This footage was selected from almost three hours of shooting around Chicago. I never realized how challenging making a documentary would be. I knew it would be no cake-walk, but this was definitely a learning process. It would be nice if we could make a more feature-length documentary and talk to more community-members and actually talk to some aldermen. Maybe somewhere down the road…

I have to thank my sister, Christina Martinez, for being a vital help in the editing and film creating process. Thanks, Chris; as always, you rock.

The meeting started off with stating the goals of the groups, which included: to pass the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance, and target specific aldermen to cosponsor the ordinance.  The discussion at the meeting involved a lot of clarification and debate.  Currently, the ordinance is in the rules committee; they are trying to figure out whether the ordinance should be placed under the Energy, Environmental Protection and Public Utilities or the Health Committee.  According to the group members they need about 40 out of the 50 aldermen to avoid vetoing the ordinance.

The group members debated the different potential forms of action, but here’s what the people agreed on: target key aldermen, such as the chair of the committee and aldermen who others would follow suit, to move the ordinance forward.  Group members decided to write a letter to Alderman Moore requesting to meet with Alderman Burke, in hopes of making mends between the two.  To my surprise, one’s relationship with an alderman determines whether they will support an ordinance or not.  Often times, teachers complain about their students not being able to work with group members, but I guess this is the case with adults, as well.  This is unfortunate too, considering peoples’ health and lives are at stake.  Aldermen, or politicians for that matter, should consider the ordinance at hand, not whether they like the person who introduced it or not.  Hopefully, the letters that the group members will send to Alderman Moore will take care of this issue.

Another idea that the group came up with for the five targeted wards was having community events to inform the people about the effects of the power plants, and to inform them about the Clean Power Ordinance.  The group hopes to get vocal community members to meet with the aldermen to voice their concerns and build pressure to cosponsor the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance.  And they plan to get some blitz on any success stories.

The group was goal-driven and it took some time to decide on what forms of actions to take.  The meeting lasted two hours.  Before leaving we gave the facilitator our contact person, telling her we would be interested in helping out, especially when a couple of us live in wards they are targeting. 

After the meeting we headed over to a Thai restaurant for a late dinner to discuss our thoughts on the meeting and the final project.  What was interesting to find out, was we all wondered what motivated the group members to take up this cause.  The majority of the group members appeared to be part of the corporate world, which did not exactly match what we expected.  But aside from that, we felt having attended the meeting was very informative and an eye-opening experience.   We learned a little bit about Chicago politics, and the ordinance process. 

We ended our dinner with discussing our roles for the presentation.  I will take care of the background knowledge, which includes discussing the SAC and giving a brief history on the power plants and their legal battles with the EPA, and the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance.  Grace, will introduce our documentary, and Meggy will discuss plans for using the documentary and plans for further action.

Aside from that, I was surprised on the lack of awareness community members had on the issue.  I was expecting to come across people who weren’t aware, but I felt like just about everyone we spoke to had no idea the the coal power plants contributed to asthma, just as I did before starting this project.  Thanks to this experience of interviewing people I’m aware that building awareness is definitely needed and could be another way we can help out.

Filming took all day. It took an hour just to film our opening shot and then to get someone, anyone, to talk to us. A lot of people were turned off by the camera. A lot of people felt unqualified to discuss the Fisk/Crawford issue, even after we assured them that all we wanted were opinions. Finally, one woman, Lucia, agreed to talk with us and let us film her. She was extremely opinionated and had been directly affected by the coal-burning plants’ emissions – her daughter had asthma. After sharing her story with us she suggested that we start a petition and gave us her contact info.

Finally getting someone to talk to us left us invigorated and ready for our next interview. But the excitement waned on our walk over to Kanoon Elementary Magnet School on 22nd and Kedzie during which no one else wanted to be filmed. When we finally got to the school we were able to interview the engineer and the school counselor. More footage, more support, and more progress. But still, we’d been working for over two hours already and had only spoken to three people! It became clear that we were not going to make it to downtown today if we really wanted to make the most of our Little Village film outing.

So we went for lunch. We got hungry and went over to the Jumping Bean Cafe on 18th street in Pilsen, a little closer to the Fisk Generating Station at 1111 W. Cermak. After an awesome meal, we decided to take our chances outside of the Rudy Lozano Public Library to try to get some more public opinions, but we were quickly learning that not a whole lot of people knew about the air quality problems being caused by the generating stations. They knew the plants were there, knew that they themselves or someone in their families had asthma, but had never made the connection.

