“The greatest moments of progress are followed by the most intense periods of retrenchment. That’s what happened after the civil war. Reconstruction was a high point for voting rights, and it was followed by nearly a hundred years of Jim Crow,” explains journalist Ari Berman in the eye-opening documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” about the history of voter suppression in the United States. The constant fluctuations to the basic voting rights of every individual – but, in particular, of African Americans – are detailed compellingly by directors Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes. This is essential viewing as we head into the most important election in our lifetime.
Stacey Abrams’ 2018 race for governor of Georgia and her ultimate loss to Brian Kemp – who was widely accused of preventing Black voters’ access – is used as the lynchpin for the narrative. Abrams was the former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, and the first female African-American major-party gubernatorial nominee. Her persuasive personal story is the through line to this history and civics lesson – that has the immediacy and propulsion of a thriller. “I’m the product of the voting rights act. An act that was bought and paid for on Edmund Pettus Bridge with foot soldiers who believed that they had the right to be there,” she says about her history.
Garbus’ and Cortes’ research is impressive. They engage activists, journalists and historians who make the case that the struggle for democracy – for true representation – has been around since our nation’s birth. Six percent of the population was eligible to vote on our first election, predominantly white, male land-owners. In a similar way that Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” used charismatic historian Shelby Foote as its guide, Carol Anderson – a professor of African American Studies at Emory University – makes for a commanding figure. She has a way of conveying information and anecdotes in a captivating manner, and she gives us quite a few sobering statistics. “In Mississippi, during the reconstruction, African-American voter registration was almost at 67%,” Anderson says. “By the time we have fought the Nazis, and we are moving into the Cold War where the US is holding up as the leader of the free world, only 3% of age-eligible African Americans were registered to vote in the South.” After the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were passed and the right of people of color to vote was granted, Mississippi figured out how to get around them without saying we don’t want the black folks to vote. They instituted a poll tax forcing the poor to choose between food or their vote, and then literacy tests were instituted. Other states followed suit. “There were these rafts of different laws that were called the Black Codes,” she elucidates. “And those laws criminalized basic normal behavior.” She tells the chilling story of Maceo Snipes, a Black World War II veteran who was the only Black person in Taylor County, Georgia, that voted in 1946 – and his fate. “And this is why you see the kind of insurgency happening in the Black community that leads into the civil rights movement.”
The documentary moves through the decades – illustrating slavery and the racial inequities of the Reconstruction period reverberating through Alabama in 1965. The filmmakers document the events that occur on March 7, when John Lewis led marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge In Selma, Alabama and were met with brutality by state troopers. Across the country, families were gathered around their TVs watching “Judgement at Nuremberg.” “They cut into their movie of the week to show the footage of Bloody Sunday,” tells Anderson. “The nation was appalled because one of the ways that Jim Crow worked so smoothly and so effectively is that you didn’t have to see it. But when you see the violence raining down on people who are just fighting for the right to vote, it tells you that something is systematically, fundamentally wrong in this democracy.”
On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court issued the rulings in the case called Shelby County v Holder. In a 5-4 vote, the court struck down the formula at the heart of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law that required certain states and localities with a history of discrimination against minority voters to get changes cleared by the federal government before they went into effect. The filmmakers show us the effect it’s had on our elections. “The Shelby decision give carte blanche to states like Georgia to restore every racist trope they had,” Abrams states.
It’s a timely documentary, one you should see and tell others to watch as well.
Stacey Abrams: “The fundamental power of democracy lives in the right to vote. If you protect that right, you create possibilities for everything else.”
