BEFORE: I think I must have confused yesterday's film, "Rigged", with this one, but they came out in different years. "Rigged" was released in 2019, so it was amazingly prescient for a film that predated the 2020 election by a year, yet all of the tactics mentioned were used by the Republicans at some point during the election. THIS film, "All In", was released in 2020, just before the election, and I remember it being publicized in October. So here I am, watching it 6 months after the fact, but for me that's actually a quick response time, when you consider my blog was dark most of November and December, plus it can take me several YEARS to link to a specific film, so getting to it just 6 months after release is relatively prompt. I think I got confused when Stacy Abrams was in the IMDB credits for "Rigged", and I just don't remember seeing her in that film, but her story is a big part of "All In", so either I missed her, or someone else was as confused about the two films as I was. It's possible that both docs have the same exact information in them about voter suppression, but this is the one that got all the attention.
At the very least, one interviewed person carries over for sure, Michael Waldman - but probably a LOT of people carry over via archive footage. I saw Barack Obama in the trailer, so he's almost certainly seen here, and that allows me to connect to tomorrow's film, so I'm in the clear. However, this film wasn't part of the plan until just yesterday when I realized my mistake - so adding this one means I'll have to drop something else if I'm still going to make it to Mother's Day in time. It's OK, I guess I'll drop some of the lesser Trump-themed docs, he certainly doesn't deserve any more attention. I need to watch this one while it still counts as (semi-) current events, and I also don't want to have to circle back this way again.
First, a quick check of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, April 20:
6:00 am "One Way Passage" (1932)
7:30 am "Operator 13" (1934)
9:00 am "Our Dancing Daughters" (1928)
10:30 am "Our Town" (1940)
12:15 pm "Our Very Own" (1950)
2:00 pm "Pacific Liner" (1939)
3:30 pm "Paisan" (1946)
6:00 pm "Pal Joey" (1957) - SEEN IT
8:00 pm "Papillon" (1973) - SEEN IT
10:45 pm "A Passage to India" (1984) - SEEN IT
1:45 am "Passion Fish" (1992)
4:15 am "Pat and Mike" (1952) - SEEN IT
Just another 4 seen out of tomorrow's 12, so 96 seen out of 231, or 41.5% overall. 11 days until the letter "Z" and just 6 days until this year's ceremony.
THE PLOT: A look at the history of, and current activism against voter suppression; barriers to voting that most people don't even know are a threat to their basic rights as U.S. citizens.
AFTER: I feel a little weird, diving into American politics in April, rather than, say, around July 4. But today, April 19, happens to be the anniversary of the start of the American Revolution, the battle of Lexington and Concord began on April 19, 1775. OK, so that's not really the start of American politics, but it's the start of the war that made American politics possible, so that's something. There have been a few wars and many uprisings since, and the battle for civil rights is an important one of those. This film ended up doing a deep dive into the civil rights battles, Jim Crow laws, everything going back to the post-Civil war times, the 13th through 15 amendments (it ignored the 19th, though, because women's suffrage is apparently a separate issue...)
And a lot of this ended up being about Stacey Abrams and the Georgia gubernatorial race in 2018, which is a bit weird because I read that at first she didn't want her story told in this film, and then relented because of what happened in that election - I don't think they would have had much of a movie without her participation, this film would have then been a carbon copy of "Rigged", mixed with material from "13th". There's very little here about the 2020 election, which is a bit disappointing, but I guess it hadn't all happened yet, so that documentary is still forthcoming. (One of the directors, Liz Garbus, also directed or produced that "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" mini-series I watched about the Golden State Killer, and she's now producing upcoming docs called "Gamestop", "Cousteau" and "Fauci".)
But the 2018 election for governor of Georgia - and the 2016 Presidential election - should have been taken as a sign of how things were going to go. As if it weren't already enough that Republicans had gerrymandered the hell out of the U.S. after the 2010 census, and moved to restrict early voting and instituted all kinds of voter ID laws, and purges that removed hundreds of thousands of "undesirable" or "inactive" voters off the books, without their knowledge or consent - on top of ALL that, the election supervisor was also the Republican candidate! That should never have been allowed, not in ANY election, there's just no way that an election supervisor is going to act impartially if his name is on the ballot! So was anyone really surprised that there were voting irregularities, voting machines that didn't work in districts where his opponent was favored, and then missing ballots that turned up, thousands at a time, weeks after the election? Yes, these are things that Republicans cited in (unproven) cases of election fraud in 2020, but they really happened in Georgia in 2018!
So, Stacey Abrams did NOT become the governor of Georgia in 2018 - this douchebag Brian Kemp did, by the thinnest of margins, 50.2% of the vote. Previously, as Secretary of State, he had cancelled more than 1.4 million voter registrations, and held up another 53,000 registrations during the 2018 election, 70% of which came from potential African-American voters, then he won by just 55,000 votes, so you have to wonder what the totals would have been if he hadn't kept over a million people from voting. He probably would have lost, so how does he deserve to be holding that office now, and implementing new policies about (you guessed it) restricting voting rights. Sorry, as he calls it "securing the integrity of our electoral process". What a bunch of bull.
