President Barack Obama has been elected for a second term, and now it's time to return to the hard work of restoring economic security for millions of families who are struggling.
Here is an article from the Center for American Progress that discusses 35 policies that could rebuild America's middle class:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2012/08/01/12034/making-our-middle-class-stronger/
Kickstarter campaign for American Winter a success!
We wanted to say THANK YOU to our 963 Kickstarter backers for helping us reach our "American Winter" crowdfunding goal! We successfully raised $29,520 on Kickstarter in 30 days. It was exciting and encouraging to see the interest and support for this film after two years of working to get it to this phase. With these funds, we are able to begin the post-production sound work on the film in a few weeks, and our composers are plugging away to create the music for the film. After that we will tackle color correction and do all the rest of the fine-tuning and technical finessing of the film to get it ready for release. We hope the film will be able to premiere at a major film festival and roll out to the public soon after. So, THANKS AGAIN!
http://www.thenation.com/blog/169900/welcome-poverty-day-one-time-year-when-america-cares-about-poor#
It says, "We need to stop looking at poverty as a separate phenomenon from the rest of the economy—an economy with a proliferation of low-wage jobs and a weak and inequitable recovery; and we especially need to stop viewing those who live in poverty as suffering from some sort of character flaw, as opposed to paying the heaviest price for our skewed priorities and choices"
Hopefully, AMERICAN WINTER can play a part in humanizing these issues and can help our country come together to give families a chance at a decent life and an opportunity to strive for the American Dream. That's the goal we are working towards.
Kickstarter campaign --going strong after 7 days!
We launched a crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter 7 days ago, and we have already almost raised our $25,000 funding goal! The film trailer on Kickstarter has been viewed 24,481 times as of today! We are so encouraged and grateful for this amazing response from so many contributors. Thanks for your support, and we hope we'll even surpass our funding goal.
American Winter at Working Film's REEL ECONOMY conference in Washington D.C.
Harry Gantz and Devon Terrill attended the REEL ECONOMY conference in Washington D.C. in July and connected with dozens of organizations working on the issues that come up in American Winter. Since attending this conference, we have been in talks with many of these organizations to find ways that they can use American Winter as a tool to advance their missions and help struggling families
Check it out: http://workingfilms.org/blog/?tag=reel-economy
Alarming trend of decreasing economic mobility in America
This is an interesting article from the NY Times about decreasing economic mobility in the United States --both liberals and conservatives agree that this is an alarming trend that undercuts the very foundation of the American Dream.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html?pagewanted=all
Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs
By JASON DePARLE
WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”
Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.
“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.
Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.
By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he was “shocked” by the international comparisons. “Republicans will not feel compelled to talk about income inequality,” Mr. Bridgeland said. “But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack of access to the American Dream.”
While Europe differs from the United States in culture and demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians.
“Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most comparable countries,” Professor Corak said in an interview.
Skeptics caution that the studies measure “relative mobility” — how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because the country has grown richer.
Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.
Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American strength. “If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.,” said Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings, while an American family would need an additional $93,000.
Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped.
While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard’s Almanac, until recently there has been little data.
Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers’ earnings and those of their sons. But when better data became available a decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the “elasticity” of father-son earnings at 0.5, which means that for every 1 percent increase in a father’s income, his sons’ income can be expected to increase by about 0.5 percent.
In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.
The causes of America’s mobility problem are a topic of dispute — starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children vulnerable to debilitating hardships.
Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum, who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of racial stratification than its peers.
“The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.”
A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and arrive in them more prepared to learn.
“Upper-income families can invest more in their children’s education and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a good education,” said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists.
The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and employment.
Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have less mobility.
Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility “is overrated as a social policy goal” compared with raising incomes across the board. Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time.
But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970, while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later. Until more recent data arrives, he said, “we don’t know the half of it.”
Off-Line edit: mission accomplished!
After 16 weeks of editing, we have just finished the final off-line edit of American Winter. We are thrilled to have gotten the film to this point, where we can show a powerful and tight cut to distributors, festivals, and advocacy groups that are interested in teaming up with us when we rollout the film to the public. But we still need to raise more money to actually complete the film. So for now, we are putting our focus on raising the remaining funds to complete the sound edit and mix, color correction, titles/graphics, and music.
We hope to finish American Winter as soon as possible. We are already in discussions with a number of major non-profit organizations nationwide that would like to use this film to engage their communities and support the work they are doing to help vulnerable families and restore the American Dream. American Winter is a powerful and authentic view of the experiences of American families after the economic downturn and the enormous cuts to social services. We hope you’ll stay tuned as we get closer to releasing this important film.
And we are.....WRAPPED!
We just finished our LAST week of filming! After shooting for 16 weeks in Portland, we are officially wrapped. We had an amazing final week shooting with our families, and we were able to get several key interviews with ‘experts’ (economic/financial/religious) who shared their perspectives on the issues addressed in this film. Now onto the editing...We are hoping to finish our first rough cut THIS WEEK. We are definitely feeling a sense of momentum and these steps are getting us closer to completion every day. Thanks for tuning in! And here is a pic from the field.
