A documentary about the efforts of Billings, Montana, residents to combat hate crimes sparked a multi–year national grassroots campaign promoting tolerance in more than 30 states.

The nonprofit Working Group, Inc., was founded in 1987 by a group of independent producers, representatives from labor unions, and educators wishing to bring the perspectives of working people to public television. For six years, The Working Group (TWG) produced a weekly half–hour series entitled We Do the Work, a national television series devoted to the struggles, challenges and successes of working people in America. Aired regularly on approximately 100 public television stations, We Do the Work was fed to the PBS system via three regional PBS feeds, the Central Educational Network, the Pacific Mountain Network, and the American Production Service.

In 1994 an episode of We Do the Work included a report on how the people of Billings, Montana, fought back when racist hate groups perpetrated a series of crimes. TWG was drawn to the story by the collaboration between unions with religious institutions, police officers, civic organizations, and the local media to prevent additional hate crimes. TWG decided to expand the Billings episode into a half–hour documentary entitled Not in Our Town.

Not in Our Town is an inspiring 27–minute documentary portrait of a community rallying to support its neighbors. With the Klu Klux Klan running a recruitment campaign, Billings experienced a series of disturbing crimes: The home of a Native American was spray–painted with racist graffiti, a Jewish cemetery was desecrated, and a cinder block was tossed though the window of a Jewish home displaying a Hanukkah menorah. The broken window was in the bedroom of the family's five–year–old son, who fortunately was not hurt by the incident.

In response, labor union members immediately repainted the Native American's house. The local newspaper printed a full–page image of a Hanukkah menorah encouraging people to display the menorahs in their own windows. In a city of 80,000 residents, home to just 100 Jewish families, 10,000 homes and businesses displayed the paper menorah. When skinheads began showing up at an African–American church to intimidate the congregation, people from all faiths began attending the services until the skinheads were driven away.

"This story is so moving and has such a great message about how ordinary people can stand against intolerance," said Patrice O'Neill of TWG, "that we thought it was important not to just put the film out there on PBS but to find a way for people to look at it and then see if they could come up with ways that their own communities could respond to violence and hate."

"We didn't want to duplicate what hundreds of human and civil rights groups were already doing all around the country," said TWG's Ryan Miller. "We hoped that this documentary would spark activity around their events. The campaign happened because we saw the responses of people who saw the show and wanted to do more than walk away."

In partnership with the Institute for Alternative Journalism (IAJ) and the Benton Foundation, TWG conceived of the idea for the "Not in Our Town Campaign" (NIOT). The NIOT campaign uses the documentary as the centerpiece of a national grassroots organizing campaign to stem the tide of hate crimes in America. (In 1994 alone, more than 6,000 hate crimes were reported in the United States). IAJ dedicated funds and staff to the campaign (including a website designer). With support from other funders, TWG hired two organizers for several months.

Dozens of national organizations endorsed and participated in the effort including People for the American Way, Southern Poverty Law Center, the YMCA, and the American Federation of Teachers, to name but a few.

With the help of independent media groups, community organizers, labor unions, public television stations, campaign funders, and individuals, hundreds of NIOT screenings and events were held in more than 75 cities and towns between November 1995 and January 1996.

Many of these events occurred during "Not in Our Town Week," which culminated on December 17, 1995, with a PBS broadcast of the documentary. More than 200 PBS affiliates aired the program, including stations in nearly every major media market in the nation. With assistance from the Washington DC–based Millennium Communications Group, the campaign and broadcast received considerable national radio and print coverage.

In Oregon the publisher of the Colorado Springs Independent drew together community leaders to view the videotape and began a dialogue which continues on a bimonthly basis. When Oregon Public Broadcasting aired the program, more than 100 house parties and 11 separate community events were organized throughout the state in both urban and rural areas. In Bloomington, Illinois, the local library distributed bookmarks promoting the PBS air date. In Bellingham, Washington, community leaders took "Not in Our Town Week" literally and various organizations held events each day of the week. Other events across the nation ranged from televised town hall meetings to living room get–togethers.

