Production for our second film project just recently came to an end.
When we started our research on environmental racism in the local context, we were presented with an overflowing history of injustice: the destruction of the Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul, the purposeful pollution of North Minneapolis from a trash incinerator and the dumping of toxic metals, and so much more. It seemed like representing the issue from the viewpoint of the people involved would be a simple enough idea, because we would just let those individuals speak for their community. We knew that nothing from our personal experiences could allow us to speak to this form (or any form) of racism, and we knew that social change wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t being led by the communities impacted. The goal of our project was to go out into the field, have conversations, and uplift those conversations so that nobody else could ignore them. With that thought, we went ahead with production.
The first problem we ran into came after our first interview.
We had just hit the tip of the iceberg. We realized that attempting to cover these massive systemic issues in a short documentary film — all while making sure that it’s done in a way that is ethical and justice-oriented — is hard, to say the least. Having to pick and choose what to include and what to cut from an interview felt wrong — who were we to decide what was important enough to give voice to? Even capturing B-roll was difficult, considering neither one of us had the life experiences within any of these areas that could make capturing them on film an intuitive process. We wanted to make sure we were covering the aspects of environmental racism that mattered most to those impacted by it. However, your “environment” is everything around you, it affects every part of your daily life. It isn’t just green landscapes on film or wildlife ecosystems that we seem to focus on much more closely — it’s the air people breath every day, it’s where people get their drinking water.
If you can’t breath in the part of the city you live in without being worried about developing asthma, there’s a problem. And most importantly, the problem is not your fault. North Minneapolis is a vibrant place with vibrant people all trying to make a living and be with their families — just like anywhere else. The difference is that our local government has decided that it’s okay to poison this area, these people, and not be held accountable for it. It’s about deciding that one group of people — a majority of them people of color — is less important than the white folks living in the suburbs. So as you can see, to give this issue the room for nuance it really needs, we’d need to interact with— and film — a hell of a lot more on this issue than what we planned for a three minute video. A three minute video can start a conversation, but it could never be the end-all, be-all for this issue. And we wouldn’t want it to be.
So, we decided that we couldn’t save the world with this one project (a disappointment, I know) and acknowledged that environmental racism does deserve more airtime than we were able to give it in the context of this project. We were working with what we had, to give a small snippet of the problem, who is responsible, and how we can move forward. There was so much more we wanted to accomplish, more conversations we wanted to have, and overall more to be able to cast the spotlight on; but for now, we did what we could. We hope to continue this conversation into new spaces with new people, and hear a few more perspectives on what’s happening just over the bridge.
The effort that is necessary to bring truth to a topic that has long been shrouded in lies is significant. There’s more to all of this than just an interview here or some emotional footage there; it’s also about being able to get the full scope of the problem, beyond the episodic viewpoint (think: less talking heads on video, more big picture) people expect of a project on this issue. What does this issue tell us about the society we live in, that people are willingly polluting (and/or destroying) homes and the people that live in them? How, at the end of the day, do we repair what has been done, and how do we make sure that these reparations are shaped around what the community truly needs and wants?
The process requires us to be thorough, and careful, and respectful — and it requires a lot more time. We only just barely dipped our feet in the water with our film, and we know it isn’t enough to reflect all that environmental racism encompasses. We also know that this project was never intended to solve anything, or provide a solution for systemic problems in the time we had to make it, but it makes you think. What do we need to be doing, even just on a daily basis, to right these wrongs? It’s more than the reduce-reuse-recycle mantra we’ve been encouraged to recite for the past twenty years, it’s about our neighbors and continually marginalized communities. But then, where do we start? Do we start at the top and work down, or is it better to start small and build up? Can we come together and have these conversations, to make sure that we all create the solutions these communities actually need? I hope so. These are only a few questions we’re left with, with the conclusion of this project leaving them mostly open-ended.
This piece is part of a series written by college undergraduates enrolled in off-campus study programs through the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA). HECUA programs offer students a chance to think deeply about the issues that matter most, and we’d like to share a piece of that experience with you. Every student post on the HECUA Medium page considers a theory or reading that intersects with that student’s lived experience. For more information about HECUA programs, click here.
