Long Island Cares will be hosting a special screening of "Hard Times" on May 21.

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"Hard Times: Lost on Long Island" is scheduled to air on HBO on July 9th at 9pm.

Keep up with festival and community screenings, as well as re-play times.

The official HBO Documentaries page

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The dates have been announced for "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island" at the P-Town Film Festival. 
Please join us for two screenings.

Thursday, June 14 at 2:30pm at Waters Edge 2 (237 Commercial St)

Saturday, June 16 at 3pm at Schoolhouse Gallery (494 Commercial St)

HBO Documentary Films heats up the summer with thought-provoking new films on Monday nights, kicking off a new seven-week series Monday, June 18, exclusively on HBO.

From an unflinching study of America’s complex relationships with canines, to a mesmerizing portrait of preeminent performance artist Marina Abramović, to an inside look at the phenomenon of internet celebrity, to the lives of legendary supermodels, HBO documentaries take subscribers to worlds others rarely see.

This year’s summer series features the work of a wide range of directors, from veterans such as Marc Levin, Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders to exciting first-time filmmakers, including Matthew Akers, Chris Moukarbel and ValerieVeatch.

Upcoming documentaries include (in chronological order):

‘One Nation Under Dog: Stories of Fear, Loss and Betrayal’ (debuting June 18) reveals the sobering realities behind America’s obsession with dogs, using startling images to show not only how far some dog lovers will go for theirpets, but how far the nation has to go before it treats all dogs humanely.

Americans have conducted a long love affair with canines, but lost amidst all the pampering are unpleasant truths about dog ownership, care and commerce, not to mention the daunting odds that face millions of unwanted shelter animals. Directed by Ellen Goosenberg Kent, Amanda Micheli and Jenny Carchman.

‘Me @The Zoo’ (June 25) is an in-depth exploration of the phenomenon of internetcelebrity. Profiling teenage video blogger Chris Crocker, who captured the international spotlight with his infamous “Leave Britney Alone” YouTube declaration, the film reveals how video sharing and social platforms have shaped the way people tell their stories and mediate their lives. An official selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Competition; directed by Chris Moukarbel and Valerie Veatch.

‘Marina Abramović the Artist is Present’ (July 2) is an exclusive, behind-the-scenes portrait of “the grandmother of performance art” as she prepares for a blockbuster retrospective exhibit of her controversial work at The Museum of Modern Art. This mesmerizing cinematic journey inside the world of radical performance reveals an astonishingly magnetic, endlessly intriguing woman who draws no distinction between life and art. Directed by first-time filmmaker Matthew Akers.

‘Hard Times: Lost on Long Island’ (July 9), directed and produced by Marc Levin (HBO’s duPont Award-winning “Triangle: Remembering the Fire” and Emmy-winning “Thug Life in D.C.”), looks at the long-term unemployed and the shrinking of the middle class. Chronicling the lives of four families over a six-month period, beginning in summer 2010, the film chronicles the growing problems and despair of subjects searching in vain for employment.

‘The Tsunami & The Cherry Blossom’ (July 16), recently nominated for a Documentary Short Oscar, follows survivors of Japan’s March 2011 tsunami, who find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. The film is an allegory about the transient nature of life and the healing power of Japan’s most beloved flower. Directed by Lucy Walker (the Oscar-nominated documentary feature “Waste Land”).

‘Birders: The Central Park Effect’ (July 16), reveals the extraordinary array of wild birds who grace Manhattan’s celebrated patch of green and the equally colorful New Yorkers who schedule their lives around the rhythms of migration. A 2012 SXSW selection in Documentary Feature Competition, it focuses on seven subjects who have discovered a profound connection with this hidden natural world and regularly visit the park, including author Jonathan Franzen, Anya, a teenager fascinated with the birds because they are “so alive, active, varied, and beautiful,” and Starr Saphir, the “matriarch” of Central Park bird watching. Directed and produced by first-time filmmaker Jeffrey Kimball.

‘Vito’ (July 23) recounts the life of Vito Russo, one of the founding fathers of the gay liberation movement. Playing a pivotal role in the formative years of the GAA (Gay Activists Alliance), GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), he was also a writer, best known for “The Celluloid Closet,” the first book to examine how LBGT people were portrayed in the movies. Just months before his death from AIDS in 1990, Russo remained an active lecturer on gay issues, traveling to college campuses and gay film festivals. Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz (“Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story”).

‘About Face: Supermodels, Then and Now’ (July 30), directed by portrait photographer and filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (HBO’s “The Black List” and “The Latino List”), explores the lives of some of the fashion world’s most legendary models, highlighting the complex relationship between physical appearance and the business of beauty.

The film features conversations with such celebrated supermodels as Carol Alt, Marisa Berenson, Karen Bjornson, Christie Brinkley, Pat Cleveland, Carmen Dell’Orefice, Jerry Hall, Bethann Hardison, Beverly Johnson, China Machado, Paulina Porizkova, Isabella Rossellini, Lisa Taylor and Cheryl Tiegs, revealing their role in defining — and redefining — beauty over time. An official selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Right now you can save 10% when you purchase the DVD from Amazon.

We receive many emails asking us about, Aundrey Burno,  a young man we filmed in "Thug Life in D.C."  We've kept in touch with Aundrey through letters and he recently wrote something for us to share with those who have been thinking about him.

5-1-12

To Whom It Concerns,

Marc Levin asked me in 1999, do I think that I'll make it out of here...and I replied (no)!!  13 years later, let's say that God is the best of planners and that he will never place a burden upon us we can't bare!!  In the Qur'an 57:13 says: On the day when the hypocrites - men and women - will say to the believers "Wait for us! Let us get something from your light!" It will be said: "Go back to your rear!  Then seek a light!"  So a wall will be put up between them, with a gate therein.  Inside it will be mercy and outside it will be torment."

I am humble and at peace,

Aundrey Burno

TRIANGLE: REMEMBERING THE FIRE
An HBO Documentary

WHEN: Sunday, May 6th at 12:45 pm
WHERE: WORKERS UNITED FILM FESTIVAL: NYIT Auditorium, Broadway at 61st Street

A portion of the proceeds from this special screening of the HBO documentary Triangle:Remembering the Fire will

be donated to the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition!

Click here for more details.

Just as the Occupy Movement shifted the spotlight to income inequality, corporate power and economic justice with its 99% / 1% language, someone unearthed this early-1970s film featuring journalist Al Levin delivering a windswept al fresco lecture against the backdrop of a pre-fiscal crisis New York City. The topic? Income inequality.

A former producer of Bill Moyers and HBO's "America Undercover" series, Levin, a kind of Noo Yawk Cassandra, issues dire warnings about corporate conglomerates and the political power they wield. "How does this whole system work?" he wonders aloud. "What makes it go 'round?" With 50 million people in poverty or at the edge, the truth is plain.

"Poor people are what make the system work," he says bluntly. "Poverty is the fuel. Without poverty, nothing would go round. Poor people are the root, and prosperity is the blossom."

He even addresses the vilification of "illegal immigrants": "Christ, the whole town runs on their backs. They're subsidizing us. If they got a living wage, half the businesses in this town would fold. Finito!"

Little has changed in the last 40 years, except then it was the top 2% who owned 80% of the stock and 90% of the bonds. Today, as the world now knows, it's the top 1%. So Levin's forecast is even more dire.

Levin's son, Marc, said recently, "As the global economy teeters and wobbles in crisis, we want to celebrate this May Day with all those trying to create a more sustainable and just paradigm for economic growth, one that gives everyone a chance at prosperity and security, not just the rich and powerful."

In that spirit we share Al Levin's 1970's sarcastic, semi-satirical rant, "The Way the Eagle Shits."

Filmmaker - Al Levin

One Day on Earth Global Screening INVITE - UN General Assembly

THE FORD FOUNDATION, UNDP, AND THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS present

A Special Screening on International Earth Day of

"One Day on Earth" (1 hr and 45 mins)

Sunday, 22 April 2012 4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. United Nations General Assembly Hall, New York

Opening Music From DJ Cut Chemist.

One Day on Earth will screen in over 160 countries this Earth Day.  We invite you to Join us.

"One Day on Earth" is the first film made in every country of the world on the same day. We see both the challenges and hopes of humanity from a diverse group of volunteer filmmakers assembled by a participatory media experiment. The world is greatly interconnected, enormous, perilous, and wonderful.

Please click here to RSVP.

Courtesy of our friends at LionsGate, you can now stream "The Last Party" here or here

Directed by Marc Levin and Marc Benjamin, Robert Downey, Jr. leads you on a quest to understand democracy in this revealing odyssey into the streets of America and the underbelly of the 1992 Democratic and Republican conventions – joined by an array of movie stars and familiar politicians seen in an unfamiliar light. "The Last Party" is a call to the youth of America, a warning that "if you don't do politics, politics will do you." It is Robert Downey, Jr.'s touching plea to understand and take a stand.

"Triangle: Remembering the Fire" is available on HBO On Demand until 4/22 and on HBO GO until 4/30.  Click here for more details.

Next month, the New York Labor History Association will host two screenings and discussions of "Schmatta." 

Thursday, May 3, 6–8:30 pm at F.I.T.

Screening followed by discussion with  filmmaker Marc Levin, F.I.T. professor Dan Levinson Wilk, Immigrant rights activist May Chen, Workers United Sec’y-Treas. Edgar Romney, Workers United Local 10 leader Joe Raico. 

FREE! Fashion Institute of Technology, “A” Bldg. cafeteria, West 27 St. just east of 8th Av., NYC.

 Co-sponsored by United College Employees of F.I.T., Educators Chapter of the Jewish Labor Committee; Gotham Center (CUNY), & the Frances Perkins Forum (Adelphi).

Thursday May 17^th  6 – 9pm at NYU

Screening followed by discussion with filmmaker Marc Levin, Labor historian Robert Parmet Parmet (York College/CUNY), Workers United Local 10 leader Joe Raico 

FREE! New York University’s King Juan Carlos Center screening room 53 Washington Square South  

Co-sponsored by LaborArts.org; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU; Educators Chapter of the Jewish Labor Committee; United Federation of Teachers’ Jewish Heritage Committee; Gotham Center (CUNY); and Frances Perkins Forum (Adelphi)   

Light refreshments served.    Information at info@laborarts.org or 212 998-2637.

Purchase "Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags" on DVD

"Triangle: Remembering the Fire" has just been added to the Friday evening program of the Workers Unite Film Festival.  Click here for a full schedule and more infomation.

"Brick City" has just been nominated in the Documentary category by the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications.

If you're interesting in viewing the second season again, it has just been made available on iTunes.

The Last Party

Slam

Brooklyn Babylon

Purchase Season One

Purchase Season Two

HBO will re-air the film next Friday, April 6th. It will also be available On Demand beginning April 2nd!

Check out MKG on the regional cover of Sports Illustrated!  Are you ready for Saturday?  Final Four!!!

Clayton riding in the limo!

This past weekend "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," "Captured" and "Dirty Old Town" all screened in Victoria, Texas. 

"Captured" went home with the Visionary Award while "Dirty Old Town" walked away with Best Soundtrack.

See some of the post-"Captured" screening Q&A with Clayton Patterson, Dan Levin and Ben Solomon.

Follow that with the Kentucky Showdown (Louisville vs. Kentucky) at 6:09pm.

Here's a piece from NPR's "All Things Considered" on the Kentucky Showdown.

Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes once ruled the drug trade in Harlem. They came out of retirement to talk business.

During the Harlem heroin plague of the seventies, few dealers were bigger than Frank Lucas and Leroy “Nicky” Barnes. Both made millions selling dope, lived the wide-brimmed-hat high life, enabled the addiction of whole neighborhoods, and, eventually, got caught. Both were locked up and later cooperated with authorities—some might call it snitching. Now, with Lucas confined to a wheelchair and Barnes in some Witness Protection Program locale, each is the subject of a current film. Barnes reports on his life and times in the flava-full documentary Mr. Untouchable. Lucas hit the ultimate Hollywood jackpot, getting Denzel Washington, no less, to play him in American Gangster (reviewed this week in “The Culture Pages”).

And so, three decades after their heyday, these former street titans are still generating commerce. This makes sense, as both insist they were businessmen, first and foremost. The trick for an ambitious black man in the seventies dope game was to minimize the sway of the Italian distributors who had controlled the Harlem scene for decades. Using sheer volume as an edge, Barnes cut increasingly favorable deals with his Mafia partners. He had the biggest clientele—hundreds of thousands of repeat (and repeat) buyers. It was a captive market, and he was their low-cost retailer. Lucas, more of a boutique operator, managed to bypass the Italians altogether by establishing the grisly but exceedingly lucrative “cadaver connection”—a direct line from Asia’s “Golden Triangle” poppy growers straight to 116th Street, smuggling heroin inside the coffins of American soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.

When the possibility emerged that these two old-school street rivals might be willing to engage in what could only be called a historic conversation—they haven’t spoken in 30 years—it was easy to envision yelling, phone slamming, and maybe even a death threat or two. Lucas, as I knew well (from writing in this magazine the original piece upon which American Gangster is based), could go off at any moment. And Barnes, who likes to quote Moby-Dick and King Lear, mocks Lucas’s “country boy” lack of education and perceived lack of finesse in Mr. Untouchable. When it came down to it, however, the two old drug-kingpins-in-winter revealed a familiarity that bordered on a kind of love. Or at least respect for a fellow tycoon.

NICKY BARNES: Hey, hey, what’s up, playa?

FRANK LUCAS: Hey, Nick.

NB: I heard you’re in a wheelchair. What’s going on?

FL: Broke a leg, Nick. Two places.

NB: Damn.

FL: So what’s with you, man?

NB: Chilling, dude.

MARK JACOBSON: You two guys talking is something of an occasion. Ever think you’d be in the history books?

NB: I don’t know about history—

FL: Hey, Nick! I told everybody and their momma you’ll be hooking up with me in Harlem in the next two years.

NB: You won’t see me in Harlem … I gave up 109 federal felony offenses ’cause I had powder in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Too many people would be gunning for me in New York.

FL: Come on, Nick, you don’t give a damn about them little kamikazes out in the street. I been knowing you for fortysomething years.

MJ: Do you remember when you guys first met?

FL: When was it, Nick? The night you come outta jail. Was that 1970, ’69, ’68?

NB: Yeah, ’70. We met through Jimmy Terrell. Remember Jimmy Terrell? Remember Goldfinger?

FL: ’Course I remember the Goldfinger.

NB: We were in Smalls, drinking. You remember this dude Prat that had that habitual stool right next to—

FL: Yeah, Prat! He didn’t live long after that, did he?

NB: Somebody knocked him over. He owed somebody some money or something.

FL: Right. He was going at somebody’s woman…

MJ: You guys have been described as being competitors. Is that true?

FL: Well, Nick wasn’t gonna catch me—I was paying $4,000 a key. Nick, you was probably paying $65,000 or $70,000, weren’t you?

NB: During that time I was paying $35,000.

FL: And I was paying $4,000. So there was no fight then.¹

MJ: Which one of you guys had the best dope?

FL: Mark, here you go! Stirring shit up. Man, I had the best dope in the world. I had 98 to 100 percent pure.

NB: Frank had a nice package, no doubt. I had to get a pen and a pad and mediate my stuff. But when you took the mix out, my thing was close to his. Close enough for somebody not to wait on one when they could get the other. Frank, you were mostly on 116th Street, right?

FL: Yeah.

NB: Well, I had powder in all five boroughs. Not just uptown.

FL: You were big, Nick, all over.

MJ: Suppose each one of you got a pound. Frank Lucas’s business model against Nicky Barnes’s business model—head-to-head, who’s going to make the most money?

FL: That’s easy. The one who got the best dope, that’s who.

NB: Frank’s right. It is always about the product. Once I had a fight with a guy named Steve Austin. I had better dope. Steve knew it. He came up and knocked on the window of my car. “Yo, dude,” he said, “we don’t want you over here.” I said, “I’m gonna put my foot in your motherfuckin’ ass.” In those days, you didn’t shoot nobody because he was on your turf, you know. You had to have hand-to-hand combat. But the buyers didn’t care, because they followed the powder, not the guys who controlled the neighborhood.

MJ: When the movies come out, there’ll be a lot of controversy about whether you guys are being glorified. What about that?

FL: Nick is a good dude who should be glorified, not me.

MJ: Why do you say that?

FL: Because he’s a hell of a good guy.

MJ: But you were both in the same business.

FL: You in the same business as other writers. You don’t go to slit their throat. Do you?

MJ: Frank. I mean, c’mon.

NB: No one should be elevated because of what they did in the drug business. The way we operated—there was a lot of violence, like, ten to twelve homicides, to keep the whole operation running. You can’t glorify that. It’s not something Frank or I would tell any of our children to get into.

FL: Absolutely right, Nick.

NB: Heroin wreaked a lot of havoc and a lot of pain in the black community. I shouldn’t have done it. Maybe I was aware, but I just didn’t give a fuck. I wanted to make money, and that’s what I did. Looking back, I wouldn’t have made those decisions, but it’s a hell of a lot different and much easier to sanitize yourself after the fact.

