"The Big Picture: How We Got Into This Mess, And How We to Get Out of It" (6.5 minutes)
Robert Reich looks at the rise of Big Money in politics, the decline of our democracy, and Trump's election.
"Sentencing Reform - The Power of Fear" (5 minutes)
It’s time to end mass incarceration. Locking up more and more people for longer and longer doesn’t make us safer.
The U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation. Over 2.3 million adults are currently in U.S. prisons and jails. The incarceration rate in the U.S. has shot up 500% over the past four decades. Yet studies show that locking up more and more people for longer and longer won't make us safer.
Fear-mongering politicians and sensational, stereotyping media coverage has driven bad policies that lock up greater numbers of people. Poor people of color are overwhelmingly and disproportionately targeted.
“Sentencing Reform: - The Power of Fear” is the first film in a new series on sentencing reform. The forthcoming series will highlight the symptoms of mass incarceration and present real, fact-based alternatives.
This episode explores the scope and source of mass incarceration.
"The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz" (1 hour, 45 minutes)
The feature film follows the story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.
Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.