Movies made in Peoria – by Peorians

Wes Brooks can rightfully promote his movie Space Prairie - Act I as “years in the making.”

Maybe more importantly, the 26-year-old area resident can also legitimately call himself a filmmaker.

Brooks and two other Peoria-area filmmakers screened some of their work on April 28 at Illinois Central College’s Lecture/Recital Hall on its East Peoria Campus. (And for those who miss the screening, the three films can be viewed in a virtual theater at spaceprairie.com. Readers also can learn more about the works of Mourning Dove Films at mourningdovefilms.com).

Brooks, William Jacobs and John Voss collaborated to showcase Brooks’ 120-minute Space Prairie- Act I, the 15-minute excerpt A Moment is Enough from Jacobs’ feature-length Poet in a Modern World, and Voss’ 5-minute Moving through the Day.

They all are alumni of ICC, where they attended between 2015 and 2020.

“It was a precious time,” said Brooks. “I met Will on campus and followed him around, hoping he’d like my work as I marveled at his. We have enjoyed a collaborative bond since those early days of cranking out coursework while fighting those battles to stay creative. A lot has happened in the world since we graduated in 2020, so I hope Peorians latch onto the kind of lyrical storytelling that we hope will be life-giving to moviegoers.”

Brooks recalled starting to write Space Prairie when he was 16, two summers before filming and starting college.

“After years of health issues as a child, I began to heal as a teenager and wanted Space Prairie to be a joy ride, a production journey that felt like a Sunday afternoon drive in a roofless car.”

Shot on video cassettes over the last 10 years, Space Prairie features robots and romance in a rollicking adventure about an interplanetary taxman landing on an isolated prairie planet that’s been colonized by a pioneer farmer. After an initial conflict between them, the farmer’s daughter provides an affection they share. Then other settlers notice a disturbing sight in the skies.

Brooks continues to work on Act II, and hopes that the entire movie will be released.

All three celebrate their roots as well as their art.

 “The heartland needs a voice,” said Jacobs, the 26-year-old founder of Mourning Dove Films. “What audiences will see is a glimpse of what is possible when filmmakers remain creating in the Midwest, untrammeled by politics and groveling studio executives.

“We are offering what Hollywood isn’t—beauty and heart,” he continued. “These three films are made by ordinary people who care for and love ordinary things. Building alternatives is no easy feat, and so we hope that our projects receive the necessary support for the continuation of beautiful cinema made in Peoria.

“I feel as though – for the very first time as a filmmaker – I am finally making a film,” Jacobs said as he was finishing A Moment Is Enough, a 16 mm production cut from the longer Poet in a Modern World, which he described as “choosing beauty in a world defying it.

“What we experience in cinema ought to clarify the common linkage between us as human beings struggling to exist in this world as spiritual creatures—the very things that go beyond mere politics, celebrity and social media,” he added. “It is beauty that binds us as a civilization.”

Civilization hasn’t overlooked Central Illinois, of course.

“Peoria is my home,” said Voss, 24. “I’ve continued to find myself and so much beauty in it, primarily in its landscapes and its people. Moving Through the Day features my beautiful girlfriend, Taylor, spending a day in Peoria’s picturesque Donovan Park. I believe films are a place where modern myth flourishes. We’re all figuring out how to navigate reality with everything we do, including art. You could say that Moving through the Day is a confrontation with the passing of the day and an expression of my love for a couple of things that I find a home in.”

Safety & health: What about the rest of us?

A new report from the University of Illinois Chicago and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health shows an increase in black lung disease, even among younger miners, “at rates not seen since the early 1970s.”

When the Workers Memorial Day international holiday is marked this year on April 28 – the date when the Occupational Safety and Health Act was enacted 52 years ago – working people remember those sickened, injured or killed at work.

However, whether illnesses such as black lung, injuries from accidents, or illnesses tied to work, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is about OCCUPATIONAL safety and health. What about work outside the traditional employer-worker relationship?

What about bystanders to companies’ actions or lack of actions?

Corporations harm people beyond those on their payrolls, from selling products contributing to diabetes and obesity to unsafe material to accidents that spill over our communities? Corporations place profits over people: workers, consumers and members of communities where they operate.

There’s “a long history of corporations pairing deceptive marketing with powerful lobbying influence to shift the blame and responsibility on consumers, and ensuring that politicians don’t regulate them,” reported Heather Coleman of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett, an associate at Harvard’s Center for Primary Care and a health innovator fellow at the Aspen Institute.

Stephanie Griffin, a former Union Pacific carman who complained that she was being criticized for reporting railcars for repairs, told The Guardian, “Most railroad workers are fighting against an entire system that only exists as a money-making apparatus to the wealthy. Those trains run through our towns, but they do not run next to rich folks’ homes, nor next to our politicians’ homes.”