Stacey, to her credit, did not concede the election, because of all the voter suppression tactics used that affected the outcome, and because there were so many outstanding votes that had possibly not been counted properly or were perhaps disposed of. Unfortunately, this sort of made her a precursor to Trump not conceding - Trump apparently stole ideas and tactics from both parties in this Georgia election, but unlike Trump, Abrams had good cause to complain, while Trump and the Republican party was just making stuff up. All that stuff they claim happened nationwide in 2020 really happened in Georgia in 2018, though - but remember how whenever Trump's lawyers filed a claim over voter fraud, they had NO evidence to back up their claims? What they wanted was to gain access in order to GET evidence, and that's just not how it works, thank God.
(Look, this sort of thing is above my pay grade, really, but just a quick look at the Wikipedia page on the 2018 Georgia election, and something just doesn't smell right. Kemp's opponent in the Republican primary, Lt Gov. Casey Cagle, got 39% of the primary vote to Kemp's 25%. Since neither candidate got over 50%, this forced a run-off vote, and before the run-off, Kemp was polling at about 18 points above his opponent, but then he won the run-off by almost 40 points? He jumped up from 25% to 70%, in a primary where he was also the election supervisor? Where his opponent had tons of endorsements from other politicians and the NRA, and he had NONE? This just doesn't smell right, something's rotten there.)
The film ends with celebrities speaking over Zoom from their homes, with advice on how to register and vote in the 2020 Presidential election, and to make sure that their vote is received and tabulated. All of this is good advice for future elections, and should stand the test of time - show up early, don't get discouraged, don't let anybody tell you to get out of line, even if the polls close... More people need to be aware of their rights, and also be aware that the voting process really begins a few months before the election, when voters need to register or check their registration to make sure they haven't been purged from the rolls. Now the people in power are going to keep "securing the integrity" of the process which means making it more restrictive, disabling early voting, removing ballot boxes, challenging absentee ballots, and now they want to make it a crime to give food or water to anyone in line, with the idea that some people will get hungry or thirsty and bail. These are the new challenges, and the vote restrictors are the weasels that need to be voted out of office, because think about it, if they were honest, competent people who were acting appropriately and fairly in office, then they wouldn't be so scared about losing the next election, now, would they?
Our language is a funny thing, and sometimes there are words that have more than one meaning, maybe too many meanings. "Democratic" refers to both a system whereby every citizen has a voice, and it's also the name of one of the two major political parties. "Republican" is the other party, but the word itself refers to the political system of a Republic, where the power is in the hands of the people's representatives. So the USA is both a democracy and a republic, it's a democratic republic. But you have to wonder if the Republicans are confused about the meaning of the word "Anti-Democratic", which would logically also have two meanings, being opposed to the Democratic party, or it could mean being opposed to democracy itself. Somehow I feel like they've been blurring the line between the two definitions, or choosing to ignore the possibility of there being a difference.
Also starring Stacey Abrams, Carolyn Abrams, Robert Abrams, Debo Adegbile, Jayla Allen, Carol Anderson, Ari Berman, Kristen Clarke (also carrying over from "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Eric Foner, Marcia Fudge, Alexis Delgado Garcia, Alejandra Gomez, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Eric Holder, Luci Baines Johnson, Desmond Meade, Michael Parsons, David Pepper, Frances Fox Piven, Bert Rein, Barbara Semans, O.J. Semans, Neil Volz, Hans von Spaskovsky, Andrew Young, Sean J. Young.
with archive footage of Hillary Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Brian Kemp, Kris Kobach, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, Scott Pelley, the voices of John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Sonia Sotomayor (all carrying over from "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook), George W. Bush (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Nathan Deal, Terrence Floyd, Gerald Ford (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Glenn Grothman, Richard Harrison, Jesse Jackson, Paul B. Johnson Jr., Coretta Scott King, John Lewis. Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Whitney"), William Rehnquist, Carl Sanders, Eugene Talmadge, John Bell Williams, Nikema Williams, Joe Arpaio, Jason Aubry, Tucker Carlson, Nancy Cordes, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs (last seen in "State of Play"), Trevor Noah (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), John Oliver (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Diane Sawyer (also last seen in "Whitney"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), the voice of Rachel Maddow (last seen in "The Report"), with cameos from Vanita Gupta, Dolores Huerta, Joe Jonas, Kevin Jonas, Nick Jonas (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Yara Shahidi (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Gabourey Sidibe (last seen in "Top Five"), Gloria Steinem (last seen in "RBG"), Jonathan van Ness.
RATING: 5 out of 10 endorsements from state senators
No comments:
Post a Comment