The film “Breath of Gloster” will screen on Saturday, May 9, at 1 p.m. at the Harold J. Miossi Center at Cuesta College.

The film follows the story of the low-income, predominantly Black town of Gloster, Mississippi, where the air is being polluted by a multi-billion-dollar UK-based company, Drax Amite, which operates a wood-biomass plant in Gloster next to schools and homes. 

The film features Peyton Thomas, an internationally known trail runner and Olympic trials finalist, who was also tapped as a trail-running ambassador for the outdoor outfitter Patagonia. Thomas is also an esteemed environmental activist. She is a fish physiologist with a PHD in biology from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and is a postdoctoral research associate with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in Boulder, Colorado.

She will join Krystal Martin, founder of the Greener Gloster Project, which advocates for public health and environmental justice in Gloster. The film focuses attention on the severe public health dangers caused by environmental injustice that is taking place in Gloster and many other communities. Thomas is filmed running in an event called the Equitable Action Run Towards Health (Earth) that took place on Oct. 26, 2023, in the nearby Homochitto National Forest, Mississippi.

They will be joined on a discussion panel by local community members, including youth mental health clinician Jene Hinton-Railsback, environmental educator Celeste Roye, NAACP’s past president and current communications chairperson Tobin Johnson, SLO Climate Coalition’s Eric Veium, and Cal Poly Kinesiology Lecturer Nicole Hagobian. The discussion will follow the film presentation. 

Outside Together is a film series sponsored by the Library Foundation of SLO County in conjunction with Cuesta College.