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Toxic Avengers

Published on June 4, 2002

High School Students in Middletown, New York Wade Ever Deeper into Illegal Dumping Story

Rachel Raimist, sporting a nose-ring and magenta-streaked hair, was like many rebellious teenagers itching to graduate high school when she signed up for her senior year English elective: "When I walked into Fred's class, I thought I was going to be making rap videos." The experience proved to be transformative: "What I ended up doing is chasing corrupt politicians and digging in toxic waste. I had no idea what I was getting myself into."

Rachel, now an active filmmaker and film instructor, was a student at Middletown High School (MHS) in Middletown, New York-an old railroad town 60 miles northwest of New York City in Orange County. The class she took was Fred Isseks' Electronic English, an English elective that focuses on using the electronic medium to compose stories. What she was getting into was exposing toxic dumping at local landfills that had her treading not only on illegal red-bag and chemical waste, but also into allegations of local, state, and federal government corruption.

Garbage, Gangsters and Greed

Since 1991, when Rachel was a senior, a succession of three documentaries have been produced by the Middletown students, following the lead of their teacher: Living with Leachate (1992), The Wallkill Dump (1994), and, most recently, Garbage, Gangsters ,and Greed (1997). Since 1991, when Rachel was a senior, a succession of three documentaries have been produced by the Middletown students: Living with Leachate (1992, 90 minutes), The Wallkill Dump (1994, 66 minutes), and, most recently, Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed (1997, 54 minutes). Each piece represents a different snapshot in the ongoing story's history. As fresh information is uncovered by a new semester's class, a larger picture of the toxic dump story comes into view, and a stronger more focused documentary is cut together-pulling from all the available student footage to date. Isseks anticipates another tape will be completed within one year.

Garbage, Gangsters and Greed crew

Although at this point the students' investigations have not delivered the legal and environmental results they seek-full accountability and toxic waste clean-up-their work has attracted widespread attention. Guerilla TV, a show produced by BBC, placed the MHS work between other activist segments; Garbage, Gangsters ,and Greed won first place at the 1998 EarthVision Film Festival in Santa Cruz, and is slated to screen this September at the Woodstock Film Festival. In addition, the class' latest effort is programmed as a part of the Pay Attention! film/video series this month at the Center for Photography in Woodstock. Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed has aired nationally on cable access through Freespeech TV.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D., New York), former chair of the New York State Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation, calls the students' toxic dump work "instrumental in calling attention to the problem." In fact, Isseks and his students' research documents were requested by the Inspector General's office of the EPA, and the FBI has commended them "for their efforts to highlight dangers to our environment."

Electronic English is one of several electives offered to seniors at Middletown High. Some students are drawn to the course to contribute to the evolving toxic dump story, and some sign on to the class for clearly non-activist reasons - to just play around with cool equipment or obtain a good-looking credit to grace their high school transcript. Isseks claims that he does not push the toxic dump story on the students; rather, he offers it as an option. As a requirement, the students have to complete assignments that demonstrate their ability to craft a journalistic story using the video medium, but subject matter is determined by individual interest. Neighborhood histories, sports team sagas, and school policy issues have also been covered in the class. Some students, like Rachel, learn lessons about themselves early on, Isseks says, when he presents the local environmental history: indignation and frustration often arise, inspiring those teenagers into activist work they never thought they'd be into. Students I spoke with concur: "It was my drinking water." "I don't think the grass was supposed to be red." "Like, there's so much corruption going on, why isn't anybody doing anything about it?"

Vesh, 17, divides his extracurricular hours between working part-time - at Best Buy - and running on the track team. His experience with Electronic English follows the classic narrative arc. "I wasn't into the whole [toxic dump] thing." Indeed, he had only a dim idea of the story. "I had this cousin, and she was, like, well, when you're a senior you gotta take this class. I heard it was fun." Then, his teacher showed him the tapes. "It made me more enlightened to what was actually going on in surrounding communities." He started researching soil contamination resulting from a local battery recycling plant. At the end of his class journey, he was a changed young man. "It was one of those moments. Call it an epiphany."

