There's Something in the Water

This is an incredible documentary highlighting environmental racism. The deep effects of these systems of oppression was so eye-opening to see. Very well done

There's Something in the Water" doesn't break any molds in terms of documentary form, and it's less impressive as cinema than activism. But it's easily digestible and well researched, with the aid of Waldron's book.

The previous reviewer obviously lacks a basic knowledge of the overwhelming statistical data which shows that marginal social status is directly related to the degree to which people are subject to hazardous living conditions. This is not liberal propaganda. This is fact. Cold, hard, fact. Any basic college (and any decent high school) text in sociology, anthropology, economics, or world geography would explain this. To not know this shows ignorance of basic real world economics.

To say that landfill land is cheap land is a Homer Simpson "Doh!" answer as well. Why does the reviewer think the land is cheap? Obviously, it isn't land that's good for much else. If it was, it would have been used for something else, or given to British men with the vote who could repay the grantor politically, not given to people of African descent who stayed loyal to the English Crown during the American Revolution. They were not British citizens as we would understand it. They couldn't vote. They were servants. They gained their freedom, they could earn a living, and they could start a town on some crappy land, but that was it. They had no political voice, and very little legal standing. I am no scholar of Canadian history, but I do know that until Canadian independence it was governed by English Common Law, and as non-land owners they had little say in government.

I had hoped that our neighbors to the north were more enlightened than we are when it came to treating people equally, but it seems that Canadians have the same problem with putting their dollars before human rights as we in the USA do.