In addition to promoting community activities during NIOT week, The Working Group placed major emphasis on distributing Not in Our Town, along with a 16–page curriculum guide to schools and colleges around the nation. More than 250 universities and colleges have purchased the video—which is also being used in hundreds of high schools. The Benton Foundation recruited support for the project from national educational organizations, including the National Education Association and the National Association of School Administrators.

"What surprised us and still overwhelms us," continued Miller, "was that two weeks after the PBS broadcast, two months after, six months after, we'd get calls from people, asking for the tape or asking for the buttons or sending in reports on how they'd used the tape. Because of those stories, we decided to do a follow up documentary about many of the towns around the country and what they've done."

On December 23, 1996, Not in Our Town II, a hour–long documentary aired on PBS profiling communities across the country that have come together to fight intolerance. Not in Our Town II is part of PBS's Democracy Project, an initiative to stimulate citizen engagement.

The "Not in Our Town Campaign" illustrates how well–conceived media campaigns that combine videotape distribution with television broadcasts can stimulate public debate and action at the local level while unifying hundreds of grassroots organizations into a single national effort.

The documentary Takeover, which portrays homeless people engaged in political action, has been a valuable resource to organizers in the poor people's movement.

In 1989 homeless people, former homeless people, and advocates for people in poverty gathered in Philadelphia for what was known as the "Survival Summit." At this meeting homeless men and women began to organize themselves, strategizing about ways to escape poverty. Filmmakers Peter Kinoy and Pam Yates of Skylight Pictures were invited to videotape the summit. In conjunction with The National Union of the Homeless and the National Welfare Rights Union, they produced Street Heat, an organizing video used to train and inspire homeless people to take direct action.

The next year the unions began to organize a one–day nationwide "Takeover" of empty federal housing, demanding permanent housing for people on the streets. The participants used Street Heat widely in their organizing efforts, and The National Union for the Homeless invited Peter Kinoy and Pam Yates to participate in the planning process for the Takeover.

Skylight organized professional and amateur crews to shoot "Takeovers" in eight cities. Kinoy found that when he contacted organizers to arrange the shoots, "in every place we called, folks had seen Street Heat and had been using it to train people. There was an immediate opening up of doors," even among people who were generally distrustful of the media.

When Kinoy and Yates viewed the dramatic footage that came in from the various demonstrations, they realized they had the potential to create a film that could assist the homeless people's movement and reach a wider audience. The final production, Takeover, aired on the PBS series POV in 1992.

Takeover begins with striking black and white film footage of caskets—one ominously marked "unknown black male"—being transported from city streets to city graves. In one shot, the camera's eye looks up inside a grave at the dirt pouring down from the gravedigger's shovel. The powerful images and haunting music at the beginning of the film dramatize the plight of homeless people. The black and white images establish a new perspective on the homeless people so many Americans try not to see.

Takeover takes the viewer to the streets to hear the real stories of homeless people and behind the scenes of the homeless movement. Kinoy and Yates artfully compile footage shot in several formats at a variety of locations. The film serves not only to humanize homeless people but it puts their decision to take direct action in context. After homeless people demonstrated before the national offices of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), HUD promised that 10 percent of HUD housing would be allocated for the homeless. When HUD failed to keep that promise, homeless people decided to "take over" the buildings.

Leona Smith, executive director of the National Union of the Homeless and a former homeless person herself, uses Takeover to train members of other homeless organizations from Canada, Mexico, and throughout the United States. She says:

What makes Takeover so unique is that it shows homeless people taking their own initiative to fight for social change and affordable housing. It shows homeless people organizing. It shows homeless people planning up until the very day. Before Takeover, there was nothing that showed homeless people doing for themselves. It inspires you, if you're on the street and you see a house standing there vacant, to take the boards off the doors.