Love,
Roger
Available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Written by Jack Youngelson
Directed by Lisa Cortes and Liz Garbus
Featuring Stacey Abrams, Debo Adegbile, Jayla Allen, Carol Anderson, Eric Foner, Marcia Fudge, Lauren Groh-Wargo and Luci Baines Johnson
102 minutes
Bringing “All In: The Fight for Democracy” to the Screen
Stacey Abrams never intended to become a documentarian. However, after the former tax attorney and Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives lost the 2018 election for Governor, with likely voter suppression orchestrated by winner Brian Kemp, it’s safe to say she was angry. And when it comes to the passion necessary to produce a documentary, angry isn’t the worst place to start. “I am always angry,” she said in a phone interview. “If you remember Bruce Banner in ‘The Avengers’ movie, when he’s in the midst of a fight against the aliens and Captain America says, ‘We need you to get angry,’ he says, ‘That’s my script, Captain: I’m always angry!” But Abrams is angry “in a righteous indignation, not a hostile way,” she said. “It fuels my passion and my drive to get to engage people and give them the tools to build the world they want. It’s nothing more than informing people that they’ve been denied their rights, the right to vote, that my parents sacrificed for.”…Abrams recalls her father taking her with him to vote when she was 14 years old. Years later, when she showed up at the polls on Election Day, at first her name was not on the rolls. (She stood her ground and voted.) “This is a moral imperative,” she said. “I am always angry, going through the front door to do what’s right. I’m going to work at it, and I’ll have a high likelihood of having some impact.”
After her contested loss in Georgia, Abrams signed with UTA and received many pitches about producing a non-fiction movie about the race. (Abrams has authored four Selena Montgomery novels and three non-fiction books, including “Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose and the Fight for a Fair America”). She turned them down. “I wasn’t interested,” she said. “I was there. I had ended the campaign and shifted into Fair Fight Action. I had been reliving the last part of that campaign for months. The larger issue for me was the sinister story about voter suppression. If it’s about me, we lose people, because with politicians, voters have a reason not to care. My mission is about voting rights, so people understand their individual power. When it became my story, it’s either a cautionary tale, or an excuse to justify what happened.” Abrams wanted to make a film that would give young people a better understanding of what preceded her lost election. “Many of them saw something new and wholly divorced from Jim Crow,” she said. “I wanted them to understand that it’s of a piece with voter suppression from the beginning of this country. It’s an all-roots issue. I wanted to do a documentary about the arc of the story that gave them a reason to fight back.” After UTA sent Abrams out to meet filmmakers, she set her cap for Oscar-nominated director Liz Garbus (“What Happened, Miss Simone?”), whose father was a Civil Rights attorney. She and her partner Dan Cogan’s company, Story Syndicate, had been looking for a way into this story, and Abrams opened the door. They hit it off, and Abrams approved of Garbus’ candidate for a co-director, African-American Lisa Cortés (“The Apollo”). “Liz was thoughtful about the need to have multiple perspectives,” said Abrams. “It was about how to juxtapose storytelling with 240 years of history to make it accessible. It was about how to consider every audience, not just pick one, and drive it home, and tell an all-encompassing story so the audience could find themselves in the narrative.” Sounds like a producer. “I come from a creative space,” she said. “I think about who is going to read you and why, and I translate that to film and television. I am a deep, avid fan of TV and film. This movie borders on an obnoxious dream come true.” (indiewire.com)
The Making of “All In: The Fight for Democracy”
Garbus and Cortés understood that Abrams did not want to be the center of the story, but coaxed her into doing two interviews. “To be clear, I was adamant and hostile to the idea of being in it!” Abrams said, laughing. “When they went to talk to my parents, I knew something was up.” The directors divided interviews and editing chores to get the film done before the election. The movie’s most poignant moment comes during Andrew Young’s interview, when he recalls the battle (told in Ava DuVernay’s “Selma”) to give President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to push through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “He was a direct witness to that history,” said Garbus. “HIs first-hand reporting gave a lot of emotional resonance to all the archival photos we’ve seen. He’s one of those great lions.” When the filmmakers sent her the rough cut, they were anxious about her reaction. She wrote them an email: “You did a great job. You were right, fine.” (Said Cortés, “She saw the film as a producer rather than as a politician.”) Abrams had notes, of course, but “as a writer and an avid consumer, I understood how I fit into the narrative,” she said. “My piece was not shoved into the story because of ego or because it was a vanity project. They were the filmmakers, the way they