FL: In our business, you get paid by fear. When the fear factor comes in, that’s when you start to make money. Violence is part of it. You ain’t gonna sweet-talk no motherfucker.

MJ: Who was more corrupt: the dealers or the cops?

FL: The cops was more corrupt. You shake hands with a drug dealer, you got their word. If they don’t do what they say, they’re gonna die. Everyone knows that.

NB: Yeah, yeah, I go with that.

FL: A drug dealer gonna live to his word. I’m not talking about a junkie. I’m talking about a man like Frank Lucas or Nicky Barnes.

MJ: Rudy Giuliani chased both you guys when he was D.A. What do you think about him running for president?

NB: Giuliani would make a good president because he’s a principled guy.

FL: When Giuliani tells you something, he means it. But I don’t think we’re ready for an Italian president. I don’t think we’re ready for a black president. I don’t think we’re ready for a woman president, but I tell you right now: I think Hillary Clinton will win this thing hands down.

NB: Hillary will be the next president.

FL: No question about it.

MJ: You guys have said some pretty harsh things about each other over the years. Nick, what’s your biggest bitch with Frank?

NB: Well, I read he had this multimillion-dollar contract on my life.

FL: Nick, hold on there! You know me a long time, and you know me well. If I had a contract on you, I’d have been hanged 20 or 30 years ago. You know doggone well that I wouldn’t do that.

NB: This was when they had the grand jury. I was with Matty Madonna and Herbie Sperling. You were on the third floor at the MCC.² Do you remember that, Frank?

FL: Absolutely.

NB: There was a corrections officer who said that Frank Lucas went to one of the other corrections officers and told him that Nicky Barnes was down there, and he was trying to set him up.

FL: You believe that? Nick! Listen to me, and hear me real good: Anybody tells you that, they’re a damn liar. You’ve been too close to me.

NB: Just what I heard.

MJ: Nick, when the New York Times called you “Mister Untouchable,” that even got the president’s attention.³ When you first found out about Carter seeing the paper, what did you think?

NB: I thought I had made a mistake, but it was done then. I still thought that I had a really good chance of winning that case, because there’s a difference between a trial in a federal court and one in a state court.

FL: All the difference in the world.

NB: In federal court, they can railroad your ass, man. In state court, you can get a fair hearing and a fair jury.

MJ: A topic that comes up a lot—it came up at a showing of Nick’s movie, and it will when American Gangster opens—is that you can sell a lot of drugs and kill people—

FL: Stop right there. Nick ain’t ever killed nobody. Me either.

MJ: I know you’re a Gandhi kind of guy, Frank. I’m saying you can do all kinds of crimes, but a lot of people feel if you snitch, that’s worse. What do you guys think about that?

FL: I never in my life, not to this day, testified on nobody. Ain’t no sonofabitch in the world who’s ever gotten put in on account of me. Bad cops, yes. But rat that shit—no, no, no, no, no.

NB: When it comes to testifying, I testified against the guys who were in the Council along with me.⁴

FL: Like Guy Fisher.

NB: Yeah, Guy Fisher, Frank James, Wally, Coco, Kenny, and you know, a couple of other guys. When I went into the joint, I gave Guy Fisher a woman of mine and told him to look out for her, take care of her. I didn’t expect him to start fucking her.

FL: Guy Fisher’s a punk. What do you expect out of a fucking punk?

NB: I expected him to do what I was askin’ him to do. Not to betray me. Look, he had women of his own who were as attractive as mine.

FL: You had good-looking women, Nick!

NB: I don’t know why he had to bone her, and I don’t know why the other Council members let him live after they knew he did it. That’s why I cooperated. If I couldn’t get out, I could still pull those motherfuckers in with me.

MJ: Any second thoughts, Nick?

NB: No, man. When I realized they left me on the battlefield to die, I said, “Fuck it!” … I said, “I’ll pull those motherfuckers in, let them see what it’s like.” I would rather be out here in the witness program than to be in jail with them. Why would I wanna be in there with them kinda niggers? I don’t regret it. I saw this show on CNN, with Anderson Cooper. Cats were talking about “Don’t snitch, no matter what happens.” Well, I can’t see how a guy can be considered strong if he lets a bunch of assholes walk all over him and he doesn’t respond, just because of some code that a bunch of idiots have cooked up. Anderson Cooper asked this rapper, “Suppose a child was molested and you knew who this molester was. Would you tell the police?” He said, “No.” So that’s what I’m sayin’—the street guidelines are just moron bullshit.

MJ: Frank? Do you think there’s a time when it’s good to cooperate?

FL: I told you before. I never testified on nobody.

MJ: Some cases were made, Frank.

FL: Look! I have remorse about what I did.

NB: Frank, talk a little softer. You’re yelling.

FL: I have remorse. I never sold nothing to a kid in the street, but I found out that my people had. I didn’t want to sell to kids. I didn’t want to make them junkies. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I justify it by saying during my time, I couldn’t get a job on Wall Street, not even washing toilets. I went to school three days and the teacher wasn’t there two of them. I had to make a living. I didn’t want to be just a damn bum in the street. So that’s what I did. But it’s complicated. When you get there, every rat in the goddamned woods is gonna come running to you. And anytime you don’t got no money, everybody disappears. Tell ’em, Nick.

MJ: Most people say you guys hated each other, but it seems like you were buddies. What’s the story?

NB: I’ll tell you what a lot of people don’t understand. See, you read in the paper about people having shooting wars about turf. But both of us operated in that 116th Street area, and it was no problem. If only one of us had had powder out there, every time the police came out, they would have been able to surveil out that one group. But if there’s a lot of people out there …

MJ: Did you ever think there’d be this whole hip-hop thing? You guys are both mentioned in a million rap songs.

FL: Call them songs? When I came along, we had singing. They might make up songs about me, but I don’t have to like them.

MJ: What about you, Nick? You’re like a hip-hop folk hero.

NB: I never thought anything like this would happen. When hip-hop first started, everybody—I mean the music entrepreneurs—predicted that hip-hop would be dead in five years. They said, “Those motherfuckers ain’t gonna make no money.” But hip-hop rolled along, and look what they’re doing now. They got Jay-Z, Damon Dash, Kanye West, 50 Cent. These guys are doing something legitimate.

FL: At least Nick knows the names. I don’t know none of them. I know Puffy Combs, because of his father.

NB: Oh, Melvin! Melvin Combs.

FL: Melvin used to be at my house a couple of times a week. I’m proud to see Melvin’s son like that.

MJ: Nick, are you curious about how you’re portrayed in American Gangster?

NB: Yeah. But when I heard that Cuba Gooding was doing it, I thought it’ll probably be decent. He’s an Academy Award winner.

MJ: What about Denzel as Frank?

NB: I knew if Denzel played the lead, then it wouldn’t be a bullshit part or a fucked-up script.

FL: Denzel Washington did more than a good job, he did a hell of a job. Nobody in the world’s as good as Denzel.

MJ: Man, I thought you guys might be more at odds. This is a love-in.

FL: We are friends, so you’re missing the whole point.

NB: There were a lot of the people who we were both hooked up with who we both like. Jimmy Terrell, for example, and Turtle and Claude, Peter MacDougal, Frank Moten.

NB: What about the guy who died in the mob riot?

FL: Aww, what was his name? Got killed on the George Washington Bridge. What was his fuckin’ name?

NB: I forgot his name, too, but we knew all of these guys. I guess there’s some nostalgia in it.

FL: It was the good old boys back then, that’s what it was.

NB: Frank, are you taking anything for your broken leg?

FL: They gave me a whole bunch of shit.

NB: There’s a Website out there of a guy named Gary Null. He’s an alternative practitioner, and he offers all kinds of vitamin supplements to cure bone injuries. You really ought to go check him out.

FL: Yeah? I’m going to take this down, man.

MJ: The vitamin connect. Hey, what do you want to have on your epitaph? What do you want your legacy to be?

NB: I’ll tell you what I want them to say on mine. I want them to say, “Boy oh boy, he was old. God damn, he was old.”

FL: Fuckin’ old.

1. A “key” is a kilogram of uncut heroin. Lucas brought his prices down by working with Southeast Asian suppliers, while Barnes purchased his keys from Mafia sources.

2. MCC, the Metropolitan Correction Center, held federal prisoners awaiting trial. Matty Madonna and Herbie Sperling were well-known criminals involved in the drug business. Sperling, a man of diminutive stature, was widely known as being “mean as a snake.” Asked about this, Lucas said, “There ain’t no snake that mean.”

3. Barnes posed for the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 1977. When President Carter saw the image, he was said to have personally directed the Feds to crack down.

4. The Council was the name for Barnes’s inner circle.

Watch "Mr. Untouchable" for free on Hulu until March 31.

Read the original article from New York Magazine

"Mr. Untouchable" is available to stream for FREE for the next 10 days courtesey of Snag Films and Magnolia Pictures. 

The DVD has great extra features including this videotaped phone conversation between Frank Luca and Nicky Barnes, filmed right here in our Blowback offices.  Watch the extra below, stream the film on Hulu or Snag and purchase the DVD here.

Watch the film on two sites - on Hulu via our friends at Snag Films or directly on their site.

Enjoy!

Wow…

Saw “Hard Times” last night at Plainview Old Bethpage Public Library. Hit me hard. Personal stories showing the bigger problem. Was shocked and disturbed. Am losing sleep over it and more aware…Very emotional. Absence of commercials, frankly, is important too. From start to finish, very moving.

As a reporter, I write articles every day about issues like unemployment etc., sometimes including profiles. I write monthly employment/jobs articles. Wrote an article related to this just a few days ago.  But often the numbers are there, but not the faces and feelings. Not the way these people spoke through the documentary.

By showing people, being visual, you make it more real and human. And you did it without pulling heart strings. Was very objective in an odd way. I think unemployment, healthcare, the economy, longer lives without commensurate ways of earning money as you grow older… It’s a tough situation. Basically, I think you got the tiger by the tail with your subject matter. An economy in transition? More like an acrobat in mid air before we know where the landing point is. Occupy Wall Street is about protestors. That’s one step removed from the problem, which is the impact on people going through all this. You let people speak for themselves. Showing not telling. Showing people isn’t a solution… But it at least makes it more difficult to ignore an invisible island… Someone called it the other Long Island. I don’t think it’s the other. It is our island in many respects.

You and the people who worked with you did a good job with a documentary, not turning it into a polemic. I also respect the people who spoke with you. Many things stood out in addition to the people (Alan Fromm, who was at the event: How could all those things happen to one person…Seems like he got the job of Job from the bible…) The eviction, belongings piled on the curb… The fact that government throws people out – so the bank can take over a house. The person who’s being thrown out actually helps pay the sheriff evicting him or her. Shouldn’t government be helping… I think government forgets that we are not just the taxpayers. We are the customers….To see government tossing people out… I wanted to see what government was doing to help these people…Electronic employment help by feds may be efficient, but impersonal…and empty.

The meetings in diners… all of that. I guess LI’s lucky we have these diners, in a weird way. LI’s diners are becoming social centers. That and libraries. This all is, as you said, a middle class problem. At the screening, we talked about how all of this could turn into our kids’ problems, even though it’s ours now.

I was surprised to see the evolution of problems from unemployment to foreclosure etc. A spiral. But when I thought about myself and many people I know, I realized financial problems are here (maybe they always were there…

Anyway, I think on the one hand, people have always had economic problems. It was always the American “dream.” I also think it’s possible that our parents and grandparents somehow expected adversity. They had the ability to adjust to adversity, to start over, to pivot, lose it all and start again. I think many of us define ourselves by what we “do for a living.” Don’t know if we can change etc., but I think having the expectation of change and adversity might make us better able to deal with it.

Answers give you a kind of permission to relax. Questions keep you wondering. I think it’s important for people to see this documentary.

Claude Solnik  

UNBELIEVABLE Comeback by Western Kentucky -
16 down with 4 minutes - they looked so bad - Pres. Obama and Prime Minister Cameron watching -
then something happened - I don't know what - amazing turn of events -
Derrick Gordon was part of comeback but then he almost blew it - with under 2 minutes
he missed 4 foul shots and turned the ball over twice - somehow they pulled it out by one!

Now Western Kentucky will play Kentucky in Louisville on Thursday night -
Derrick Gordon vs Michael Kidd-Gilchrist both teammates from Saint Patrick High School
in Elizabeth New Jersey which sadly will be closing after this year.
They will take the court together for the first time since that memorable game last year 
which is the climax of the documentary  "PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON"

MARCH MADNESS INDEED!

by: Suzanne Rozdeba

http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/billy-leroy-and-friends-spend-one-last-night-in-the-tent/#more-31569

The hand in formaldehyde, the dusty Styrofoam mannequins and the subway signs for sale were long gone. But last night Billy Leroy and around 200 friends celebrated the now-closed antique shop on the Bowery a final time, raising their beers inside the iconic tent that will soon be six feet under.

“It’s sad, but it’s a new beginning,” said Mr. Leroy, patting the coffin like an old friend as neighborhood characters like Clayton Patterson, director Jim Jarmusch and writer Anthony Haden-Guest mingled with the crowd. “It’s an outpouring of love. All of my friends are here. It’s really amazing. I didn’t realize how much people love this place.”

The love was not in short supply because Mr. Leroy’s eponymous shop on East Houston Street at Bowery, which he ran for 10 years, had to close on Jan. 1. In the place of the store will go a two-story development, though the story isn’t entirely tragic. The tent will be gone, but the landlord, Tony Goldman, has assured Mr. Leroy his store will have a space in the building when complete.

By 8 p.m. the tent was at capacity as old friends and the crew from Mr. Leroy’s upcoming film rocked out to the bands The Naked Heroes and The Virgins. Two hours later the funeral bash had spilled out to the sidewalk.

At one point Mr. Leroy — a raconteur if there ever was one — grabbed the mic and shared a tale from his tent’s glory days. “A homeless dude came into the store and he brought me some pieces of junk. I said, ‘Dude, I don’t want this crap. Bring me like a human head or something,’” he recalled. “The next week, he was on 12th Street and saw a beautiful trunk. He was going to bring me the trunk, but it smelled funny. Inside the trunk was a young lady, dead. He was going to bring her to me, but he freaked out, and the cops took the trunk. His name is Spider, and he’s probably slithering around here somewhere.”

Not surprisingly, that wasn’t the only example of gallows humor last night.

“There have been two deaths in this tent. One in the 1980s, there was a junkie that jumped the fence and ODed in the office. The other one, one of the workers committed suicide in the bar next door,” Mr. Leroy said, adding, “The cosmic energy of this store is unbelievable. The ghosts are here.”

The nostalgia was nearly palpable. “This is bringing back a lot of memories. It’s getting to be the end of a period of time,” Mr. Patterson said.

Mr. Haden-Guest sounded a more hopeful tone. “Energy does not die, it just moves. This energy’s going to move,” he said.

Today at 3 p.m. the tent will be torn down and packed into the coffin. Mr. Leroy’s wife, musician Lorraine Leckie will lead a funeral procession around the neighborhood, and then they’ll bury it on the property where it once stood. It will be a somber moment, but Mr. Leroy has plenty to keep him busy while waiting for his new store. He’s promoting his new movie “Dirty Old Town” (about a merchant on the Bowery who has 72 hours to pay his rent) as well as filming for the “Baggage Battles” reality show.

“You’ve got to move on,” Mr. Leroy said. “The neighborhood’s changed forever.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53696718@N07/sets/72157629554249271/with/6969791945/

MARCH MADNESS IS HERE and basketball fans round the nation are getting ready to fill out their brackets and lose themselves in NCAA tournament action. Last year at this time we were getting ready to film the climactic showdown between the nation's top 2 high school basketball teams - New Jersey's Saint Patrick vs Saint Anthony - for our documentary "PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON."

Our film premiered on HBO this fall and is now available on HBO GO. The DVD, with over an hour of bonus material, will be available next week. You can start to place your orders here, right now.

Here's why I think that every hardcore basketball junkie needs this DVD. A few weeks ago I was watching one of the main characters in "Prayer for a Perfect Season," Michael Kidd Gilchrist and his team, the number one ranked Kentucky Wildcats, on national TV. Michael and his two freshman teammates, Anthony Davis and Marcus Teague, were dominating. At half time I switched channels and landed on the Duke vs North Carolina game and there is Austin Rivers (Gilchrist and Rivers went head to head in a High School game last year - check it out on the DVD extras on PFPS) dribbling as the clock counts down, and then launching a three which swishes through at the buzzer and Duke beats it's arch rival North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Then an NBA game comes on and there is Kyrie Irving (Saint Patrick Alumni) leading the Cleveland Cavaliers and looking like the favorite for NBA rookie of the year.

Then I read in the New York Times that Saint Patrick is closing after this year! In the documentary we included scenes about the financial problems the school, like many small parochial, schools, faced. Still this announcement is a shock. Sadly it seems we really captured the end of an era in "PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON."