We then realized that we were pretty close to Benito Juarez High School and decided to walk over and see how some of the community youth feel about the clean air issue. On the way, we could see the giant Fisk smokestack in the distance behind the school. We spoke to Jovana, a junior at Benito Juarez whose physics teacher, Ms. Moyers, had taken her on a school tour of the Fisk Generating Station. How perfect! Jovana was very eager to participate in our documentary and described to us her experience in Ms. Moyers’ class. She told us that in her own research she’d found that the power produced by Fisk doesn’t even go to Chicago residents! It is sold to other cities for a profit. That’s something we have to research further ourselves, but it made me very happy to have a teenager share her own research into this matter and show such passion and interest. Jovana felt very strongly on the issue and suggested that we go talk to Ms. Moyers.

On our walk into the Benito Juarez campus we talked to a couple of other teens about the power plants and it turned out that they too had been a part of Ms. Moyers’ social action lesson plan on energy creation and pollution. We decided we had to get in touch with the teacher. So we went in. The security guard directed us to the main office where the receptionist was nice enough to page Ms. Moyers who was more than happy to provide us with an on-film interview in which she explained her class-project, the process involved, and the outcome. For more on that you’ll have to tune in to watch the documentary!

All in all, a really productive and surprising day. We found out some very interesting information, including that Fisk is one of Benito Juarez’s funders. We don’t know what the implications of this are, but we are very curious, especially after having learned that Ms. Moyers was recently relieved of her duties as a teacher at Benito Juarez High School. Yet another area for us to look into.

Tomorrow we head over to the Chicago Clean Air Coalition’s meeting at the Sierra Club. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

It turns out that both 14th ward alderman, Ed Burke, and 22nd ward alderman (that’s Little Village itself, by the way), Ricardo Munoz, receive funding of sorts from Midwest Generation, the company that owns and runs both the Fisk and Crawford generating stations. We thought that this was particularly interesting in light of the fact that Alderman Burke had a hand in holding up the Clean Power Ordinance from passing, and that Alderman Munoz not only opposes the ordinance, but also failed to return our calls. This got us wondering, how much money does Edison International, the company that owns and runs Midwest Generation, provide to these aldermen and their wards, and just how much of a difference does that money make? I mean, if they are providing, let’s say, 20% of the ward revenue, then I can see how that would be a major influence on whether or not the aldermen support the Clean Power Ordinance. But if these companies are providing 5% or under, is it really worth all the lives affected by the generating station’s emissions?

In her discussions with LVEJO’s Ian Viteri, Lucy discovered that one of the major ways in which we could help would be to contact aldermen who have not yet offered their support of the Clean Power Ordinance which would force these generating stations to clean up their acts. Chicago has 50 aldermen, and a majority vote is needed to pass any city ordinance. As of this moment, a mere 10 have supported the Clean Power Ordinance. Meaning that a whopping 16 need to be won over in order to get this thing passed. It will be tricky trying to pinpoint which alderman to target for support…or it would have been were it not for the Chicago Clean Power Coalition’s action planning meeting this Tuesday evening where they will decide which wards to target, build ward teams, and begin the process of garnering the support of as many aldermen as possible. CI 484′s Clean Air for Little Village team hopes that their professor won’t mind them leaving class early this Tuesday night in order to attend the meeting and get that much closer to taking action on their Social Action Curriculum Project (SACP)!

In addition to sharing all of this info at our last meeting, we also began filming footage for our documentary. We shot much of our meeting, Lucy’s telephone conversation with Mr. Viteri, and then Lucy and I took a drive down the Stevenson to try and capture some of the ickiness of the air down there, not an easy feat on film. When we realized that we could scrunch our noses all we wanted in the camera and still not truly convey the sheer dominance Fisk and Crawford have over the communities they encompass, we decided to get a little closer to one of them. We went over to Crawford on Pulaski Road and got a great shot of the ever-present chemical cloud spewing forth from its smokestack. That’s as close as we could get, however, as the signs read “No Trespassing” all around.

