set the tone for the day by declaring himself a “hardcore Steelers fan” and waving a Terrible Towel above his head while shouting “Go Steelers!” Wilson peppered an otherwise serious talk about the ravages of environmental racism and his work developing tools to combat it with football jokes, referencing recent quarterback drama (“two quarterbacks are better than one!”), emphasizing the importance of both offense and defense for communities burdened by pollution and quipping that if we want to score a touchdown, the community needs to work as a team. “Where you live can kill you,” Wilson said, noting that poor, Black and Brown neighborhoods in most places, including southwestern Pennsylvania, face higher levels of exposure to pollution that result in worse health outcomes and lowered life expectancy. These places are also more likely to experience the impacts of climate change and other disproportionate harms.“We need a holistic framework for environmental justice that also acknowledges the need for housing justice, economic justice, social justice, educational justice, reproductive justice and racial justice,” he said, “because these things are all connected. And you can’t get equity without justice… And on a separate note, we’re going to the Super Bowl this year, right?” Environmental justice victoriesOther speakers shared recent victories and progress. Professor Tiffany Gary-Webb, the associate dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, shared the results of her work with the Black Environmental Collective and the Black Equity Coalition. The group formed in April 2020 to ensure an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pittsburgh and has evolved to continue advancing racial equity in western Pennsylvania. “We used data to try and understand where there were higher rates of COVID and sent those to the county and state health departments. We talked to elected officials and put out our own dashboard with the numbers for Black populations, and through those efforts we were able to get critical resources to our communities and see that data change,” Gary-Webb said, pointing to a study that summarized the group’s effectiveness. “Now we’re continuing that work with a focus on other issues in our communities.” Ash Chan, a farmer and steward at Oasis Farm and Fishery, shared their experience working at a Black-owned garden and market in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black, working-class Homewood neighborhood, which has a long history of disinvestment and has been without a grocery store since 1994. The organization uses vacant land to grow food and offers classes in urban farming and healthy cooking. “We see food as a driver of social and economic capital, as well as a way that connects people to their cultural roots and their natural environment,” Chan said. “We’re growing what folks want. For example, last year we noticed that elders in the community would line up for okra before we even opened our farmer’s market …so this year we’re growing six different kinds of okra based on that demand.”Bearing witness to injusticeWhile the Summit highlighted progress and promoted resilience, it also emphasized “bearing witness” — a process described by event organizers as actively listening, not looking away, and most importantly, responding — to “the slow violence of environmental degradation on our land.” Participants were invited to attend a “bearing witness ceremony” in Clairton, a small town about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh that regularly sees some of the most polluted air in the country due to emissions from a coal-based U.S. Steel plant. “The injustices are very thick and very brutal in Clairton,” said Melanie Meade, a clean air activist and resident of Clairton. Meade shared the heartbreak she has experienced learning that Clairton’s rate of childhood asthma is more than double the national rate, watching many loved ones die of cancer and witnessing the impacts of poverty and violence. “The people are tired and they are sick and they are in great need, and we need to stand in the way for them.” Later in the day, Kayien Conner, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, told Melanie she’d been moved by her words and asked if she could connect her with an organization she’s involved with that offers mental health resources for Black communities to get additional resources to Clairton. “Yes, please, thank you!” Melanie said. “See? We’re here making connections, collaborating, getting this work done already!” Wilson shouted to applause and laughter.Political optimismSpeakers at the symposium also noted that western Pennsylvania is on the precipice of major political changes that offer many reasons for optimism for environmental advocates, pointing to the election of progressive politicians like Summer Lee and Lindsay Powell and county executive Sara Innamorato, all of whom have pledged to prioritize environmental justice. “We’re really shaking things up politically right now,” said Bey. “If we don’t do this now, then that’s on us. Now is the time. Let’s keep lifting each other up, let’s do our work and let’s get this done.”

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US