Relief from this depressing news came when I saw Michael Kidd Gilchrist was just selected first team all SEC. Once again I'm watching basketball on tv, this time a Denver vs Phoenix game, with Al Harrington, another Saint Patrick's alumni. I switch channels and there is Derrick Gordon, another main character from PFPS. It's the Sun Belt Conference Championship game. Derrick and his Western Kentucky team have won 3 games in 3 nights and now pull ahead in the last minutes to claim the Sun Belt Championship and earn a trip to the NCAA tournament.

Is it possible that Western Kentucky, a true Cinderella team, could meet number 1 seed, Kentucky in the first round? We'll have to wait for the brackets on Sunday. It would certainly be amazing to see Michael and Derrick, such great friends and teammates at Saint Patrick, going head to head in the first round of this years NCAA tournament. I might even have to fly down to Orlando and watch that game with their High School Coach, Kevin Boyle. Boyle, now coaching at Mount Verde Academy, is planning his own Spring basketball offensive, hoping to take his new team on a hoops tour of China.

Yes, March Madness is here and this season I'm rooting for all our friends.

"Hard Times; Lost on Long Island" screens tomorrow at 6:30pm as part of the Omaha Film Festival.  The venue is Great Escape - Screen 3 at 7440 Crown Point Avenue, Omaha NE.

Purchase tickets here.

"Dirty Old Town" is now available to buy or rent on iTunes.

The End is Here

Friday, March 9th at Billy's Antiques & Props

After nearly three decades in business the infamous tent housing Billy's Antiques and Props on Bowery and Houston will be taken down forever.  Please join shop owner, Billy Leroy, Proprietor Tony Goldman of Goldman Properties and the filmmakers behind Dirty Old Town as they say goodbye to an iconic landmark.

On Friday, March 9th starting at 7pm, Anthony Haden Guest will host a special farewell celebration with performances, eulogies, poetry, live music and more...

7pm - Kelly Swindall

7:30pm - Lorraine Leckie and her Demons

8pm - The Naked Heroes

9pm - The Virgins

10pm - TV Baby

11pm - DJ King Soloman

12am - AndrewAndrew

On the next day, Saturday, March 10th at 3pm, the tent will begin it's first phase of demolition.  The tarps and fabric, enduring over 30 years of New York weather, both cultural and environmental, will be taken down forever.  In a gothic burial ceremony, the "Flesh" of the tent will be peeled from the skeletal "Bones" of the structure and placed in a coffin.  The coffin will be paraded around the block by pallbearers, while a funewral march is strummed by guitarist and tent-matriarch Lorraine Leckie.  The coffin will be chained to the inside fence, and the remaining hollow structure will be painted fire-engine red in the days to follow.

"Hard Times" will play as part of the Victoria Independent Film Festival on March 24th at 5pm.

A Q & A with the Director, Marc Levin and the Director of Photography, Daniel Levin follows.

Click the link below for ticket info.

http://www.vtxiff.com/2012-films/march-24th/hard-times/

Documentary Film

(HBO)
Triangle: Remembering The Fire (HBO)

Blowback Productions for HBO Documentary Films;
Directed by: Daphne Pinkerson;
Produced by Daphne Pinkerson and Marc Levin;
Written by Michael Hirsch, Richard Lowe and Daphne Pinkerson;
Edited by Richard Lowe & Christopher K. Walker;
Line Producer: Kara Rozansky,
"Scenes from "The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal" Directed by Mel Stuart;
Senior Producer: Nancy Abraham (For HBO);
Executive Producer: Sheila Nevins (For HBO);
Narrated by Tovah Feldshuh

Here's more about the closing, as reported by the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/sports/st-patrick-high-a-new-jersey-basketball-powerhouse-will-close.html

ELIZABETH, N.J. — The oldest parochial school in New Jersey, St. Patrick High School in Elizabeth, which earned a reputation as a basketball powerhouse, will shutter at the end of the school year, the Archdiocese of Newark said.

Despite a shrinking student body, St. Patrick became well known in recent years for producing a disproportionate number of Division I college players, several of whom went on to play in the N.B.A., including Samuel Dalembert of the Houston Rockets, Al Harrington of the Denver Nuggets and Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“It’s a great school that did a lot of great things for a lot of kids,” said the longtime coach Kevin Boyle, who led the team to a 26-1 record last season before leaving for Montverde Academy in Florida.

He added, “It’s very unfortunate, but what are you going to do?”

Enrollment at the school, a stocky, red-brick building hunkered in the seat of Union County’s troubled First Ward, plunged precipitously in recent years, said James Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark. In the last five years, it fell by more than 100, to 151 students. Only 20 freshmen were signed up for the fall of 2012, he added. To compensate, the archdiocese had given the school $100,000 subsidies each of the last four years.

“The school just was not able to meet basic costs,” Goodness said Sunday.

Many school employees could see that dropping enrollment was creating economic woes for the school, Goodness said. But the news that the school would close, passed down via a letter two weeks ago from the archbishop, John J. Myers, and announced to faculty on Friday, still hurt.

“It’s an awful feeling, like someone hit me in the stomach with a bag of bricks,” said Rae Miller, 44, an assistant basketball coach at the school.

Former players said that the atmosphere at St. Patrick instilled in them the habits for success. Grant Billmeier, 27, who went on to be a two-time captain for Seton Hall’s basketball team, credits his alma matter for his achievements.

“It’s more than just a school, more than just a basketball team, it was like a family,” said Billmeier, now the coordinator of basketball operations at Seton Hall.

The high school is on Court Street, amid blocks lined with dollar stores, liquor stores and bail bond shops, and in the shadow of the two aged, gray spires of St. Patrick Church. Outside, the rush of cars on the New Jersey Turnpike can be heard, along with the whoosh of jets from Newark Airport. The sign in front reads, “St. Patrick High School, Est. 1868” and features a cartoon of a short, bearded man in a green suit with his fists raised for fighting.

Donald Myers, 16, a freshman at Washington High School, a public school that faces St. Patrick across from Jackson Park, said he considered transferring to the Catholic school but learned that its declining enrollment had created a vicious cycle.

“I had friends who went to St. Patrick, but they transferred out because the student body was too small,” he said. “I thought about going over there last year and this year,” but when he saw everybody leaving, “I was like, Uh-uh, they don’t have the resources.”

The closing of St. Patrick continues an unsettling trend in inner-city Catholic schools, particularly in North Jersey, where Paterson Catholic shuttered in 2010 and St. Mary in Jersey City shut down in 2011.

Adrian Wojnarowski, who wrote a book called “The Miracle of St. Anthony” — about St. Patrick’s Jersey City archrival, St. Anthony, which handed St. Patrick its only loss last season, in the state tournament — called the news “devastating.”

“You couldn’t imagine high school games with more on the line; they weren’t just fighting for parochial titles or New Jersey titles, they were fighting for national prominence,” he said. “There will never be anything like this again.”

St. Anthony Coach Bob Hurley, who first faced St. Patrick for the state title in 1973, said: “Particularly in the last 15 years, it’s become one of the best rivalries in the country. But when enrollment gets to a certain number, around 200, you’re on a respirator.”

Mike Rice, the coach at Rutgers, said he always scouted St. Patrick players, knowing their scrappy surroundings and strong work ethic made for excellent athletes.

“Those kids from St. Patrick were kind of in the underdog role from not having bright, shiny facilities like everyone else,” he said. “They knew how to grind out a win. They were tough, hard-nosed individuals that just played hard and got better.”

We addressed this issue in 2009, in "Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags" about the rise and fall of New York's Garment Center and the New York Times recently ran this piece about work-themed advertising.

By STUART ELLIOTT

BLUE-COLLAR workers in fields like manufacturing — particularly when they make products on American soil — are again becoming a favorite subject for white-collar workers on Madison Avenue.

The trend was born of the economic worries that followed the financial crisis in 2008. Recently, it is gaining steam — appropriate, since the ads often use blasts of steam to signal something is being built — with proposals in Washington to offer incentives to encourage the location or relocation of factories in the United States.

“We continue to see very heavy emotional response to anything that would leverage against the bad economy,” said Robert Passikoff, president at Brand Keys, a brand and customer-loyalty consulting company in New York.

The trend is even extending beyond advertising. For instance, “ABC World News” is running a series of reports under the rubric “Made in America,” in which anchors and reporters celebrate a preference for buying merchandise made in this country.

The most notable moment to date in the trend came on Feb. 5, when Super Bowl XLVI was played, as marketers paid NBC tens of millions of dollars to run commercials with work themes before the game, during the game and during halftime.

Those commercials included spots for General Electric, part of a campaign carrying the theme “G.E. works,” that celebrated products like refrigerators and turbines being built in the United States; a spot that showed a bottle of new Bud Light Platinum beer being produced in a plant that looked more like a factory than a brewery; and a spot for Hyundai, featuring workers employed at its first American factory, in Montgomery, Ala.

The Hyundai commercial, titled “All for One,” “was intended to celebrate Hyundai’s spirit of trying new things,” said Steve Shannon, vice president for marketing at Hyundai Motor America. “An example is certainly our growth and capabilities in the U.S.”

“Although we didn’t develop ‘All for One’ specifically to communicate a ‘made in the U.S.A.’ message,” he added, “it became part of the story we wanted to tell.”

•

No work-themed commercial that Super Bowl Sunday drew more notice than a spot from the Chrysler Group, known as “Halftime in America,” which featured Clint Eastwood declaring that “the world’s going to hear the roar of our engines.” The spot generated a national debate that was even spoofed on “Saturday Night Live.”

The purpose of the Chrysler commercial, and the others in the genre, was summarized in a speech by Sergio Marchionne, chief executive at the Chrysler Group, to a group of dealers. The intention is “a call to take action to reconsider and contribute to this great land’s economic progress,” he said. “It’s simply a way of saying that everyone, in this land, has the right to dream and the power to turn that dream into reality.”

Another example of the trend also arrived last week when the Tropicana Products division of PepsiCo augmented a campaign for Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice, which carries the theme “Tap into nature,” with ads that play up the provenance of the oranges.

“Grown, picked and squeezed in Florida,” print ads proclaim. “Tropicana Pure Premium is 100% pure Florida orange juice.” In a television commercial that made its debut during the CBS coverage of theGrammy Awards, orange crates labeled “Tropicana Pure Premium 100% Florida” are displayed four times in 30 seconds.

Tropicana Pure Premium had been made solely with Florida oranges until 2007, when PepsiCo began mixing in oranges from Brazil.

That decision, and a similar step by the Coca-Cola Company, which sells orange juices bearing brands like Minute Maid and Simply Orange, led a competitor, Florida’s Natural, part of Citrus World, to add a logo to its packages composed of an American flag and the words “Product of U.S.A.”

(Now that Tropicana Pure Premium has returned to its all-American orange sourcing, Florida’s Natural is proclaiming in ads and on its Web site: “All Florida. Never imported. Who can say that?”)

The timing of the Tropicana Pure Premium campaign “is based on 100 percent Florida Tropicana Pure Premium being nationally available,” said a spokesman for Tropicana Products, Michael Torres.

•

In several instances, there is more to the American-centric efforts by marketers than commercials. For instance, Tropicana Products also changed the labels on packages of Tropicana Pure Premium, adding a sentence that reads “100% pure Florida orange juice.”

And the “G.E. works” campaign is being accompanied by initiatives at General Electric like a four-day conference in Washington this week, meant to shine a spotlight on “what works in America,” as the company described it.

At the conference, Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and chief executive at G.E., discussed plans that include the opening of three G.E. Aviation plants in 2013, in Alabama, Mississippi and Ohio, and the company’s hiring of 5,000 American veterans in the next five years.

For all the drumbeating for American workers, said Mr. Passikoff of Brand Keys, his research indicates that many consumers do not shop specifically “for something made in one place or another” because they have heard “in the past 20 years so much talk of a ‘global economy.’ ”

For example, in the automotive category, where a car is built “is not one of the drivers, pardon the pun” in deciding whether or not to buy it, he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/business/media/made-in-america-resonates-with-marketers.html?_r=1&src=tp

"Hard Times" is set to screen as part of the Omaha Film Festival on March 8 at 6:30pm.  For more information or to review or comment, please visit our film's page.

http://omaha.festivalgenius.com/2012/films/hardtimeslostonlongisland_marclevin_omaha2012

It's finally here!

We've selected our favorite deleted scenes and included full interviews with coaches, Bob Hurley and Kevin Boyle in the Bonus Materials.

Click to purchase on Amazon

Our good friend, Bob Holman has a new show on LinkTV called "On the Road." 

On the Road

What happens when a downtown New York poet of the hip hop and slam persuasion discovers that the roots of spoken word go back thousands of years and span the globe? If he's Bob Holman, he goes On the Road to track them down! He trades stories, fun, recipes, insights, jokes, songs, and poems. Along the way, he gets passionately immersed in the Endangered Language crisis -- over half the world's 6500 languages will disappear before the end of this century. Holman guides us to the bottom-line question of survival of these systems of consciousness with respect, joy, and dedication to diversity. He throws himself into the life -- shares the meals, participates in the ceremonies, dances and parties. His enthusiasm infects the series' fast-paced style.

Produced by Ram Devineni and Beatriz Seigner. Hosted by Bob Holman.

http://www.linktv.org/programs/on-the-road-episode-1

http://www.linktv.org/programs/on-the-road-episode-2

http://www.linktv.org/programs/on-the-road-episode-3

http://www.linktv.org/video/7272/postcards-from-kathmandu

Q&A with Marc from IFC's Stranger Than Fiction series - Winter 2011.

"Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags"

This Sunday (02/12) both "Triangle: Remembering the Fire" and "Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags" will screen as part of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

See here for schedule and tickets.

http://www.ajff.org/films/schedule

This Saturday (02/11/12), "Triangle: Remembering the Fire" will screen as part of the Everett Film Festival in Everett, Washington.

Tickets are available through the festival website.

http://www.everettfilmfest.com/index

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/Brahm1700/154066

Arizona's Republican Legislature could virtually wipe out public employee unions in a sweeping new package of legislation far broader than the collective-bargaining bills that shut down Wisconsin's Capitol last spring. 

The bills would:

-Make it illegal for government bodies to collectively bargain with employee groups. Public safety unions would be included in the ban.

--End the practice of automatic payroll deductions for union dues. 

--Ban compensation of public employees for union work.

Wisconsin's collective bargaining law enacted last year made unions effectively irrelevant by limiting issues that could be bargained by a government and an employee group. Arizona's bills would do away with collective bargaining entirely and also go beyond Wisconsin law by including public safety unions.

Coupled with Gov. Jan Brewer's plan to do away with civil-service protections  for state employees, the new legislation could make Arizona ground zero for union protests during this election year.

The Goldwater Institute  worked with state lawmakers to draw up the bills. The libertarian think tank has churned out research and reports over the past few years highlighting what it views as excesses in public-sector employment.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the guest of honor at Goldwater's annual dinner last November. Walker had some advice for Arizona legislators when I interviewed him on "Sunday Square Off."

The package of bills is scheduled for a hearing at 9 a.m. Wednesday before the Senate Government Reform Committee.

Please see our Facebook page for photos from the event.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150495579362965.369300.109261007964&type=1

Thank you from Blowback!

We wanted to share two clips that feature her song "I'd Rather Go Blind." 

The first clip is from the documentary, "Godfathers and Sons."  In it, Marshall Chess shares the story of hearing of the death of his father, Leonard Chess and the impending end of Chess Records.

The second is from the feature film  "Cadillac Records."  In a breathtaking performance, Beyonce, plays Etta, recording this classic song.

RIP Etta your soul lives on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/foreclosure-south-carolina-primary-2012-gop_n_1199441.html

The battle for the Republican presidential nomination has so far been waged in states relatively untouched by the Great Recession. Now it heads to three states with some of the country's highest rates of unemployment and foreclosures.

In South Carolina, where primary voters hit the polls on Jan. 21, unemployment's flying high at 9.9 percent. After that, elections will be in Florida, with a 10 percent unemployment rate, and Nevada, where it's 13 percent. The jobless rates in Iowa and New Hampshire are 5.7 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.

Nevada leads the nation in both joblessness and foreclosures. One out of every 16 homes in the state was subject to some type of foreclosure filing in 2011, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, an online marketplace and foreclosure data firm. It's the fifth consecutive year the Silver State has topped RealtyTrac's list. Florida's seventh, with filings on more than 2 percent of homes.

Frontrunner Mitt Romney hasn't pandered to struggling Nevada homeowners. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in October he supports the government stepping aside: "Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom."

It's not likely Romney will have much more to say on his next visit. The candidates didn't talk foreclosure policy in Iowa, even though the state attorney general is leading national foreclosure settlement negotiations with the country's biggest banks. Only Jon Huntsman, who didn't bother to campaign in the Iowa, has taken a position on the settlement.

While the candidates have spoken in broad terms about hard times and recovery, they've offered few specifics on unemployment policy.

