Meet the Stars on MTV
S.B. 1070 has been tried once before. Learn the history anti-immigration lobbyists want us to forget.
On Sunday Sept. 26th at 8 PM ET / PT, a game-changing documentary about politics and immigration will be broadcast into 100 million homes.
“9500 Liberty” will premiere simultaneously on MTV2, MTV U, and MTV Tr3s (with Spanish subtitles), and America will see how ordinary citizens, Republicans, and Democrats in Northern Virginia join forces to combat extremism, and regain control of a county government.MTV 360 presents the
WORLD TELEVISION PREMIERE of
9500 LIBERTY
Sunday Sept. 26th
8 PM ET / PT on MTV 2, MTV U,
& MTV Tr3s (with Spanish subtitles)
I hope we get to see the panel discussion with Corey and John Quinones. I will be online tonight during the film. We can use this thread for comments about the film. I am sorry we couldn’t meet as a group. Finding a place seemed pointless with so little get together interest. So…we can do it here.
Alanna and I will be here during the film. Hopefully our contributors will be watching.
MTV2, MTVU and TR3S MTV
Elena might be joining us later. But 1 movie star is all I could get here tonight.
Counting down! 🙂
I’m watching the live stream pre-film webcast with Eric and Annabel now, live from the Coffee Party Convention in Louisville, KY.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/coffee-party-videos
Hi Cindy, Hi Red Dawn.
I finally got into the live stream. I thought I was going to throw my computer out the window in the process.
hmmmm….the dark screen doesn’t have a running thread to discuss the film. surprise surprise.
Actually, they sprung it all in to being.
Not asking here, but does anyone know who the man is in the opening scene? You can tell me in email if anyone knows.
Interesting discussion of who does demonstrations…theh fringe left. I will remember that.
I used to produce TV commercials for WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, NC. I used a local man on TV for three seconds. It was as if his whole life passed before his eyes – he heard from everyone he ever knew. “I saw you on TV!” 100 million homes….
It looks like we were down for a few minutes. I wonder what caused that?
Lots of local men and women tonight….I wonder if they are all watching?
It’s so much better w/out the commercials!! Ugh 🙂
agreed. The commercials are driving me nuts.
The marathon. Corey’s invitations that cost $30,000. What a waste.
I watched the closing remarks for the coffee party convention there in Louisville and ……… um ……… wow …….. how did they handle crowd control?
Ummmm………Jesus, I can’t stop laughing!
MTV probably does go into 100 million homes. Just not all of them will be turned in.
Why is that funny?
I almost never watch it. Tonight I make an exception.
What I find almost horrifying, a year later after my last viewing, is the bullying and sneering that went on in our community. That is unacceptable.
Hethmon just admitted it was all about the election and that Greg called him.
There you go. Is Hethmon lying?
Now do we get to see him, Duecaster, and Stirrup all fight over authorship of the original Anti-immigration Resolution?
Point taken. Everyone’s watching “The Amazing Race.”
Turning Point: Elena speaks to the board of supervisors.
Mrs. Caddigan says a silent prayer.
Here we go….LOL ( Alanna and that grin )
Corey indicated today that the county has pretty much recovered. I guess he missed the front page of the Washington Post today.
Short sales:
Note: Brewer Creek is in Prince William County, not the City of Manassas.
Antibvbl.net has been born.
The chief has been accused of treason. Horrible! Another turning point. Greg miscalculated that one.
Go Ms. Barg!! She went after Corey for allowing it.
“You owe Chief Dean a big apology, Mr. Stewart ” Bob Wills 🙂 “That’s not a sleeping giant you want to wake” Lafayette 🙂 lol
Where has Bob Wills been? No one has seen him for a long time.
That devilish grin on Alanna will live in infamy.
Going back to live stream Q & A on webcast.
Cindy’s right, I’m one of those watching the Amazing Race. I did get email from an old classmate that said they were watching and wanting to when this happened.
We flipped over just in time to catch that devilish grin. 👿
Where’s Big Dog and/or Rick with their reviews?
I still do understand WHY the Obama portion is the movie. Obama was here a year after the issue was debated.
