Julie Winokur, director of Sacrifice Zone
By Susan Messer
Of the many topics that are difficult to fully take in is the damage we’ve done to this planet and the inordinate burden this damage has placed on communities of color. To make it possible to contemplate these damages and injustices, filmmaker and storyteller Julie Winokur, with her film The Sacrifice Zone, brings us positive messages about community empowerment, heroic leaders, and movements that work to break the cycle.
Q: Of all the many, many possible stories about environmental issues, how did you become focused on this one?
A: For the past 7 years, I’ve been doing a project in Newark, New Jersey, called Newest Americans, about immigration issues and about what it’s like to be in a majority minority city. It’s a storytelling project with many arms. In the course of that work, I went on the Environmental Justice Tour sponsored by the Ironbound Community Corporation [Ironbound is the name of a neighborhood in Newark and the home of a 24/7 incinerator], and I was horrified by what I saw. Despite the fact that I had been in the neighborhood many times over many years, I had never before realized what was going on, on the ground. Here is one of New Jersey’s largest garbage incinerators combined with one of the country’s most contaminated land sites and most polluted waterways. And that’s not all. The situation was so toxic where people lived, and the rest of us were closing our eyes to it. It haunted me. I decided I had to do what I could in service to the people living this unjust reality. If I hadn’t been able to see it, others probably weren’t seeing it either. And it isn’t just happening in Newark. It’s all over the country.
Covanta incinerator, a waste-to-energy plant that burns garbage 24/7 in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark. Photo by Raymond Spencer.
Q: The Sacrifice Zone. That’s a powerful title. It’s raw. Talk about it.
A: The concept is that we have chosen to sacrifice certain people for the benefit of others. They’re collateral damage. There’s an intentionality to it. Collectively, we’ve decided that it’s okay to put all this toxic industry in certain neighborhoods. And somehow we have the idea that the people who live there don’t care, because if they didn’t like it, they’d move. Plus it’s a cumulative burden that these communities face. They don’t only have the sewage treatment plant. We keep adding one toxic industry after another, and not taking into account how it adds up. One outcome is that 25% of the population in these communities has asthma. It’s hard to tie cancer to any particular pollutant, but we know that the high levels of air pollution have severe respiratory consequences, including from COVID. The outcomes aren’t surprising.
Q: How did you find Maria Lopez-Nuñez as a center of the film?
Maria Lopez-Nuñez, director of environmental justice and community development at the Ironbound Community Corporation. Photo by Kristin Reimer.
A: Maria is the director of environmental justice and community development at the Ironbound Community Corporation. She led the toxic tour I went on. She’s incredible. Fierce. She has also been appointed to the White House Advisory Committee on Environmental Justice and is recognized as a national leader in this battle. The film follows her as she leads a group of environmental justice fighters who are tired of seeing poor communities of color serve as dumping grounds for our consumer society.
Q: Describe a moment in the film that particularly moved you, angered you, whatever.
A: Well, I’ve seen it hundreds of times, but I get emotional every time I see that large group of young people marching in a snowstorm, shouting at the top of their lungs, protesting against the renewal of a permit for an incinerator in the Ironbound—one of the largest incinerators on the East Coast. No child should have to yell about something like that in the street in the middle of a snowstorm.
Also, I taught an environmental justice course at Rutgers-Newark, and I took my students on the toxic tour on a day when it was raining. In the Ironbound, when it rains, it floods. When we were on the tour, the water was so deep, it was coming up the stairs of the bus. You can see the flooding problem in the film. When you see that first hand, you realize the climate disaster is not years from now. Climate change is real, and many neighborhoods are experiencing it via rising water levels compounded with serious infrastructure problems. During Superstorm Sandy [in 2012], a 6-7 foot water surge came up and over into the Ironbound, flooding the entire neighborhood, opening pools of sewage, and dumping raw sewage into Newark Bay.
Q: What surprised you in the making of this film—about anything, people, issues, challenges?
A: Everything. Including the up note of it. It’s not helpful to feel buried under the bad news. Maria and her group of neighborhood residents refuse to accept the situation that’s been dealt them. They are fighting tirelessly, going to zoning hearings, pushing through progressive legislation. People say “How do you keep doing it, Maria?” But giving up is not an option. It’s like asking a mother, “Aren’t you tired of taking care of those kids?”
Q: What’s next?
A: We’ve been doing a lot of community screenings with discussions, using the film to inspire and activate people everywhere. People need to understand that if they flush their toilet or throw out their garbage, there’s an environmental justice neighborhood nearby that’s taking the brunt of it. We use film to wake people up to these facts, get them to support people who are doing the organizing on the ground.
The Sacrifice Zone will screen on March 6 both virtually and in person as part of the One Earth Film Fest. Click below to reserve tickets.