#wu review
This review originally appeared on Shloka’s blog, Pop Culture Scribe.
It’s October and people in many US states have already started voting, either in person or via mail-in ballots. I received my mail-in ballot last week but will be heading to my in-person early voting center on October 24th because I need the thrill of voting via a machine to feel like I gave this my all. If you are an American voter, make a plan and ensure you vote this year. And if you need a reminder of how important elections can be, I give you two wonderful documentaries that highlight all of the work that goes into political campaigning, all of the unnecessary horror of voter suppression, and what it looks like when truly deserving political candidates fight for the chance to represent their fellow citizens in a democracy.
Directed by Rachel Lears, Knock Down the House tells the story of four female Democrats in different parts of the country who ran for election in 2018. These women were not career politicians, but were all inspired to run following the 2016 election, where the shock of not seeing the first woman President get elected quickly gave way to sweeping anger and resolve to go into office themselves. The most famous candidate in the documentary is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She serves as the star of this film and gets more screentime than any other candidate, which is a bit unfortunate as I thought the other ladies were rather brilliant too. But in Ocasio-Cortez’s case, what’s intriguing is that she isn’t a Democrat looking to flip her district - instead she is a progressive looking to upset the establishment Democrat, a complacent white man who can’t even be bothered to show up to a debate and thinks that the voters in his district will just vote for him out of name recognition and sheer misinformed laziness. But with her grassroots campaign, Ocasio-Cortez convinces the people of New York’s 14th Congressional District to vote with their best interests at heart, and thank goodness, they did. In the two years since she was elected to office, we’ve seen how great it can be when someone who actually gives a damn about the world and her constituents comes to Washington.
The other women featured in this documentary are Amy Vilela from Nevada, Cori Bush from Missouri, and Paula Jean Swearengin from West Virginia. They are all incredible women who are running to protect their people from greedy self-serving Republican interests. None of them won their primaries in 2018, but Swearengin and Bush both won in 2020 and I will be eagerly following their races this November to see if they flip their districts/states blue (Swearengin, in particular, is a fascinating woman who bucks the stereotype that West Wirginia coal miners can only be Republicans, and she is running for Senate, which would be such a coup for the country). All three women have incredible stories of why they chose to run in the first place and serve as a great reminder that politicians do not all have to be corrupt, amoral snakes. Sometimes, they can be women who want to protect their communities and serve their country proudly. Also, Netflix put this movie out for free on YouTube, so really, you have absolutely no excuse not to watch it.
Directed by Hannah Rosenzweig and Wendy Sachs, Surge tells a nearly identical story of three women running for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. Like the women of Knock Down the House, they were all “activated” following the 2016 election and are determined to make a difference. This movie does a better job of giving each woman equal time to tell her story and following her campaign, and it also showcases some of the challenges they face on elections days with poor infrastructure that seems designed to discourage voting. There’s also an incisive look at how the Democrats’ Primary Machine works and how candidates depend so much on the support of the Party for monetary and logistical support that could give them a boost and much-needed name recognition during their races.
The film follow Lauren Underwood in Illinois, Jana Lynne Sanchez in Texas, and Liz Watson in Indiana. Again, these three women have different levels of political savvy, and different reasons for why they are running, but they are all united in their passion and commitment to the people of their districts. All three women win their Democratic primaries, but then we get to see how difficult it is to actually flip a district in the General Election when they are up against moneyed Republican interests. Millionaires and lobbyists (and racists and misogynists) aren’t going to let these women win without a fight. Devastatingly, in Indiana, Liz Watson’s grassroots campaign generates high voter turnout, but the Election Office in one county runs out of ballots as they never expected so many voters. Which causes a delay and results in her losing a lot of people who might have voted for her in the first place. While Underwood and Watson get Party support and have people like Obama, Biden, and Sanders show up to their rallies to get out the vote, Jana Lynne Sanchez’s district in Texas is deemed too impossible, so the Party doesn’t help her out. She ultimately loses the election, but because of her efforts, Democrats discovered it was actually winnable, and they will be investing in the candidate who runs there in 2020.
