FILM TACKLES HOUSTON’S ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
For a man who recently had his phone stolen, Ronald Llewellyn Jones isn’t going to be deterred from talking about how much environmental racism has impacted the city of Houston.
The Bay City-born, Second Ward-based Jones will be premiering his short film “Again, Together: The Cumulative Impacts of Environmental Racism in Houston” via Zoom on Jan. 21. The 14-minute film will be followed by a discussion with the director and a panel of health experts, housing advocates and community leaders.
“There are some projects that you cannot explain but are just presented at the right moment,” says Jones, 37, via email.
This project was forwarded to him by fellow Houston artist Carrie Marie Schneider. “I was feeling helpless in many ways, especially considering the political climate and the ominous undercurrents of revolution, whether it came from the right- or left-leaning spectrum. I do not believe in coincidences.”
While Jones is mostly known for being an interdisciplinary artist, creating work that, according to his website, “explores barriers between artists and audiences, as well as individuals and their communities by challenging their respective perceptions as it relates to access and agency within normative societal structures,” he wanted to make sure he did this film right.
With funding from the nonprofit organization One Breath Partnership, Jones did research on finding connections in the disparate communities and seeing the intersections. He also contacted many environmental advocacy agencies, listening to the conversations these groups would have. Eventually, Jones interviewed people who were most affected, including members from the Forgotten Harvey Survivors Caucus. “Many of these folks have lost, not one, but many of their family members and friends to the scourges set in place so many years ago,” he says. “I felt if we allowed the present to speak to the past and the future, our young people can see the baton and start to take the next leg of this fight.”
In its brief running time, “Again” highlights what has made Houston a hot spot for environmental racism. For decades now, African American neighborhoods, such as Fifth Ward, Kashmere Gardens, Sunnyside and Acres Homes, have been plagued with everything from landfills and incinerators to refineries and illegal dumping. Jones gets former residents to speak on growing up with fumes and gases that would later make them and their loved ones sick or dead. “We were exposed because we were deemed expendable,” Alice Torres, a ex-Fifth Ward/Kashmere Gardens resident, says in the film. “Because it was Black and brown people.”
Recently, Houstonians have been looking to take action against those who contaminated their neighborhoods. Last year, dozens of residents joined a wrongful death lawsuit against Union Pacific Railroad and its environmental consultants, alleging that the companies failed to properly manage a toxic plume of contamination and legacy rail yard contamination in Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens caused a cancer cluster.
With “Again,” Jones wants viewers to be aware that people who live in minority neighborhoods have to fight for their lives in so many ways. “My highest hopes would be that it could help someone to recognize the intentional harm done to Black, brown and chronically disenfranchised communities,” he says. “Every filmmaker wants their project to change the world around them, to fit more closely with the world they would feel most welcomed within. Personally, I just hope that the folks who made themselves vulnerable, available, often randomly accessible and flexible see themselves and their stories reflected back at them.”
Jones has many projects on deck: producing a documentary for the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in conjunction with an upcoming exhibition with Beaumont sculptor David Cargill; working with Atlanta-based Core Dance on two new works; and opening a solo exhibition at Galveston Arts Center at the end of the month.
But, for the moment, he’s all about raising awareness with “Again.” He says, “I want the folks to sit down and take in these people’s lives, to become as vulnerable as they did, to receive this as the truth and to start to recognize the power they possess.”