Could that change in South Carolina? For the past year lawmakers there have pushed controversial reforms to the unemployment insurance system. State Republican lawmakers succeeded last year in reducing the duration of state-funded jobless aid from 26 to 20 weeks. Now they're pushing to require drug testing and to force the long-term jobless to perform part-time volunteer work.

The South Carolina state senators leading the effort said they don't expect the GOP primary to bring their cause extra national attention (though Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have said in passing that they support drug testing the jobless, so maybe that proposal will get more scrutiny).

"The unemployment issues and that sort of thing haven't been anything anybody's talked about with any of the candidates that I'm aware of," state Sen. Kevin Bryant (R), a leading unemployment reformer, said in an interview. "I think for your average voter, that's probably too specific to campaign on."

The economy was already a top concern in New Hampshire, despite the state's relatively strong economy. Six out of 10 New Hampshire voters told exit pollsters the economy was their top concern, and 94 percent said they were worried about it.

It is critical to empathize and help empower those who have been victimized, by no fault of their own, by the failed "trickle down economics" of the last 30 years.  It is also time to reclaim "free enterprise," for the 99% of Americans who have been left behind by Romney, Bain, Wall St., Washington DC and their fellow 1%er's.  This is not about dividing American's or redistributing the wealth (get that Rick Santorum.)  The facts are in - for the last 30 years the wealth has been redistributed - mostly to the top 1%.  If the 99% of Americans who have been struggling to keep up act in unison across the political spectrum, it will be the most united the citizens of this great country have been in years.  To do that we have to put a human face on the consequences of this predatory, corrupt, crony brand of capitalism.  That is what the short film "King of Bain" tries to do and it is what the documentary "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island"
does in a very compelling fashion.

By: Sabrina Tavernise

Conflict between rich and poor now eclipses racial strain and friction between immigrants and the native-born as the greatest source of tension in American society, according to a survey released Wednesday.

About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are “strong conflicts” between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness.

The share was the largest since 1992, and represented about a 50 percent increase from the 2009 survey, when immigration was seen as the greatest source of tension. In that survey, 47 percent of those polled said there were strong conflicts between classes.

“Income inequality is no longer just for economists,” said Richard Morin, a senior editor at Pew Social & Demographic Trends, which conducted the latest survey. “It has moved off the business pages into the front page.”

The survey, which polled 2,048 adults from Dec. 6 to 19, found that perception of class conflict surged the most among white people, middle-income earners and independent voters. But it also increased substantially among Republicans, to 55 percent of those polled, up from 38 percent in 2009, even as the party leadership has railed against the concept of class divisions.

The change in perception is the result of a confluence of factors, Mr. Morin said, probably including the Occupy Wall Street movement, which put the issue of undeserved wealth and fairness in American society at the top of the news throughout most of the fall.

Traditionally, class has been less a part of the American political debate than it has been in Europe. Still, the concept has long existed for ordinary Americans.

“Americans have always acknowledged that there are Rockefellers and the lunch-bucket guy,” said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, based at the University of Chicago. “But they believe it is not a permanent caste, but a transitory condition. The real game-changer would be if they give up on that.”

Going by the survey’s results, they have not. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said the rich became wealthy “mainly because of their own hard work, ambition or education,” a number unchanged since 2008.

The survey’s main question — “In America, how much conflict is there between poor people and rich people?” — was based on language used by Mr. Smith’s center at the University of Chicago, Mr. Morin said.

Mr. Smith said the question was often understood to mean, “Do the rich and the poor get along?” and “Do they have the same objectives?”

The issue has also become a prominent part of the political debate. President Obama has pressed the case that income inequality is rising as election season has gotten under way.

It has even crept into the Republican presidential primary race. At a debate in New Hampshire last Saturday, Rick Santorum criticized Mitt Romney for using the phrase “middle class,” dismissing the words as Democratic weapons to divide society. And conservatives have been wringing their hands over Newt Gingrich’s recent attacks on Mr. Romney’s past in private equity, saying they are a misguided assault on free-market capitalism.

Independents, whose votes will be fought over by both parties, showed the single largest increase in perceptions of conflicts between rich and poor, up 23 percentage points, to 68 percent, compared with an 18-point rise among Democrats and a 17-point rise for Republicans. Sixty-eight percent of independents believe there are strong class conflicts, just below the 73 percent of Democrats who do. (The survey’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for results based on the total sample.)

“The story for me was the consistency of the change,” Mr. Morin said. “Everyone sees more conflict.”

The demographics were surprising, experts said. While blacks were still more likely than whites to see serious conflicts between rich and poor, the share of whites who held that view increased by 22 percentage points, more than triple the increase among blacks. The share of blacks and Hispanics who held the view grew by single digits.

What is more, people at the upper middle of the income ladder were most likely to see conflict. Seventy-one percent of those who earned from $40,000 to $75,000 said there were strong conflicts between rich and poor, up from 47 percent in 2009. The lowest income bracket, less than $20,000, changed the least.

The grinding economic downturn may be contributing to the heightened perception of conflict between rich and poor, said Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“Rich and poor aren’t terribly distinct from secure and unemployed,” he said.

The survey attributed the change, in part, to “underlying shifts in the distribution of wealth in American society,” citing a finding by the Census Bureau that the share of wealth held by the top 10 percent of the population increased to 56 percent in 2009, from 49 percent in 2005.

“There are facts behind it,” Mr. Smith said of the findings. “It’s not just rhetoric.”

Robert Rector, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, took issue with that, arguing that government data routinely undercounted aid to the poor and taxes taken from everyone else.

To him, the findings did not mean much, “other than that the topic has been in the press for the last two years.”

http://www.blowbackproductions.com/84/blowback-productions/federal-artist.html?galAlbum=38

http://www.blowbackproductions.com/84/87/prisoners-of-the-war-on-drugs.html?galAlbum=42

***CHICAGO PREMIERE***

Facets Cinematheque

1517 W. Fullerton Ave.

Jan. 7th & 8th  

Showtimes: 

Sat. Jan. 7th @ 7 & 9 p.m.

Sun. Jan. 8th @ 1, 3 & 5 p.m

more info & tickets 

Official after party @ aliveOne 2683 N Halsted  

Sat. Jan. 7th @ 11pm,

 w/ DJ Nick Castle & DJ Moppy

"The film drips with sweaty ambiance and guerrilla-style energy." -  Variety

“A low Budget Ode to No-Budget NY.” - The Village Voice

“A vibrant, visceral portrait of the streets of New York at their most sublime.” - W Magazine

“When the [Lower East Side] is chock full of high rise condos and Starbucks shops, we will look to films like DIRTY OLD TOWN to remind us of what it once was that grew beneath those walls.” - New York Press

Watch The Trailer

A Gonzo Narrative by young trio Jenner Furst, Daniel B. Levin and Julia Willoughby Nason. Produced by Paul Sevigny. From Blowback Productions and Executive Producer Marc Levin. Spun from the New York Underground and Cult Documentary "Captured" this Indie Feature is a Post 911 Postcard for a place, physical, spiritual and emotional, that has moved on. Down on the Bowery, with 72 hours to pay the rent, the iconic Billy's Antiques and Props draws in a cast of Bohemian Dinosaurs, young and old, scrambling to survive in a Dark Comedy / Neo-Realist Tone Poem that captures the last breath, a fleeting vapor, of old New York. After independent Theatrical Releases in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berlin, and special VIP premieres in London and Paris, this film continues to redefine the independent landscape and has been picked up by Matson Films for a broader US theatrical release, as well as a digitally release in March 2012 by Filmbuff.  In January 2012 Billy's Antiques and Props will be torn down forever. Come see the only film to ever capture the essence of this infamous gathering place.  For press inquires please contact dirtyoldtownmovie@gmail.com

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A special thanks and congratulations to the family members who shared their stories and brought the history alive.

http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/page/788-the-alfred-i-dupont-columbia-university-award-winners/594

By: Dave Jamieson

JOLIET, Ill., and FONTANA, Calif. -- Like nearly everyone else in Joliet without good job prospects, Uylonda Dickerson eventually found herself at the warehouses looking for work.

"I just needed a job," the 38-year-old single mother says.

Dickerson came to the right place. Over the past decade and a half, Joliet and its Will County environs southwest of Chicago have grown into one of the world's largest inland ports, a major hub for dry goods destined for retail stores throughout the Midwest and beyond. With all the new distribution centers have come thousands of jobs at "logistics"companies -- firms that specialize in moving goods for retailers and manufacturers. Many of these jobs are filled by Joliet's African Americans, like Dickerson, and immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

But many bottom-rung workers like Dickerson don't work for the big corporations whose products are in the warehouses, or even the logistics companies that run them. They go to work for labor agencies that supply workers like Dickerson. Last year, she found work as a temp through one of the myriad staffing agencies that serve big-box retailers and their contractors. Thanks largely to the warehousing boom, Will County has developed one of the highest concentrations of temp agencies in the Midwest.

Dickerson, grateful to have even a temp job, was taken on as a "lumper" -- someone who schleps boxes to and from trailers all day long. As unglamorous as her duties were, Dickerson became an essential cog in one of the most sophisticated machines in modern commerce -- the Walmart supply chain. Walmart, the world's largest private-sector employer, had contracted a company called Schneider Logistics to operate the warehouse. And Schneider, in turn, had its own contracts with staffing companies that supplied workers.

The experience would change the way Dickerson saw the retail industry -- particularly during the frenetic run-up to the holidays, when workers are under tremendous pressure to get products out the door and into stores.

"I don't think people know what the people in those warehouses have to go through to get them their stuff in those stores," Dickerson says. "If you don't work in a warehouse, you don't know."

Dickerson quickly discovered that the work wasn't easy, if there was any work at all. Each morning she showed up at her warehouse, she wasn't sure whether she'd be assigned a trailer and earn a day's pay. She says there were days that she and many temps were told simply to go home, without pay, since there wasn't as much product to unload as expected. Sometimes Dickerson was told they didn't have any trailers light enough for a woman, she says.

But on most days the warehouse teemed with lumpers, many of them wearing different colored t-shirts to signify the different agencies they worked for. Dickerson herself would work for two different labor providers within the same warehouse in a little more than a year.

The difficulty of a lumper's day often went according to chance. A lucky lumper might be assigned a container filled with boxes of Kleenex or stuffed animals, while an unlucky lumper might pull a container filled with kiddie swimming pools or 200-pound trampolines. For the heaviest lifts, Dickerson would be assigned a partner, and the two would split the pay for the trailer, moving the massive boxes onto pallets by hand.

The job was fast-paced and stressful. Dickerson says supervisors would walk along the warehouse's bay doors, marking the workers' progress over time. The supervisors, Dickerson and other workers say, often told them to speed it up if they wanted to be invited back. Many of the workers were temps with no job security and no recourse. And the local unemployment rate, then around 11 percent, promised a long line of potential replacements.

"By the end of the day, your body hurts so bad," says Dickerson, who was among a small minority of females working as lumpers at the warehouse. "You tell them you can't do it the next day, ... they'll tell you, 'We've got four more people waiting for your job.'"

For a while, Dickerson worked according to "piece rate" -- she was paid not by the hour but by the trailer -- a stressful pay scheme meant to encourage her and her colleagues to work faster and faster, and one that the labor movement worked hard to abolish in many industries in the 20th century. Each paycheck was different than the last, and most of them were disappointingly low, she says. In her year at the warehouse, Dickerson says she never had health benefits, sick days or vacation days. If she didn't unload containers, she didn't get paid.

"It all depends on how fast you work," she says. "It's like a race. You're racing to get done with the trailer so you can get another one. Otherwise, you won't get enough money."

The warehouse floor wasn't a very welcoming place for a woman, Dickerson says. As one of the relatively few female lumpers, she says she was often fending off crude overtures from male co-workers. And then there were the bathroom issues. While it was piece rate when it benefited the boss, the clock came on for break time. Each day Dickerson had two 15-minute personal breaks in addition to her lunch, but the warehouse was so sprawling -- it covered ground equal to several football fields -- that it could take her five minutes to walk each way to get some air or use the bathroom, leaving her with only five minutes of personal time.

"When I used to go to the bathroom, I literally had somebody counting down the minutes," Dickerson says.

It was particularly difficult when she was on her period and she felt couldn't use the restroom when she needed to. Eventually, she was being reprimanded for too many breaks, she says. Worried about losing her job, she says she tried so hard to avoid using the bathroom that she eventually developed a bladder infection.

Physically and emotionally drained, Dickerson stopped showing up at the warehouse earlier this year.

"My body still is not the same," she says. "I still have aches and I still have pains. I have migraines because of the stress I went through working at that place."

Dickerson says she's now living in a house where the electricity and water have been shut off, sharing a cell phone with some of her neighbors. She's on government-sponsored health care, just as she was while working at the warehouse, and she now relies on food stamps to get by.

The one place she refuses to take her food stamps is Walmart.

Walmart may have been the end beneficiary of Dickerson's sweat, but the big-box retailer wasn't directly responsible for her low pay or her aching body. That's one of the many benefits to an employment arrangement based on outsourcing and subcontracting: The corporation at the top indemnifies itself from any unpleasantness at the bottom, thanks to the smaller corporate players in the middle. Many American companies have woken up to this fact, with broad implications for the future of blue-collar work.

"It seems to be spreading like wildfire," Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of American labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says of such outsourcing, particularly as it relates to temp workers like Dickerson. "All of these companies, wherever they possibly can, they want to create a workforce that doesn't work for them. The question is, Why? What is the incentive?"

"They're smart," he says. "They run the numbers."

Earlier this year, temporary workers at a Pennsylvania plant packing Hershey products staged a mass walkout over what they described asabusive working conditions. The workers, who were students from Asia and Eastern Europe here on J-1 guest visas for the summer, said they were required to lift 50-pound boxes throughout the day and were threatened with deportation if they couldn't keep up. Although they packed Hershey goods, the students were employed by a staffing company twice removed from Hershey, which had more than $5 billion in revenues last year. Similar outsourcing has spread to much of the American food-packing industry.

But such sub-contracting isn't contained to warehouses and plants. In an effort to cut costs, even hotels have started quietly contracting out a considerable chunk of their back-of-the-house workforce to labor

agencies. Hyatt, for example, has replaced many of its housekeepers with cheaper temp workers. Hyatt's direct hires now work alongside many lesser-paid agency workers, some of whom work on a temporary basis for years on end, tracking the minimum wage.

Such subcontracting enables corporations to essentially take workers off their books, foisting the traditional responsibilities that go with being an employer -- paying a reasonable wage, offering health benefits, providing a pension or retirement plan, chipping into workers' compensation coverage -- conveniently onto someone else. Workers like Dickerson, of course, aren't accounted for when Walmart touts that more than half of its workforce receives health coverage.

2011 WORKERS VOICE AWARDS WINNERS
Best Film (Feature)
A Better Life. Director: Chris Weitz (Summit/Green Orchard)

Best Film (Documentary)
Triangle: Remembering the Fire. Director: Marc Levin, Daphne Pinkerson (Blowback Productions/HBO Films)

Best Television Show (Drama)
Friday Night Lights. Producer: Peter Berg, Brian Grazer, David Nevins (NBC/DirecTV)

Best Television Show (Comedy)
Parks and Recreation. Producer: Greg Daniels, Michael Schur (NBC)

Best Television Show (Reality)
Dirty Jobs. Producer: Craig Piligian (Pilgrim Films/Discovery Channel)

Best Art Exhibit or Display
Wisconsin Labor: A Contemporary Portrait. @The Overture Center for the Arts (Madison, WI)

Best Online Video Short
"We Are Wisconsin". Producer: Finn Ryan, David Navala (on vimeo)

Best Book (Fiction)
A Moment in the Sun - John Sayles (McSweeney's)

Best Book (Non-Fiction)
Griftopia - Matt Taibbi (Spiegel & Grau)

Best Song (for Listening)
"I Need A Dollar" - Aloe Blacc (Stone's Throw)

Best Song (for Rallying)
"Union Song" - Tom Morello (New West)

More observations and trends about what was nominated and won and delving deeper into certain categories will come later.

ABOUT THE AWARDS
The awards were based on a survey of people in the arts, entertainment, union, working family advocacy, and political arenas first generating various nominations before determining these winners. They are an attempt to shine a light on works that reflect the voices of workers today which is part of the mission of PopWork USA. See the full list of all works in every category that were under consideration, and go check them all out!

Criteria for Awards: must evoke voices of workers or issues of working families; Released or were in public sphere between August 1, 2010 - July 31, 2011; commercially available or easily accessible.

They are worthy of your attention and sharing with others. We are just skimming the surface in terms of the stories out there and ways to convey their messages in an entertaining or provocative way.

by: Arthur Delaney

WASHINGTON -- During a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives this week, Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) suggested the unemployed can't find jobs because of their own bad decisions.

"I have been back in my district, and we do town halls all the time," Reed said. "And what I've heard from small business owners across our district is that one of the main reasons that they cannot hire individuals is because they simply cannot pass a drug test."

