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In 2021, the Ohio Community Rights Network and Simply Living hosted a four-part film series focusing on issues related to democracy. Each film showing was followed by a post-film discussion and open Q&A.
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Donations can be made at OhioCRN.org via PayPal or
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PO Box 470123 Broadview Heights, OH 44147
We thank you!
What is Democracy?
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Coming at a moment of profound political and social crisis, What Is Democracy? reflects on a word we too often take for granted.
Director Astra Taylor’s idiosyncratic, philosophical journey spans millennia and continents: from ancient Athens’ groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism’s roots in medieval Italy; from modern-day Greece grappling with financial collapse and a mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its racist past and the growing gap between rich and poor.
Featuring a diverse cast—including celebrated theorists, trauma surgeons, activists, factory workers, asylum seekers, and former prime ministers—this urgent film connects the past and the present, the emotional and the intellectual, the personal and the political, in order to provoke and inspire. If we want to live in a democracy, we must first ask what the word even means.
Invisible Hand
Sunday, April 25, 2021
Produced by award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo, INVISIBLE HAND takes you behind the curtain of the global economy where ‘Rights of Nature’ becomes “capitalism’s one true opponent.”
In the fall of 2014, for the first time in United States history, an ecosystem filed to defend itself in a lawsuit claiming its ‘right to exist' in Grant Township, Pennsylvania. For attempting such a radical act, Grant’s rural community of 700 people were sued by a corporation, then by the state government, and are now locked in a battle to defend the watershed they call home through civil disobedience. The water they drink, the Rights to Nature laws they've passed are all on the line in this exclusive story.
In Toledo, Ohio an earth-shattering vote was passed to enact the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR), granting personhood to international waters.
Half a continent away in Standing Rock, North Dakota, the same industry threatening Grant Twp. is using militarized force against indigenous tribes and allies fighting to protect Mother Earth.
Activists leaving Standing Rock are rejoined on the Pennsylvania and New York border where the Seneca Nation of Indians aligns with communities in the Triple Divide to stop radioactive fracking waste from entering Ohi:yo’ waters. Terry Pegula, the owner of Buffalo Bills and Sabres, threatens to sue INVISIBLE HAND filmmakers and whoever continues to speak out about his oil and gas company and their efforts.
The four, Grant Township, Lake Erie Bill of Rights, Defend Oh:yo’ and Standing Rock, are joined in an international fight to protect more than just water. They fight for their community, democracy, and for Nature as a living entity unto itself.
In the end, "Who will speak for Nature?"
Markie is a volunteer organizer for Toledoans for Safe Water and the Ohio Community Rights Network. She currently works for CELDF on grant writing, communications, and leads special projects. She is an ambassador for the Lake Erie Bill of Rights and the Rights of Nature, speaking at the United Nations, appearing on The Daily Show, and numerous local, national and international media outlets.
For the past 10 years, Tish has been involved in community rights and Rights of Nature work starting in her own community of Broadview Heights, Ohio, which led to the adoption of Ohio’s first Home Rule charter amendment creating a Community Bill of Rights banning fracking and recognizing Rights of Nature. She has since worked with dozens of Ohio communities on anti-fracking, anti-pipeline, right to a livable climate, fair and free elections and water privatization issues. Today, Tish works with communities all over the country and internationally and most recently assisted the people of Toledo with their effort to pass the historic Lake Erie Bill of Rights.
The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Live Q&A with Move to Amend Outreach Director, Greg Coleridge
The New Corporation reveals how the corporate takeover of society is being justified by the sly rebranding of corporations as socially conscious entities. From gatherings of corporate elites in Davos, to climate change and spiralling inequality; the rise of ultra-right leaders to Covid-19 and racial injustice, the film looks at corporations’ devastating power. Countering this is a groundswell of resistance worldwide as people take to the streets in pursuit of justice and the planet’s future.
Greg Coleridge is Outreach Director of Move to Amend. He is the author of Citizens over Corporations: A Brief History of Democracy in Ohio and Challenges to Freedom in the Future (2003), writer of the documentary CorpOrNation: The Story of Citizens and Corporations in Ohio (2003), and contributed several articles to the anthology Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy - A Book of History and Strategy (2001). He currently maintains and distributes via email a weekly REAL Democracy History Calendar and Monetary History Calendar.
The People VS. Agent Orange
Two women, one American and one Vietnamese, fight to hold the chemical industry accountable for a devastating legacy.
Nearly 60 years following the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War—the deadliest use of chemical warfare in history—the devastating after effects of the toxin remain lethal, demanding attention both in Vietnam and at home in America. The People vs. Agent Orange closely follows two activists as they take on the chemical industry, and demand accountability for the pernicious legacy caused by the use of this poisonous herbicide.
French-Vietnamese activist Tran To Nga and American activist Carol Van Strum are joined in mutual pain and purpose in their quest for justice. Tran spent seven years building a legal case against the American chemical industry for poisoning her and her family in Vietnam—causing severe health issues and deformity—after 12 million gallons of the toxic herbicide were used there by the American military in the ’60s and ’70s. Stateside in Oregon, Carol Van Strum fights intimidation and threats by timber interests as she brings to light damning corporate documentation of the deadly impacts of the chemical 24D, even as it was widely used in her community, with no public consultation or warnings.
The People vs. Agent Orange unites these two activists nearly halfway around the world from each other, both equally passionate and righteous in their causes, in a staggering examination of corruption for which there has been no accountability.
Zoom Discussion: Sunday, October 24, 2021
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Alan Adelson (Director, Producer, Writer) has overlapping careers in documentary film and investigative journalism. Adelson produced and co-directed Lodz Ghetto (1988) with Kate Taverna. The documentary was shortlisted for the Academy Award Best Documentary Oscar. The filmmaker couple also produced and directed Two Villages in Kosovo (2006) for Arte, and the widely acclaimed In Bed with Ulysses (2012). Adelson made worldwide headlines with his investigative articles in Esquire and The Wall Street Journal revealing the disappearance of enriched plutonium from an American nuclear reprocessing plant.
Carol Van Strum is a writer, bookseller, ruthless editor, chronic book reviewer, Agéd Parent and seasoned troublemaker. Her books include “A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights” (Sierra Club Books, 1983, Jericho Hill 2014, 2021), The Oreo File (Jericho Hill 2016), “No Margin of Safety” (Greenpeace 1987), and “The Politics of Penta (Greenpeace 1989). She has been a proof-reader and toxics and legal researcher for environmental lawyers since 1975 and was sole editor and on-line book reviewer for The Department of the Planet Earth until the demise of its founder, as well as researcher and copy editor for Mongabay.com, and Tropical Conservation Science Journal.