The story of a partnership between the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and Bill Moyer's Public Affairs Television reveals that a television special—woven into the fabric of a comprehensive, targeted public relations effort—can help influence public policy.

In 1991 several foundations collaborated with Bill Moyer's Public Affairs Television to sponsor a 90–minute documentary on family preservation services. Families First with Bill Moyers profiles family preservation programs that provide intensive assistance to families in crisis instead of placing children in foster care. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, which has a slim record in terms of funding media but a decade–long history of supporting family preservation programs, worked to develop a strategic communications campaign around the broadcast of Families First. Joanne Edgar of the foundation says:

"This video is actually the single–most dramatic statement of the values and definition of family preservation that exists," "It humanizes poor families. It humanizes social workers. And it also humanizes the social service system, if you can imagine that. But one of the reasons we got involved was because it was an opportunity for our grantees to do strategic communications planning in key states both before and after the broadcast." The program received its air date a year in advance, and the foundation used the full 12 months to maximize the impact of the program. Working with Public Affairs Television and the outreach office at WNET–Channel 13, New York, the foundation developed an extensive outreach campaign. They prepared promotional print materials, including 100,000 postcards and 20,000 posters distributed to children's organizations and PBS stations. To give the issue a local focus and increase public discussion, numerous PBS affiliates produced their own shows on the topic which ran before or after Families First. Other stations displayed an 800 number after the broadcast. The foundation also organized a successful screening on Capitol Hill.

Working with the Communications Consortium, the foundation focused its outreach efforts in the eight states where it funds family preservation programs. The foundation brought social service administrators and press officers from those states to Washington DC for media training at the Communications Consortium.

The results of the campaign, both in terms of press coverage and policy change, are impressive. In Missouri dozens of county social service administrators called radio stations and wrote letters to the editors of area newspapers. In Kentucky, where one Louisville paper called on all elected officials to watch the program, a state legislator held a press conference urging an increase in the family preservation budget. Later that year, the Kentucky State Legislature voted in favor of a $1 million increase in funding for family preservation. In Colorado, where the PBS station aired a one–hour follow–up program, more than 400 people called in, many of them families in need of assistance and social workers wanting to know how to become involved.

"The work we did around Families First was extremely helpful to us and to our grantees in the states," says Edgar, "but we would only fund television in the future if it again lends itself to being used beyond a night on the tube. The collaboration with Channel 13 and Public Affairs Television helped us reach a large audience. And the collaboration with the Communications Consortium helped us take advantage of the documentary to organize around family preservation advocacy in our targeted states."

By involving its strong grassroots network, the League of Women Voters used television and video cassette distribution to show health officials, business owners, and the public how to reduce toxic waste.

In 1987 the League of Women Voters in California released a study of hazardous materials management in their state. The league decided to create two half–hour videos, Cleaning Up Toxics at Home and Cleaning Up Toxics in Business, in conjunction with their report. Both tapes emphasize what citizens and small business owners can do to reduce the volume of toxic waste. They stress simple, practical steps like donating old paint to a community group or using nontoxic cleaners instead of commercial cleaning products. In addition to foundation support, the league was able to secure corporate funding from some unlikely sources, including corporations that produce both toxic products and toxic waste, like Dow and Clorox.

The Video Project, the distributor of the two titles, organized and publicized a satellite feed of the programs in 1992 through PBS's Pacific Mountain Network. Producer Nancy Bickell did a mailing to the 1,100 league presidents in the United States a month before the feed, encouraging them to ask their local PBS stations to air the programs (which were made available for free). A hundred leagues responded to the mailing, and 98 PBS stations took down the programs. The league prepared a "Cleaning Up Toxics Fact Sheet," offered to viewers upon request. The stations airing the programs also received a series of public service announcements educating viewers about ways to eliminate toxic products in the home.

