Since seeing the film, Windfall, yesterday afternoon at the Clayton Opera House, I have been reflecting on how fortunate the other members of the audience and I were that this film was made, and that it was made available to be shown here.
I have been reviewing every scene in the film in my head, and thinking how directly applicable it was in so many respects to the dramas that are being played out presently in Cape Vincent, Clayton, Hammond, and Lyme. The parallels are numerous and spot on.
One of the characteristics of human nature is the tendency to want to be sure that your own feelings and reactions to any situation are valid. In your mind and in your heart you want to better understand yourself by seeing and hearing others living through a comparable experience. In Windfall, we saw a beautifully crafted film that, with great sensitivity and care, does exactly that.
I think – I hope – that seeing Windfall yesterday is going to cause most people who were in the audience to allow themselves to get justifiably more angry in a way that they may have not completely allowed themselves to feel so far – even with all of the shenanigans and blatantly unethical conduct they have seen displayed by some of their local officials. Anger is a counter-productive force when not well channeled and properly directed. But well directed anger is an entirely appropriate emotion to have under the present circumstances. We need more of it. Well directed anger often must precede more participatory citizenship.
There is no doubt that the "anger quotient" has been going up and up over the continuing and persistent threat to trash our St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario shoreline towns. That's good. But we need to see that response kicked up a few notches and spread among our troubled but still silent fellow citizens who too often behave like passive onlookers. Watching Windfall will help to do that -- in a serious and careful way.
I think in the coming weeks and months people are going to react to Windfall by saying to themselves, "I have a perfect right to feel angry that these wind companies are coming in here trying to radically change the nature of my town in a fundamental and profound way – – and all they can tell me is, essentially, that I will learn to get used to it. And I'm also angry at my lifelong neighbors and friends who are doing business with the wind developers with complete disregard for how it's going to affect the majority of their fellow citizens."
The Windfall movie does not cast the large landowner wind leaseholders in a negative way. The leaseholders who are interviewed come across as very decent people who simply did not comprehend or appreciate how invasive and unwanted the wind turbines would be to others. They approach the issue – aside from the matter of needing and wanting another source of income -- with an almost complete obliviousness to the ways in which the turbines would destroy the atmosphere and an entire way of life for the majority (yes, the majority) of the residents of Meredith, NY. (If only it were obliviousness that we were dealing with in our current struggles here.)
Among the things that I hope Windfall will reinforce in the minds of those who saw it is that there is not anything wrong – not anything remotely selfish – about passionately protecting the rural quietude and rare beauty of the Thousand Islands Region. Our treasured views of land and water and sky, our clear dark star-filled nights, without the contamination of hundreds of giant twirling machines and red blinking lights, is something to be protected with no apologies to anyone.
Because Windfall does not deteriorate to the level of character assassination and name-calling on either side, it is going to be very difficult for any pro-Big Wind viewers in the audience (those who had the good judgment to come) to criticize it for driving a wedge even deeper into the community. At the same time, Windfall reminds its viewers that it is entirely legitimate to feel profoundly sad and distressed, and thoroughly un-accepting of misguided development and shoddy underhanded dealings that make such bad deals possible.
I am very hopeful that as we move further into this critical local election year that the collective will to protect our shoreline towns will become an iron determination. Intolerance of local public corruption and uncompromising insistence on preserving our most valuable natural assets will continue to grow faster and become more widespread among our residents -- stimulated, in part, as a result of seeing Windfall.
There are dozens of responsible and proper ways to act upon anger channeled and applied to block the unethically corrupted processes that are still slowly grinding away leading to what would be the essential destruction of our towns. Without a broad-based and high level of citizen anger and indignation, those grinding processes will ultimately work in favor of the Big Wind corporations and their local leaseholder accomplices.
Take back your town. Windfall has shown us that it can be done, and how it should be done.
Thanks and congratulations to Windfall creator and director, Laura Israel, and to all those who helped in any way to bring this fine documentary to us.
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