Isseks began teaching freshman English at Middletown High in 1976 after receiving both his BA and MA in English Literature from Albany State - and his high school diploma from Middletown High in 1966. In 1991, when the school district decided to run a small cable access station out of the school, Isseks, who was working towards an MA in Media Studies at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, designed Electronic English to take advantage of the new equipment resources. As inspiration for the course he cites the moment he looked around his class and realized that 20 to 25 kids represented the largest news team in the Hudson Valley area.

"I am very much interested in, and worried about, corporate media, and believe that part of my work is to alert students to the media's power," Isseks states. "And I also think it is my job to encourage kids to become media activists and to alert them to their own power." Isseks begins each semester dissecting and framing the complex relationship between the media, political process, and degradation of the environment as he sees it. "I lay it out in ways that make it all comprehensible and present it to them in the form of opportunity. The technology is there; it's a matter of what people and their needs and creativity can do with it." Students are free to develop the toxic dump story in the areas that interest them - i.e. corruption, health hazards, personal stories. They narrate, shoot, interview, file freedom of information requests, pursue leads, and even get involved in the distribution process - including hand-delivering a tape to President Clinton. Isseks offers direction and guidance, and assembles the sequence of the final edit, with help from his students. All the documentary work to date has been shot on VHS, and edited on linear S-VHS systems. Recently the class went digital with a G4, iMovie 2, and a Canon Optura camera. Isseks describes his class as somewhere between low-tech and no-tech: "I try not to stress the technology in my classes, but rather, the concepts."

Some Electronic English students become active citizens as a result of the course. Josh Lieberson, a 1996 MHS graduate, speaks of an important lesson gleaned from the collaborative filmmaking process: "I learned that in order to effect change you need organization and purpose, and you have to work in an organized fashion in a group, rather than doing things alone." Before he took Isseks' class, Josh says, he was uneducated about environmental issues, and he didn't care or even know about politics. Now he is a masters student in political science at SUNY Albany, president of the College Greens, and is considering seeking the Green Party nomination for Albany City Council. Others, like Rachel Raimist, are working directly in media: Jeff Dutemple (MHS '94) works in film/video, as does Justin Libirio (MHS '97), who echoes a sentiment of all the former students with whom I spoke: "Without a doubt, if it weren't for that class I wouldn't be doing what I am doing today."

Talking with the students, I am struck by the lack of proprietary creativity that supports the baton-handing nature of this ongoing class project. (Danielle: "Every year you kind of pass the torch along to someone new and the story keeps going.") And witnessing their work, I am struck by the innocence the students bring to their journalism. There's an honesty and fearlessness - almost a naivete - that makes their work all the more powerful. (Congressman Hinchey agrees: "You've hit the nail right on the head. That's what's so amazing about these kids.")

This past April, Isseks and a few of his Electronic English students traveled 25 miles north along the Hudson to New Paltz for a visit with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg to discuss a media issue Isseks hopes to bring into his class discourse - "the difficulty in getting sensitive stories out to the public." As an educator, Isseks likes to point out that "the failure of government and media to follow-through on the problem of toxic dumping has enabled students to get a glimpse into the complex relationship between political power and media." As an environmental steward, he is frustrated: "If the corporate media were into it, it would go a long way toward solving environmental problems." Isseks charges that press coverage of the story has focused more on "cool kids with a camera" rather than the serious issues these kids are raising with that camera. Julie Orlick, MHS '96, agrees: "Every time something comes up that would have an effect on the political powers in Wallkill, what we have actually found gets shunned away and turns back around to 'Wow, look at what these kids are doing.' It's kind of nerve racking." But Isseks remains optimistic. He believes the project has taken on a life of its own, which will help steer results in a positive direction.

So today the story continues. This past semester, students of Electronic English covered topics that piqued their interest, like a local power plant proposed at the edge of town and the history of the football team. And then there was Danielle who was excited to pick up a camera and head down to the local dump to see what she could uncover, eager to contribute to the evolution of the illegal toxic waste story, and as impassioned to effect change as Rachel was a decade ago: "They keep blowing us off. Maybe they'll get sick of us and do something about it so we won't bother them anymore."

Youth Activist Video is born. Doug declares his class mission: "Uncover as much as possible; get the truth out there; show people what's really going on." He adds another strand: "And also show that kids can do anything pretty much they set their minds to."

# # # # Originally published in The Independent Film and Video Monthly June 2001. Harriette Yahr is a writer, filmmaker, and film professor living in Miami, Florida.