S3.E84 ∙ Pick Up America: Stepping Forward, Part 3

A documentary feature film about a cinematographer who is caught in a mass arrest. His film crew's videotape of the incident leads to a civil rights lawsuit, uncovers a police spying ring and launches his personal investigation in to the weird world of domestic surveillance. With special appearances by Andre '3000' Benjamin, Barack Obama, The Bush Twins, Cornel West, Al Sharpton and Don King.

Led by John Steinbeck's editor, a group of women activists protest Japanese American incarceration and resist racism in WWII California. Recently in a dusty filing cabinet in Monterey, California a local historian made the amazing discovery of a 16mm film from 1938 showing the local Japanese American Community having fun at the wharf and playing baseball. Along with this remarkable never-before-seen film of a community about to be destroyed was a trove of signed petitions demanding the restoration of civil rights to those same Americans. As historian Tim Thomas dug deeper into the origins of both the film and the petition drive he discovered a story that stands as a lesson for all Americans interested in preserving our democracy. At a time when the fear of WWII gripped our nation, kitchen table conversations led to a door-to-door petition drive motivating citizens of the Monterey peninsula to resist economically motivated racism and welcome back fellow citizens held in concentration camps for 3+ years solely due to their Japanese ancestry. Toni Jackson-who worked as an editor for John Steinbeck and was Ed Ricketts' common-law wife-wrote the petition, A Democratic Way of Life for All, in 1945. It stands as the only organized public resistance to the well-funded hate campaign waged against Japanese-Americans as they began the painful return home to suspicious communities. "Enduring Democracy: the Monterey Petitions" explores the motivations of the wealthy individuals who financed hate campaigns as well as the daring women who spearheaded the carefully thought out response. A twitter war before mobile phones, the battle was fought in the editorial pages of several local newspapers as racists emboldened by Anti-Japanese war propaganda posted full page ads to discourage Japanese Americans from returning to their homes and businesses. Inspired by Mollie Sumida's letter to the editor written while imprisoned in camp and impervious to threats of violence, residents banded together to get their community to sign Toni Jackson's petition pledging "The Democratic Way of Life for All." The petition drive and subsequent posting in The Monterey Herald effectively put a stop to the public efforts of several well funded fear campaigns against California Japanese American Citizens.

The Peace for Profit Series is a proposed ongoing series of documentaries that explore the economics of Peace. It is a vision of hope and triumph that gathers positive ideas on how peace can be profitable and takes action without judgment or condemnation. The ongoing series focuses on the big issues concerning government and also on the individual and the families where even the smallest efforts can bring about the greatest changes. There are many sources that are pointing out the problems with few focusing on peaceful solutions from the core of the problem and showing that everyone large and small is hurt in one way or another by hostility or by war. Peace for Profit is not anti anything, it is simply pro peace. Freedom cannot be obtained by pushing against one another.

In Peace We Trust. This documentary shows us how animal rights and human rights & the environment are all related. Narrated by Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker and featuring Jimmy Carter, Maneka Gandhi and Harold Ramis among others.

This animated documentary about the vision of the Colombia war by displaced children using their original drawings and their testimonies.

With thousands dead and counting, the ongoing conflict in Syria has become a microcosm for the complicated politics of the region, and an unsavory reflection of the world at large. Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring and the complicated politics of the region, this film explores the Syrian conflict through the humanity of the civilians who have been killed, abused, and displaced. In all such conflicts, it is civilians, women and children, families and whole communities, who suffer at the leisure of those in power. When elephants go to war, it is the grass that suffers.