DAUK Film Night: Suppressed 2020 and Suppressed 2021
was held on April 16, 2021 online
In collaboration with the DAUK GOTV and Voter Registration Committee and the Policy Network Voting Rights and Democracy Group of the Policy Network
See details on Brave New Films
Thanks to Brave New Films for a license to screen to our DA global audience.
The Filmmaker
Robert Greenwald Director and Producer
More About the Film
Issues at stake
The Film Night
“ If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be trying to stop it ” Stacey Abrams
On March 24th the Senate opened its hearings on For The People Act, the most important voting rights legislation since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Why is this so urgent? We won – but just barely – in 2020 due to a number of factors, but key was achieving the highest voter turnout in over a century. This was the result of extraordinarily successful efforts to GOTV alongside provision for easier ways to register to vote and cast ballots – e.g. ‘no-excuse’ mail-in voting, drop-off voting, and extensions to early voting.
While the outcome of the 2020 elections was pivotal for preserving the foundations of our democratic institutions, winning in 2022 is essential for ensuring we can get on track to address economic and social justice, the vitality of our democratic institutions and the future of our planet.
We know this and so do the Republicans. Republicans readily admit that their route to future electoral success rests upon fewer people voting. Their immediate response has been to sharpen their tools for voter suppression. At last count over 360 laws have been introduced in state legislatures in 47 states to restrict voting rights. These are brazen in their mission and surgical in their precision in suppressing Democratic votes – the poor, the young, but with a particular focus on minority, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and especially African American voters.
Suppressed 2020 provides an overview of how voter suppression impacted voters in the 2020 elections.
Suppressed 2021 is a short update on the current efforts by Republican legislators to roll back the expansion of access to voting propelled by the pandemic and to impose more onerous and very targeted restrictions
As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently said : “If one political party believes that when you lose an election, the answer isn’t to win more votes but rather to try and prevent the other side from voting, we have an existential threat to democracy on our hands.”
Relying on testimonies of voters, Suppressed clearly and comprehensively shows how voter suppression works on the ground. Like these voters and GOTV campaigners, we can meet these challenges, exposing the anti-democratic impulses that drive them.
About The Filmmaker
Photo credit:
Adapted from his Wikipedia entry
Robert Greenwald is the founder of Brave New Films, a nonprofit film and advocacy organization whose work is distributed for free in concert with nonprofit partners and movements in order to educate and mobilize for progressive causes. With Brave New Films, Greenwald has made investigative documentaries on a wide range of topics, as well as many short investigative films and internet videos.
Before launching Brave Films in 2000, Greenwald produced and/or directed more than 65 TV movies, miniseries and films as well as major theatrical releases. His early body of work includes Steal This Movie! (2000), starring Vincent D’Onofrio as 60s radical Abbie Hoffman; Breaking Up (1997), starring Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek; A Woman of Independent Means (1995) with Sally Field; The Burning Bed (1984)[2] with Farrah Fawcett; and Xanadu (1980), for which he won the inaugural Golden Raspberry award for Worst Director.
Greenwald has earned 25 Emmy Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, the Peabody Award and the Robert Wood Johnson Award. He was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute.
The DAUK Film Committee has screened many of Brave New Films documentaries. We launched the Film Committee in 2004 with a screening of Outfoxed and John Kerry’s campaign biography Going Upriver. Since then we have screened Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006)
About Brave New Films
Disclaimer: The screening of this film does not constitute an endorsement or promotion of the film, nor of any views expressed therein or any association with The Film Committee, DAUK, Democrats Abroad or the Democratic Party. Screenings are solely conceived as educational activities: offering an opportunity for members to discuss issues.
Links to other organizations or publications imply neither endorsement of their policies nor any association with the Democratic Party or Democrats Abroad – UK.
