Community Funded Reporting
Kirill Volchinskiy  |  10 Apr 2009

Rights to a Clean Environment for All



Show/Hide Video
Dscf0836_medium

In many parts of the bay, we enjoy comfortable lives. We have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. We live in quiet, peaceful neighborhoods, and we don’t have to worry about our safety when we step out the door. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the citizens of West Oakland.

Residents of West Oakland are surrounded on all four sides by highways, and breathe car exhaust every day. They are forced to cope with pollution from the trucks that come and go everyday to pick up and drop off supplies at the Port of Oakland. Worst of all, the citizens of West Oakland live among factories that make unbearable noise while releasing toxic fumes into the residential neighborhood.

The levels of lead inside of EXCEL High School in West Oakland were found to be 54 times higher than the EPA standard. The levels of other toxic metals such as cadmium and nickel were all at least eight times the safe levels.

Dioxins, chemicals that cause cancer, have not been tested for yet because the tests are too expensive. When we first heard about the situation in West Oakland, we were stunned that such terrible circumstances would be allowed to exist in America, and we were inspired to take action.

How will it help?

Our goal is to educate the public about this unjust situation, primarily the people of West Oakland, so they will be able to take necessary action in order to regain clean air and clean water that they are entitled to. Our film will be shown at a fundraiser organized by David Joseph that will raise funds for Global Community Monitor.

 Also, we will donate money to Global Community Air Monitors if we make a profit from this documentary.

We have already started on this project, and as I mentioned earlier, you can watch our two minute teaser here.

However, we have already run out of money, and still need to obtain these items in order to complete our larger project:

  • Extra computer memory: $25.97 Video files slow down our computer, so we will need extra memory to store them.
  • 500 GB external hard drive: $108.24 We will use this to store the large video files so they don't take up space on our computer.
  • Wide angle lens: $50 The wide angle lens will allow us to capture pan shots with less motion blur.
  • Lapel microphone: $35.67 We will use this for interviews.
  • Money for Transportation: $106 Both of us will be taking at least ten trips to West Oakland, and BART tickets cost $5.30 for each one of us.
  • Money for MiniDV Cassettes. We will need at least 12 in order to make a full length documentary $65.98

With these tools we can work on a full length documentary. Right now, with Spot.Us, we hope to produce a short documetary of 10-15 minutes.




It is important to know that the film-makers behind this project are both in highschool. My name is Kirill Volchinskiy and I am working with my friend Alex Hillan on this project. We are two film makers who want to make a real difference in the world. Alex and I have about two years of experience in shooting and editing. You can watch the teaser we made as an example of our work.
We will produce a short documentary in two parts on environmental injustice, specifically about how people of color and lower income are being disproportionally burdened by industrial pollution in West Oakland. We expect this to be between 10-15 minutes long.
West_oakland_bart_thumb Author
Kirill Volchinskiy
Peer review: Alex Hillan
This story has been published:

Rights to a Clean Environment for All

by Kirill Volchinskiy | 03 Jun 2009 | sfbay
In many parts of the bay, we enjoy comfortable lives. We have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. We live in quiet, peaceful neighborhoods, and we don’t have to worry about our safety when we step out the door. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the citizens of West Oakland. Residents of West Oakland are surrounded on all four sides by highways, and breathe car exhaust every day. They are forced to cope with pollution from…
Read the published story
Widget
Get the Spot.Us Widget
Want the embed code to add to your blog or site!? Grab the different widgets below.
SIMPLE WIDGET    /    SPOT.US LITE
To get this widget, just grab this html code and paste into your template. You can of course change the width of the iframe to fit your template.

Spot.Us Lite

Spot.Us Lite is widget which allows anyone to register at Spot.Us, login at Spot.Us and even donate to a pitch without having to leave the site hosting the widget. Isn't that cool?'

You need to follow a few steps to get Spot.Us Lite working on your site. Just follow these simple steps below to get it up and running in no time.

  1. Download the file http://www.spot.us/helper.html, and upload it to your root folder on your server.
  2. Grab this html code and paste into your template:
  3. You now need to modify the pasted code. You need to change 'http://www.domain.com/path' to the root path of your server. Example: If you can access the helper.html file at http://www.domain.com/path/helper.html, then you add http://www.domain.com/path there.

You can of course change the width of the iframe to fit your template. Note: As Spot.Us Lite is an interactive widget, we recommend that you do not use widths below 300px.

If you have any issues with the widget, please contact info@spot.us

Organizational Support

Pagelogo2_thumb
Allvoices, Inc.
$400.00

Public Support

$750.00 donated by 19 people

Default_avatar
Rupa Dev
$20.00
Picture_3_bigger_thumb
Spot. Us
$25.00
Default_avatar
Renaissance_thumb
Kara Andrade
$20.00
Foto_2_thumb
Álvaro Ortiz
$20.00
Default_avatar
Karen Huff
$30.00
Img_1106_thumb
Lauren Cohn
$10.00
Default_avatar
Doug Greer
$25.00
Default_avatar
Haruko Mukasa
$20.00
Default_avatar
John Blair
$10.00
Default_avatar
Ron Williams
$10.00
Default_avatar
Default_avatar
Default_avatar
Dana McLean
$20.00
Default_avatar
Default_avatar
Ron Kidd
$30.00
Default_avatar
Default_avatar
Erik Sundelof
$10.00