Politics is a complicated and dirty business, but what these two documentaries (that were directed and edited and shot and produced by women, FYI) reveal is that there are still idealistic and determined people that we can get behind. More specifically, idealistic, determined women, who face an uphill battle because women simply aren’t treated fairly in the political arena. It was thrilling to see how excited they were to see other women running for office and formed a supportive clique to cheer each other on regardless of whether they won or lost their own elections. That’s the kind of energy we need in today’s toxic political climate. In addition, these women aren’t taking corporate PAC money and they have a slog ahead of them, but they are fighting for the right to represent us fairly and decently, and they deserve our attention.
So before you vote this year, and in every election following, pay some attention to the people on your ballot. See if there’s a new candidate who is more deserving of your vote than the establishment candidate you’ve been voting for all your life but who has never actually pushed any policies that you want. In Surge, someone talks about how party affiliation has become like a religion - you’ll vote for the person from your Party even if they’re ripping you off. Let’s stop doing that and only vote in the people who actually want a better life for us and our families, instead of pocketing millions from corporate interests. Read up on what these candidates stand for and don’t just vote for someone because they have a (D) or an ® after their name, but because they actually represent the values that matter to you. Get out there and vote, America. We’re all counting on you.
I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions but this year I set out to read 100 books. I would say for no other reason than to challenge myself but truly it was rooted in the fact that I had fallen out of love with reading. I had spent much of my life a total bookworm but somewhere in my late 20s I just…stopped reading. It could have been the shorter commutes where there was no time to settle in, or the fact that I wanted to be a kindle person and just very much wasn’t, or that I had a home overflowing with books that I didn’t want to pick up but felt guilty buying books I did want to pick up. Regardless of the reason, I wasn’t reading and I felt horrible about it. So, 2020 came around and I set a goal (shout out to goodreads for their reading challenge.)
There were no rules to the challenge, though I did decide that I wanted to read actual books whenever possible (remember, the kindle was my downfall,) I wanted to leverage my Boston Public Library card whenever possible (shoutout to the Lucky Day Section for getting me access to the books that usually had waitlists a mile long,) and I would not force myself to finish books I didn’t like. Things were plugging along for the first quarter of the year. Plenty of great books (some greater than others) and a real sense of momentum. I was a reader again!
And then came COVID, a time when people were picking up hobbies and working out at home, and learning to grow wild yeast in jars — all while a once in a lifetime pandemic hovered around us. I didn’t pick up a new hobby (though I did buy a very expensive punch needling kit that I have yet to touch.) I just kept reading. I worked through the backlog of the library books I had stashed before they closed. I started throwing money at small booksellers and bookshop.org. I relished in the escapism of fiction and the rabbit holes of googling topics that came up in non-fiction. I let myself cry and laugh when those releases felt hard to come by in real life.
And when the protests and calls for justice for Black people in America rose after George Floyd’s murder I used books by Black authors to re-educate and challenge me. To push me to be a better, more active, more honest ally.
2020 is not the year any of us thought it would be but it will be the year that I read 100 books — I’m currently at 45 and taking suggestions. It will be the year I fell back in love with reading. It will be the year that I remembered how books can buoy me in rough times and delight me in happy ones. It’s a weird year — I’m just trying to make something good out of it.
Check out some of the books Liz has read so far below!
This review originally appeared on Shloka’s blog, Pop Culture Scribe.
This has been a great year for women directors (which in Hollywood, means that more than two women got to make high-profile movies). Of course, just because a woman is directing a movie, doesn’t mean it’s going to be good, and so I watched One Night in Miami with a lot of hope and my fingers crossed. But I needn’t have worried. First-time director but long-time superstar Regina King absolutely knocks it out of the park.
I didn’t realize the movie was based on a play by Kemp Powers (who also adapted this screenplay), but that fact became evident as the movie progressed and I found myself becoming more and more entranced by the dialogue. This is the story of a fictionalized meeting between four Black American icons: Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Cassius Clay, soon-to-be Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree) who all celebrate in a motel room on the night of February 25, 1964, after Clay has just defeated Sunny Liston to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. The movie actually opens with four different scenes highlighting where these men were in their lives prior to this night and the various struggles they were facing, but as they gather in that motel room, the first feeling you get is one of playful exuberance. Clay is so splendidly arrogant, but having just been crowned as world champion, isn’t that allowed? He declares that he has conquered the world of boxing and he’s only 22, which is such a startling and monumental achievement. But he isn’t the only impressive Black man in that room.
