Call for Entries

October 23, 2012


Green Screen Youth Film Festival

Deadline: November 2nd for 2012 

Entries are being accepted through November 2nd for the sixth-annual Green Screen Youth Environmental Film Festival sponsored by East Michigan Environmental Action Council. The 2012 Green Screen will be held inside the D. Blair Theater at the Cass Corridor Commons on Saturday, November 10, 2012. The event will be preceded by a special Green Room gathering, panel discussion on youth media and refreshments.

First prize:  $200 and the opportunity to work with a local filmmaker and local artists to create a unique video project!!

Films may be up to 5 minutes in length. Film must be about an environmental issue facing your community, city or county. Topics may include but not limited to environmental health, alternative energy, healthy food choices, recycling, climate change, stream and wetland protection,or trash/recycling. Film must be suitable and appropriate for an audience of all ages.

Films may be live action, animation, claymation, still photography or any combination. Films may be PSA’s, commericals, documentary, performance, talk show, music video, or poetry.

Entry must be playready on a DVD (if you have formatting questions, other  call the EMEAC office in advance and we’ll help you out). Entry must be labeled with film, title, filmmaker's name, e-mail and phone number.

These films may be used as educational tools for future environmental education presentations.

Participants must fill out and return an application form.

Final film submissions must be received at the address below by November 2nd, 2012, 5:00 PM.

EMEAC  
c/o Green Screen Contest, 
4605 Cass Avenue, 
Detroit, MI 48201.

e-mail Lottie for an application or call 313.354.4469.

 

Join us for Green Screen 2012!

Join us for Green Screen IV!

 In 2007 East Michigan Environmental Action Council hosted its first ever Green Screen Youth Environmental Film Festival.  Green Screen is a celebration of youth voice and emerging environmentalism.  The short films were created entirely by young activists and aspiring young activists, and span environmental and social consciousness.  Since 2007, the festival has grown each year to include more youth media art and a wider range of topics that young people feel are most critical to the improvement of the areas in which we live, play, learn and work.

This year promises to be even more amazing than before with the addition of a youth panel discussion on how to make media and local food taste fest.  

Submit a Video

We are still inviting video submissions created by young people.  So if you are a youth and have a video that you made about an environmental issue facing your community, city, nation or world, click here to learn how to submit it .

 Be a Sponsor

 We would like to invite YOU to sponsor for this year's Green Screen IV.  Consider donating  $100 - $200.  If an event sponsorship is not possible this year for you or your organization, please consider a sponsoring a youth film for $50. All sponsorships will help to defray the cost for the actual event and go towards next year's youth film programming.  

 As a sponsor, you will demonstrate your support for the education, health and well-being of Michigan youth.  Sponsors will be prominently recognized both at the event and on EMEAC's website.

 Sponsorships can also easily be done on-line by clicking DONATE  and indicating this is for Green Screen Sponsorship in the “designation” box. 

 We ask that you let us now by November 2, 2012 if you will be able to participate as a sponsor. Please contact Kim Sherobbi at 313-478-7610 with any questions. 

 Thank you for your consideration and continued partnership! 

 

Commons Partners

October 19, 2012


Detroit Grassroots Cultural Arts Center

The DGCAC will serve as a The DGCAC will serve as a multicultural visual, performing and literary arts center that provides access to information, equipment, services, and programming to members of the community.  Activities are designed to educate and encourage grassroots activism while creating a community space that supports diverse progressive arts for Metro Detroit residents of all ages and backgrounds.

East Michigan Environmental Action Council


Fender Bender is an inclusive bicycle building and mechanic training organization with focus on creating a safe and nurturing space for women, trans and genderqueer people to learn bicycle repair skills not only as a means of transportation but also as a tool to address relevant social issues.  

Media Arts Cooperative

The East Michigan Environmental Action Council in partnership with the Detroit Media Economy Collaborative have formed a cooperative that will train multimedia educators and producers, provide budget friendly studio space to Detroit based artists as well as host and co-create a multimedia arts cooperative. Once prospective cooperative members demonstrate proficiency and have a solid plan for success, EMEAC will support the development of a revenue generating cooperative that specializes in the development of fine art and multimedia products.


People’s Kitchen Detroit emerged from the work of Detroit Evolution, which helped to create a space where community members shared tools, techniques, information and inspiration to create sustainable lifestyles and practices. Founded by Angela and Gregg Newsom, the People’s Kitchen Detroit (formerly Detroit Evolution), believes that having safe, healthy and affordable food options, so the community itself can be healthy, is a basic human right. Its vision is to create a safe, healing space in which Detroiters can reconnect with their community, the earth and themselves, and to learn how to step down from the high stress, destructive and unsustainable nature of the standard American lifestyle.  






 

What are the CCC?

The Cass Corridor Commons

EMEAC is committed to cultivating a shared space called The Commons.  The Commons is intended to serve as a multi-use non-profit and green space in which educational activities, community efforts and business endeavors are created and carried out. Our vision is to transform the Unitarian Universalist office space – that was donated to EMEAC in 2011 – into a multi-use office space and community hub that embodies principles of shared space, environmental justice and social justice principles.  We intend to use the space in the following ways:
  1. Office space for East Michigan Environmental Action Council and several grassroots organizations with which EMEAC collaborates.
  2. Space for entrepreneurial ventures by grassroots collaborative partners.
  3. Community space for grassroots activities and events.

