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call (213) 387-2800 to order
Publications:
Voices
from the Front Lines
--
A Video Produced by the Labor/Community Strategy Center. Directed
by: Eric
Mann, Mark
Dworkin and Melissa Young,
and Howard
Dratch . Written by Eric
Mann. Narrated by Cynthia Hamilton. 60 minutes, 1997.
"Voices
from the Front Lines" highlights an emerging anti-corporate
tendency within the environmental movement, focusing on the innovative
and successful campaigns of the Los Angeles based Labor/Community
Strategy Center. "Voices..." portrays the Strategy Center's
origins in the battle to keep the General Motors plant in Van Nuys,
CA, from closing, its WATCHDOG organizing in L.A.'s oil refinery
ravaged harbor communities, its battles with the South Coast Air
Quality Management District, its international solidarity with Acción
Ecológica in Ecuador, and the mass organizing of its Bus Riders
Union. "Voices...," with its compelling footage of East
L.A., South Central, the 1992 L.A. rebellion, and the Texaco refinery
explosion in Wilmington, offers a class and race based perspective
on the evolving environmental justice movement.
"Voices..."
is ideally suited to opening the topic of environmental justice
for both members of environmental organizations and students learning
about political movements. Its images and interviews from successful
campaigns are interleaved with commentaries by Richard Moore, Hazel
Johnson, Damu Smith, Alexander Cockburn, Mandy Hawes, and Domingo
Gonzales at a national meeting sponsored by the Strategy Center,
weaving theory and practice together in an engaging dialectic. Because
of the film's decade-long attention span, actual outcomes can be
presented, analyzed, and opened for further discussion.
Students
at high schools, community colleges, undergraduate and graduate
schools are taking courses on social movements and on black, Latino,
women's, and environmental studies. These students want to debate
public policy and social change based on real-life organizations
with a history of direct organizing and a solid analytical foundation.
Too often, they receive only abstract interpretations of social
movements, filtered through the eyes of academic observers. In "Voices...,"
organizers drawn from the ranks of the classes most directly affected
by environmental injustice speak out powerfully and effectively
for themselves.
Environmental
grassroots organizers searching for politics and strategy will find
it in "Voices from the Front Lines." A rough cut of the
film was shown at a Sustainable and Healthy Communities conference
in Atlanta to 300 people, ranging from the leaders of many grassroots
groups in communities of color to college faculty, EPA officials,
and environmental attorneys. "Voices..." captivated the
audience and received a standing ovation. Despite the fact that
the final cut was not yet available, fifteen groups placed advance
orders for the film on the spot.
The film shows
that a left analysis can unlock some of the present organizing dilemmas,
and that a left strategy, focusing on the profit-driven abuses of
transnational capitalism in both the private and "public"
sector, can help give orientation and confidence to the uphill fights
of people's movments at this difficult and critical point in history.
It has been largely forgotten that from 1955 through at least 1975
the left political perspective was a major and very popular ideological
and organizational force in U.S. society. In the climate of demoralization
that has accompanied such amnesia, delusions of an "inside"
track with the Clinton/Gore team, "progressive appointments,"
and "access" have become the pathetic drugs of choice.
Now that Clinton
has signed the welfare bill and the EPA again has protected corporate
polluters, it is gratifying to note the degree to which people are
anxious to re-open theoretical, ideological, and strategic debates
as first steps toward rebuilding grassroots organizing, social movements,
and long-term institutions. "Voices from the Front Lines"
will help to inspire, inform, and shape such necessary discussions
as the social and environmental crises of the present period continue
to unfold.
"'Voices
from the Front Lines' provides an inspirational, feel-good story about
community organizing. More importantly, it explains the global forces
that have created the environmental and economic injustices we are
fighting against. We will be using this documentary to spark discussion
over the broader economic and political trends that our young leaders
will have to confront to solve our local problems."
--Penn Loh,
Associate Director, Alternatives for Community and Environment,
Massachusetts
"'Voices
from the Front Lines' is a powerful film about organizing, about
movement building, about environmental justice--and yes, about fighting
environmental racism. 'Voices...' focuses on the work of Los Angeles'
Labor/Community Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union and will stimulate
debate among organizers in every other city. They are relentless,
crystal clear on their worldview and their principles--and make
no apologies. As the country moves to the right, some groups are
trying to pick smaller fights that they can win. But the Strategy
Center is drawing a line in the sand and saying, 'Sometimes you
fight the big fights--with General Motors, with Texaco, with the
Los Angeles transit authority--fights that have to be fought, regardless
of the odds.'"
--Robert Bullard,
director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta
University
60 minutes,
color, VHS. Order #7. Individuals: $50, Non-profits: $150, For-profits:
$200. Call for special rates for low-income organizations.
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