The Air We Breathe: Long Beach Neighborhoods Bombarded by Pollution

The Power of Stories is an archive of projects submitted every year to Building Healthy Communities (BHC) Statewide Convening. It showcases work created throughout California highlighting the power of individual and collective efforts to promote health and demonstrates how stories have the power to re-imagine and transform our communities. Produced in partnership with the California Endowment.

Project submitted by: Collaboratory X

Project summary: "The Air We Breathe" (TAWB) is a collaborative performance about Long Beach, CA's air quality, its impact, and the resilience of the community. Written and performed by local residents using humor, song and expressive movement to share personal narratives as well as community gathered stories, TAWB puts a human face on the complex issues facing an area bombarded by pollution from the surrounding freeways, oil refineries, auto-body shops and one of the biggest port complexes in the world.

BHC site: Long Beach

"The Air We Breathe" (TAWB) is the culmination of a 10 month workshop / mentorship by Los Angeles based performance arts group Great Leap, Inc. led by veteran performers / community activists Nobuko Miyamoto, Dan Kwong and Young Ae Park for a diverse group of approximately 12 residents living in the heavily polluted city of Long Beach . At the request of Long Beach's environmental health non-profit organization End Oil, the intention for this process was to highlight environmental justice issues that burden the area through the eyes and voices of community-members-turned-emerging artists via theater. Through the resulting performance piece, voices of historically marginalized communities are lifted up, such as low income residents of color living in the heavily polluted west side of Long Beach (that are being threatened by the further expansion of the port by the SCIG rail yard project, for example) and elder refugees from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Killing Fields (living with a large number of polluting auto-body shops butted up against their neighborhoods). Our collective purpose was not only to shine a light on the impacts of air pollution and environmental degradation, but also on the transformative possibilities borne out of community organizing and community sharing.