Thanks to everyone who came out last week for The Trouble with Tomatoes! For those of you who couldn’t make it, we watched two movies, one about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers which organizes for workers’ rights in Southwest Florida, and another about environmental justice in the South Bronx. The latter, Shame on You, was a youth-created documentary, and we had a lively panel discussion following the screenings with three of its producers, as well as Sarah Pappas and Anna Smukowski.
One of the most interesting parts of the discussion came when the three Shame on You youth producers were telling us about their continued work with the Educational Video Center, the organization that coordinated the production of the documentary. One of them, Anna, is presently working on a documentary about adolescent depression in communities of color. When asked about her motivation for making a movie about that issue, she very frankly responded that she found it to be more important and have a larger social impact than a movie like Shame on You, because “if someone sees a movie like that, it can change their life right then,” whereas a movie like Shame on You, which deals with an issue that is broader and less directly felt, “they might recycle for a few weeks but it doesn’t really change much.” We talked about how different approaches are needed to address different sorts of social problems: with something like depression, information can make all the difference int he world, and a movie might very well make a significant difference in someone’s life. However, with an issue like environmental degradation and its disproportionate impact on marginalized populations, a movie can only be one small part of a multifaceted approach to changing consumption habits and empowering community members to become activists. I asked Anna what she thought needed to go along with awareness in order for change to actually happen on this issue; she pointed first to the fact that locally-grown, sustainably- and ethically-produced food is sometimes far more expensive than, say, McDonalds — especially in low-income communities. She also highlighted the fact that it’s not that people don’t know how to make healthy, nutritious food, they simply do not have time.
Thanks again to everyone who helped make this event a success!!