In addition, 100 commercial broadcast and cable stations in California alone have aired the programs and promoted local toxics clean–up programs. California league chapters received a free "Cleaning Up Toxics Kit" with suggestions about how to use the videos most effectively. Nearly every league in the state participated in several ways, by showing the programs at league meetings, by organizing public meetings on toxics, and by publicizing and promoting the local broadcasts and cablecasts. One group of league chapters in Silicon Valley obtained a $5,000 grant from the Hewlett Packard Bay Area Contributions Committee to train 20 speakers to show and discuss the videos in presentations to business organizations, senior citizen clubs, and environmental groups.

Nationally, the videos continue to be used extensively by public health officials, environmental agencies, and professionals in industries which generate hazardous waste. The Tennessee Valley Authority, for example, bought 100 copies of Cleaning Up Toxics at Home to show to their 22,000 employees and as gifts for local schools and libraries.

Ironically, at least one polluter became an unwilling sponsor of the Cleaning Up Toxics distribution plan. California's Proposition 65 requires appropriate warnings on all products containing toxic materials and enables citizens to file charges against corporations which fail to comply. In 1993 a citizen action group called As You Sow brought several violations of Proposition 65 to the attention of the state attorney general. The attorney general's office negotiated settlements with the companies and one company, Devcon, was required to pay $10,000 directly to the Video Project for free distribution of the two league tapes.

The money will enable the Video Project to distribute free copies of Cleaning Up Toxics at Home to hundreds of California high schools and Cleaning Up Toxics in Business to a hundred chambers of commerce in the state.

"This is a wonderful example of citizen power at so many levels," said Video Project's former executive director, Steve Ladd. "Citizen power passed Proposition 65, citizens discovered the violations, and now distribution of these citizen–produced videos is part of the settlement. A violation of the law is being used to help educate the public about how to reduce the use of toxins."

The documentary Where Have All the Dolphins Gone? played a crucial role in a decade long effort to save dolphins from destruction in tuna fishing nets.

Stan Minasian created the nonprofit Marine Mammal Fund (MMF) in 1975 to protect marine creatures through the dissemination of film, video, and photographic images showing the threats to their environments. Minasian was inspired to create MMF when he read an article about dolphins being slaughtered in the nets of tuna fishing boats. Since tuna tend to swim beneath groups of dolphins, fishermen learned to set their nets on the dolphins, needlessly killing the dolphins to catch the tuna below.

In 1975, determined to educate the public about the issue and absolutely no experience in production, Minasian persuaded KPIX–TV, a CBS affiliate in San Francisco, to collaborate in the production of an hour–long documentary, The Last Days of the Dolphins. After the program aired on KPIX–TV, Minasian worked with the Environmental Defense Fund to distribute the film to 325 commercial and public stations. Though the film explained how fishermen kill dolphins in their quest for tuna, it did not contain any damning footage of the process. The film informed the public but failed to have a lasting impact on the industry's practices.

For the next 13 years, Minasian honed his skills as a producer and created many films on marine mammal issues. Then, in 1988, Minasian had the chance to realize his original goal. He met biologist Sam LaBudde who planned to go undercover on a tuna vessel to obtain footage of the dolphin slaughter. LaBudde went to Mexico and got a job as a cook on a Panamanian fishing boat. His 8mm camcorder, he told the crew, was a gift from his father to document his life at sea.

Over a period of four months, LaBudde shot the first evidence of the gruesome slaying of dolphins by tuna fishermen. His images of dolphins trapped in the nets, gasping for air, crushed in the machinery, and thrown back dead into the water aired in television news reports around the world. Several environmental organizations that had been fighting the dolphin slaughter for years attempted to turn public outrage into public pressure on the industry. Yet, more than a year after the images were released, the industry continued with business as usual.