This year more than ever, Republicans have brought up again and again the topic of unemployed people using drugs. Lawmakers in a dozen state legislatures pursued jobless drug testing bills in 2011, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, in an unprecedented flurry of legislative activity on the issue. But a major obstacle to those proposals is that federal law does not allow states to deny unemployment benefits for reasons not related to the circumstances of a person's unemployment -- though 20 states do have laws disqualifying workers from receiving benefits if they're fired for a drug-related reason.

The legislation percolating through the states culminated in Congress, where Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill on Tuesday to allow states to do all the drug testing they want. NASWA director Rich Hobbie, who's worked in the unemployment insurance field since 1975, said it's the first time a bill to drug test the unemployed has made it so far. The fate of the provision is currently in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has said he finds it ridiculous.

The House legislation sends a message: Not all unemployed are created equal; some would rather smoke pot than work. Accordingly, a portion of the huge amount the government has spent on unemployment benefits -- $160 billion in 2010 alone -- has been a waste.

What evidence do Republicans have that drug use is a problem among the unemployed? None that they've been willing to share. Ask a Republican politician's staff for additional information on his or her anecdote about the stoned jobless, and they'll tell you it's just something they hear about all the time back in their districts, and you have to take their word for it.

Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee -- and the man most responsible for the House bill -- acknowledged as much in an interview. In the spring, he said, his committee will hold a hearing on the topic to gather more information. In the meantime, he said, letting states require testing would be a good way to study the problem.

"I think we do need to get more data. That's why I think letting the states make this decision isn't imposing a set of requirements on them. They'll be able to examine their own policies, and it's going to be different in every state," Camp said.

"What you don't want to do is have somebody get to the final stages of applying for a job and then fail a drug test and then be denied their ability to work," Camp continued. "So it's really about making sure people are ready both for skill sets and available for the jobs that may come up. And states will be able to decide how to address that, whether it's a screening, whether it's assistance."

Several states have shown that they want screening. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said this year, "I so want drug testing. I so want it." She claimed that of hundreds of people wanting work with a local employer, half flunked a drug test. "We don't have an unemployment problem," she said. "We have an education and poverty problem."

Upon investigation, however, the claim proved completely untrue. It turned out that less than 1 percent of the local employer's hires tested positive. So last week, when Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) used a similar example and his office declined to provide any additional details, it seemed safe to disregard it as pure class warfare -- even as Republican leaders made Kingston their spokesman on the issue. (His proposal is different from the one that passed the House in that it would require states to drug test the jobless, not just allow them to do so.)

The Huffington Post reached out to businesses in Kington's Georgia district, however, and connected with Trey Cook, owner of Savannah Tire, a tire and auto repair company with 125 employees and eight locations throughout the Savannah area. Cook said that on average, his company has received 15 to 20 job applications per month for the past four years. During that time, he said, 40 percent of applicants failed the drug test, though he did not have detailed data.

"It is quite surprising to me," he said.

Cook said asking applicants to pass a drug test earns Savannah Tire a deal on workman's compensation insurance. "Even more," he said, "in our shop, they're working with heavy equipment. Hurting themselves or others, we see that as a liability."

And Rep. Reed wasn't just making stuff up when he said on the House floor that businesses in his New York district complained of job applicants failing drug tests. Though his office made no effort to prove it, the business community in his district insists it's a problem.

Dan Porter, director of Chemung Schuyler Steuben Workforce New York, a job training nonprofit, is not a fan of demagogic attacks on unemployed people. But he said that over the past three to five years, the hundreds of businesses he's worked with have told him job applicants fail drug tests at a rate of 10 to 30 percent. Marijuana is the main culprit.

"I can tell you there are individuals we have that were on unemployment for a significant period of time," Porter said. "Additionally, while they were on that, they were receiving food stamps, and also during that time we would be training them to the tune of thousands of dollars. We get this all done, and then they go to the job and they fail the drug test and they can't get hired. ... It's a huge drain."

Denise Ackley, director of the nearby Corning Area Chamber of Commerce, said employers make people pee in cups for legal reasons. "You would never want to be caught having an accident or a breach of security ... and then find out there was a drug history and the employer was not testing," Ackley said. "We are definitely in a sue-happy society."

Porter's got informal anecdotes and no detailed data, but positive drug tests have become such a concern that in June, his agency launched an effort to get the word out. The "Think Again, Quit to Get Hired" public awareness campaign featured radio and TV ads during the summer, and it continues online at www.quit2gethired.org. The ads say that up to 50 percent of area workers can't pass a pre-employment drug test (the higher rate, Porter said, reflects what has happened with a narrower set of employers). As far as Porter knows, his is the first workforce agency to publicize widely the issue of drug use and hiring, though he suspects it's a national problem.

According to the government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health for 2010, unemployed people were more than twice as likely to use drugs than people with full-time jobs. The rate of drug use among the fully employed was 8.4 percent, compared with 17.5 percent for the unemployed. It's a striking statistic -- even though not everyone looking for work is necessarily eligible for unemployment insurance; people who quit of their own accord, or who were fired, or who just entered the workforce, or who have been out of work for too long are ineligible for benefits.

Anecdotal evidence supports both sides of the argument. Earlier this year in Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott championed a new law requiring every single welfare applicant to pass a drug test. Before a federal judge halted the policy for flagrant unconstitutionality, it revealed that welfare applicants used drugs at an even lower rate than the general population. While surveys put overall drug use at 8 percent, just 2.5 percent of Florida welfare applicants tested positive.

Nevertheless, a right-wing think tank claimed huge savings from the law -- in an analysis that a federal judge ridiculed as flawed -- and statehouse Republicans across the country cited Scott's bill when they proposed bills to drug test either welfare applicants or unemployment insurance claimants. The analysis wasn't strong enough to dissuade the National Employment Law Project, a respected worker research and advocacy group, from using what happened in Florida to say drug testing the jobless is a waste of money.

During a floor debate in Congress on Tuesday, Democrat after Democrat raged against the Republican bill in an effort to destroy the notion that a person can be laid off through no fault of his or her own. Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) said it sounded sensible to ask people not to be on drugs when they search for work, but that the measure sent a different message.

"It isn't sensible to say to someone, 'If you've been looking for work day after day and week after week and trying your best to find your next job, it's your fault if you didn't find it,'" he said. "But that is essentially what this bill says: If you are unemployed, look in the mirror. It's your fault."

WASHINGTON -- Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans – nearly 1 in 2 – have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too `rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax cut, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

"There's no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen," Rector said. "As we come out of recession, it will be important that these programs promote self-sufficiency rather than dependence and encourage people to look for work."

Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold – roughly $45,000 for a family of four – because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job. Housing and child-care costs are consuming up to half of a family's income.

States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy. By raw numbers, such families were most numerous in California and Texas, each with more than 1 million.

The struggling Americans include Zenobia Bechtol, 18, in Austin, Texas, who earns minimum wage as a part-time pizza delivery driver. Bechtol and her 7-month-old baby were recently evicted from their bedbug-infested apartment after her boyfriend, an electrician, lost his job in the sluggish economy.

After an 18-month job search, Bechtol's boyfriend now works as a waiter and the family of three is temporarily living with her mother.

"We're paying my mom $200 a month for rent, and after diapers and formula and gas for work, we barely have enough money to spend," said Bechtol, a high school graduate who wants to go to college. "If it weren't for food stamps and other government money for families who need help, we wouldn't have been able to survive."

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income – about 57 percent – followed by seniors over 65. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

Even by traditional measures, many working families are hurting.

Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade, up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.

Among low-income families, about one-third were considered poor while the remainder – 6.9 million – earned income just above the poverty line. Many states phase out eligibility for food stamps, Medicaid, tax credit and other government aid programs for low-income Americans as they approach 200 percent of the poverty level.

The majority of low-income families – 62 percent – spent more than one-third of their earnings on housing, surpassing a common guideline for what is considered affordable. By some census surveys, child-care costs consume close to another one-fifth.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.

A survey of 29 cities conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors being released Thursday points to a gloomy outlook for those on the lower end of the income scale.

Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands for food assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federal programs such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income pregnant women and mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs.

Across the 29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did not receive it. Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., Sacramento, Calif., and Trenton, N.J., were among the cities that pointed to increases in the cost of food and declining food donations, while Mayor Michael McGinn in Seattle cited an unexpected spike in food requests from immigrants and refugees, particularly from Somalia, Burma and Bhutan.

Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 51 percent were in families, 26 percent were employed, 19 percent were elderly and 11 percent were homeless.

"People who never thought they would need food are in need of help," said Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo., who co-chairs a mayors' task force on hunger and homelessness.

http://entertainment.time.com/2011/12/07/the-top-10-tv-series-of-2011-the-best-and-the-rest/

By: James Poniewozik

TIME’s annual collection of top-10 lists is up, including my list of the Top 10 TV Shows of 2011. (Also up is my list of Top 10 TV Episodes, which I’ll cover in a separate post.)

After the jump, I’ll post my complete list, along with a partial list of honorable mentions. But first, it’s time for my annual list of caveats, rationalizations and excuses!

* Number one: this is not the Top 10 and Everything Else Sucks list. I had 10 slots to fill. I love more than 10 TV shows. There are different ways of dealing with that problem. You could do a top 20, or 30, or 50 list. You could do lists of comedies, reality shows, best performances, etc., etc. Some critics do, and that’s great. I didn’t, because I’m lazy and it starts to get into everyone-gets a-trophy territory.

* Related to which: I don’t blame anyone for asking “How could you not include _____?” But I probably won’t answer. (1) That way lies madness; and (2) it inevitably leads to my response focusing on the relative flaws of some show that I actually like a lot and thus seeming to bash it. Again, the blanket answer is: a show is not on this list because I didn’t want to remove any of these 10 shows to make room for it, period.

* Somebody is going to post, “You forgot _____.” I didn’t. I keep a running list throughout the year and revise it constantly. There may be a show or two I overlooked, but pretty much anything with a serious shot I thought long and hard about why to include it or not. (My top-10 episodes list, about which I’ll post separately, is a different story–I can’t watch everything, and I almost certainly I did forget things.)

* However, that doesn’t mean I never regret my choices. There are probably one or two I’m regretting already. Any honest top 10 list is really a top 9 list, and a 15-way tie for 10th. But overall, I think this list gives a pretty fair sense of what I think was best on TV this year.

* Someone will also ask how I could claim X show is two places better than Y. Here’s the dirty secret of list-making: beyond a point, the numbering is arbitrary. It has to be, with so many genres competing: Louie and Breaking Bad, say, are great in very different ways. I suspect that numbered lists make possible a kind of Mobius illogic, where I might believe 8 to be better than 9, and 9 better than 10, yet, if pressed, believe 10 is superior to 8. I cannot rationally explain it, which is why I hate numbered lists; but readers and my editors like them, so here you go.

* In fact, how arbitrary is it? So arbitrary that–for boring production reasons–we somehow managed to mix up the order of numbers 4 through 7 in the print-magazine version of the list, and I did not even notice until the very last minute. (The print and online lists match now. I think.)

* Don’t worry! There will be a 10 Worst Shows list too, around the holidays. There’s still time to nominate your least favorites!

* Please feel free to complain in the comments about the shows I left off. But a challenge: for every show you want to put on my list, nominate one show to take off. (Preferably one you’ve actually seen!)

* Finally, time.com did a bang-up job formatting the lists, but they had 50 of them to produce, so they may have made mistakes–and I almost certainly did. If you find any, note them and I’ll get them fixed. (Note: failing to pick your favorite show not a “mistake” except in the moral sense.)

Without further ado, here’s my list (and please click through my writeups for my full explanations).

1. Louie
2. Parks and Recreation
3. Breaking Bad
4. Justified
5. Game of Thrones
6. Homeland
7. Friday Night Lights
8. Community
9. The Good Wife
10. Enlightened

And finally, in no particular order–because alphabetization is hard–here is an entirely incomplete list of runners-up, which on another day might have made the list this year:

Archer
Modern Family
All-American Muslim
Boardwalk Empire
Downton Abbey
Wilfred
Awkward.
The Hour
Sons of Anarchy
Portlandia
Brick City
Treme
Up All Night
Revenge

By: Robert Reich

The President's speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas -- where Teddy Roosevelt gave his "New Nationalism" speech in 1910 -- is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged that have gamed the system to their advantage.

Here are the highlights (and, if you'll pardon me, my annotations):

For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefitted from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before. But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren't -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

He's absolutely right -- and it's the first time he or any other president has clearly stated the long-term structural problem that's been widening the gap between the very top and everyone else for thirty years -- the breaking of the basic bargain linking pay to productivity gains.

For many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over the harsh realities of this new economy. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed.

Exactly. But the first papering over was when large numbers of women went into paid work, starting the in the late 1970s and 1980s, in order to prop up family incomes that were stagnating or dropping because male wages were under siege -- from globalization, technological change, and the decline of unions. Only when this coping mechanism was exhausted, and when housing prices started to climb, did Americans shift to credit cards and home equity loans as a means of papering over the new harsh reality of an economy that was working for a minority at the top but not for most of the middle class.

We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them, or sometimes even understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets -- and huge bonuses -- made with other people's money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn't have the authority to look at all.

It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs, homes, and the basic security of millions -- innocent, hard-working Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were still left holding the bag.

Precisely -- and it's about time he used the term "wrong" to describe Wall Street's antics, and the abject failure of regulators (led by Alan Greenspan and the Fed) to stop what was going on. But these "wrongs" were only the proximate cause of the economic crisis. The underlying cause was, as the President said before, the breaking of the basic bargain linking pay to productivity.

Ever since, there has been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity; balance and fairness. Throughout the country, it has sparked protests and political movements -- from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities. It's left Washington in a near-constant state of gridlock. And it's been the topic of heated and sometimes colorful discussion among the men and women who are running for president.

But this isn't just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.

Right again. It is the defining issue of our time. But I wish he wouldn't lump the Tea Party in with the Occupiers. The former hates government; the latter focuses blame on Wall Street and corporate greed -- just where the President did a moment ago.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

He might have been a bit stronger here. The "they" who are suffering collective amnesia include many of the privileged and powerful who have gained enormous wealth by using their political muscle to entrench their privilege and power. In other words, it's not simply or even mainly amnesia. It's a clear and concerted strategy.

Well, I'm here to say they are wrong. I'm here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren't Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They're American values, and we have to reclaim them.

Amen.

...

In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here, to Osawatomie, and laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. "Our country," he said, "... means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy... of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him."

Some background: In 1909, Herbert Croly, a young political philosopher and journalist, argued in his best-selling The Promise of American Life that the large American corporation should be regulated by the nation and directed toward national goals. "The constructive idea behind a policy of the recognition of the semi-monopolistic corporation is, of course, the idea that they can be converted into economic agents... for the national economic interest," Croly wrote. Teddy Roosevelt's New Nationalism embraced Croly's idea.

For this, Roosevelt was called a radical, a socialist, even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight hour work day and a minimum wage for women; insurance for the unemployed, the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.

Today, over one hundred years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.

Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where the workers were cheaper. Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. These changes didn't just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the internet. Today, even higher-skilled jobs like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China and India. And if you're someone whose job can be done cheaper by a computer or someone in another country, you don't have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages and benefits -- especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union.

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there's been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, they argue, that's the price of liberty.

It's a simple theory -- one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here's the problem: It doesn't work. It's never worked. It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade.

Obama is advocating Croly's proposal that large corporations be regulated for the nation's good. But he's updating Croly. The next paragraphs are important.

Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class -- things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security.

Remember that in those years, thanks to some of the same folks who are running Congress now, we had weak regulation and little oversight, and what did that get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people's premiums with impunity, and denied care to the patients who were sick. Mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn't afford. A financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.

We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn't result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its future. It doesn't result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that's enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens.

Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent.

The very first time the President has emphasized this grotesque trend. Now listen for how he connects this with the deterioration of our economy and democracy:

This kind of inequality -- a level we haven't seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity -- that's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them -- that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans.

More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you're born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That's why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.

And what it's done to equal opportunity, and how it's eroded upward mobility:

And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it's estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class.

It's heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That's inexcusable. It's wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.

What should we do about this? Not turn to protectionism or become neo-Luddites. Nor turn to some version of government planning.

Fortunately, that's not a future we have to accept. Because there's another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country -- a view that's truer to our history; a vision that's been embraced by people of both parties for more than two hundred years.

It's not a view that we should somehow turn back technology or put up walls around America. It's not a view that says we should punish profit or success or pretend that government knows how to fix all society's problems. It's a view that says in America, we are greater together -- when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share.

So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today's economy?

It starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is, we'll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who's best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages or pollute as much as they want. That's a race to the bottom that we can't win -- and shouldn't want to win. Those countries don't have a strong middle-class. They don't have our standard of living.

In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here, to Osawatomie, and laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. ...

The fact is, this crisis has left a deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. And major banks that were rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit. At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis, and working to keep responsible homeowners in their home. We're going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house.

I wish the Obama administration had made this a condition for the banks receiving bailouts.

