CHOKE is a verite-style short documentary set in the unfolding present with a historical look back to the United States in the Summer of 2020. The film follows three main activists – Sarra Tekola, Sam Grant, and Tamara Toles O’ Laughlin – who are fighting at the intersection of climate justice and racial justice. These activists believe that we – as communities, as a nation, and as a planet – cannot continue to treat racial justice, climate justice, and economic justice as separate aims. When oil pipelines are constructed through Indigenous communities, predominantly-Black cities like Flint Michigan go years without clean water, and Black and Latino workers are overrepresented in highly polluted neighborhoods, it becomes clear that the fight for racial justice and climate justice are inexplicably linked.

Our film will explore the moment that each activist came to that conclusion. They quickly found that talking about race in climate justice spaces and climate in racial justice spaces was not the norm- and sometimes discouraged. Slowly coming together with organizers in each realm who shared their intersectional approach, all came to a head in 2020 when George Floyd was murdered. In CHOKE, we will interweave interview and archival footage from 2020 showing our activists’ real-time reactions to the racial reckoning-pandemic combination that forced everyone to pay attention.

We revisit them three years later and examine the aftermath and what they each think needs to happen to continue the fight for climate and racial justice. In 2023, our subjects are still “doing the work” while the rest of the world moves on.