Minasian decided the campaign needed an hour–long television documentary to intensify pressure on the tuna industry. With LaBudde's support, and a $50,000 grant from the ASPCA, he produced Where Have All the Dolphins Gone?, an elegant film that chronicles the long struggle to prevent the tuna industry from killing dolphins. The cornerstone of the film is LaBudde's footage and his first–person account of his experience on the Panamanian vessel.

The film received critical acclaim and extensive play in 33 countries, but perhaps its greatest success lies in its impact on just one man: Anthony O'Reilly, chief executive officer of H.J. Heinz, which owns Starkist, the largest tuna packer in the United States.

In April 1990, a few weeks before the film was to air in the United States on the Discovery Channel, Minasian sent a copy of the film directly to O'Reilly. Minasian informed O'Reilly that national cablecast would include a series of PSAs asking viewers to boycott Heinz. The program would also periodically show an 800–number viewers could call to send telegrams directly to Heinz protesting the dolphin slaughter. (In lieu of payment for the film, Minasian acquired three–and–a–half minutes of advertising time from the Discovery Channel for the PSAs.)

Two weeks before the airdate, Heinz held a press conference and announced that they would begin buying only dolphin–safe tuna. After the victory, Minasian rewrote and retaped the celebrity PSAs asking viewers to send mailgrams to Washington DC supporting legislation banning the import of any tuna caught by setting nets on dolphins. When the film aired in 1990 and again in 1991, 60,000 viewers responded to the request.

In the updated version of the film, which aired in 1991, O'Reilly says: "Because of the gross scenes that were shown in the LaBudde film, there was a growing barrage of criticism, well–orchestrated, which I think served to convey a growing sentiment...that the previous fishing methods were no longer acceptable."

When asked about the success of the film, Minasian replies that his overriding feeling is one of relief. It took him 15 years and two films to tell the world about the dolphin slaughter. "If [environmental films] are going to be really effective in terms of changing things for the better, they are going to have to be allied with campaigns," says Minasian. "There is going to have to be some forethought given to how to use film as part of a template for change."

Population Services International imported the social marketing techniques it employs in developing nations to Portland, Oregon. Here public service announcements and full–length television programs are cornerstones in a ground–breaking effort to increase condom use among at–risk teens.

Population Services International (PSI) is an international nonprofit organization that provides family planning and other health products to lower–income people, predominantly in developing countries. PSI employs the techniques of social marketing, using the tools of commercial marketing to sell behavior and products that help people lead safer, healthier lives. PSI's programs in more than 30 nations account for one–third of all products distributed by social marketing programs in the world.

PSI is increasingly working with producers in host countries to create television and radio programming to educate the public and to promote PSI products. Funded by USAID, PSI's Zaire AIDS Mass Media Project targeted young people with messages "to motivate safer sexual practices by influencing social norms through innovative media materials." During the course of the campaign, which employed television and radio PSAs, a dramatic mini–series, talk shows, music videos, and songs by popular artists, sales of PSI's condoms increased 1000 percent. By the end of 1990 Zaire's 13 million urban residents were receiving an average of 10 minutes a day of televised AIDS messages. According to the Family Health International AIDSTech Program, in 1991 alone PSI condom sales resulted in the prevention of 7,200 cases of AIDS among the target population.

When project manager Julie Convisser returned from Zaire, she wondered if this approach could work in Africa, why couldn't it be done here? AIDS is now the leading killer of teenagers in 65 U.S. cities. Yet, before 1992, no organization had attempted to use media to promote the purchase of condoms among at–risk youth. PSI chose Portland as the site of Project Action, the organization's first social marketing project in the United States.

Project Action designed an 18–month media campaign combining television PSAs with longer–format TV shows, TV news features, posters, T–shirts, print advertisements, condom machines, and safer sex kits. To develop the message for the campaign, and the PSAs in particular, Project Action conducted 11 focus group meetings. The PSAs, created by the ad agency Borders, Parrin, and Norander, depict teenagers in moments when they are having sexual thoughts—a girl receives flowers, a boy lies by the pool while young women splash in the water, two teenagers pass one another on opposing escalators at the mall. In each scene, the young people are showered with condoms while an announcer says the campaign message: "Don't even think about sex without a condom."

