By: Steve Goodman
This blog post, written by EVC founder Steve Goodman, is Part 2 of a two-part series on EVC’s groundbreaking work supporting youth media production across the urban-rural divide. Read Part 1 here.
I wrote in part 1 of this blog post how in 1984 I was deeply inspired by Appalachian filmmakers and supported by local grassroots organizers to create a summer program where New York City youth would collaborate with Appalachian youth to create documentaries that explored their shared experiences across the geographical and racial divides. The idea caught fire, and during that first summer in 1984, youth produced the following films.
Award-Winning Documentaries
“Letta’s Family”
With 60% unemployment, the community was challenged by poverty, food insecurity, and poor healthcare. Many families subsisted on food stamps and what little they could grow in their gardens. But it was not easy to get people to talk about it on camera. Many folks felt a sense of shame, blaming themselves for their poverty, and they were understandably hesitant to open up to outsiders, given the history of exploitative media reporting on Appalachian poverty. When interviewed about problems related to housing and land ownership, some admitted that they were afraid that if they spoke out the company would run them off the land.
Despite these challenges the campers found someone willing to talk on camera. Marie introduced us to her courageous neighbor, Letta Casey, who lived up the road with her two boys, Henry (13) and JJ (9). The boys were curious about our videotaping and hung out with us at the camp. They were playful and loved to joke and laugh with us.
The campers made a documentary, “Letta’s Family,” that captured a day in this family’s lives. Letta and her family were hard-working and resilient. They didn’t have electricity or running water in their home and barely had enough to eat. Students documented “a day in their life” as they dug up potatoes in their garden, fed their chickens, carried jugs of water up to the house twice a day from the stream, and collected cans from the roadside to make some money from the scrap-metal man. They not only struggled financially, but with health as well. Letta’s malnutrition contributed to two miscarriages. She told us that Henry had a heart condition that resulted from all the painkillers she was taking when she was pregnant with him because of the terrible toothaches she suffered. By age 37, she lost all her teeth, and didn’t have money to have them replaced.
“Hungry to Learn”
The second documentary we created that summer is “Hungry to Learn.” Filming it took us about an hour and a half drive each way to St. Charles, Virginia. A nun there who worked with Marie introduced us to Beatrice Huff. A single mother, Beatrice depended on food stamps as one of her few means of support. She wanted to be self-sufficient and earn a living as a nurse’s aid,so she began taking courses to become certified. As a direct result, social services cut her food stamps. The government was forcing her to choose between gaining an education and having enough to eat. The camp video crew interviewed Beatrice and documented her meeting with social services requesting a hearing to appeal her case. When they denied her request, we were sad and furious at the injustice of it. In the film she explained, “I do not have enough to eat. It’s hard to take from my neighbors and my family all the time.”
We were amassing piles of videotapes that all had to be viewed and logged. This was always a tedious process, even under the best conditions. It was especially challenging to stay focused when the temperature was soaring into the upper 90s, and there was no air conditioning to provide relief. But we all persisted. And when we were finally ready to edit the documentaries, we drove a couple of hours to Whitesburg, Kentucky to use the editing facilities at Appalshop, with assistance from Anne Lewis. When we finally finished our videos we had a community screening in Marie’s house followed by a discussion, which we recorded. We ran a long cable up the hill to a neighbor’s house so Letta and her family and other neighbors could also watch. The camper’s documentary took first prize at two National Video Festivals and was aired in Japan and nationally on NBC.
Giving Up Wasn’t an Option
After we all returned home, we were excited to learn that our students’ documentaries were beginning to stir up some action that we hoped could lead to some real material improvement for the Appalachian community. Later that fall, Marie helped organize a hearing before the select congressional committee on hunger in Appalachia where Letta, Beatrice, and others from the community would get to tell their stories. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the major television networks covered the hearing.
Sadly, their powerful testimony fell on deaf ears. The administrator of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service walked out of the hearing without listening to even one word of the women’s testimony. He said that he believed the food stamp program “is fine just the way it is—people can live on what they get.'' This dismissive, punitive attitude toward poor people was common in the Reagan government of the 80s, which made deep cuts in government funding for social services. According to them, $153 a month in food stamps for Letta and her boys “was fine just the way it is.”
Not only were we disappointed by this non-response from the men who held power in Washington, DC, but we were mortified when we heard that Henry and JJ had been teased and bullied in school for publicly testifying that they usually only had bread and potatoes to eat.
