Holding Ground: How Communities Build Power Towards Justice | A Story Salon at Austin Film Festival
About this event
Holding Ground: How Communities Build Power Towards Justice amplifies the stories of three leaders on the frontlines of climate and environmental justice. This event is produced by Counterstream Media in partnership with Society of Native Nations and is sponsored by Earthjustice.
The industry may change. Their tactics do not. For decades, Gulf South communities have fought fossil fuel and petrochemical companies that promise jobs and prosperity while leaving communities with the health and environmental costs. Now, AI and data centers are driving new industrial expansion and bringing the same extractive logic, demanding enormous amounts of land, water, and energy. Join Diane Wilson, Alexia Leclercq, Frankie Orona, Jo Banner, and Joy Banner at Austin Film Society during the Austin Film Festival for Holding Ground: How Communities Build Power Towards Justice. This Story Salon explores what it takes to resist extraction, protect the places we call home, and build power for the long haul.
What to Expect:
A 90-minute screening of HELLCAT: The True Story of an Unreasonable Texan chronicles Goldman Environmental Prize winner Diane Wilson's harrowing 35-year war against the petrochemical giants that have polluted and nearly destroyed the Texas Gulf Coast bays her family has fished for a century.
A 60-minute Story Salon to follow, which includes stories from frontline voices of climate and environmental justice
The opportunity to purchase snacks and drinks from the bar
Storyteller bios:
Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, former boat captain, author, and mother of five. She recounted her environmental struggle in An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas, and Diary of an Eco Outlaw: Breaking the law for Mother Earth, both published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company. She is the founder and executive director of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper. In 2019, Wilson and Waterkeeper won a $50 million settlement in a Citizen Clean Water suit against Formosa Plastics in Point Comfort, Texas. It is the largest Clean Water settlement in US history. In 2023, Wilson received the Goldman Environmental Award as the North American recipient. Wilson lives in Seadrift.
Frankie Orona is a Husband of 25 Years, a proud Father, and Executive Director of the Society of Native Nations, an intertribal nonprofit dedicated to preserving Indigenous spirituality, culture, and way of life. Frankie serves on the Board of Advisors for Counterstream Media. As an environmental liaison for his Tribal Chief, Anthony Morales of the Gabrielino Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, he tirelessly advocates for environmental justice and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Frankie serves on numerous environmental coalition steering committees and nonprofit boards. As a member of the BFFP U.S. Environmental Justice Delegation and the Indigenous Peoples Major Group with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), he actively works on the Global Plastics Treaty and other U.N. frameworks addressing environmental and human health concerns. His mission is to remind us that we are not separate from the environment but an integral part of it, and that the health of both are inextricably linked.
Alexia Leclercq is an environmental justice organizer, scholar, and artist.
For over a decade, Alexia has led campaigns to secure clean water protections, pass aggregate mining regulation and land use law, shut down petrochemical projects, and strengthen international climate mechanisms, including the loss and damage fund and an equitable fossil fuel phase-out.
Alexia is Founder and Executive Director of Land Justice Community School (and former co-founder and Executive Director of Start:Empowerment, its predecessor). Her climate education curriculum has reached more than 120,000 students; her critical climate education framework has been adopted by leading organizations; and in 2021 she launched the first climate organizing fellowship designed by and for Gen Z youth of color. Alexia is also the Co-Founder of the Colorado River Conservancy, a program advancing community- and Indigenous-led conservation across Central Texas; Community Powered ATX, a housing justice collective; and Survival Bloc, a national network working toward sovereignty.
Alexia graduated Summa Cum Laude from New York University and Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Hosts:
Dr. Joy Banner is Co-Founder and Co-Director of The Descendants Project, a nonprofit foundation committed to the liberation of the Black descendant community through the dismantling of inequitable and discriminatory economic, environmental, and social systems inherent in the violent legacies of slavery. As part of this work, Dr. Banner is on the front lines of the struggle against environmental racism in the form of petrochemical plants along Louisiana’s River Road, otherwise known as “Cancer Alley.” After earning a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, she taught business communications, marketing, and entrepreneurship at the university level, where she advanced to Chair of the Management program. Joy is a proud member of the local descendant community, with ancestry rooted in the 18th century. As Co-Director of The Descendants Project, Joy’s vision spearheaded the acquisition of Woodland Plantation, the origin site of the largest slave rebellion in the US, and the creation of a Descendant Culture and Education District in the historic Freetown of Wallace. In partnership with the UNO Midlo Hall Center and the Monument Lab, Joy is part of the core team leading the design and implementation of The Liberation Labyrinth, a garden space in Wallace dedicated to freedom-seeking and environmental connection for historically enslaved people who used Louisiana’s natural landscape to seek liberation. Joy has spent 20+ years in heritage and tourism, championing the preservation of Black historic sites, heritage, and communities. Dr. Banner is the 2023 recipient of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Emerging Leader Award and was recently named 2024 Preservation Action’s Hero of the Quarter.
As part of her environmental work, Joy has testified at the United Nations Convention on the Eradication of Racial Discrimination, the United Nations Global Plastic Treaty, and the Business and Human Rights Working Group about the extractive “Plantation to Petrochemical Plant” throughline. Her efforts are credited with stopping 140 tons of pollution per year by blocking the development of a dangerous grain depot in her beloved community of Wallace.
Jo Banner is the founder and director of The Descendants Project, a nonprofit she co-founded with her twin sister, Dr. Joy Banner, in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications, she uses her education to honor the legacy of enslaved people while defending descendant communities. Living in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, Jo is a fierce environmental justice advocate, working to eliminate pollution from grain to petrochemicals. She represents frontline communities in global spaces like the UN Plastics Pollution Treaty, highlighting the health toll of plastic production on Black communities and other fenceline residents. Jo’s mission includes preserving the burial grounds of the enslaved and protecting the last 11 miles untouched by industrial development in Cancer Alley. Through her work, she envisions a just transition for people and land, achieving economic and environmental liberation.
Managing Producer of Holding Ground: Chess Jakobs is an environmental sociologist and writer. They are the Managing Producer of Story Salons at Counterstream Media and one of the organizers of DC Climate Week. Their research focuses on the societal impacts of greenwashing, the health outcomes of human-environment interaction, and the relationship between masculinity and the climate crisis. @chessjakobs on social.
About Counterstream: Counterstream Media centers the stories and perspectives the mainstream media often misses. We are an independent, nonprofit media organization covering climate and environmental justice in the United States. We work in relationship with movements to challenge harmful narratives, reveal the systems behind pollution and extraction, and tell stories that build power and possibility. Learn more at counterstream.org.
About Society of Native Nations: The Society of Native Nations (SNN) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded by Native individuals in Texas, with members spanning multiple states. Our mission is to advocate for Indigenous Peoples and future generations by protecting and preserving our culture, spirituality, teachings, medicine, and way of life.
About Earth Justice: Earthjustice is the premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization. We wield the power of law and the strength of partnership to protect people’s health, to preserve magnificent places and wildlife, to advance clean energy, and to combat climate change.
Media Information
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