I wrote a review months ago … let me see if I can dig that up.
Watching it again :
A. It’s not quite as biased as I remembered it, there is some intellectual integrity in placves, but still pretty biased.
B. I feel strongly that Greg, Stirrup, Stewart didn’t create or even fan flames of discontent; the discontent came from people’s experiences and feelings. The guy from FAIR did roll in to town and pretty much claim to the cameras that it was being done for political purposes. I think his perspective is way off.
C. We were 19% Hispanic at the peak? Balderdash. It was at least 40%, at least around me, with half those people “living in the shadows” in broad daylight. There’s a real story to be told there.
D.
Since Lafayette asked, here’s my original review :
9500 Liberty – Glimpses From the Illegal Immigration Debate
“9500 Liberty” aspires to be a documentary about the illegal immigration phenomenon in Prince William County, culminating in the “Rule of Law” resolution adopted in 2007 and revised in 2008, and particularly on the resolution’s effect on Prince William’s immigrant community. It’s an important and timely story, and the filmmakers caught some interesting and at times compelling footage. In the end though this film suffers from a lack of coherence, and from tunnel vision.
The film’s bias is revealed not so much in what is on the screen, but in what is not on the screen. Particularly, the citizens of the County who supported the resolution (and who wish to discourage illegal immigrants from settling in Prince William) don’t really have a voice here. Their concerns are presented as paranoid and race-based, and the few spokespeople for those concerns who appear here are presented in unflattering contexts. As a resident of Prince William, who saw some very dramatic things happen over time, I know that there’s a reality for many County citizens unaddressed by the filmmakers – mortgage fraud galore, suburban neighborhoods swollen to the gills with overcrowded houses, bombed-out properties, bitterly unhappy neighbors, and flight out of town by many a middle-class taxpayer. Presuming those citizens as racially prejudiced is a brutal simplification to a complex and unexamined phenomenon, that to most people has more to do with suburban vs. urban concerns than it does to do with racial prejudice.
The film proceeds down its minority-viewpoint path, that the will of the majority is a tyranny, until it dead-ends in a head-scratching final act that lacks explanation and coherence. Perhaps it would take a longer film to tell the story in a comprehensible way; I have a feeling that it would take a less invested set of filmmakers as well.
When the film does deign to let people speak for themselves, there is some powerful footage here, and particularly during an all-night “Citizens Time” session that the PWC Board of Supervisors inflicted on itself before the original resolution vote. The anger and the lack of common ground between those on one side who want illegal immigrants treated as criminals, and those on the other who want them treated as humanitarian refugees, is palpable and the divide clearly unbridgeable. Good luck to anyone who wants to craft a “comprehensive solution” that will make either side happy.
The film introduces, for brief intervals, some players in this drama, none more interesting than anti-illegal immigration blogger/activist/bully/powerbroker Greg Letiecq, who is cast as the Darth Vader in this narrative. Again, more in-depth examination would be needed before a coherent portrait could be drawn.
So, the film will primarily be of interest to those already familiar with the issues and the people involved, and will fail to provide an accurate or coherent picture of Prince William County to the rest of the world, though it may be considered worthwhile entertainment by a subset of viewers who choose to watch without asking themselves some rather obvious questions. (Questions such as “If the measure is so unpopular, why is it still law?” or “Why were the people in Prince William so angry about a supposedly moderate demographic shift?”). Its primary value is as a flawed framework that holds within it some great documentary footage. My advice to the directors, should they ever endeavor to make more serious documentaries, is to let the camera run more and to not spend so much time trying to work out a contrived narrative structure that tells us what to think. I rate this film as a C-.
Rick, thanks for your observations.
A. Where do you feel there are biases?
B. Were you asleep? I didn’t see a lot of fanning out of Stirrup but I sure did out of Stewart and Letiecq. What do you call calling the chief of police a traitor, just out of curiosity? What do you call working numbersusa to fax all those letters from out of state people? I saw lots of flame fanning from my perspective.