The most recent example is this winter’s catastrophic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, where the community of 4,761 people still notice odors from the Feb. 3 disaster that saw some 38 of a Norfolk Southern train’s 150 cars derailed, including 11 which carried hazardous chemicals: Vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate, isobutylene, and benzene residue. Five other cars carried oil and another had fuel additives.

“Exposure to these hazardous materials at sufficiently high levels has been associated variously with an increased risk of cancer, risks to fetal development, damage to organs like the liver, kidneys, lungs, and skin, and other health conditions,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Venting five of the cars, supposedly to prevent an explosion, produced widespread air and water pollution in and around the town. A mushroom-like cloud, started by the fires on the derailed cars, hovered over East Palestine.

Despite evacuating, many East Palestinians after returning home had properties covered in soot of some sort, and they continue to complain about dizziness, headaches, numbness in their limbs, nausea, rashes, irritated eyes, and shortness of breath – plus sickened animals. Runoff of the chemicals polluted the water in the stream that ran through town, killing at least 3,500 fish. Pets died, too. And Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz estimated that more than 43,000 wild animals died as a result of the derailment and its chemical aftermath.

A preliminary report blamed a single wheel bearing on one car of that train, which weighed 18,000 tons and stretched 1.76 miles.

Almost always ignored is the possibility of long-term effects – the lifetime impact on anyone at or near such mass exposures to toxins. The many derailments over the years have left victims akin to those affected by the 9/11 World Trade Center attack and cleanup.

“While the trains are still burning, they’re rebuilding the rails,” said Justine Mikulka, author of “Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk.”

He continued, “It’s again an excellent example of how they put profit over public safety.”

More than 12,400 train derailments happened in the United States in the last 10 years, and “only” 10 railroad accidents involving hazardous material occurred last year, according to the Federal Railroad Administration. The Association of American Railroads claims that 99% of their trains are safe.

(Excuse me? If you and some friends are watching the NBA tournament with a basket of 100 chicken wings, and 1 of them is poison, would you eat any?)

“The bottom line is that what happened in East Palestine could have just as easily happened in Illinois,” said U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). Indeed, the Norfolk Southern train that dumped its chemicals in East Palestine started its doomed trek in Madison, Ill., almost 10 million tons of hazardous material moved through the state in 2019, and a staggering one of four freight trains in the country passes through Chicago.

                                                               

                                                                        CONSEQUENCES

In the aftermath of that derailment, the Environmental Protection Agency responded to start cleaning up. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) launched investigations that expanded to Norfolk Southern’s entire system, not just the February accident. State and local authorities are pressing for safety reforms, from legislative measures in Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia to proposals from the National League of Cities.

The state of Ohio and the U.S. Justice Department filed suit again Norfolk Southern, and in Congress, a rare bipartisan measure was introduced to improve safety regulations, co-sponsored by Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and J.D. Vance.

“It shouldn’t take a train derailment for elected officials to put partisanship aside and work together for the people we serve – not corporations like Norfolk Southern,” said Brown, a progressive Democrat. “Lobbyists for the rail companies spent years fighting every effort to strengthen rules to make our trains and rail lines safer. Now Ohioans are paying the price.”

Vance, a Trump-backed Republican, added, “We have a choice: Are we for big business and big government, or are we for the people of East Palestine?”

Prevention is preferable, of course, and this industrial accident could have been avoided, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who said, “I can tell you this much: This was 100% preventable.”

Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw apologized and pledged to clean up the town and help its residents, plus he said he’ll support some reforms and even dropped the company’s long-time demand to cut crew sizes.

But the GOP’s zeal for deregulation remains, so some Republicans doubt there’s a need to change the rules of the railroads.

“The railroads have opposed any government regulation on train length; they have sought waivers to eliminate having trained inspectors monitor railcars; and they have pushed back on the train crew staffing rule,” said Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) national president Eddie Hall.

“The railroads and their trade association the Association of American Railroads (AAR) employ armies of lobbyists on Capitol Hill who are there not to promote safety regulations but to slow the implementation of federal safety regulations – or attempt to eliminate them altogether.”

The researchers Coleman and Barnett said, “Americans should all be asking the question of what role corporations are playing on the health of our bodies. We cannot continue to let corporations decide what’s best.”

Government mandates are needed, according to Matt Weaver from Railroad Workers United.

“You can't trust a capitalist industry, a for-profit industry, to self-regulate,” he said. “We have to have government intervention. So it’s time for the regulators to regulate and the public servants to serve the public."

