Witness to the Future is an extraordinary portrayal of the transformation of ordinary citizens into environmental activists. Downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Tom Bailie describes the many homes, including his own, decimated by disease and birth defects, from radioactive gases released from the atomic plant.
In California's San Joaquin Valley, where Hispanic-American farm-workers are routinely exposed to large doses of pesticides, Camilla Yarburough-Nunes talks about the effects of pesticide sprays and chemical drifts on her children. In Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," a string of industrial plants surrounds rural, predominantly African-American families too poor to move or to mobilize - until people like Wilfred Greene decided to do something. "I'll give up when I'm dead," he says, "but hopefully my children will carry on what I believe."
Brilliantly edited, fast-moving and suitable for viewing in three segments, the program also includes a musical score with great blues, country and folk arrangements.
"It will change the way you think about consumerism and the industrial infrastructure that supports it." — I.D. Magazine