Our next filming forray will be tomorrow morning when Lucy and I head down to the Little Village community to find out how residents feel about or have been affected by these two generating stations and the pollutants they emit. Then we will go over to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chicago branch to inquire why Fisk and Crawford aren’t being held to the standards the EPA puts forth for clean power. Finally, we will stop by the environmental branch of Midwest Generations and ask them what steps they are taking to remedy the emission problem and where they stand on the Clean Power Ordinance in Chicago. Hopefully we’ll get some answers, some footage, and get some people thinking.

Meanwhile, Meggie will be contacting her alderman, Joe Moore of the 49th ward, the man who originally proposed the Clean Power Ordinance under the Energy and Environment Committee to find out who’s on board and who is resisting. She will also find out what the money story for Fisk and Crawford and the wards they support are, and she will further flesh out assessment strategies for this SACP.

For Tuesday’s blog we hope to have a clear picture of another action plan (other than the documentary). Stay tuned for exciting developments!

Unfortunately, making contact has been more difficult than we had expected.  Grace left a message with Alderman Munoz of Ward 22 (which encompasses the Crawford power plant) whose assistant promised the Alderman would call back immediately. Munoz does not support the ordinance. Grace is still waiting on a call back. Lucy left messages with LVEJO, an organization dedicated to supporting community and environmental health in Little Village, but is also having trouble finding someone to talk to. I have been hunting for contact numbers for either of the Fisk or Crawford plants, but the best I can come up with is the number for the Environmental Depertment of the Midwest Generation of the Edison Mission Group that owns both plants. I am beginning to doubt that this environmental wing even exists, as there has been no answer or even voicemail each time I called.

It became clear after sharing our frustrations that we could not just wait around for someone to call us back. We are still committed to networking with groups that are already working on the issue and pursuing more direct background information, and each of  us promised to continue our attempts to make contact. In addition, I decided to call the offices of the four Alderman supporting the  ordinance: Moore, Jackson, Preckwinkle, and Schulter. However, we have decided to push on with action planning in the mean time.

We have decided to create a video documentary of our work on this project with the intention of hosting a community screening in the future. We are approaching the project from multiple angles:

• We are developing a survey for the parents of the students at Little Village’s Elementary schools that will gauge their awareness of the problem of air pollution and the ordinance being proposed and their interest in discussing the issue.
• In the upcoming week, we will head to Little Village to conduct interviews on the street in hopes that community members will share stories of their experience with the air quality and the factories for the documentary.
• We will begin filming ourselves, our processes with our research and action, and our own experiences with the issue.

In these next steps, Lucy has taken on the role of directing both the interview and survey, writing up questions for each, Grace is taking on the creative design, working on our website and beginning the documentary, while I am doing background research on other communities that have successfully organized behind having stronger emission standards applied to local factories/plants.  We are all free writing in our journals regularly, recording our feelings as we take on this project.

http://cleanpowerchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/June-2-Community-Meeting.pdf

After having identified the problem at our first meeting we decided to research alternative solutions on our own and reconvene to discuss the alternative solutions we came up with. These are the alternative solutions we came up:
· Spreading power production more evenly through the city
· Creating more green spaces, such as planting more trees
· Converting coal power plants to solar power plants
· Supporting the Clean Power Ordinance

We discussed each alternative and decided to support the Clean Power Ordinance because we felt it was the most feasible solution. We also decided as a group we would all be equal PR representatives. I, Lucy, have the duty of contacting Ian Viteri from the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) to: see where in the process of the ordinance they’re at, find out how we can help, and to find out how aware of the problem community members are. Grace will contact the Little Village Neighborhood Council and try to get the same information as I will. Meggie will contact the Fisk and Crawford Power Plants to find out their response to the ordinance, their level of awareness on the air pollution in Little Village, and to find out whether workers are unionized or not. We will share our findings at our meeting.

We also decided to share the duty of archiving our meetings. I will archive the second meeting, Meggie will archive the third one, and Grace will archive the last one.

Finally, as agreed upon at our first meeting we also discussed the student assessments we would have for the SACP. The students’ assessments we came up with for this session, in addition to observation, are:

Have students:
· determine their role (from a list provided by the teacher)
· determine their goals for all of their sessions
· start a blog on their SACP
· 10 minutes journal free writing at the end of sessions

We will add assessments at every session.