"Once A Braided River” - Barbara Bernstein
For the first service this year about our social justice focus on the climate crisis, Barbara Bernstein, a long-time Portland media person, will be speaking to us today about a film she made regarding the local superfund site on the Willamette, and showing us a bit of the film. Barbara is also planning to stay afterward so that people can engage with her.
"Once a Braided River, a new documentary by Barbara Bernstein, tells the story of how the North Reach of the Willamette River was transformed from a braided river, rich in biodiversity and home to many bands of indigenous people, into an industrial sacrifice zone with a ten mile long superfund site running from downtown Portland to the river’s confluence with the Columbia River. The documentary focuses a lens on the part of Portland that most Portlanders don't know about or ignore. It braids together the strands of many issues that face us - climate chaos, rivers contaminated with toxic pollutants, fish and wildlife brought to the brink of extinction by these perilous practices, and the dire hazards of storing immense amounts of explosive fossil fuels upon liquefaction zones underlain by major fault lines along the shorelines of our rivers. The documentary features community groups and activists working to replace the current industrial sacrifice zone with a green working waterfront defined by good jobs, clean energy, and healthy ecosystems."