New Videos Dig Deep
Roots of Migration and Shoveling Water
Watch Roots of Migration here
Watch Shoveling Water here
Leiha Edmonds, WFP-MA Intern
The upcoming months will bring renewed action on key initiatives like revamping U.S. free trade agreements (NAFTA, CAFTA and the Peru FTA) and ending U.S. funding of coca fumigation in Colombia. The Witness for Peace website now offers two free videos that provide deeper, firsthand insight into the everyday realities behind these policies.
Traveling to Oaxaca, Mexico earlier this year with WFP, a delegation of 20 North Carolinians have compiled video footage, photos and interviews documenting the causes and effects of migration for communities in Mexico. Roots of Migration is an insightful film into the lives of everyday people from both sides of the border who live through the economic and moral implications of migration.
The film provides facts on the impacts of NAFTA not only through statistics but also through the personal accounts of people in the communities of Oaxaca. Oaxacans tell stories of family and neighbors lost to forced migration while WFP delegates speak with passion about the need to rethink the theories of free trade. Perhaps the most poignant moment in the film comes in part five when a migrant who has attempted to cross the border twice in recent months speaks about his frightening experience of abduction and abuse along his journey. One of the WFP delegates tells the young man that she would be so proud to be his mother because of his courage in pursuing his dreams, ending the scene in a tearful embrace of kinship across borders.
Like Roots of Migration, Shoveling Water depicts U.S. foreign policy through the lens of those who shoulder its burden. Interviewing campesinos whose legit agricultural fields have been destroyed by fumigation, Shoveling Water captures the complex but inescapable failures of Plan Colombia.
Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, travels to a coca processing plant during the film, leading to a conversation between Tree and the coca growers. During this interview, the Colombians ask if President Obama will watch this movie and learn how they really live, that people who grow coca do not make much money and that they did not want to choose this dangerous career.
These films are two great resources for educating and inspiring action in your community, action that will hopefully mean that films like these never have to be made again.
Host a Movie Night
Spread the awareness! Show Roots of Migration or Shoveling Water to your community.
- Tell Mid-Atlantic organizer Ben Beachy that you’re interested in hosting a movie night. He can offer materials & help: wfpma@witnessforpeace.org
- Send invitations to friends, co-workers, family, or neighbors. Tell them it will be fun. It will.
- Get or prepare some food for the festivities.
- During the party, play the video off the website.
- Be ready with a few discussion questions to prompt conversation after the video (Ben has some).
- Suggest one way that participants can take action on migration or fumigations (Ben has some).
- Pass around a sign-up sheet for WFP alerts & a hat to donate to WFP’s work (send to Ben).
