And Off To Washington!

I left Morelia at 3am (of course from a party), got in a festival van to Mexico city (4 hour ride), waited 4 hours, took a plane (3:30 hours), and arrived in DC at 5pm, just on time for the presentation of the film at the DC Labor Film Festival. Wow! I REALLY wanted to be there! ? It was a special presentation organized by Active Voice in collaboration with the Center for Social Media at American University, and sponsored by Inclusion, Center for Community Change, National Council of La Raza, DC Lawyer Chapter of American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and POV. What an honor -we're grateful to Active Voice for bringing all of these groups together!

(It was great to see Larry Kirkman, Dean of the School of Communication at AU, mixed in with students in the audience! Larry has been a supporter ever since he was a member of the jury that gave my short doc the Sterling Award at Silverdocs in 2003...)

The screening was followed by a panel with Margy Waller, Co-Founder of Inclusion and Director of the Mobility Agenda, Rich Stolz from the Center for Community Change's Immigration Team, and of course Robert and myself. The students were boiling with questions, and it was actually one of the most interesting discussions we've had with the film so far. We were all able to bring to the forefront ALL aspects of the film and use the film to contextualize them and put a human face on issues of poverty, immigration, women's rights, fair labor, and the right to organize. Check out Inclusion's blog for more about the event! (We're working to put up a podcast of the panel -stay tuned or join our list for updates!)