“Some of us have to actually live the future that you all are setting on fire,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warns the fossil fuel execs testifying before Congress in Rachel Lears’ “To the End.” Filmed over four years of upheaval and hope, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the landmark passage of the The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the doc reunites the U.S. representative and the “Knock Down the House” documentary filmmaker for another inside look into a historical moment spearheaded by women revolutionaries.
“To the End” centers on four WOC at the vanguard of the Green New Deal (GND), following the disparate yet parallel paths these young changemakers embark on within the fraught arena of climate politics. Along with Ocasio-Cortez, Lears’ film features the fierce activism of Sunrise Movement’s exec director Varshini Prakash, GND policy writer Rhiana Gunn-Wright, and political strategist Alexandra Rojas, exec director of Justice Democrats. Described by Lears as a “darker and more complex story,” the doc builds on “Knock Down the House,” her 2019 Sundance winner that follows Ocasio-Cortez and three other women running for congress.
“Moments of crisis crack open the window of possibility,” Prakash quips. While the film does not sugarcoat the urgency of the climate emergency – which the activists also describe as an “existential crisis” – it also highlights the admirable selflessness of the young climate activists trying to undo the damage of previous generations. This disjunction between the old and young, between those in power and those on the ground, is a recurring theme in “To the End” that frustrates viewers but also magnifies the grit of the protagonists.
The doc sees the youth organizers of the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats navigate hostile political terrain ridden with obstacles at every turn, with old, rich stakeholders and politicians who don’t seem to hear their demands – or are willfully ignoring them. Even as their efforts are repeatedly struck down, these grassroots activists continue to canvass, march, protest, and even hunger strike, fighting against their own fatigue and dejection to reach their end goal. “The climate crisis can be so overwhelming that it leads to feelings of despair or even cynicism,” Lears told us in an interview. “Our protagonists confront this reality head-on and find the courage to act in the face of it.”
Notably, “To the End” makes clear that the fight for the GND concerns not just the planet, but its most vulnerable and marginalized inhabitants as well. The GND’s advocates remind us of the inextricable double helix of environmental justice and racial justice – one cannot be achieved without the other in the crusade for legislative reform. “The climate and environmental piece in the Green New Deal is what we need to do. The inequality piece and the justice piece is how we need to do it,” Ocasio-Cortez explains in the doc.
This symbiosis of environmental exploitation and racial division also helps contextualize why fossil fuel industries have been able to wreak destruction with impunity. Gunn-Wright explains that big oil has “capitalized on racial division” through discriminatory practices like redlining, which enables corporate powers to put fossil fuel infrastructure into racially and economically segregated neighbourhoods. “As long as there are people you can poison without consequences, there will always be a loophole that the fossil fuel industry can exploit,” she says.
Gunn-Wright also reminds us there is a human cost to the policies that enable industrial greed. After all, why should individuals and entire communities become collateral damage to political and corporate decisions beyond their control? “Why are you okay with people dying so that we don’t have a bigger deficit?” she demands. “Because are you fine if that person was your grandmother? Or are you fine if that person was my grandmother?”
If the status quo persists, the planet will see extremely hot temperatures every other year by 2030, experiencing infernal heat waves that have, historically, been recorded only once per century in pre-industrial times. With the dreaded deadline just eight years away, the planet’s days are numbered. As Rojas tells the members of Justice Democrats, we can no longer delay immediate, transformative action. “The brutality of the conditions that we’re headed towards guarantee some sort of mass response,” she says. “It’s on us to create the conditions for that, if that should happen, to be as successful as possible.”
“To the End” hits theaters December 9.
