On a sunny fall afternoon, an intergenerational group of dozens of Latine community members descended upon Bregamos Community Theater for Mic at the Mill, a bilingual storytelling event organized by Drawdown’s Neighborhood interviewee and community leader Xóchitl Garcia as part of Save the Sound’s Urban Waters Initiative, in partnership with Women Without Borders, Semilla Collective, and Project Drawdown’s storytelling program.
Alex Rodriguez, another local leader featured in Drawdown’s Neighborhood: Tri-State docuseries, served as co-host. As Project Drawdown’s director of storytelling and engagement, I served as a guest speaker. For the first time, because of the largely Spanish-speaking audience, I presented about the power of storytelling with the support of an interpreter and with Spanish captions on my slides and videos.
Alex opened the event with a powerful reminder: “When we build community,” he shared, from his perspective as the environmental justice specialist at Save the Sound and a Connecticut native, “we share love, we share stories, we share community, and we also share power... We are building community because Mother Earth’s problems are too big for one person to tackle alone.”
That’s something that those in attendance, impacted by redlining, flooding of the Mill River, and other environmental hazards, know all too well. Folks in Fair Haven – which is historically predominantly Black and Latine – know the importance of togetherness in shaping the future they want for themselves and their children.
One way Xóchitl has catalyzed that togetherness is through the UWI PhotoVoice project, which captures both the environmental hazards and features of the Fair Haven community. The project received more than 100 photos from Fair Haven residents. Ultimately, the team curated 50 images that paint a fuller picture of opportunities to better the community from the community’s point of view. The PhotoVoice project was a first-of-its-kind effort to build a collective vision for the local environment.
