22 Aug Down to Earth: Philadelphia Filmmakers Tackle Environmental Injustice

BY GABE CASTRO

This article is part of a column by Gabe Castro called “Reel Impact: From Screens to Streets.” The column explores contemporary film through conversations with Philadelphia-area community members and organizers. This column is funded with support from Bread and Roses Community Fund.

“The power to make the shifts that we need starts with each of us and starts right where you are.” – Jendaiya Hill, filmmaker and Philly Thrive member.

Philadelphia and its neighboring cities face significant environmental hazards. The intentional placement of hazardous facilities–such as an oil refinery that exploded in 2019 and a trash incinerator–in predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods has led to increased exposure to pollutants, poor air and water quality, and greater health risks for nearby residents. These residents experience disproportionately high rates of asthma and cancer, with Philadelphia ranked as the 8th worst place for asthma sufferers by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. In Chester, Pennsylvania, asthma rates are five times the national average, with 26.8% of children affected.

Local filmmakers are working alongside activist groups Philly Thrive and Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) to tell personalized stories about environmental harm, raise awareness about environmental injustice, and inspire action. For example, Bilal Motley, who was an employee at the oil refinery when it exploded in 2019, turned his personal experience into a documentary filmmaking career centered on advocacy. Additionally, a team of filmmakers associated with the climate justice organization Philly Thrive is documenting their fight against environmental racism by educating and inspiring other environmental activists. “Thirty years is a long time to be fighting something,” Motley shares in an interview with cinéSPEAK about CRCQL leader Zulene Mayfield and her battle against the trash incinerator affecting the health of her neighbors in Chester. “But had they not been there, the situation would be significantly worse off.”

In June 2019, the largest oil refinery on the East Coast, located in South Philadelphia, exploded. Processing 335,000 barrels of crude oil daily, the refinery produced various petroleum products, including plastics and rubber. Bilal Motley was a utilities manager at the refinery at the time of the explosion, and he decided to make a film about what he saw and experienced. We meet Motley in his film, Midnight Oil, as he gives us a tour of the refinery perimeter and shares the connectedness of the employees. “We’re like a family here,” he notes, giving a co-worker the “refinery wave.” Motley highlights the close-knit relationships among employees and the job security they felt. However, an underlying anxiety about the refinery’s dangers becomes evident, especially after the explosion that changes Motley’s career and outlook. As the film progresses, Motley becomes increasingly aware of the broader equity issues and health and safety concerns with the refinery that community members had been protesting for years.

Originally, Motley planned to create a scripted drama titled Midnight Oil that depicted the intimate experience of a refinery worker. However, after the explosion, he felt compelled to showcase a different aspect of this manufacturing giant. “I gained more [from] making a documentary. It just felt more visceral, because you see it happen in real time. You see me start to change throughout the film,” Motley shares about the necessity of this version of Midnight Oil. The film provides an intimate look into his experience, with Motley often speaking directly to the viewer. Motley’s introduction to the environmental activist group Philly Thrive at a community hearing between refinery workers and the affected residents marks a turning point in his film. The film is nuanced as it portrays both refinery employees and local residents as empathetic–as an employee himself, Motley is uniquely positioned to highlight how the refinery shutdown hurt employees who had to relocate their families to find work, and simultaneously marked a step forward for the activists fighting the refinery and the health problems it caused for residents. 

In his follow-up film, Trash & Burn, Motley shifts focus to his hometown of Chester, Pennsylvania. In Midnight Oil, Motley shares his personal experiences, and in Trash & Burn, he emphasizes the facts, stepping back from the spotlight to highlight community members. The film centers on the battle against the Covanta Incinerator, the largest trash incinerator in the U.S., located on the Delaware River and Highland Avenue. This facility, which burns trash from places like Philadelphia, New York, Maryland, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, and Canada, poses a direct threat to Chester residents, where the asthma rate is 38%, compared to the national average of 8%.

Motley collaborates with the environmental activist group Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL), following longtime leader Zulene Mayfield as she fights to protect her community. CRCQL aims to ban the toxic giant, arguing that the regulations it follows do not account for the cumulative environmental impact from multiple sources. Motley underscores the larger issue, explaining, “The problem is that the incinerator company is following regulations, but the regulations don’t consider the variety of factors contributing to the community’s overall health. There’s not only an incinerator there, there’s an oil refinery, a waste factory, etc. They need to consider the picture at large, not just their piece of the puzzle. These residents are being bombarded with environmental harm.” Trash & Burn culminates in CRCQL’s annual protest march from Chester’s City Hall to the incinerator, as they continue this decades-long battle for environmental justice. 

Motley’s films were screened during the opening night of the Academy of Natural Sciences’ environmentally focused film festival, Confluence: Earthly Films for Philadelphia, during Earth Week 2024 (April 19 – 21). Following the films was a panel with director Bilal Motley, and community organizers whose work is featured in the films. Midnight Oil can be watched on YouTube and was recently acquired by the distribution company Black Public Media. Trash & Burn is still making the festival rounds and has recently screened alongside conversations and workshops at universities like Swarthmore, Villanova, and UC Berkeley.

While Motley documented his experiences from inside the refinery, filmmakers Kristen Harrison, Tara Eng, Alex Klein, and Alisha Tamarchenko documented reactions on the outside, focusing on Philly Thrive’s organizing efforts in the aftermath of the refinery shutdown in their film On the Fenceline: A Fight for Clean Air. 

