Thank you so much to our 26 generous donors for helping @oaklead reach $4,500 this month! This Giving Tuesday, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to @OAKLEAD (link in bio). As many of you know, this has been a community-led labor of love for 7 years and we’re finally finished filming. Now, we just need your help to finish editing! OAKLEAD follows our community as we fight to protect one another from lead poisoning in our own homes and schools — and confront over a century of environmental racism. This story starts in Oakland but has global impact, as 1 in 3 children worldwide are currently experiencing lead poisoning. The impact of our film is already in motion — influencing public policies and school curricula — but we can have the greatest impact when the film is finished and released!
With utmost gratitude,
Alex & the OAKLEAD team
Honored to be a 2025 @bavcmedia MediaMaker with @oaklead ! Applications for the 2026 cohort are due tomorrow (Monday 9/29). If you’re directing your first feature-length documentary, definitely apply to this fellowship. To eligible you can be based anywhere on Turtle Island/in the U.S. This fellowship has already opened so many doors that have changed the trajectory of @oaklead , and I’ve learned so much from my talented and supportive cohort - stay tuned for the greatness on deck from @annaclarespelman (@meanttobemaddie ) @thanhxmusic (@findingmafilm )
@_haozhou_@lucapponi_real@spiriteddoc
With gratitude for our amazing @bavcmedia team @dawnvaladez@brittneyreaume@jykfilms ❤️🔥
🚨It’s 2025 and kids across the US are still being poisoned by lead. For 7 years, @oaklead has been documenting this fight in Oakland. Now we’re at a breaking point: we need your support to release the film, and to help force this issue into the spotlight. Make a tax-deductible donation through the link in @oaklead ’s bio and join us in exposing the truth they’d rather keep hidden. 🚨
Many thanks to Black Arts Movement Film Festival @bamfilmfest who screened our work-in-progress to a sold-out theater in Oakland. Much love to all of our collaborators and community ✊🏽 #documentary #film #indiefilm #oaklead #leadpoisoning #environmentaljustice #oakland #california #publichealth #healthequity
Join us for a special work-in-progress sample screening of @oaklead this Sunday August 3 at 7:30pm at BAM House. Much love to the Black Arts Movement Film Festival @bambdcdc for holding the door open. Link in bio for tickets.
This week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention week and it also marks three and a half weeks since the Oakland Unified School Board received the demands of the @gettheleadout_ousd coalition. Yet only three members claim to have read the demands and none have responded. 8 years into OUSD's knowledge of poisoned taps in our schools, this level of inaction is unacceptable. #gettheleadout
Thank you to everyone who tuned in and sent love this week as I joined a panel on KQED’s live Forum show to discuss the current moment of uprising against lead poisoning and water contamination in Oakland’s public school district. If you missed it, check the link in my bio or visit KQED.org and listen to the Wed Oct 16 episode.
This is the second crisis of lead contamination in Oakland’s public school drinking water in 7 years, and I’ve been documenting our community response to these environmental justice issues since 2017. It has been a lonely journey at times, being entrusted to hold our stories, carrying them even when I couldn’t see the finish line. There has also been grief in sharpening the focus on the plot we are living in, de-gaslighting myself and acknowledging what is happening and how much unnecessary suffering has been caused by the systems that target our lives and land. My goal with this work is to help people connect the dots between capitalism, colonization, imperialism, and lead poisoning, the climate crisis, jenoside, and other symptoms of these systems that disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous, POC and working class communities. We are taught to focus on the symptoms as if isolated issues, disconnected from their roots, which keeps us trapped in cycles of predictable suffering.
One thing I love about the Bay is we care for one another and we believe and invest in our capacity to protect and nurture one another. Speaking on environmental racism and lead poisoning often feels like shouting into the void, but when coalitions form, we get to decide what is possible.
As someone beautiful said this week, “The trees are still hopeful, and they know a lot more than me, so why wouldn’t I be?”
I’m grateful to my loved ones in all realms who poured into me this week as I prayed to embody my full power and do well for us.
In 2024, there is no reason why elementary students should have to create artwork demanding lead-free clean water for them to drink at school!
Join us Monday 9/30 for a community rally at Oscar Grant Plaza at 4pm.
Art from Sequoia garden 3rd and 5th graders.
photo credit: @gettheleadout_ousd
In spite of Mayor Thao’s attempt to scapegoat lead poisoning as solely an OUSD issue outside of her jurisdiction, the city of Oakland’s very own Department of Race & Equity made it clear back in 2021 that the city needed to take immediate action on the lead poisoning occurring through subpar housing quality & soil contamination!
THE CURRENT HEALTH CRISIS IS AN ISSUE THAT BOTH THE CITY AND OUSD HAVE A PART IN. The district knows that low income children are already exposed to lead through their housing & outside areas yet sees no obligation to prevent further poison by meaningfully addressing the lead in their water system. The city government of Oakland knows that low income children are being poisoned by the drinking water in their schools yet feels no immediacy to put their millions of $$$ allocated to lead remediation to use!
JOIN US OUTSIDE OF CITY HALL TOMORROW DURING THE JOINT DISTRICT & CITY SESSION TO HOLD THEM BOTH ACCOUNTABLE
Have you heard? In August, news broke, again, of widespread lead contamination in the drinking water in Oakland Unified School District. And OUSD did not inform schools for 4 months.
Join @gettheleadout_ousd , a coalition of Oakland students, teachers and community members as we push for clean water at OUSD. We are hosting a community rally on Monday, September 30 at 4pm at Oscar Grant Plaza (in front of Oakland City Hall). Immediately after the rally, we will deliver our demands to city council and Oakland Unified School District officials.
In 2016, Reuters published a groundbreaking investigative report finding that 3,000 communities in the United States have higher rates of lead poisoning than Flint, Michigan -- including Fruitvale and West Oakland.
This revelation set us on a 7-year journey of researching, filming and documenting to figure out why lead poisoning - the longest pediatric epidemic in US history - is still ongoing, and why there is a mysterious lack of awareness and institutional action on the issue.
As a member of the @gettheleadout_ousd coalition I urge you to join us Monday 9/30 for the community rally at 4pm taking place at the Oscar Grant Plaza (outside of City Hall) as we speak out on the lead contamination crisis happening right now in Oakland Unified School District.
Thank you @sundanceorg for supporting @oaklead as we finish the work we began in 2017. Infinite gratitude for the people who have told their stories so far, and to the collaborators who have flowed through this project as producers, soundies, APs, PAs, DPs, word-of-mouth supporters, organizational partners, and well-wishers. If you’ve ever sent me an article about lead. Or mentored me in becoming a filmmaker to specifically tell this story. I intend to honor the efforts of organizers and health practitioners in Oakland who have been doing radical work to address racial health inequities for decades, from the Black Panther Party, to People United for a Better Life in Oakland (PUEBLO), to West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, the Get The Lead Out Coalition and more.
Let’s get it!