But there's far more to the speech. Read it in full. It lays out the basis for what could be the platform Obama will run on in 2012 -- increasing taxes on the rich, investing in the rest us, requiring corporations and Wall Street banks that reap benefits from being in America create good jobs for Americans, and protecting our democracy from being corrupted by money -- a new New Nationalism.

Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. Since then we've had a president who has only reluctantly stood up to the moneyed interests Teddy Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin stood up to.

Hopefully Obama will carry this message through 2012, and gain a mandate to use his second term to take on the growing inequities and game-rigging practices that have been undermining the American economy and American democracy for years.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

By: Richard Eskow

Some politicians are saying that the latest unemployment report is good news, but it's not. It shows us that this country is still in crisis. It shows us that the government needs to act quickly and aggressively to create jobs, and to restore the lost earning power of the average American who has a job.

Mos of all it shows us that millions of struggling people are still invisible in the Nation's Capitol.

This week the Occupy movement is holding a series of "Take Back the Capitol" events in Washington. Let's hope it shines some light on the country's unemployed, under-employed, and under-earning millions. Until now, they've been pretty much invisible in that town.

The Invisible Americans are all around you. They're in your state, in your community, maybe in your family. Maybe they're your kids, just out of college. Maybe they're your fifty-something uncles and aunts, your grandparents, your grandchildren. They're right there in the jobs report, for anyone with the eyes - and the willingness - to find them.

Invisible: Millions of the long-term unemployed.

While some celebrated an unemployment rate of "only" 8.6 percent, half that change was explained by the fact that 315,000 people dropped out of the labor force. Job creation barely kept pace with the entry of new people into the workforce.

Those 315,000 people join the 5.7 million people officially classified as long-term unemployed. That number is at historically high levels, representing nearly half (43 percent) of all the jobless people in this country.

It's not that they don't want jobs. Most of them have fallen into despair. Even worse, what they may have fallen into is realism. Unless we use the power of government to do something, some of them will never work again. They're falling out of the "normal" economy and into a new reality of persistent joblessness and, for some, eventual poverty.

Invisible: Segregation on the unemployment line.

The official jobless rate for white people is 7.6 percent, versus 15.5 percent for African Americans and 11.4 percent for Hispanics.

And those are only the official numbers. The figures are much higher if you count the long-term unemployed, the under-employed, and "discouraged" workers.

In a nation that prides itself on being the land of opportunity, we're denying entire groups of people the chance for a better life.

Invisible: The jobless generation.

There's a silent epidemic of youth unemployment. Official teenaged unemployment is 23.7 percent, and the real rate is much higher. Recent college graduates face historically high jobless rates - along with historically high student debt.

Studies show that young people who begin their work lives un- or under-employed face an entire lifetime of lower income. By failing to act, we're betraying our own children and throwing away an entire generation of young people.

Invisible: The under-employed.

There's a silent epidemic of under-employment. There are 8.5 million people who want to work full-time but can only get part time work. in that category. That figure dropped slightly, but we don't know how much of the drop was due to people finding full-time work or being laid off altogether.

And remember, underemployed people aren't just making less money. In most cases they're also going without health insurance or other benefits. They're struggling on the margins of working America, barely surviving and never knowing how much money the'll earn from one week to the next.

Invisible: The vanishing public servant.

While Washington politicians drone on about "budget cuts," there's not much discussion of the fact that many of those cuts increase unemployment - at the Federal, state, and local levels. Government jobs have been dwindling since 2008, and the shrinkage is continuing a time when we need more of them.

Teachers, police officers, highway toll takers, postal workers - you name it, they're losing their jobs. And the only debate in Washington seems to be, How many more of them can we make unemployed?

Invisible: The drowning middle class.

Average hourly earnings for all nonfarm employees decreased last month by 1 percent. Average hourly earnings increased by only 1.8 percen over the last year, while the cost of living (measured by the Consumer Price Index) increased 3.5 percent.

Once again average Americans have fallen behind in earnings and has seen their standard of living decline. Meanwhile, incomes continue to skyrocket for the wealthiest Americans. Income inequality is the worst it's been since the Great Depression.

Welcome to the New Gilded Age.

Political Blindness

This week we heard almost nothing in Washington about direct action to address these crises. The Democrats' "payroll tax holiday" would provide urgently needed ongoing relief for the battered middle class, and would also have a mild job-creating effect. But it would do so in an inefficient way, and also needlessly and recklessly endangers Social Security.

Republicans have no solution at all - just more of the same policies that caused these problems in the first place.

Our neighbors deserve better than this. We deserve better than this. Change starts with a simple statement we can make to those around us, and they can make to us: You're not invisible. I see you.

People in Washington over-complicate the debate by tinkering at the margins: tax-break this, incentive that. Those things will have some effect, but there's a simpler and better way to fix the joblessness problem: Put people to work. At a time when this country needs trillions of dollar in infrastructure repair, government should hire people and get on with it.

George W. Bush had no problem doing that a few years ago. He signed a bill spending more than a quarter of a trillion dollars on infrastructure spending while the Republican Speaker of the House bragged about creating. But Republicans would apparently rather prolong the suffering so they can defeat Obama and the Democrats in 2012.

As for the Obama Democrats, either they don't understand the problem or they don't think it's politically smart to propose fixing it. I suspect it's the latter - and they're dead wrong. The President's jobs bill had some useful ideas. But the President went small on the fixes and, in his typical fashion, couldn't resist pushing useless conservative "job creation" ideas along with the good ones.

Far-Sighted

We need a massive jobs program now to fix our crumbling bridges, highways, railroads, dams, and public buildings. We need to fix wage stagnation by going back to the policies that built the middle class, beginning with stronger collective bargaining rights for working people. Unions were one of the engines of post-World War II prosperity, and the war on unions needs to stop.

We also need higher taxes for the wealthy, tax advantages for companies that hire, and higher taxes for those who make money by gambling, trading other people's debts, or hedging against the success of the American economy. We need to downsize the financial sector, which is capturing too much corporate profit and squeezing out job-creating businesses.

And we need to rebuild the firewall between banking and speculating, so we can end too-big-to-fail and the boom-and-bust cycle that keeps crashing the economy.

Vision Test

Some political party, maybe one that has had a reputation for defending the middle class, ought to say something this: We know what's going on out there. We understand the problem. Here's how we would fix it. We're going to introduce these measures in the House and Senate wherever and whenever we can, so you can see who's fighting for the Invisible Americans, and who's fighting against them.

But no party appears willing to do that, at least not without the presence of a non-partisan movement that forces it to act.

Someday historians will review this country's history to find those times when our people and our leaders responded to a crisis with vision and courage. They'll see the millions of Americans who rose to the occasion during the War of Independence, the Civil War, World War II, and the Great Depression.

But will they see us, or will we have become ... invisible?

Our political leaders need to be pressured - a lot - which is why the Occupy events in Washington are so important. We need to build and maintain a movement for real change, a movement that sees the invisible ones among us, a movement that sees each of us and makes us visible, a movement that fights unrelentingly for a better society.

Hope to "see" you soon - on the barricades.

Hometown: Born in NYC, grew up in Elizabeth and Maplewood, NJ
Current Residence: NYC
Occupation: Filmmaker
Areas of Focus: Documentaries, features, and tv series that are genre busting
Website: www.blowbackproductions.com

You graduated from Wesleyan University, how did this shape you for your career in film?

I started making films in high school. Wesleyan was key because I met fellow students who became collegues. I met Jeanine Basinger who is one of the most respected film historians in Acadamia and Prof. Richard Slotkin who wrote “Regeneration Through Violence” and helped create a field of American study that used popular culture as a way of looking at contemporary history.

I dropped out of Wesleyan to work as an apprentice editor on “Gimme Shelter”. This was a formative experience because the film captured the death of the 60s and the convergence of 60s culture (sex, drugs and rock and roll) with racism, politics and violence. The imprint that this left has been a part of my work ever since.

Your film Slam (1998) was hugely critically acclaimed and took not only the Sundance Film Festival’s Dramatic Feature Grand Jury Prize but also the Cannes Film Festival Camera d’Or. What was it like for you to have your work recognised in this fashion?

SLAM was a high point. It was like riding a wave because not only was the film acclaimed, but it was the vanguard of the spoken word and poetry movement and allowed it to be discovered by a whole new generation. It was tremendously gratifying to not only be recognized but to be with the whole SLAM family there. A lasting bond was formed and it was a once in a lifetime experience.

You directed the film Whiteboyz, which featured some of the world’s greatest rappers and hip hop artists Dr Dre, Fat Joe, Snoop Dogg, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, Dead Prez and Big Pun. What was it like working with these guys? Are there any anecdotes of outrageous behaviour from them?

I half remember what it was like. Snoop and the other guys from the Dogg Pound needed a seperate game trailer where they could play video games and smoke. Going in there was like sticking your head in a hookah. When it was time to film he was really accomodating. He knew my work from Gang War. To get him to freestyle at the end of the film with Danny he lit up a huge blunt and passed it to me and by the time we were finished I barely knew what planet we were on.

You’re a Jewish man yourself, how was it filming “Protocols of Zion?” with such a personal attachment, considering the harrowing focal point, the resurgence of Anti-Semitism after 9/11?

Looking back, like others, I think I was suffering from post-traumatic stress. It’s hard to believe that I threw myself both in front of the camera (it was the first and last time that I did that) and into the lion’s den of anti-semitic zealots. Shooting Protocols was very moving because it was the last film that I made with my father. He passed away a few years later. He was actually buried in the same plot that he and I stand in at the end of the film.

Your latest documentary mini series ‘Brick City’ focuses on the city of Newark, New Jersey and the people within it. It was nominated for an Emmy and also was described as a “verite version of the wire, one of TV’s finest series ever”. When you started did you expect it would take off like it has?

Brick City was the culmination of three decades of filmmaking experience and a dream of trying to do a docu-series that played like scripted television. After my show Street Time, which aired on Showtime, I was bit by the series bug – how immediate it is and how much ground you can cover in regards to stories and characters. But it was a tough sell.

Academy Award winner Forest Whittaker was a executive producer on ‘Brick City’, what was it like working with him?

Forest and I were developing a scripted project when he saw the trailer for Brick City and asked how he could get involved. I joked that he was West Coast and this was the East Coast. He laughed and said that LA, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Hartford – it’s all the same story and wanted to know what he could do to help. I said “Call Robert Redford.” And he did.

You now own your own production company Blowback productions, which you run with Daphne Pinkerton. What are the goals and messages you try to get across?

Blowback means what goes around, comes around. It’s about karma, but it’s also a term from CIA intelligence. Daphne and I have been lucky enough to make films with meat and meaning and build a community of independent filmmakers. We stay involved with many of the people we work with and the constant struggle is to convince people in the business that you can make things with substance and that are compelling and that people will watch.

For anyone trying to get into the film industry, what would you say would is the best way?

Intern at Blowback.

Did you have technical difficulties during any of your films? How did you overcome these problems to get the desired results?

Always.
Pray.

Joel Holland

When it comes to changing the toxic partisan gridlock in Washington, the Beatles got it just about right: “You tell me it’s the institution/Well, you know/You’d better free your mind instead.”

Last week’s failure of the budget supercommittee, despite its super powers, is only the latest breakdown in an attempt at compromise in Washington. Politicians keep trying to fashion failsafe solutions to the capital’s uncompromising mind-set, without understanding that there is no external escape from an environment that rewards those who stand tenaciously on their principles and demonize their opponents. Members of Congress need to change their minds about compromise, or voters will need to change the members of Congress.

The supercommittee was given almost unprecedented protection from Congress’s normal rules: no filibuster or amendments would be allowed on its proposals, which would become law by a simple majority of both houses. Yet it failed to achieve what most Americans say that they want from Congress: compromises that improve on the status quo, even if it means giving up some causes the members care about.

The exercise proved that the capital is caught in a centrifuge that allows those with an uncompromising mind-set to chase the tantalizing partisan dream: My party will gain control, and push through its agenda, undiluted. This is a fantasy. It is highly unlikely that one party will gain complete control. It would have to secure the 60 votes to overcome the filibuster, and it would still face the task of making compromises within its own ranks.

What enabled the uncompromising mind-set to dominate our politics? We live in the era of the permanent campaign, and the uncompromising approach is designed for campaigning: voters are inspired by high-flying promises never to give in on their favorite causes, while the news media thrive on low-lying attacks, endlessly repeated even (or especially) if they are mendacious.

Although campaigning is essential to democracy, this degeneration of American politics over the past three decades enables the uncompromising attitude to dominate like an invasive species, spreading beyond its natural habitat of the campaign to the government. Once there it overwhelms the compromising mind-set, which is far more suitable to governing, calling on politicians to adjust their principles and respect their opponents to reach agreements.

The situation is dire, but not hopeless. Even a sharply polarized politics is not insurmountable if opponents will bend a little, as Senators Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, regularly did. Despite standing on the right and left wings of their parties, they cosponsored significant legislation, including support for AIDS patients and the children’s health insurance program.

Only a few decades ago, Ronald Reagan — a staunch partisan — criticized the “radical conservatives” in California who thought “ ‘compromise’ was a dirty word” and “wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today.” Not coincidentally, it was under President Reagan that Congress passed the most far-reaching tax reform law of the century, a classic bipartisan compromise.

And yet today Reagan’s professed followers go out of their way to avoid association with the very idea of compromise. Speaker John A. Boehner, pressed to explain why he would not try to compromise, said, “I reject the word.”

Because most voters say they want compromise, we could also try to change electoral institutions to gain a greater voice for majorities over intransigent minorities on both sides. Allowing independents to vote in all party primaries could elect candidates with more compromising attitudes. Publicly financed campaigns would lessen the pressures of fund-raising that distract politicians from governing. Even rules that require members to spend more time interacting in Washington instead of rushing home to raise money from like-minded supporters could help.

These are all worthy reforms, but there is a Catch-22: Institutional reforms themselves require a change in the mind-sets of our political leaders, and they will not happen without compromise. Either legislators adopt a compromising attitude, in which case the reforms are not essential, or they do not adopt it, in which case they will not be able to agree on the reforms. There is no deus ex machina that will save Congress from itself.

If its members won’t relearn the value of compromise, then voters must use the next election to show that they want representatives who care enough about governing to try to compromise. This does not mean accepting those who abandon their principles or forgo partisanship. But it does mean choosing those who accept that compromises by their very nature will be impure from all partisan perspectives. So voters, too, may need to free, and speak, their minds.

Today we harken back to the original conspiracy theory, "blame it on the Jews."  Our film "Protocols of Zion" explored the resurgence of anti-semitism in the wake of 9/11.  Now Umberto Eco has just come out with a new book, "The Prague Cemetery," which is a novel about a fictional forger in Paris who creates the infamous, "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which purported to be the minutes of the secret Jewish Cabal which supposedly met in the Prague Cemetery where it plotted to control the world.  An obvious and odious fraud, still it was believed and spread by folks from Henry Ford to Adolph Hitler.  Now Eco brings his novelist's imagination to explore the mind and milieu that gave birth to this grand forgery, this poisonous and insane conspiracy that refuses to die.

Watch the trailer for "Protocols of Zion" here:

"Protocols of Zion" on Blowback TV

and read the New York Times review of Eco's book here:

The Prague Cemetery

Hard Times is a disturbing film that puts a face to the unemployment crisis in America in a rather effective way. At times, talk radio broadcasts play over footage of the principals as they trundle off to another day of staring down their own obsolescence. Over the airwaves, voices of people like Rush Limbaugh can be heard exhorting his listeners about the evil of unemployment benefits and how such programs only encourage procrastination and sloth.

In America today, we are told that unemployment now hovers at around nine percent, while other sources insist that those statistics are underreported and are closer to 12.5 percent. At nine percent, we are confronted with a situation where one in eleven working Americans is without an income. At 12.5 percent, we are talking about one in eight.

The rest of us try to go about our business. We wish those who are suffering our very best. We hope that they succeed in finding work. We are grateful, on a daily if not twice daily basis, to have jobs and to be able to pay our bills and to support our families. Then we put our heads down and try not to think about what it would be like to be one of those unemployed people. Especially the long term unemployed.

It is somewhat easier to sidestep the raw helplessness of one in eleven or even one in eight. It's similar to the way we sidestep the homeless or indigent on the street, believing that they got there like a leaf falls from a tree; as if they belonged there through some law of nature, and that we are not responsible in any way. Nor are any of our decisions. But what happens if unemployment reaches twenty percent? What would it be like for one in five Americans to be in serious, bordering on irreversible, financial trouble? How do you overlook one in five people in contemporary society?

We have learned many lessons in the past three years. One important lesson, I believe, is that bailouts of major corporations in any and all industries is counterproductive to long term economic health. And not simply direct infusions of cash as loans, tossed like gargantuan life preservers, in moments of greatest perceived dread. I'm talking about the bailouts the US government gives major corporations every day. The excessive fees forced on customers by certain banks, not to mention the predatory lending practices of the mortgage industry (coupled with the remarkably stupid borrowing of certain homeowners).