Over the course of two hours, we get to understand each man’s achievements in his sphere of influence. Sam Cooke is a music maestro, charming white audiences with his voice and dubbed the King of Soul. He isn’t just a singer though - he’s also a producer with his own label, through which he tries to empower up-and-coming Black artists. Jim Brown is one of the greatest football players of all time, but he’s now considering a pivot to Hollywood. And then we have Malcolm X, a man who is fighting so hard for Civil Rights, but is also currently facing his own doubts about the leadership of the Nation of Islam, while dealing with escalating harassment from the FBI. He is a man on the edge, and as this night continues, the celebratory atmosphere takes a turn as X starts to lay into Cooke about how he isn’t doing enough with his gifts to speak out for racial justice.
I don’t want to get into more detail because it all unfolds beautifully like the world’s most engaging history lesson. Cooke’s business acumen and his story about Bobby Womack and the Rolling Stones made me cheer. But when X berates him via Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind,” it is a gut punch. Meanwhile, Brown acts as a wonderful mediator, exuding a calm patience built up from years of having to put up with the cognitive dissonance exhibited by his white neighbors back home in Georgia. And you get to see Clay struggle with his impending decision to become a Muslim and join X in the Nation of Islam. This movie captures all four men at such a pivotal moment in their own personal histories, as well as a pivotal moment in the history of Civil Rights in this country and it’s a magnificent thing to watch them debate and argue and ascertain what their duty is as pioneers in their fields to speak up for the rest of the downtrodden and oppressed.
Plays adapted for the screen can sometimes suffer in translation, but thanks to the excellent writing and direction, and pitch-perfect casting (I cannot think of four actors who could better capture both the look and essence of these men), One Night in Miami won’t bore you for a second. Even though they’re in a cramped hotel room, King moves the action around in various ways, either by an interlude on the roof, or a flashback to Cooke singing a few years ago, so you never get too claustrophobic. And let’s face it. Even if the entire movie was just these four men in a room, I would have been fascinated for the entire two hours because of the things they had to say. It is such a frank and complicated discussion of race and activism, as well as a chance to stop and marvel at the singular achievements of these men. It’s a powerful story that leaves you thirsting for more (I need the Sam Cooke and Jim Brown biopics STAT) and many of their discussions about what they owe to their community are still resonant today. Watch it and let your education continue after you’re done.
During the last four years, there have been many issues and concerns that have competed for the public’s attention: the Muslim ban, family separations, an impeachment, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, protests against police brutality and the recent election to name a few. Noted but perhaps less at the media forefront has been the implementation of specific policies both under Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and within individual states that aim to “re-envision” public education through a very conservative lens. In terms of public education, many of the conversations in recent years have focused on the school choice movement and the increasing use of standardized test scores to hold schools “accountable” and label them “good or bad.” The re-envisioning (or dismantling depending on your vantage point), however, which has really solidified in the last few years is unfortunately much broader than that.
InA Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of the School, authors Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider (hosts of the popular podcast Have You Heard) go beyond talking about the conservative agenda and public education solely in terms of privatization and standardized testing. A Wolf explores other aspects of this agenda: vouchers, the rise of (pre-COVID) virtual schooling, the idea of “unbundling education,“ deregulation, limiting the role of organized labor, the use of ratings and advertising in public schools, and, at the heart of it all, free market thinking. More than just positioning efforts to dismantle public education as only a conservative, Republican ideology, Berkshire and Schneider also acknowledge the ways in which Democratic lawmakers have also contributed to a climate in which some not only see education and the way it is currently delivered as something that needs to radically change but also an sector to profit off of at times to the detriment of the most vulnerable student populations.
Both in laying out the current state of public education and providing key historical context, Berkshire and Schneider provide an extensive yet well laid out and easily understandable assessment of the issues at play in light of the substantial funding and efforts being allocated toward a very specific re-envisioning of public schooling that relies less on the idea of public education as a public good meant to benefit the collective and more so on individual needs that prioritize choice, competition and cost cutting. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door is a must read for anyone interested in the current state and future of public education in the United States.
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If purchasing, please consider buying from your local independent bookseller.
Originally posted on An Education.