One in Three Young U.S. Workers Are Underemployed
Check out this article from Gallop Economy published on May 9th. Sadly, we are still a country in crisis...
One in Three Young U.S. Workers Are Underemployed
One in Three Young U.S. Workers Are Underemployed
Poverty in America and the new Census Numbers
The numbers just released paint a difficult portrait of the sate of poverty in the United Sates. The latest census formula took in consideration the cost of living by region and defined as living in a state of poverty 16 percent of the population or 49.1 million Americans. The census numbers came on the eve of a vote by the congressional super committee which is to define exactly where cuts should be made. More than ever we cannot let the voice of 16 percent of American be drowned out by all the other noises heard in the media. Real people with incredible difficult circumstances will be affected by budget cuts to social services. The American Winter documentary aims to make the voices of the weakest amongst us louder.
Read the detailed article about the new Census on Poverty in America.
Read the detailed article about the new Census on Poverty in America.
Have you tried living on food stamps?
Some politicians are according to this very interesting article on Food Stamps in the New York Times:
"WASHINGTON — Facing billions of dollars in possible cuts, advocates for the poor are resorting to some creative tactics to grab the attention of Congress: Getting lawmakers to try eating on $4.50 a day, just as some 46 million food-stamp recipients already do."
"WASHINGTON — Facing billions of dollars in possible cuts, advocates for the poor are resorting to some creative tactics to grab the attention of Congress: Getting lawmakers to try eating on $4.50 a day, just as some 46 million food-stamp recipients already do."
"Crisis Call 211 Puts Camera on Plight of the Poor, Former Middle Class"
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), with over 32,000 members,
has endorsed our project and posted an article about Crisis Call 211 (now renamed American Winter) on their blog Social Workers Speak today.
has endorsed our project and posted an article about Crisis Call 211 (now renamed American Winter) on their blog Social Workers Speak today.
Will this program help those who are underwater in the deep end?
I just read this article by Zachary A. Goldfarb over at The Washington Post...
Government announces new program to help ‘underwater’ homeowners
Crisis Call 211 wins project of the week on Indie Wire
Thank you for all your votes and your show of support. Thanks to you Crisis Call 211 was voted Project of the Week in Indie Wire. Our documentary (now renamed American Winter) is now in the running for Project of the Month and we're excited. We're still gathering donations to our KickStarter campaign and we only have 19 days to go, so spread the word to make this important social documentary happen.
Vote for Crisis Call 211 on Indie Wire
Our film is Project of the Day on indieWIRE.com today!
A BIG THANKS to those of you who have contributed to our film on Kickstarter! We've been working hard to get the word out about the film, and today we are featured as indieWIRE's project of the day!
Joe Gantz spent the weekend in Portland, meeting with crew, visiting the 211 office, and laying the groundwork for production, scheduled for November 28th. There is definitely a lot of passion and enthusiasm for this subject matter, and it seems like EVERYONE we talk to about this film feels the same sense of urgency to show the consequences of this broken economy from the viewpoint of families just trying to get by. Now we just have to reach our funding goals to make sure we can start shooting by the end of November and get this film out into the world before the 2012 elections! Keep spreading the word! We need your help to make this happen!
How families cope as they lose it all
A very interesting article in the Los Angeles Times about families trying to cope during the financial crisis. Familes facing the economic downturn deserve the voice that the documentary Crisis Call 211 (now renamed American Winter) will give them. By helping finance the documentary on KickStarter you can help give a voice to those most at risk.
picture courtesy of the Los Angeles Times
Why the Crisis Call 211 documentary matters
Every day, more Americans find themselves descending into a perilous economic situation. Lost as to what to do next and desperate to meet their basic needs, many call a number looking for help: that number is 211. In a nondescript building in downtown Portland, men and women answer these calls twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The sole mission of the 211 call center is to connect people with the social service agencies that may be able to provide the urgent housing, health, or financial assistance that they need.
We are producing American Winter to reveal the dramatic struggle of these individuals and families in their time of need, beginning with their phone call to 211. From there, with the caller’s permission, a camera crew rushes to the caller’s location and captures the events unfolding as the subjects try to find a solution to their crisis. We intend to follow several families as they struggle to get their life back on course, weaving these powerful stories into a narrative that will give viewers insight into the impact of budget cuts to social services on a growing number of families who desperately need help.
Not surprisingly, it is no longer just the chronically poor who are affected by our nation’s economic downturn-- the impact has spread to the middle class. Chances are that you, or someone in your family, have been hurt by this economy, or you know someone who is still suffering. The volume of calls at the 211 call centers nationwide is exploding as many families find themselves in need of assistance for the first time in their lives. 211 calls come from a mother who can’t feed her children and needs to find a food bank for help… A homeless vet with chronic medical problems… A family just evicted from their home in need of shelter for the night… A single mother with an asthmatic child whose electricity is about to be shut off, making it impossible to use his breathing machine… A single father of four whose unemployment has run out and now can’t cover their bills. These are the daily battles that 211 operators face on the frontlines of America’s current economic crisis.
You can see the American Winter trailer by entering the American Winter website here or by scrolling and finding it below this post.
You can also find us on twitter and like our facebook page
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