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Suppressed Screening and Panel Discussion

by Hunter Paulson-Smith July 24, 2020 0

On Thursday July 9th, we hosted a screening and panel discussion of the film “Suppressed: The Fight to Vote.” It was a hugely successful event with over 500 people signed up and almost 400 people in attendance. “Suppressed” traces the 2018 Georgia governor election between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams and the voter suppression that was rampant in that race.

Discussion points

Our very own Hunter facilitated a rich discussion with the filmmaker and founder of Brave New Films, Robert Greenwald, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, Aunna Dennis, and Washington Attorney General, Bob Ferguson. Robert Greenwald spoke about the process of making the powerful 38 minute film. In the discussion he said, “Look, I’m a New Yorker, I’m cynical, I don’t think too many things shock me. But I must tell you, day after day as we heard these stories of the most patriotic people, in the truest sense of the word, wanted to vote, who spent hours and hours, giving up their work for the day, it deeply affected me and it deeply affected the rest of the rest of the staff. So we made an organic decision to keep going and tell as many of these stories as possible.”

Aunna Dennis, who zoomed in from Georgia, shared about her work at Common Cause. She said, “Working in coalition with a lot of the groups that you all saw in the film, we work on election protection, where we have volunteers on the ground monitoring polling places, and we are also recruiting for poll workers as well.” She also shared, “I would love for people to be 365 day voters and be activated like that. But in reality, voting sometimes only comes to someone’s kitchen tables every four years, maybe two years. So we always try to find ways to keep folks engaged in the process and keep them engaged in wanting to talk about their kitchen table issues, and wanting to create reflective democracy.”

Comments from Bob Ferguson

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson talked about his thoughts on voter suppression and his responsibility to fight for justice in this arena, “One thing that’s important to me as a father of young kids, you know, thinking about the next generation. I do think that part of what inspires me to do the work that I do that I care about is seeing role models of past generations who took on the challenges of their day. I feel that we have our responsibility in whatever role we play to do that for our kids and our grandkids as well.”

We received many questions and comments from our audience through the Q&A function on the webinar. One of the final comments was simple yet powerful. An audience member said, “Showing up counts.”

Watch the recording

Please check out the full recording of the film and panel discussion. CLICK HERE FOR RECORDING.

You will need to register to watch the recording.

Big thanks to our partners Brave New Films, Fix Democracy First, Social Justice Film Festival & Institute, as well 4Culture and Humanities Washington.