AFSCME-Library talks heading to mediation as N.O.W. backs union

 Peoria Public Library workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are in the fourth month without a contract after multiple negotiating sessions, and though a resolution doesn’t seem imminent at press time, increasing support from local groups and the pending presence of a third-party could break the bargaining logjam.

“We’re still pretty far apart,” commented Anthony Walraven, a member of the bargaining team recently elected president of AFSCME Local 3464.  “We’re going to be going to mediation, [but] I’m confident we can reach an agreement.”

No dates have been announced for meeting with a mediator,

Catching up on wages remains a focus, Walraven said, particularly after a union survey of its membership of about 60 workers showed that some 90% say they’re living “paycheck to paycheck,” and more than 44% feel insecure about their housing.

“We have a large number of our members that are making minimum wage or close to minimum wage – and a lot of them have post-secondary education,” Walraven added. “This is not teenagers working in the summers, or part-time. These are adults trying to raise families or support themselves.”

Meanwhile, informational picketing March 21 had more than 100 people marching outside the Main library downtown. Besides community allies and AFSCME members from different locals, current staffers were there, including relatively recent hires, such as Jacob Roberts, a children’s reference assistant, and Alexa Cary, “artist in residence.” Dozens of other library workers left PPL in the last few years.

Elsewhere, a prominent area activist group released an open letter supporting library workers.

“The Peoria Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) joins the individuals and organizations supporting the Peoria Public Librarians in their contract negotiations,” wrote NOW co-Presidents Nancy Long and Martha Willi. “While Library employees are City of Peoria employees, they do not enjoy the same contract as other employees.

“These are just a few of the intolerable issues experienced by librarians,” they said, listing:

* Many employees are at or near minimum wage salaries, despite their education and experience.

* Other than mandatory minimum wage adjustments, increases have been virtually non-existent. Over the last 13 years, non-minimum wage increases have ranged between $0.52 to $1.89 per hour.

* Library employees’ health insurance premiums are higher than other City of Peoria employees.

* The work approved by the referendum in 2007 to renovate existing libraries and add a North Branch was completed in 2011. At that time there were 67 union employees; today the number of union employees is 55. Fewer people are doing more and different types of work without additional compensation.

 

Such wage scales have consequences to workers and he community, NOW said.

“One [employee] has to come to terms with the reality her teenage son working at a restaurant makes $3 an hour more than she does - and she has a Master’s degree. His skills learned on previous jobs are compensated; hers are not, NOW said. “To make groceries stretch as far as possible, another eats only one meal a day.

“Fifty-four librarians have left since 2018. How many of them sacrificed a job they loved in order to make enough to support their families?” the group continued.. “Their Social Security will be based on their lifetime income; thus, retirement for librarians will be considerably more difficult than that of other City of Peoria employees. “

NOW speculates that management isn’t aware of what’s at stake.

“Is it possible the ‘powers that be’ aren’t familiar with what librarians do?” they wrote. “Perhaps the new contract should include a mandate that Library Board and City Council members visit a different library each month to make themselves aware of the needs and demands of each location, including staffing and equipment issues.

“These 2022 figures represent some of what librarians do as they keep the doors open so we have access to a library every day of the week somewhere in Peoria,” NOW continued –

* 593,783 physical items were borrowed by patrons.

* 82,530 e-books were downloaded (after some received training from the librarians).

* 25,798 movies and different types of music were downloaded

 

“All are processed and cataloged by whom? Librarians! (not student pages),” NOW noted, adding, “216,420 people walked through library doors; 1,949 programs were offered to adults, teens and children, most in-person and/or hands-on – our Librarians go beyond crafts, story times and book clubs to murder mysteries for ages 18+, escape rooms, STEM activities, as well as what the outreach branches do to collaborate and bring the library to the community. There are more requests for these programs than there are staff to offer them.

“Additionally, librarians answer all sorts of questions. They can only respond to them because of the education, intelligence, skills and experience they bring to the job. And they do it all for less than any other City of Peoria employee.”

A settlement doesn’t seem beyond reason, they said.

“The solution is to show librarians the respect their profession and commitment deserve,” NOW wrote. “We value our librarians. If the Library Board and City Council value them, put that appreciation in their paychecks. We call on the City of Peoria to remedy this serious situation and truly become an equal opportunity employer.”

Library Executive Director Randall Yelverton said, “The library and AFSCME have enjoyed a long history of respectful and productive negotiations and will continue to do so as the parties bargain this contract. While the library cannot comment on the status of ongoing negotiations, it looks forward to reaching a mutually beneficial agreement that will allow the library to continue to offer all the same excellent services and programming that our community has come to expect and enjoy.”

Walraven commented, “The whole point of negotiations is to come up with a number that’s acceptable for both sides. That’s what we’re trying to do. The status quo is unacceptable.”