In January 2020, a closed-door auction determined the fate of the land once occupied by the refinery. Philly Thrive, initially vocal about the refinery’s presence and now advocating for the land’s future, has intensified their efforts to raise awareness. The film begins with a protest outside the auction building, where barred activists chant for their right to clean air. A Philly Thrive member shares her experience with environmental harm, lifting a bag of medications she must carry everywhere. Sonya Sanders recounts losing her husband to cancer and walks through her South Philly neighborhood, pointing out neighbors’ health issues and deaths linked to pollution, the impact of the harm like a shadow over her otherwise bright neighborhood. 

“Clean air is a right, not a luxury,” Philly Thrive member Carol Hemmingway declares in the film. The film highlights a stark statistic: Philadelphia has the highest cancer rates among large U.S. cities, with 542 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 474 in New York City and the U.S. average of 460.

While studying film at Ithaca College, Kristen Harrison and her team decided to cover Philly Thrive’s 2019 protests. Harrison, originally from just outside Philadelphia, had been familiar with the organization and their plight. Philly Thrive asked the filmmakers to become active participants in the campaigns and to become invested in the mission before giving them access to the fenceline community. The filmmakers joined them in canvassing neighborhoods, educating residents about the refinery’s harm and the significance of the auction. They were involved in planting trees and engaged directly with the activists’ campaigns before being connected with Grays Ferry residents. “We were interested in the role that a local grassroots organization can play in influencing change on a larger scale,” says Harrison in an interview with cinéSPEAK. Now a member of Philly Thrive, Harrison continues the work and shares the film with educational institutions to inspire other activist organizations.

The land was ultimately sold to Hilco Redevelopment Partners, a Chicago-based firm planning to convert the defunct fossil fuel site into a “state-of-the-art innovation, e-commerce, and logistics campus,” according to the company’s press release about the site’s future development. In the documentary’s final moments, there’s tentative hope among participants that the land might be properly cared for. Despite this, Philly Thrive continues to fight, as they remain excluded from key environmental discussions. They’ve established a People’s Environmental Justice Enforcement Agency to hold Hilco and complicit officials accountable. The agency plans to issue “violation notices” and “enforcement actions” until the project meets health, justice, and equity standards. People interested in joining the task force can submit an application.

Philly Thrive members are now advancing the Right the Thrive campaign, which continues from the Right to Breathe campaign aimed at closing the refinery. This new initiative focuses on cleaning and repairing land damaged by over 150 years of pollution. Filmmaker and Thrive member Jendaiya Hill explains in an interview with cinéSPEAK that the campaign seeks thorough remediation, criticizing current efforts to merely pave over pollution as insufficient given the site’s severe contamination and documented health issues. Hill has produced her own film, Right to Thrive (Inseparable Oneness), which combines her personal connection to the natural world, archival footage of Philly Thrive’s efforts, and an original song by Hill asking that we “embrace our shared abundance.”

Hill, who was the youngest member of the Thrive strategy team organizing actions for the refinery’s closure, appears throughout Harrison’s film On the Fenceline fighting alongside experienced members. Hill notes in her interview, “When industries like the refinery operate for over 150 years, they create generations disconnected from having a healthy relationship with their land. Specifically, the refinery’s property blocked access to the Schuylkill River for multiple neighborhoods, affecting generations.” Both films were recently screened for Scribe Video Center’s Street Movies! series hosted by Philly Thrive and featuring other activist films, Playing in the Wreck and Change the Name, followed by community-led discussions about environmental justice, community organizing, and neighborhood history. On the Fenceline was awarded Best Documentary at the Visions10 Film Festival and Conference and has screened at multiple film festivals including Urbanworld Film Festival, Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia Film Festival. It can now be watched on Kanopy and is being screened at libraries, universities, and for other environmental groups. It has become an educational resource for these institutions and a conversation starter about larger issues by focusing on the people, or “the fenceline,” first. Right to Thrive, first place winner of the youth category for the Ubuntu Climate Initiative’s Climate Arts Short Film Showcase, can be viewed on YouTube.

Films like Midnight Oil, Trash & Burn, On the Fenceline: A Fight for Clean Air, and Right to Thrive (Inseparable Oneness) reveal the damage caused by seemingly unstoppable organizations and demonstrate that change is possible. The films also put faces and names to those affected, rather than reducing them to statistics. By humanizing the impact, these films can influence decision-makers. To help make a difference and reclaim your neighborhood’s land and air, join local organizations, educate yourself on pollution and environmental injustice, and understand your role in the issue. “As hard as it is fighting against these giant entities, it’s possible to make progress,” insists Motley, who is already working on his next film, Inwards in Paris, a feature film that follows a Black Philadelphian’s vision of an ideal, race-free Paris set against the backdrop of France’s racial awakening. 
You can follow Bilal Motley’s filmmaking journey and learn of upcoming conversations, workshops, and screenings on Instagram and his website. Learn more about Philly Thrive’s work and how you can get involved on their website. You can also find out more about Jendaiya Hill and Kristen Harrison’s work through Philly Thrive.

To continue the conversation about film and climate justice, make sure to check out cinéSPEAK’s upcoming screening on September 20, 2024, co-presented with Philly Climate Works, featuring films about housing rights and environmental justice and a discussion with local organizers. The discussion will be facilitated by Gabe Castro. Learn more here.

*Featured Image: Film still from On the Fenceline: A Fight for Clean Air. Photo credit: Picture 2 Picture Productions.

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Gabe Castro is a Philadelphia-based Latiné multimedia professional specializing in the horror genre. Gabe believes media can be used as a tool to bring social change and works in all she does to create impactful and inspiring media. Gabe is a former cinéSPEAK Philly Beat Fellow.