ALTON - The local Piasa Palisades chapter of the Sierra Club will screen a special film at their upcoming monthly meeting.
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At 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, community members are invited to Old Bakery Beer Co. in Alton for a screening of “Water for Life,” a documentary that tells the story of three Indigenous leaders who fought for water resources in their communities. Christine Favilla, representative with the Sierra Club and a co-coordinator for the Three Rivers Project, emphasized the importance of talking about sustainability and water rights.
“It has to do a lot with making that connection with humans and hoping that they see they have a connection to nature,” she explained. “The more people that we have connected to nature, hopefully the more we will be able to see it be sustained and conserved.”
Favilla said that the Piasa Palisades chapter of the Sierra Club meets at Old Bakery Beer Co. once a month, but this is the first time they have screened a film in many years. The meetings are open to the public and completely free.
“Water for Life,” a movie by Bullfrog Films, tells the stories of Berta Cáceres, a leader of the Lenca people in Honduras; Francisco Pineda, a subsistence farmer in El Salvador; and Alberto Curamil, an Indigenous Mapuche leader in Chile. The film includes subtitles and has won several awards.
Favilla is excited to share the movie with the local community. She hopes people connect to the stories of these leaders, who faced death threats and violence in their fight to preserve water.
“It's really just a way to start understanding and learning about the crisis of water and sustainability,” she said. “The way I would tie it back to the United States is that it basically is intertwined with the current refugee crisis on our border, because people of all three of these locations have just been rolled over by corporations and their own government, and they're living in a very toxic atmosphere, and they have nowhere to go. They have no clean water, nothing to eat. And so we do see a lot of the crisis at our border because of these water fights that are occurring.”
The Sierra Club aims to promote sustainable practices while advocating for people and the environment. Favilla hopes many people come out for the “Water for Life” screening on Jan. 14 to learn more about what this can look like.
She said it’s a “great community” of people, and she encourages more community members to get involved in the local Piasa Palisades chapter of the Sierra Club.
“It’s important to just realize under the surface of everyday America what is going on in our environment and our environmental community,” she added. “We’re just trying to make sure that what beautiful lands we have here in this region can be conserved and preserved, and if they have to be developed, that they’re done in the most environmentally and community-friendly way possible.”
Registration for the film screening is encouraged; visit the official Facebook event page for more information. To learn more about the local chapter of the Sierra Club, check out their official webpage.
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