Despite this resistance, giving up wasn’t an option. We recommitted ourselves to the collaborative work we had started. We continued bringing EVC students down to Roses Creek, working to amplify voices and create new opportunities for them, (since business and government was falling woefully short). With Marie’s guidance, we continued to use video production as a tool for documenting and educating the community about the local grassroots organizations that were building self-reliance and empowerment for youth and their families.
EVC and Rural Video Together
With Marie’s support, Sue Ellison and Carolyn Deaton, two summer camp participants from that first summer, formed a video production company in Roses Creek called Rural Video. They conducted oral histories and documented and publicized local organizations and events. Sue and Carolyn visited their EVC friends in New York City the next year, and they corresponded with each other for many years after.
The next summer, campers each received bright yellow T-shirts saying, “Video Camp Summer ‘86,” with both EVC and Rural Video on it. I still have mine!
In subsequent years, Dave Murdock, my brother Ben Goodman, EVC’s first office manager Liz Grabiner, and Brad Berman were among those who carried the work forward running the camp, teaching and coordinating the youth documentary productions. Students produced an amazing body of work covering a range of subjects, including teen parents, community housing programs, the need for garbage services, cooperative gardens, and the pervasive problem of hunger. We added a literacy component to the camp, setting aside time each day for students to reflect on the day’s events in their journals, as well as play theater games, draw, write poetry, draft stories, and listen to local bluegrass music. We compiled their writing, artwork, and photography in a journal we called, Mountain Video Review, a co-publication of EVC and Rural Video.
In one article, EVC youth Miriam Hernandez and Tennessee youth Sue Ellison and Richard Terry described the making of their video on teen parents:
Picking our video topics was a very difficult process because everybody wanted to do something different. Some of the topics people wanted to do were employment problems, young employment programs, problems with the land being owned by big companies, childcare, drug abuse, community development groups, housing and teenage mothers. There were other ideas too, but finally we narrowed it down to housing and teen parents. The next day, Sue called up a few girls who she knew were pregnant or already had kids and we asked if they would talk with us about it….
In another article, Tyrone Bush and Carolyn Deaton and Anahid Avsharian wrote,
One of the best things that happened in all this was that, since other people from different areas came in, I went deeper into the history of my community and got a better appreciation of it. … Making decisions in the editing room was quite a process. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes just to decide whether to add or delete one frame! McD.L.T.s and candy from the vending machines saw us through 20 hours of editing...The most fun was when we videotaped J.B. playing fiddle with Hutch. They have a band which plays bluegrass music and we ended up using their music in our tape.
We developed a partnership with CTV Channel 20 cable access station in Knoxville. Peggy Gilbertson, the general manager there, donated time for us to use her station’s edit suites and then broadcast their documentaries. They also shot studio interviews with the students about their work and their camp experiences.
We’re All Connected…Still
EVC has maintained our relationship with Appalshop. Years later we had a former Appalshop staff member, Caron Atlas, join the EVC board. I was thrilled to have Dee Davis, Jeff Hawkins, and Robert Gipe visit EVC and exchange ideas with us as they were starting their own youth media program, the Appalachian Media Institute, in 1988.
And after a 30 year hiatus, Hana Sun and the Mozilla Foundation generously gave us funding to revive the camp in the summer of 2017. We called the project, “We’re All Connected.” After the polarizing effects of Trump’s election, there was a sense of great urgency to build bridges between urban and rural communities in our country. Marie was still in Roses Creek, as active as ever, now working with the Parent Resource Center. EVC media educators Mary Grueser and Emmanuel Garcia brought EVC students and lots of equipment down to the Clearfork Valley. Partnering again with Marie, as well as with June Pyle, Dawn Ivey, and William Isom, urban and rural youth lived, worked, and made films together. They investigated local problems of contaminated water, broadband access in the mountains, foster care, and the opioid epidemic. As in the 80s, the youth learned about the history of coal and timber extraction in the community, and visited the Highlander Research and Education Center to learn about the history of Southern organizing, and about the connections that bring urban and rural youth together.
While the cameras were a lot smaller, and computers a lot faster—well, we actually didn’t have any computers back in the 80s!—the spirit of collaboration and cross-cultural dialogue remained the same. Their friendships and connections were strengthened when the Tennessee youth reunited with EVC youth in New York City five months later over the Christmas holiday. As I described the campers’ different backgrounds and experiences in the opening issue of Mountain Video Review in 1986,
Some of them left high school early, others attended alternative schools, and some attended college; they were Black, Hispanic, Native American and white; they came from the crowded neighborhoods of New York City, the towns and hollers in the Central Appalachian Mountains…. Rather than causing any problems, however, the youths often remarked on how their differences made the experiences of sharing and learning from each other that much richer.
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