Company Town: 'quiet tragedy' of an Arkansas community vs the Kochs

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Company Town: 'quiet tragedy' of an Arkansas community vs the Kochs

A new film tells the story of Crossett, Arkansas – a small town dominated by a Koch brothers-owned paper mill, blamed for dumping cancer-causing chemicals

Martin Pengelly
Sunday 10 September 2017 14.03 BST

The documentary Company Town opened in New York City on Friday night, for a short run at Cinema Village on East 12th Street. Introducing a sold-out screening, New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman said co-directors Natalie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian had captured one of the “quiet tragedies that are taking place all across America all the time”.

The film tells the story of Crossett, Arkansas, a small town dominated by a huge Georgia-Pacific paper mill owned by the Koch brothers, Charles and David, hugely influential Republican donors with a deeply contentious – activists would say appalling – record on the environment. People who live in Crossett blame the mill for the heedless dumping of cancer-causing chemicals they say pollutes drinking water and shortens already straitened lives.

“This is a story that never gets told,” Schneiderman said, “and it takes tremendous commitment to get to the quiet tragedies that are taking place all across America all the time.

“The environmental movement really has not done as good a job perhaps as we should have done carrying the essential message that people who are poor and without power are always on the front lines of pollution and environmental justice.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/10/company-town-film-arkansas-koch-brothers

[Wellstone ruled]

1. What a crap hole.

Only been in that town twice. Once in late July when it was a Hundred Degrees and mega humidity. The stench was over whelming to say the least. and the next time was in December,at least the wind was blowing the smut out of town.

[TomSlick]

2. It's easy to call towns like Crossett "crap holes" but its hardly fair.

People in the rest of the country depend on folks living in south Arkansas to grow the pine trees and work the mills to produce lumber and paper used in the rest of the country.

You bet, in the summer it's hotter then hell with high humidity. However, this is where pine trees can be grown as a crop. No question, a paper mill produces a terrible stink. However, the locals know that as long as the paper mill is producing a stink, it is also making payroll.

Unless you are going to swear-off using wood products and paper, please don't tell the people of Crossett they live in a "crap-hole." Instead, pay attention to how the Koch brothers abuse their employees in producing the products you buy - and insist they do better.

[madokie]

3. Yea the fucking koch brothers

bought the local Georgia Pacific paper plant that was a union shop that had been in business making drywall paper since 1945. Immediately shut it down. Beings as it was a Union shop the smell was as a paper plant is but they were well ahead of the curve in trying to take care of the employees and stay abreast of the environmental laws.. I've known many of the workers over the years and they were able to make a living, take a vacation, send their kids to college. All American dream if ever there was one but the kochs shut it down within a few months of buying. Just now they're hauling all the new equipment out of the plant to parts unknown. When the kochs bought it Georgia Pacific had just put in a new several Million dollar top of the line production line. It was one of the plants in our local industrial park that many people around here strove to get a job at over the years. It was a good place to work due to the Union factor and due to that giving a fuck. Fuck the koch brother in the yinyan with a rusty rail road spike sideways and upside down. Yes these paper plants have their problems but again this was a Union shop that was trying to protect the environment and the employees. So the kochs shut it down and ship the production to other non Union don't give a shit about the employees nor the environment plants.

Again fuck the koch brother until they turn blue and beg for mercy then really give it to them. Sorry couple of assholes