Celebrating our 20th Anniversary
Celebrating our 20th Anniversary
Film Screening and Panel Discussion with Director Damien D. Smith
We invite you to a screening and panel discussion of Target: St. Louis Vol.1, an award winning documentary about secret radiological weapons development testing in a low-income Black community. Panelists include the film’s director and producer Damien D. Smith, sociologist, researcher and author Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor, and former resident Ben Phillips.
Date
Thursday December 7th
Time
8:00pm – 9:30pm Eastern
7:00pm – 8:30pm Central
5:00pm – 7:30pm Pacific
Target: St. Louis Vol. 1, winner of best documentary at the 2021 Urban Film Awards, tells the story of how the United States Military conducted secret radiological weapons development testing during the Cold War. The spraying of zinc cadmium sulfide along with what evidence suggests was a radioactive substance centered on a region that included Saint Louis, Missouri’s Pruitt Igoe public housing complex (built in the 1950s and demolished in the 1970s). According to government documents obtained by panelist Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor, the Army referred to the test area as a “Densely Populated Slum District.” The story is told through the eyes of the survivors who bravely share their experiences of being unwitting test subjects. The trailer can be watched here.
Damien D. Smith was born in St. Louis and currently resides in Los Angeles. He is an actor, screenwriter, director, and producer and recently appeared on the series “Snowfall” on Fx Networks, “The Purge” on USA networks, and alongside Will Smith in the movie “Emancipation”. His stage credits include the NAACP Theater Award-winning production of “12×9.” His directorial debut short narrative film entitled About That (2015), a powerful look at love through the eyes of a mentally disturbed young man, won the Arts with Impact film Award. He is also known for Second (2017) and his short film Daddy’s Big Girl which won the Gentleman Jack Daniel’s Reel to Real Filmmaker of the Year Award.
Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor is a sociologist and researcher who examined the St. Louis open-air experiments for her doctoral dissertation at the University of Missouri Columbia, and after more than a decade of research wrote the book Behind the Fog: How the US Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans.
Ben Phillips is a former resident of the Pruitt Igoe housing complex who, along with fellow former resident Chester Deans, is spearheading the recent push for justice for the former residents of Pruitt Igoe. This includes having the government recognize its wrongdoing, release more information about the covert actions, and compensate residents of Pruitt-Igoe and surrounding areas. Ben Phillips successfully had Pruitt Igoe residents of the area added to a bill working its way through Congress that seeks to compensate residents that were exposed to radiation during cold war era production of nuclear weapons in St. Louis.
Phillips had a distinguished career in public service as well as St. Louis and Missouri politics and he received a degree in sociology from the University of Missouri at St. Louis. His accomplishments include a gubernatorial appointee to the St. Louis City board of elections commission, a Mayoral appointment to the City of St. Louis Employees Retirement Board and serving as Presiding of the Missouri State President of the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice (NABCJ).
NOTE: Global Justice Ecology Project was one of the first to report on Dr. Martino-Taylor’s research in 2012. The Press Release can be found on GJEP’s previous site.
FURTHER INFORMATION: The Breaking Green Podcast had two episodes that explored this topic: “Cold War Testing on African American Population in St. Louis with Filmmaker Damien D. Smith” (October 5, 2022) and Radiological Weapons Development and Pruitt Igoe Residents with Ben Phillips and Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor (October 14, 2023).
DISCLOSURE: The Breaking Green Podcast is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project and host Steve Taylor is married to Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor.