Another example is that we have no high speed rail in this country. Typically, you fly or you drive. So airlines are free to tack on fees to remain profitable the way that oil companies are free to manipulate oil production, and thus the price of gasoline. You bailed out the airlines every time you did not demand more effective, intermediate range travel, i.e. high speed rail. You bailed out the oil companies every time you watched (were you watching?) as American troops went to Iraq to fight a war for oil. You bail out American business, and help them maintain an often false veneer of profitability, every time you send nearly every member of the current Congress back to Washington. Maintaining US corporate profitability is the single goal of this Congress. Because that is what the corporations who own the Congress paid for when they bought the Congress.

Every thing I have put forth here, I have heard articulated from the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some of it was not news to me. I have grown up in the latter half of the 20th Century. When the Greatest Generation was replaced by the greediest generation and what was known as the Protestant Work Ethic became a quaint chestnut. The definition of success became getting the most for doing the least. It became about getting away with what you can and the only issue was getting caught. Which pretty much defines the Wall Street culture of today. Never have the world's greatest financial markets been controlled by such dangerously short-sighted people as they are today. And never has this country been cursed by a more incompetent and derelict Securities and Exchange Commission as we are today. In the wake of 9/11, America attacked a perceived terrorist community with all it had. In the wake of some of the worst financial scandals in US history, the SEC took a dive, throwing the fight in the first round.

Occupy Wall Street people understand that not only are more difficult times possibly around the corner, they know that the current government will likely do as it has historically done, which is to protect the rich and powerful at the expense of the long term interests of the middle class. Some of the most financially successful people in America continually remind us all that capitalism is a contest. There are winners and losers. And the winners want to enjoy their success and they want the losers to keep it down. The noise of the vanquished is spoiling the victors' fun.

OWS talks a lot, too much in fact, about One Percent versus Ninety Nine Percent. As if success itself were a crime. That's a mistake. But what OWS has helped to remind me is that One in Five is a far more unsettling ratio. Twenty percent unemployment. In the 21st Century United States.

There won't be enough cops any where in this country to rip down all the tents that are going to pop up in places you never imagined if we hit that figure. That's what OWS has taught me.

In my next post, let's talk about how Ray Kelly is running for Mayor of New York and how he'll never get there without paddy wagons full of Wall Street money, which is why he had the boys hose down Zuccotti Park.

http://www.forward.com/specials/forward-50-2011/michael-hirsch/

If you are interested in learning more about Festival-in-a-Box or hosting one yourself, please click the link below.

http://labourfilms.ca/?page_id=514

"Triangle: Remembering the Fire"

November 26, 2011

2pm

Downtown
Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto campus)
2 Sussex Drive
Toronto ON

A very big 'thank-you' to Kim Koyama at CLiFF for all of her help.

Other HBO playdates:  Oct. 28 (11:00 a.m., 8:00 p.m.) and 30 (11:00 a.m.), and Nov. 11 (3:00 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT), 19 (4:00 p.m.) and 28 (3:10 a.m.)

HBO2 playdates:  Oct. 26 (9:30 a.m., midnight) and 31 (6:30 p.m.), and Nov. 6 (8:30 a.m.), 14 (9:00 a.m., midnight), 23 (10:30 p.m.) and 26 (8:00 a.m.)

HBO On Demand availability:  Oct. 26-Nov. 21

Plus available on HBO GO.

Director Marc Levin, who had just released Brick City, which documents the rough streets of Newark (NJ), was looking to capture a first-hand encounter of the high stakes involved in high school basketball and all the drama and the unforeseen happenings that take place. During the production of the 2009 film, Levin met Father Edwin Leahy, the Headmaster at St. Benedict’s Prep. 

The school’s basketball program is considered year-in and year-out among the top in nation, with names like J.R. Smith, Corey Stokes and Sarmado Samuels among its alumni. Levin was sold on the idea of chronicling the basketball program when Father Leahy advised him of St. Benedict’s head coach Dan Hurley possibly leaving for the head coaching position at Wagner College. And it was there when Father Leahy suggested that Levin pay a visit to Elizabeth (NJ) and speak with Boyle. “I always wanted to do a real Friday Night Lights of urban basketball,” says Levin. “And I was like New Jersey, ‘Hey, this is the center of the basketball universe right here.’

After speaking with Boyle, Levin was convinced he had found his next film project. “He’s a classic type Jersey character — chip on his shoulder, great guy but everyone is out to get him,” say Levin of the coach. “We immediately hit off.”

Boyle, who at times fell in the shadows of the two Hurleys, actually had a winning record against the two. Yet, he wasn’t ever really given his share of fair dues. Boyle told Levin his team was the perfect bunch for a featured documentary, and Levin along with his production team agreed. The Celtics are constantly among the top teams in every national poll and throughout the years saw Samuel Dalembert, Samuel Dalembert, Derrick Character, Corey Fisher, Dexter Strickland, Kyrie Irving, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist earn their way to stardom in that same old small gym. Boyle, who’d been at the Elizabeth school for 23 years, won more than 400 games and had five Tournament of Champions titles under his belt. Kids from all parts of New Jersey and even New York City attended the school just to be part of the renowned program.

And although it made perfect sense to have a star-studded team on the big screen, like the one St. Pat’s featured during the 2010-2011 season, there was once person who would “make or break this project,” as Boyle told Levin. Cindy Richardson.

Kidd-Gilchrist’s mother, Cindy, was appreciative of the attention and interest involved in having her son being part of the documentary, but was hesitant at first and turned down the idea after speaking to the production team. Was she just protecting her son from the already overwhelming attention he was receiving? Was she just making sure that her son stayed focus and finished up his senior year with a bang without any other distractions? Kidd-Gilchrist, a 6-7 forward, was ranked as the top player in the class of 2011. At the age of two, his father was shot and killed in the streets of Camden (NJ), leaving Gilchrist alone with his mother. After producers Karl Hollandt and Binky Brown had a couple of more sit-downs with Cindy and visited during the family’s annual Labor Day cookout, she finally agreed and was on-board with the project.

The filming crew taped over 250 hours of footage, following the team around from preseason up till the day the seniors walked across the stage in their cap and gowns.

“A lot of good basketball films have been made. We wanted to make it so it was as if you were watching a scripted show,” says Levin. “In other words, so that you are living the drama — it’s not looking back, it’s not historical — you’re in the moment and you’re taking the ride with these characters. That was our contribution to it.”

“We wanted to tell an intimate story, follow the lives of the people and let their lives unfold,” adds Hollandt. “Let everyone’s narrative come out and have a film where you get to actually know the kids and all the other characters through the journey.”

by: Franklyn Calle

Aside from Kidd-Gilchrist, the film also highlights senior shooting guard Derrick Gordon. The 6-3 Western Kentucky commit deals with having to play his final season without his twin brother in the stands, after the latter was sentenced to prison for aggravated assault. In addition, at the beginning of the season Derrick is diagnosed with acid reflux and drastically drops over 15 pounds within weeks.

Kidd-Gilchrist on the other hand has to deal with another family death only hours before he officially signs his letter of intent to the University of Kentucky when his uncle, Darrin Kidd, dies of a heart attack. Darrin, Cindy’s brother, stepped up as father-figure to Michael following the murder of his dad. Darrin was very influential in Mike’s progress throughout the years and subsequently led to the McDonald’s All-American adding Kidd to his last name in his honor.

The film takes us behind-the-scenes into the lives of some of America’s top recruits. Gordon and Kidd-Gilchrist are particularly focused on throughout the 90-minute feature, as we see the adversary and curve balls that life throws at them, and how as teenagers they do their best overcome the obstacles.

The film plot itself evolves around St. Patrick’s quest for a state title and finishing atop of the national rankings. But in their way stands neighboring St. Anthony, which features a couple of their own blue-chippers. In addition, the roller-coaster ride offers us a view into the financial challenges the school faces annually to keep its doors open, and without having to raise tuition dramatically.

When it’s all said and done, it’s the story behind the story that the production team hopes viewers can take away from the film. “They had plenty on the line. All the prestige of being number one in the country and beat their number one rival. But their fraternity, their brotherhood, that’s what sports teaches us all, just discipline,” says producer Ben Selkow. “But what I think these kids learned at the end of the day is just how to support each other and be brothers. And that’s what they’ll carry forward. I hope that’s what the fans take away — sports is about family.  I hope people take away the amount of class this team had being the amount of pressure they were under.”

“For fans of any sport, you gotta look the high school game. Be careful in that. There’s a paradox in that. We gotta look to it as fans because the purity is there, the effort is there, the innocence and the development is there. But we need to do it with some responsibility that we don’t turn it into a complete business,” he adds. “It’s already on that edge but we need to maintain some point of innocence for the kids before it really goes to take some of the business qualities it does as it moves up the ranks. But their intentions and motivations to be there are so pure in just being a kid. When you can tap into that for a moment, that feels really good.”

Tired of the selfish financial wrangling between NBA owners and players?

HBO Sports premieres "Prayer for a Perfect Season" (7 p.m. Tuesday), an involving documentary about basketball that is played for school, community, family, friends and simply for the love of the game.

Centering on the 2010-11 boys basketball season, the 90-minute production follows the team from St. Patrick High School, located in the hardscrabble neighborhood of Elizabeth N.J.

The team's season culminates with a traditional championship battle with a rival from Jersey City.

The sports story is told along with the dramatic intersection of two forces — the soaring media interest in the "big game" and the problems dealing with the decline of the Catholic school's academic programs.

The documentary often has the feel of a real-life version of "Hoosiers."

- Dusty Saunders

Thank you!

by: Rafer Guzman

Partway through the documentary "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," director Marc Levin captures some fairly surreal moments in which the Suffolk County sheriffs forcibly evict people from their homes. 

What's odd is not the action, which is sadly familiar, but the settings: pretty trees, green lawns, clean, wide streets.  The message is clear:  The recession isn't hitting only the poor but the average, even well-off, American.

"Hard Times," is an HBO documentary that plays today and tomorrow at the Hamptons International Film Festival, monitors the effects of the economic downturn on several Long Islanders.  They are white-collar, well-educated people with nice homes and six-figure incomes, though their lives changed dramatically when the economy began to crater in 2008.

"It's following the slow-motion disintegration of their lives and, in a way, the whole American middle-class dream," says Levin, a part-time Amagansett resident.  "And we chose Long Island because it is the birthplace of the postwar suburban good life."

Among those profiled in the film are Alan Fromm, a corporate trainer from Plainview; Anne Strauss, a public relations professional in Smithtown; Nick Puccio, a former securities lending trader from Wantagh; and Dave and Heather Hartstein, a Montauk couple with three children.  The subjects endure some difficult moments on camera: job-hunting, rejections, foreclosure notices.

"The reason I decided to do it was because the story needed to be told," says Strauss, who plans to attend today's screening.  "People in the U.S. are suffering.  They're hungry, and they're in many ways worse off than my husband and myself.  And that awaremess has to be brought to mind."

The film's soundtrack includes periodic chatter from talk-show hosts who blast the unemployed as lazy moochers.

"Go out and get a job, work at McDonald's!" one yells.  Fromm, it turns out, applied to FedEx, thinking he could at least drive a truck, but was turned down as "overqualified."

"There might be some people who'll say, 'They had a good run, I'm not going to feel sorry for them,'" says Levin.  "But it goes to the core of the essential question that we as Americans face now.  If we can't provide that promise that Long Island has always held, that promise of shared prosperity - if all that is going to disappear, what have we got?"

Hours before Michael Kidd-Gilchrist was to sign his National Letter of Intent to Kentucky last November, his uncle, Darrin, collapsed of a heart attack at 42.

“My sister-in-law called and said that DeAnte, his son, found him passed out,” Cindy Richardson, Michael’s mother, says in the film “Prayer For A Perfect Season,” which airs Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. on HBO.

“So we all ran around there to try to resuscitate him, and the ambulance came. They couldn’t revive him. We did CPR as best we could and we couldn’t revive him.”

Faced with this tragedy on a day that was supposed to be filled with joy, the family persevered and carried on with heavy hearts for the celebration honoring the Kentucky signing.

"My son's been playing organized basketball all year, every year since he was 5,” Cindy says in the film. “And today is the day he’ll be signing his National Letter of Intent. But the day is still special. It’s still special.”

Directed by Marc Levin and produced by Blowback Production, “Prayer” comes out two years after another terrific documentary, “The Street Stops Here,” documented St. Anthony’s run to an undefeated season and mythical national title in 2008.

“Prayer” documents St. Patrick’s struggle to remain afloat as small Catholic schools all around it are closing (1,000 nationally in the last 10 years); its “Bermuda Triangle” relationship with North Jersey powers St. Anthony and St. Benedict’s; and the Celtics’ quest for their first mythical national championship under coach Kevin Boyle, winner of 10 state titles and five Tournament of Champions crowns.

It delves into the complex, sometimes heated relationship between Boyle and Naismith Hall of Famer Bob Hurley, and features interviews with both men, as well as Wagner coach Dan Hurley.

“I found myself trying to explain the other guy to the other guy quite a bit to maybe help them become friendly rivals,” Dan Hurley said. “I don’t know if we ever got there.”

As the season unfolded, the two teams located 13 miles apart carved out undefeated seasons and ended up ranked 1-2 in every national poll.

Still, the dominant storylines focus on seniors Gilchrist and Derrick Gordon, now freshmen at Kentucky and Western Kentucky, respectively.

The early scenes show Gilchrist enjoying barbeques and quiet moments with his family, including Cindy and her husband, Vince Richardson. Video of Michael as a child shows him playing basketball with Darrin.

“He was the miracle baby of our family and God had something special destined for him,” Darrin is shown saying of Michael.

(This past summer, Michael officially changed his name to Michael Kidd-Gilchrist to honor his late uncle.)

Cindy talks about the family’s decision to send Michael from their home in Somerdale, N.J.., to St. Patrick, some 70 miles away. He awoke at 5 a.m. every day to get to school by 8.

“St Pat’s is an old-fashioned Catholic school,” she says in the film. “The only thing they don’t do is beat your kids.”

Gilchrist’s father, Michael Sr., was shot dead on the streets of Camden when he was 2 1/2, and the film shows Cindy taking Michael on a tour of Camden to show him where his father used to walk her home from school.

The film also delves into how Gordon copes with having his twin brother, Darryl, locked up in the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in Chesterfield, N.J.

“I think about him every single day,” Derrick says at one point.

Ultimately, St. Anthony, led by Kyle Anderson and Myles Mack beats Gilchrist, Gordon and St. Anthony, 62-45, in the unofficial national championship game at Rutgers before a capacity crowd that included Kentucky coach John Calipari.

The St. Pat’s players are shown crying and distraught in the Rutgers locker room.

“Prayer” takes you behind the scenes as Boyle tells St. Pat’s principal Joe Picaro that he will be leaving the school to take a job at Montverde (Fla.) Academy (where he signed on for a salary of $130,000 plus tuition for his son, Brendan.) He is then shown breaking the news to his seniors.

It ends on a positive note, showing Gilchrist winning the co-MVP at the McDonald’s All-American Game and depicting all the St. Pat’s players graduating and moving on with their lives.

Now Gilchrist is a freshman at Kentucky preparing for Big Blue Madness Friday night and the upcoming season.

“He is happy,” Cindy said by phone. “He has a 4.0 GPA. He’s really happy.”

"I was struck by lightning when I was 15. I had heart trouble when I was 21," he says. "I was at the World Trade Center -- I'd just started a new job -- when it was bombed for the first time. And a few months after that I was on the Long Island Rail Road when Colin Ferguson shot all those people. And most recently I was in the World Trade Center when it collapsed.

"So you put all this stuff into perspective, being unemployed is something I can deal with very easily."

It turned out to be harder than he expected. Fromm's struggle with a jobless spell that lasted longer than a year is shown in "Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," an HBO documentary premiering at the Hamptons Film Festival this Saturday.

The movie's producers, Daphne Pinkerson and Marc Levin, say their film combats the myth that the unemployed are lazy. It's the third in a series of labor-focused films, the first looking at the decline of New York City's garment industry and the second a take on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.

"Hard Times" follows Fromm and a handful of other white collar Long Island families coping with the anxiety and despair of long-term joblessness. Pinkerson said she and Levin tracked Fromm for six months starting in 2010, accompanying him to the hospital when he donated blood and joining him at a diner where he commiserated with other jobless folks. Where, they wanted to know, had they gone wrong?

Fromm, a former corporate trainer, describes being turned down for a job driving a FedEx truck during the holidays. "They told me I was overqualified."

He says he never thought this could happen to him: "Everybody thinks their job is important, so like a lot of other people I thought my job was safe."

Workers with college degrees are much less likely to be unemployed, but once they lose their jobs they're no less likely than high school grads to be out of work for 99 weeks or longer. And baby boomers, like the folks shown in "Hard Times," are twice as likely as younger jobless people to stay unemployed for that long.

"There are days that I just feel like it's not even worth getting out of bed in the morning," Fromm says at one point in the film. "I actually took out the life insurance policies to see how the family would be taken care of if I were no longer here."

