Love & Solidarity: Rev. James Lawson & Nonviolence in the Search for Workers' Rights

Director:  Michael Honey
Run time:  38 min.
Call number: HM1281 .L68 2016

"What can people do to change a world full of violence and hate? Is nonviolent revolution possible? 'Love and Solidarity' addresses these questions through the life and thought of Rev. James Lawson, an African American Methodist minister who worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., to initiate civil rights struggles in the South in the 1960s, and in recent years taught nonviolence organizing to poor Black and Latino workers in coalitions that have remade the labor movement in Los Angeles. Through interviews with Rev. Lawson and historic film footage, acclaimed labor and civil rights historian Michael Honey and award-winning filmmaker Errol Webber place a needed discourse on nonviolent social change at the forefront of today's struggles against violence and for human rights, peace, and economic justice."

—Publisher's description

Incarcerating US (2016)

Director:   Regan Hines
Run time:  84 min.

"Incarcerating US is a feature-length documentary that exposes America's prison problem and explores ways to unshackle the Land of the Free through vital criminal justice reforms. With 2.3 million people behind bars, the U.S. has the largest prison population in the history of the world. Through dramatic first-hand accounts, expert testimony, and shocking statistics, Incarcerating US asks fundamental questions about the prison system in America: What is the purpose of prison? Why did our prison population explode in the 1970s? What can make our justice system more just?"
—Publisher's description

91%: A Film about Guns in America (2016)

Director:   John Richie 
Run time:  71 min.

"In 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that 91% of Americans support comprehensive background checks that could prevent thousands of similar gun violence tragedies nationwide. 91%: A Film about Guns in America allows for those permanently affected by the aftermath of gun violence to have a voice. The survivors of these tragedies tell their heartbreaking stories of loss, pain, and a heroic search for hope in a nation stalled in a senseless gun control debate. Every story details agony. Carolyn Tuft lost her daughter Kirsten Hinckley in the 2007 killing spree at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square Mall. Once physically active, Carolyn can barely take a few steps without exhaustion--doctors could not remove all the metal shot in her body. In Portland, Maine, Wayne and Judi Richardson lost their daughter Darien days after she was shot in her bedroom by an intruder. The gun that was used was purchased at a 'private' gun show--later used to kill a young man a month after Darien's murder. In 1999, a Neo-Nazi shot six-year-old Joshua Stepakoff at the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center. Joshua continues to live on alert while attending college." 
—Publisher's description

Pull of Gravity

Directors: El Sawyer and Jon Kaufman
Run time: 80 min. 
Call number:  HV6021 .P8 2015

"Kev, El and Andy are three men united by one struggle: they are trying to defy gravity. As part of the 700,000 prisoners released into society every year, they find themselves faced with a chilling outlook: 67% of ex-offenders re-offend within three years. What explains this invisible force that keeps former inmates in a seemingly unending cycle of incarceration? Pull of Gravity is an intimate portrait of these three men that confronts head--on the gritty details of lives cut short by poverty and drugs, where dealing is seen as the only route to economic prosperity, where using offers an escape from powerlessness, and where prison is too often the next stop. The film's unfiltered lens captures its subjects as they lay bare their stories, fears, and tentative dreams."
—Distributor's description

H-2 Worker

Director: Stephanie Black
Run time: 67 min.

"Winner of the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, H-2 Worker reveals the systematic exploitation of Caribbean laborers by the Florida sugar cane industry from World War II through the 1990s . . . Originally released in 1990, today H-2 Worker provides an invaluable resource to understanding the current debate over guest worker provisions of immigration legislation.  While Florida's sugar cane cutters have been replaced by mechanical harvesters, guest worker programs have expanded in agriculture, hotel, restaurant, forestry, and other industries."
—Distributor's description