shaped and added other voices allowed me to be part of the story without becoming the whole story. It goes back to the core mission, which is not a partisan issue but a democracy issue: to create a space for people to come to this and leverage it for their own power. They did that in a nimble way.” The filmmakers were also grateful to Georgia-born Janelle Monae for coming through with the song “Turntable.” Along with the documentary itself, it could be a strong Oscar contender. Abrams still prioritizes her voting mission, but she also understands how “the arts and politics neatly coincide,” she said. “I will always continue to express my creative side: I love writing, producing, and I’m working on a TV show based on one of my books. I keep my eyes and mind open to other possibilities. My mission is to never to have to panic.” What about the looming election? “Don’t panic!,” she said. “Make a plan to vote early. Terrible things are afoot; there are mean-spirited people who think the only path to victory is theft and not convincing. You either convince or steal. Go to allinforvoting.com.” (indiewire.com)
Co-Directors Lisa Cortés and Liz Garbus on Janelle Monae & the Music
Cortés: “She sent us a demo on a Saturday, and the demo was perfect. There was nothing that needed to change. She and her team are from Georgia. They took to the film and they took to the message of Stacey’s work. She gave us this amazing demo on a Saturday and we were able to put it into our film immediately because it was so perfect. Usually, you’re listening and you got the notepad, and you’re thinking about things and taking notes that the bridge should be this, or the lyric should be that. As an artist, she used her voice to speak to this moment and to speak to the energy that so many of us are feeling – looking for a change.
Garbus: “Being from Georgia, her whole team felt so connected. Her producer went to Morehouse and Stacey went to Spelman, there was already a shorthand, and when we talked, it was this amazing kismet. What I’m so encouraged about is that there’s a lot of apathy, especially with young folks around voting. I just love that artists who have those kinds of followings are saying, ‘You know, one vote may not change all of America, it’s not going to change your life, but it’s cool. You’ve got to do it and you’ve got to participate.’ I love that artists like Janelle are putting their hearts and souls into this and helping to bring their audiences along with us.” (variety.com)
About Co-Director Liz Garbus
Two-time Oscar Nominee, two-time Emmy Winner, Peabody Winner, Grammy Nominee, and DGA-Nominated director Liz Garbus is one of the most celebrated American documentary filmmakers working today. Garbus’ “The Fourth Estate,” a Showtime original, is nominated for a 2018 Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. The docuseries follows New York Times reporters covering the Trump Presidency. “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” a Netflix original, was nominated for a 2016 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, received a Peabody Award, and six Emmy nominations including Best Directing. It took home the Emmy Award for Best Documentary or Nonfiction Special. The film delves into the life of Nina Simone, drawing from more than 100 hours of never-before-heard audiotapes, rare concert footage, and archival interviews. Past work includes: “A Dangerous Son” (HBO, 2018), “Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper” (HBO) which had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, “Love, Marilyn,” which was a Gala Premiere at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival and released worldwide by StudioCanal and HBO. In 2011 her film “Bobby Fischer Against the World” opened the Premiere Documentary section of the Sundance Film Festival, and won a prestigious UK Grierson Award for Best Cinema Documentary and earned an Emmy nomination for Best Doc. Garbus’ first documentary film, “The Farm: Angola, USA,” won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, was awarded ten other festival and critics’ awards, and was nominated for an Oscar in 1998. Other films as director include: “There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane” (HBO, 2011), “Girlhood” (Wellspring, 2003), and as producer “Street Fight” (PBS, Oscar Nominated, 2005), “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” (HBO, Emmy for Best Doc, 2007), and “Killing in the Name” (HBO, Oscar nominated, 2010). (moxiefirecracker.com)
About Co-Director Lisa Cortés
Lisa Cortés is co-director of “All In: The Fight For Democracy,” an Amazon Original documentary featuring Stacey Abrams. She produced the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary “The Apollo,” which explores African American history through the story of the legendary Apollo Theater. Her directorial debut, “The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion,” traces the impact of street fashion and African American creativity on global cultural trends, and streams on Netflix. She was executive producer of the Academy Award-winning film “Precious,” and her film productions have received over 70 international awards and nominations. Lisa launched her early career as a music executive at the iconic Def Jam label and Rush Artist Management; she also was VP of A&R at Mercury Records, and founded the Loose Cannon label. (Lisa Cortes)