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The Sacrifice Zone: A Film Screening Followed by
Poetry & Conversation about Environmental Justice
July 22, 7 p.m. EST
With poets Camille T. Dungy and Marina Carreira,
environmental activists Maria Lopez-Nuñez and Dr. Jalonne L.
White-Newsome; moderated by filmmaker Julie Winokur.
“It is
burning./ It is dreaming./ It is waking up.”
—from the poem
“Map” by Linda Hogan
This free virtual
event is one of a series of programs presented nationally by member
organizations of the Poetry Coalition. This event will be closed captioned.
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Photo by Raymond Spencer
Covanta Essex is the largest incinerator on the East Coast, burning 2,800
tons of municipal garbage from New York City and Essex County each day.
The incinerator is located close to several public housing complexes and
an elementary school.
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The
Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey (home of the Dodge Poetry Festival), is one of the
most toxic neighborhoods in the country. Maria Lopez-Nuñez, a
Honduran-American resident there, is waging a war for environmental
justice. She is part of the Ironbound Community Corporation, one
of the most effective environmental justice organizations in the
country. The Sacrifice
Zone is a 35-minute documentary that follows Maria
as she leads a group of environmental justice fighters determined to
break the cycle of poor communities of color serving as dumping grounds
for our consumer society.
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Join us for a free
screening of The Sacrifice Zone,
followed by poetry and discussion about environmental justice featuring
poets Camille T. Dungy and Marina Carreira, environmental activists
Maria Lopez-Nuñez and Dr. Jalonne L. White-Newsome, and filmmaker Julie
Winokur.
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 Marina Carreira (she/her/hers) is a queer
Luso-American poet/artist from Newark, NJ. She is the author of tantotanto
(Cavankerry Press, forthcoming 2022), Save the Bathwater (Get Fresh Books, 2018)
and I Sing to That
Bird Knowing It Won’t Sing Back (Finishing Line Press,
2017). She has exhibited her art at Morris Museum, ArtFront Galleries,
West Orange Arts Council, and Monmouth University Center for the Arts,
among others. Her work investigates identity as it relates to gender,
urban, queer, and bicultural first-generation spaces. Keep up with
her at hellomarinacarreira.com.
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 Camille T.
Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan
UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay
collection Guidebook
to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W.
Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries
of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An
Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate,
and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her
honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an
American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two
Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy’s poems have been
published in Best
American Poetry, The
100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing,
and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished
Professor at Colorado State University.
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 Maria
Lopez-Nuñez works for the Ironbound Community Corporation. She is an
environmental justice organizer and plays a large role in activating
and uplifting her community while also pushing for policies to address
environmental injustice locally, regionally, and nationally. She is on
the board of the Climate Justice Alliance and serves on the White House
Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
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 A life-long learner and advocate, Dr.
Jalonne L. White-Newsome founded Empowering a Green Environment and Economy,
LLC, a strategic consulting firm, with the mission of transforming
communities through the development of people-centered solutions.
She serves a diverse set of clients with forward-thinking and
intersectional approaches to tackle issues such as climate change,
public health, environmental injustice, and advancing racial
equity. Jalonne has multi-sector experience having worked in
environmental philanthropy, state government, non-profit, grassroots,
academia and private industry. Most notably, she created and
implemented the transformational Climate Resilient and Equitable Water
Systems (CREWS) Initiative at the Kresge Foundation as a Senior Program
Officer; she was the first Director of WE ACT for Environmental
Justice’s federal policy office in Washington, DC; and, her
doctoral research illuminated the impact of climate change &
extreme heat on the low-income, elderly in Detroit, and is still
referenced to drive public health interventions. She is a
Lecturer at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of
Public Health, a lifetime member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.,
and the proud mom of Arielle and Jeannelyn.
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 Julie Winokur is the
Director of The
Sacrifice Zone and Executive Director of Talking Eyes
Media, a nonprofit company that produces compelling media that
advocates for positive social change. The Sacrifice Zone emerged from a
multimedia storytelling project called Newest Americans that for the
past six years has been examining immigration and identity in Newark,
N.J. Winokur’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Time, National Geographic
and The Atlantic.
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Register for
this event today! Visit the event page to sign up, and be
sure to click the link in the confirmation e-mail you receive to
complete your registration.
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