High school basketball is the last pure platform of the sport. Where the NBA and even college ball are “just a business,” high school basketball is played for school, community, family, friends and love of the game.

Directed by Marc Levin (the 1998 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “Slam”), PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON is a gripping account of the 2010-11 boys’ basketball season at St. Patrick High School, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of Elizabeth, NJ. This feature-length documentary chronicles the extraordinary effort of coach Kevin Boyle and his players, whose journey ends in a winner-take-all showdown for the mythical national championship with archrival St. Anthony of Jersey City, when it debuts TUESDAY, OCT. 25 (9:00-10:30 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON captures the intersection of two forces – the soaring media interest in the big game, and the decline of Catholic school programs – while illuminating the real-life issues players and coaches confront during the season.

Coached by Kevin Boyle, the St. Patrick Celtics’ 2010-11 team was loaded with talent and plagued by distractions. Star player Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (now a freshman at the University of Kentucky) was one of the nation’s top performers and his elite skills had cast him in an unrelenting spotlight since grade school. When Kidd-Gilchrist was just two and a half years old, his father was murdered, and he also lost his surrogate father at the beginning of his senior year of high school. Complementing Kidd-Gilchrist, senior shooting guard Derrick Gordon (ticketed for Western Kentucky University) must live with his twin brother’s incarceration for aggravated assault.

PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON follows the roller-coaster ride of a team on the brink of history, at a school on the verge of becoming insolvent, where the journey to the top of the polls is inspiring, but the future is filled with uncertainty. The quest for the perfect season comes down to the March 9 title game, a prime-time match-up on the campus of Rutgers University before an overflow crowd, as St. Patrick (26-0) confronts arch-nemesis St. Anthony (29-0), led by Basketball Hall of Fame coach Bob Hurley.

Marc Levin’s previous HBO credits include “Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags,” the Emmy®-winning “Thug Life in D.C.,” “Protocols of Zion” “Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock” and “Gladiator Days.”

PRAYER FOR A PERFECT SEASON is a Blowback Production in association with Overbrook Entertainment; written and directed by Marc Levin; produced by Karl Hollandt, Ben Selkow and R. Binky Brown; editor, James Lester; director of photography, Daniel B. Levin. For HBO: executive producer Rick Bernstein; senior producer Joe Lavine.

Each screening will be preceded by Goro Toshima's short film "Broken Doors".  Purchase tickets here.

Hope to see you there!

Synopsis: The Bowery becomes a nexus of shattered dreams when a merchant has 72 hours to pay his rent. Facing extinction, his ramshackle tent of antiquities lures a troop of misfits, freaks and renegades who form tableaux full of carnival pageantry, white lies and victimless crime in a fleeting glimpse of Downtown New York.

http://www.royalflushfestival.com/rff/2011/film

On October 3 activists from across the country will gather in Washington at the Take Back the American Dream conference, in the belief that only a citizens movement can save an American dream that grows ever more distant. In the face of a failed economy and a corrupted politics, the only hope for renewal is that citizens lead and politicians follow.

The modern American dream was inspired by a growing middle class that was the triumph of democracy after World War II. Its promise was and is opportunity: that hard work can earn a good life—a good job with decent pay and security, a home in a safe neighborhood, affordable healthcare, a secure retirement, a good education for the kids. The promise always exceeded the performance—especially with regard to racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and women—and America never did as well as Europe in lifting the poor from misery. But a broad middle class and a broadly shared prosperity at least provided the possibility of a way up.

Now that middle class is sinking, imperiled by an economy that does not work for working people. Twenty-five million Americans are in need of full-time work, wages are declining and one in six people lives in poverty, the highest level in fifty years.

Every element of the dream is imperiled. Wages for the 70 percent of Americans without a college education have declined dramatically over the past forty years, although CEO salaries and corporate profits soared. Corporations continue to ship good jobs abroad, while the few jobs created at home are disproportionately in the low-wage service sector. One in four homes is underwater, devastating what has been the largest single asset for most middle-class families. Healthcare costs are soaring, with nearly 50 million uninsured. Half of all Americans have no retirement plan at work, pensions are disappearing and even Social Security and Medicare are targeted for cuts. College debt now exceeds credit card debt, with defaults rising and more and more students priced out of higher education.

The economy works fabulously well for the few. The richest 1 percent capture nearly a quarter of the nation’s income and control about 40 percent of its wealth. They have pocketed almost all the rewards of the past decade’s economic growth. Tahrir Square erupted in revolution in January, but America actually suffers greater inequality than Egypt. Instead of an American dream, we have an American nightmare: a government, as Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has written, of the top 1 percent, by the top 1 percent and for the top 1 percent.

This is not an accident; it is a defeat. It is the casualty of class warfare, waged and won, as Warren Buffett has noted, by the wealthiest few. Economists evoke globalization, technology and education as causal factors in our era’s extreme inequality. In fact, it results from policies that have weakened workers, liberated CEOs, starved social protections and savaged the middle class.

For more than thirty years, conservative ideas and corporate cronyism have consolidated their hold on both major political parties. Trade policy has been handed to the multinationals and the banks, which have not only transferred good jobs abroad but have given us a trade imbalance of more than $2 billion a day. Healthcare is dominated by drug companies and the insurance industry, creating a system that costs nearly twice as much per capita as the rest of the industrial world while delivering inferior care. Big Oil and King Coal exert a stranglehold on our energy policy, with the United States forfeiting the lead it once had in the green technologies that will be central to the markets of the future. Finance liberated itself from regulation, unleashing the Wall Street wilding that drove the economy over a cliff in 2008. The Pentagon’s budget is higher than it was during the cold war.

Hope Frustrated

The past three years provide an object lesson in the power of entrenched interests. Elected in the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, President Obama captured a majority of the vote (the first Democrat to do so since Jimmy Carter) with a mandate for change. In January 2009 Democrats held fifty-eight Senate seats and a large House majority led by the most progressive Speaker in history, Nancy Pelosi. Crisis, mandate, majority—all were in place for reform.

Obama put forth reforms in areas the country must address: healthcare, energy and finance. The president’s proposals were cautious, often pre-emptively compromised, but he had his head handed to him anyway. The economic recovery act was weakened, energy reform blocked, financial re-regulation neutered, healthcare deformed. Conservative obstruction and powerful corporate interests stymied change.

The failure fed voter skepticism about government. Washington bailed out Wall Street but did little for Main Street. It ran up deficits but failed to generate jobs. The White House embraced establishment calls for a premature turn to deficit reduction, distracting from the need for more federal action to stimulate economic recovery. Pollster Stanley Greenberg says voters “think that the game is rigged.” As he summarizes, they “see a nexus of money and power, greased by special interest lobbyists and large campaign donations…. They do not believe the fundamentals have really changed in Mr. Obama’s Washington.”

The economic calamity, and bipartisan collusion with Wall Street, set the stage for citizen protest. With Democrats in control of Washington, the right appealed to popular anger, most notably through the much-hyped Tea Party. Contrary to initial reports, it was composed not of independents but of right-wing activists, many initially driven by racial resentment. Its members tend to be older, whiter and more affluent than the general population. Its grassroots energy was bolstered by lavishly funded Astroturf organizations like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, backed in part by the billionaire Koch brothers.

The Tea Partiers used the spectacle of corrupted politics to make a conservative case: Washington doesn’t work for you; get your money back. Its leaders often sounded populist themes, as Sarah Palin did at a Tea Party rally this past summer: “The permanent political class—they’re doing just fine…. They derive power and their wealth from their access to our money—to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks…. And there is a name for this: it’s called corporate crony capitalism.” It’s a hoary flimflam: the Tea Party’s agenda belies the populist rhetoric. The current GOP House majority, allegedly dominated by the Tea Party, champions the same elite policies that helped create the mess: lower taxes on the wealthy, rollback of basic services, assault on unions, corporate trade, Big Oil energy, financial deregulation. The only difference is their ambition: GOP zealots would roll back not simply Obama’s reforms but the Great Society, the New Deal—indeed, much of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, those goals have little appeal to the vast majority of Americans.

Waiting for Lefty?
 
So where was protest on the left? Historically, whenever America has reached this extreme of what Citigroup analysts dubbed “plutonomy,” popular mass movements have arisen to champion economic justice. Populist movements of the late nineteenth century confronted the robber barons. The Socialist and Communist parties and Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth movement grew threatening enough to goad Franklin Roosevelt into the second New Deal, including Social Security; the Wagner Act, recognizing the right of workers to organize; and much more. And in more prosperous times, the civil rights movement forced the end of apartheid in the American South; the anti–Vietnam War movement drove Lyndon Johnson out of office; and the women’s, gay rights, consumer and environmental movements all helped to make America better. More recently, the movement against the war in Iraq helped sweep Democrats into power in 2006 and 2008.

Progressives did organize demonstrations in the wake of the economic collapse. Groups like National People’s Action sought to defend homeowners against foreclosure and led protests against big banks. The broad We Are One coalition, anchored by labor unions, sponsored a national march for jobs in the run-up to the 2010 elections. But these and other efforts received shamefully little mainstream press and generated little momentum. Significant progressive attention and resources were committed to helping pass the Obama reform agenda. Support for the president muted many critics, particularly among African-Americans, whose economic losses were the most devastating.

The sweeping GOP victories last year shattered that complacency. Despite continued mass unemployment, Republicans have dominated the debate about who will pay to clean up the mess left by Wall Street’s excesses—and what kind of economy will emerge out of the ditch. Their assault sparked a vigorous progressive response.

When teachers, students and firefighters joined union members in Wisconsin to defend worker rights and oppose the assault on schools and public services, the mass demonstrations electrified progressives and captured national attention. When House Republicans passed a budget that would have ended Medicare as we know it while cutting taxes on the wealthy, angry citizens filled Congressional town halls across the country.

The American Dream Movement
 
Wisconsin provided inspiration for the effort by Van Jones and others to launch the American Dream Movement. Jones, the founder of Green For All, joined MoveOn.org, the Center for Community Change, the Campaign for America’s Future and dozens of unions and other progressive organizations to build an initiative that many activists can affiliate with and help to define.

Just as the Tea Party provided an umbrella for conservative groups with disparate agendas, ranging from small-government purists to Christian fundamentalists to Citizens Council racists, so the American Dream Movement hopes to provide an umbrella and help mobilize energy for widespread progressive organizing efforts that are virtually invisible nationally. But unlike the Tea Party, the American Dream Movement is championing concerns that have broad popular support.

As a first step, the initiative held more than 1,500 house parties across the country to help develop a “Contract for the American Dream.” More than 130,000 activists joined online and in person to define a reform agenda that challenges the limits of the current debate. It includes major initiatives for jobs and growth: a commitment to reinvest in our decrepit infrastructure and to recapture the lead in the green industrial revolution. It calls for repairing our basic social contract, with investment in education from preschool to affordable college, Medicare for all and protection of Social Security. It would make work pay, empowering employees to organize unions and championing a living wage. It advocates progressive tax reform and an end to America’s wars abroad to help get our domestic books in order. And it demands sweeping democratic reforms to curb the power of money politics and clean out the Washington swamp.

The first major mobilization took place in August, as various groups, led by unions and MoveOn, often under an American Dream banner, waged an aggressive Jobs, Not Cuts campaign in Congressional districts, with activists confronting legislators of both parties. The efforts received extensive local press attention—and jolted legislators, many of whom canceled town meetings to avoid embarrassment.

Under the aegis of ProgressiveCongress.org, leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sponsored a Speakout for Good Jobs Now tour, holding town meetings and collecting stories of the unemployed in cities across the country. That culminated in a bold jobs agenda that they will champion. The protests—and the stalled economy—helped move President Obama to introduce his American Jobs Act in a speech before a joint session of Congress.

The onslaught of the right at the state and national levels, and the determination of predatory interests to sustain their privileges, will force numerous battles. An early test for the movement will be posed by the “supercommittee,” a gang of twelve legislators charged with carving $1.2 trillion or more from projected ten-year deficits and reporting back for an expedited vote before Christmas. The committee, bastard child of the debt-ceiling confrontation, revives the destructive focus on deficits amid mass unemployment. Obama continues to reach for the “grand bargain” he offered in the debt-ceiling negotiations last summer: he would trade cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in exchange for greater revenue achieved by hiking taxes on the rich and closing loopholes on corporations. This deal, championed under the banner of “shared sacrifice,” has broad establishment support and draws a revealing contrast with Republicans, who are staunch defenders of the privileged. But when the rewards of the economy are not shared, “shared sacrifice” involves what Martin Luther King Jr. used to call “ham and egg justice,” where the hen gives up an egg and the sow is asked for a leg. Progressives must demand that jobs remain the focus, not cuts. And the bill to pay for it should be sent to the banks that helped blow up the economy and to the wealthy who pocketed the rewards of growth, rather than the most vulnerable in society.

In November the referendum in Ohio on the rollback of worker rights will become a focal point of national mobilization. The Republican effort to curtail voter rights in thirty-eight states should spark student organizing and mass protest. The bank pressure to escape accountability for pervasive mortgage fraud and abuse, already confronted by the New Bottom Line coalition and other groups, will stoke public outrage. The drive of Big Oil to build a pipeline from Canada’s pollution-laden tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico has sparked unprecedented civil disobedience from environmentalists. Polls reveal increasing opposition to failed trade policies and the Pentagon’s effort to defend endless wars and bloated budgets.

The challenge for the American Dream Movement is to link these struggles and help raise the energy and the street heat. For this to happen, the movement has to challenge not just the extremism of the right but the failed dogmas of the establishment. It needs to take on conservatives in both parties.

A movement tells its story through the battles it fights, the tactics it employs, the messages it projects. The right has spent decades training the members of its choir. They know the gospel; they can sing the words to the songs. Progressives have done less well, particularly on core economic issues. Democratic presidents too often mislead, touting financial deregulation, corporate trade accords and capital gains tax cuts. A central task of the American Dream Movement—like the Populist movement of the late nineteenth century—will be popular education, convening the modern equivalent of barnyard gatherings, the next wave of teach-ins, to spread the word. Progressive leaders can help lay out now-excluded alternatives. No movement can grow unless citizens are convinced that there is a better way.

As Van Jones has argued, this requires a clear story, with a compelling cause, a threat, villains and heroes. The cause is to revive the American dream. The threat is clear. America’s democracy has been corrupted by big money and predatory corporate interests that threaten that dream. Big-money politics has purchased conservative support in both parties, with ruinous results. Our task is to clean up politics and rebuild an economy that works for working people. And that requires an independent people’s movement willing to challenge the reign of private interests. This can be done only by ordinary heroes—citizens who put aside their normal routines to save the American dream.

The Obama Question

Can the American Dream Movement, or any truly populist movement, build with Barack Obama in the White House? Disappointment in Obama has sparked a familiar debate among activists. Many fear doing anything that will weaken him further, given the calamity that would result if extremist Republicans take over the White House. Some call for primary challenges to the president; others argue it is time to abandon the Democratic Party altogether.

The test for a popular movement is independent energy and integrity. It has to defend working and poor people, skewering the destructive myths of the current debate, even if Obama recycles them. It has to give voice to the needs and the outrage of Americans. We need a movement prepared to sit in at the Justice Department when it fails to prosecute the pervasive fraud central to the financial collapse. A movement that marches 5,000 unemployed workers to Washington to demand work—and camps them in the Mall until action is taken.

In his Democratic National Convention speech in Chicago in 1996, the Rev. Jesse Jackson summarized the interaction between movements and presidents:

Progress comes through an enlightened president, in coalition with an energized people. In 1932, FDR did not run on a New Deal platform. The people mobilized around their economic plan, and FDR responded with the New Deal. FDR was the option. The people provided the answer. In 1960, neither Kennedy nor Nixon ran for president on the promise of a public accommodations bill. But Dr. King supported Kennedy. JFK was the best option. Desegregated public accommodations came from Greensboro and Birmingham, from the sit-ins and marches and street heat. From we, the people, in motion. In 1964, neither Goldwater nor Johnson campaigned on the Voting Rights Act. But Dr. King supported LBJ; he was the best option. We won voting rights on the bridge at Selma. We, the people, provided the answer.

King was a vocal critic of Kennedy and Johnson, and he led mass demonstrations protesting injustice. He saw no contradiction between mass protest and strategic voting—but the movement came first.

Can the American Dream Movement help galvanize protest that forces fundamental change? The gulf between Washington and the American people grows ever larger. Elements of a new direction—clean energy, ending the wars and investing at home; crafting a new manufacturing strategy and curbing Wall Street; progressive taxation, protecting Social Security and Medicare—have the support of the vast majority of Americans.

But Americans despair about whether anything will change. Most feel they are on their own and have no concept of how collective action might help. Most are isolated from democratic organizations or movements. They see a Washington dominated by insiders and corporate money—and their hopes have been dashed over the past three years.

The challenge is less to convince people of the need for reform than to give them hope that change is possible. That takes a movement. Now is the time to build one.

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