If you travel down a one-mile stretch of Doremus Avenue in Newark,
NJ, you pass a natural gas plant next to a sewage treatment facility
next to an animal fat rendering plant next to a series of ominous
looking chemical storage containers behind acres of fencing.
Airplanes pass overhead every two minutes, their engines rattling
windows, while a putrid smell wafts from the open pools at the sewage
treatment plant. This stretch is known as Chemical Corridor, and
it’s located just down the road from schools and apartment
buildings. It borders the Ironbound neighborhood, where Portuguese,
Brazilian, Central American and African American residents are
separated from toxic substances by little more than a railroad track.
The Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey, is one of the most
toxic neighborhoods in the country. Maria Lopez, a Honduran-American
resident there, is waging a war for environmental justice. The
Sacrifice Zone follows Maria as she leads a group of warriors who are
fighting to break the cycle of poor communities of color serving as
dumping grounds, so the rest of us can live in comfortable ignorance.
Biography:
Julie Winokur has been a storyteller for over two decades,
first as a magazine writer and then as a documentary filmmaker. She
launched Talking Eyes Media in 2002 as a way to focus on creating
visual media that catalyzes positive social change. Her work has
appeared on PBS (Aging in America, Firestorm), the Documentary
Channel (Firestorm), MediaStorm, National Geographic Magazine
and Discovery online, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, The New
York Times, The Washington Post, and MSNBC.com. She has received two
Emmy nominations and numerous awards from World Press, Pictures of
the Year International and the Society for Professional Journalists.
Beyond broadcast and publication, Winokur works extensively with
nonprofit organizations to develop their messages and put Talking
Eyes' films to work at the grassroots level. She has been on faculty
at Rutgers University-Newark and the International Center of
Photography in New York.
