Alyssah Hall
Black Voice News hosted a panel discussion and exhibit inspired by Between Progress and Preservation: A Visual Narrative of the Impact of Warehouse Development in the Inland Empire, a yearslong project by BVN photojournalist and CatchLight Local News Fellow, Aryana Noroozi.
The exhibition showcased powerful images of communities who have been impacted by the growing warehouse industry. Over a three year period, Noroozi connected with residents in the unincorporated community of Bloomington in San Bernardino County. She captured the increasing environmental, physical and mental impact the warehouse industry is having on the Bloomington community and reflected how it affects similar communities across the Inland Empire.
“It’s just super amazing to see everyone come together and become a culmination of three years worth of talking to folks, documenting them, reporting, being on the ground, looking at environmental reports, everything that culminated in the project. So it’s really exciting to celebrate it and have folks here together to talk about the issue,” Noroozi said.
Noroozi felt the most important part of the event was the ability to create conversation around the issue of warehouse development and seeing that come to fruition made her thankful to the people who came out to discuss the topic at hand.
The panel members in conversation were Noroozi included BVN Executive Editor Stephanie Williams, former Costco warehouse worker Kristen Malaby, Bloomington local business owner of her family’s generational barber shop Carolina Verduzco, and Bloomington native and community organizer for the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ), Joaquin Castillejos. The panel was moderated by BVN Director of Revenue and Audience Engagement Christen Irving who invited each panel member to share their personal experiences and thoughts on warehouse development, followed by the reveal of the Between Progress and Preservation exhibit.
“I’m really excited that she’s [Noroozi] able to connect the community through a visual aspect because it’s much more powerful when you’re seeing it with your own eyes, and not being able to actually be in this situation,” Malaby said.
During the panel Malaby shared her story of being overworked in the warehouse industry to the point of developing injuries, which resulted in disabilities. In 2017, after working as a Costco warehouse worker for five years, Malaby woke up one day and was unable to fully move her arms. After seeing many specialists, Malaby was diagnosed with 14 injuries in her shoulders, arms, hands and neck, and nerve damage that came from rotating her spine to face the rack where she performed her tasks. Malaby is now founder of the SoCal Trash Army and Lead Navigator for the Inland Empire’s Healthcare in Action team.
Another panelist, Verduzco, shared that she is not against the warehouse industry itself, but is against the way the industry came into her community. Verduzco feels that she is an outlier in her beliefs about meeting with developers to discuss how to achieve the needs of the community in order to rescue the things that the community values. Verduzco runs a barbershop in her community that has been in her family for 35 years. She also belongs to a movement that favored incorporating the community of Bloomington for more than 20 years.
“We have to stay involved in order to help shape the future of our communities and I think that’s why it’s important to be here,” Verduzco said.
“It was a great experience. I was saying earlier…thank you, [Aryana], for having done this project because you’re really preserving a big piece of our history of Bloomington. It’s little by little being erased with all these projects. So, thank you for the work… I love being part of the project,“ Verduzco continued.
Noroozi documented the consequences of warehouse developments in the Inland Empire with a goal to bring forth a 360 degree perspective which revealed the impact to residents, environment, economy, and the role of developers and local politicians involved in the industry’s expansion.
An event goer and grassroots movement organizer in Riverside, Jen Larratt-Smith, said, she heard about the event and wanted to see and support what her fellow “fighters” were doing.
“I appreciate the art of it…to be able to show what’s happening. They say a picture’s worth 1000 words. I think that that communicates a lot about the fight,” Larratt-Smith said.