The idea of the Commons emerged from the United States Social Forum held in Detroit, MI in June 2010.  Several organizations that played an important role in the planning and implementation of the USSF – including the East Michigan Environmental Action Council [EMEAC], Detroit Women of Color Film Festival, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network [DBCFSN], Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), and Michigan Welfare Rights Organization [MWRO] – continued meeting after the USSF to discuss its impact on and legacy to Detroit.  A common theme of these ongoing conversations involved the many ways that Detroit residents were inspired to get involved in revitalizing and uplifting Detroit communities.

After many discussions with one another and feedback from USSF attendees, as well as observations and critical analyses of the outsider-led Detroit revitalization initiatives (which systematically deny input by grassroots people and organizations), recommendations to positively impact the city of Detroit and its residents were identified.  One recommendation was to create and support a commons, or a publicly owned/held shared space; especially timely given the determined effort to gentrify various neighborhoods in Detroit, thereby displacing people and businesses/organizations that have served them for years. In the meantime an opportunity opened to submit a proposal to the Unitarian Universalist Church to assume ownership of its 3-building complex.  EMEAC prepared a proposal that was accepted in June 2011.  Since then we have been working to develop the concept and practice of a Commons.

We consider the creation of the Commons to be an important contribution to community advocacy and movement building in the city of Detroit, particularly as it is located in the heart of rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.  Though still in the early stages of development, Commons members are furthering its development by creating values and principles, as well as processes for shared decision-making, care for the building, making repairs and renovations, offering programs and engaging the community...among other things. We look forward to fully realizing what we consider to be a powerful alternative to an economy in crisis. 

 

Digital Justice Principles


Digital Justice Principles

Access
  • Digital justice ensures that all members of our community have equal access to media and technology, as producers as well as consumers.
  • Digital justice provides multiple layers of communications infrastructure in order to ensure that every member of the community has access to life-saving emergency information.
  • Digital justice values all different languages, dialects and forms of communication.

Participation
  • Digital justice prioritizes the participation of people who have been traditionally excluded from and attacked by media and technology.
  • Digital justice advances our ability to tell our own stories, as individuals and as communities.
  • Digital justice values non-digital forms of communication and fosters knowledge-sharing across generations.
  • Digital justice demystifies technology to the point where we can not only use it, but create our own technologies and participate in the decisions that will shape communications infrastructure.

Common ownership
  • Digital justice fuels the creation of knowledge, tools and technologies that are free and shared openly with the public.
  • Digital justice promotes diverse business models for the control and distribution of information, including: cooperative business models and municipal ownership.

Healthy communities
  • Digital justice provides spaces through which people can investigate community problems, generate solutions, create media and organize together.
  • Digital justice promotes alternative energy, recycling and salvaging technology, and using technology to promote environmental solutions.
  • Digital justice advances community-based economic development by expanding technology access for small businesses, independent artists and other entrepreneurs.
  • Digital justice integrates media and technology into education in order to transform teaching and learning, to value multiple learning styles and to expand the process of learning beyond the classroom and across the lifespan.



 

Food Sovereignty Principles

Food Sovereignty Principles
from La Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org)
1. Food: A Basic Human Right  

Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.  

2. Agrarian Reform  
A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless and farming people – especially women – ownership and control of the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those who work it.  

 3. Protecting Natural Resources  
Food Sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agrochemicals. 

 4. Reorganizing Food Trade  
Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices.  

 5. Ending the Globalization of Hunger  
Food Sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF. Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of Conduct for TNCs is therefore needed.  

 6. Social Peace  
Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, repression and increasing incidence of racism of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.  

 7. Democratic control  
Smallholder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision-making. These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal participation in economic, political and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision making on food and rural issues.  

 

Environmental Justice Principles

Principles of Environmental Justice
Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then,The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.

PREAMBLE

WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:

1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.

2) Environmental Justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias.

3) Environmental Justice mandates the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things.

4) Environmental Justice calls for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water, and food.

5) Environmental Justice affirms the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination of all peoples.

6) Environmental Justice demands the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes, and radioactive materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production.

7) Environmental Justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation.

8) Environmental Justice affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards.

9) Environmental Justice protects the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care.

10) Environmental Justice considers governmental acts of environmental injustice a violation of international law, the Universal Declaration On Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on Genocide.

11) Environmental Justice must recognize a special legal and natural relationship of Native Peoples to the U.S. government through treaties, agreements, compacts, and covenants affirming sovereignty and self-determination.

12) Environmental Justice affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities, and provided fair access for all to the full range of resources.

13) Environmental Justice calls for the strict enforcement of principles of informed consent, and a halt to the testing of experimental reproductive and medical procedures and vaccinations on people of color.

14) Environmental Justice opposes the destructive operations of multi-national corporations.

15) Environmental Justice opposes military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms.

16) Environmental Justice calls for the education of present and future generations which emphasizes social and environmental issues, based on our experience and an appreciation of our diverse cultural perspectives.

17) Environmental Justice requires that we, as individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of Mother Earth's resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations.


The Proceedings to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit are available from the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 475 Riverside Dr. Suite 1950, New York, NY 10115.