Environmental Racism, Waste, and Consumption film screening

Screening of Mossville: When Great Trees Fall with Short: Kofi and Lartey

February 9, 6 PM - Loyola Notre Dame Library Auditorium
Followed by a discussion led by Elizabeth Kennedy and Danny Esposito

Free and open to the public.
CO-HOSTED with the African and African American Studies Program and the Sustainability Program Office.

KOFI AND LARTEY follows Abdallah who found himself in Agbogbloshie, one of the biggest electronic waste dumps in the world and home to 100,000 people. His work there financed his education and inspired him to work to help children escape the area for a better life. Interested in how the media was portraying Agbogbloshie, Abdallah built a children's play centre and began a film project with two 12-year-old boys, Kofi and Lartey, to give them the opportunity to tell their own story. When destruction strikes, Abdallah feels silenced and defeated but encourages the boys to film the world around them and reveal their true dreams and ambitions for their future.

MOSSVILLE: WHEN GREAT TREES FALL follows the struggles of the residents of Mossville, Louisiana who are forced to let go of their ancestral home. This is a community rich in history, founded by formerly enslaved people and free people of color — where neighbors lived in harmony. Today, 14 petrochemical plants surround Mossville, and it is the future site of a new plant being built by the chemical company Sasol. Stacey Ryan, who has lost much of his family to cancer and has seen the neighborhood he grew up in demolished to make way for Sasol's new multi-billion dollar project. He views these changes from his parent's home, smack in the middle of where the new facility is being built — and he refuses to leave. He struggles as his power, water, and sewage are all cut off, and his health continues to decline from ongoing chemical exposure. As Sasol encroaches on citizens' property with buyout offers, Stacey and other community members have to decide whether to exist in a chemical war zone or abandon land that has been in their families for generations.

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Co-hosted with: Environmental Action Club (EAC), Environmental Studies, African and African American Studies

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