Convisser persuaded the ad agency to donate roughly three–quarters of the more than $400,000 PSA production budget. When the storyboards for the spots were completed, she invited all of the public affairs directors for Portland's seven network affiliate and commercial cable stations to a luncheon at the ad agency. The public affairs directors felt that the end of the spot which said "Find this machine," over a shot of a Project Action condom vending machine, crossed the line into advertising. PSI agreed to change the message to "Find this machine...or just find a condom." Despite attempts to allay every reservation, the meeting ended with a commitment from just two stations to air the spots.

To increase pressure, Project Action organized a press conference for the release of the PSAs. The story made the local news that night and the next day every station called wanting to air the PSAs. The three 30–second and two 15–second spots have received more than 2,400 minutes of free air time in the Portland area. In a survey of 1,800 youth in the target group, 40 percent named the spots when asked if they'd seen anything recently about AIDS or condoms on TV.

In addition to the PSAs, Project Action worked with local stations to create television specials. The first, produced by Paragon Cable, featured a two–hour teen forum on the issue of AIDS and sex, led by teen hosts before a live teen audience. The program aired 20 times over a period of six months.

The second special, Let's Talk About Safer Sex, is a half–hour program produced by KPDX, the Portland Fox affiliate. It consists of a dramatic story conceived of and performed by teenagers in which a couple negotiates safe sex. The skit is followed by a roundtable discussion in which the all–teen cast steps out of character for "straight talk." Although the KPDX general manager had read a scene–by–scene description of the show, when he saw the final tape, in which the young man proves to his new girlfriend he knows how to use a condom by putting one on his fingers, the general manager moved the scheduled airtime from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The third of Project Action's productions, Sex, AIDS and Videotape, is by far the most innovative. Conceived and performed by the Portland Planned Parenthood Teen Theater group, this half–hour program uses humor and MTV–style camera work and graphics to make the topic of AIDS entertaining, accessible, and familiar to a teenage audience. The program begins in the style of an old, black and white educational film about AIDS, but once the male and female hosts tie up the pedantic professor, the images turn to color and the program becomes their own.

The highlight of the program is a trip to the "Latex Laboratory" where teens dressed in thick glasses and white lab coats debunk common misconceptions about condoms. To refute the claim that condoms are too small, they fit a condom on a downhill ski. To prove that condoms do not easily leak, they fill one with whipped cream. As the show ends, the hosts decide to watch the show backwards, providing a clever reinforcement of the information presented. The program's humor and creativity make a unique attempt to transform an extremely difficult topic into one that teens can talk and laugh about. Project Action has distributed hundreds of copies of the tape throughout the state of Oregon.

The media campaign is one major component of Project Action's AIDS education campaign which also involves working with local community groups, installing and advertising condom vending machines, and providing training for teen educators. Since the campaign began in 1992, Project Action's more than 240 vending machines located in popular teen hangouts have distributed an average of 78,000 condoms per year.

"I believe that media is a key component of a synergistic program that changes the physical and mental environment in which people are sexually active," says Convisser. "Human beings absorb messages in a million different ways. I'm not sure we can say that a TV PSA or show has more effect than seeing a condom vending machine or attending a workshop, but these things together can actually add up to motivate an individual to change his or her behavior."

With the tremendous success of Project Action in Portland, the PSI campaign is being replicated in Seattle and San Jose, where campaigns will be completed by the summer of 1998. In both cities, Project Action is working in formal partnership with coalitions of local HIV prevention, teen pregnancy prevention, and youth– serving agencies. Funding for the replication is being provided by a variety of national foundations as well as Seattle and San Jose–based public, private, and corporate donors committed to preventing the spread of HIV among American teens.

Next: Conclusion

Last updated: 22 October 2001 mff
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