C. Hethmon knows if Greg called him or not. He said he did. Is he lying?
Agree, for the most part, with Rick although I would give the film
an “incomplete”. To place the “resolution discussion” in context
would require an objective overview of the impact of
the wave of immigrants – many illegal – who swept into our
communities prior to the PWBOCS actions. Sure, there were
hotheads and publicity seekers on both sides, but there
were also many good decent people who were having their
lives ruined by single family homes on quiet residential streets
being suddenly coverted to flop houses with 20-25 “cousins”
who would quickly trash entire blocks. Desperate citizens
seeking help were ignored by their federal and state governments –
their last recourse was at the local level.
And note the picture at the top of this thread at the top of this thread.
Por favor, who is that with with mustache and baseball cap just
behind Chief Deane? Giving him publicity is like giving heroin to an addict.
There is a dark back story to him, the property, disregard for legal due process,
and his repeated attempts to bully the citizens of Manassas.
Fernandez played Eric and Annabel for stooges.
Hethmon says people called him, yes. He intimates that the whole thing was motivated by Republicans wanting to hold seats.
That’s probably true in a sense. Every Supervisor including Stewart probably realized that if illegal immigration were not addressed, they could go dowj in a political bloodbath as happened in Herndon circa 2006.
The film is misleading when it intimates that Greg, HSM, Stewart, Stirrup were drawing power mostly from blogs and blogging. As if a minority element seized control of an issue. What every elected official was really afraid of was a rerun of what happened in Herndon. That’s very meaningful context that the film doesn’t show.
The message the casual, Roger Ebert-style viewer sees in the film is that Hethmon got called to hatch a sinister plot to help the GOP hold seats.
What was really happening is that we the people were very very angry and the politicians were aware that if they didn’t address the issue they’d probably get the bounce.
“What do you call calling the chief of police a traitor”
Deane did and does seem more interested in undercutting the anti-illegal immigration efforts than in supporting them. I’ve softened my position on him, as he is not totally ineffectual, but I remember well why people like me were angry with him. I didn’t need any cue from Letiecq or stewart to feel that way. In fact at that big HSM meeting when deame spoke, Greg took great care to tell us all that Deane deserved much respect, but I felt that Deame came off extremely badly and was very directly hostile to the resolution and to the idea of proper lawfulness.
If the film is biased by what it didn’t show, then anyone is free to produce a film that shows those neighborhoods and interviews those people whose voices were not heard. Students from American University and George Mason University have filmed. Why not Help Save Manassas?
Cindy brings up an excellent point.
“Where do you feel there are biases?”
Primarily in what they chose to include or disclude from the film. Here and there there is some intellectual integrity, but for any real balance we should have seen :
Flophouses and bombed-out basements, devalued properties
Overcrowded streets, double-parked cars
Mention of mortgage fraud driving the high foreclosure rate
Interviews with people who left the area specifically because of the influx. the people who hated it most and/or had the means LEFT.
Interviews with contractors who can’t compete unless they choose to use illegal labor
Some discussion with illegal immigrants about knowledge that they broke laws, guilt that they feel, some sense of personal responsibility
A real discussion of how middle-class Americans feel less safe in situations like mine – not just “My 76-year old grandmother doesn’t feel safe taking out the trash” not that I doubt that is real or important
Some discussion about antipathy towards illegal immigration that is not race-based
Discussion about what was happening budget-wise – the overcrowding in schools, the large increases in ESOL budgets, the fact that people are paying less tax per capita because of the overcrowding and the fact that the area was slowly becoming a Hispanic ghetto
All of this is beyond the filmmakers I would guess. At the things they sympathize with and aspire to – communicating the pain and suffering of the illegal immigrant community and their children, and the frustration of men like Fernandez – they actually did a fine job, and I gained perspective from it. Two images I really noticed last night. One, the girl taking the podium during Citizens’ Time right after a guy talking about civil war and there’s a million like me and bring it on – the way she kind of swallowed and then walked to the podium. Two, the little kid in the green shirt rolling around screaming, presumably after the resolution passed. I blame the Juarrez’ and Lyall’s for that more than the Letiecq’s or Stewart’s – the demonstrations, the us-against-them mentality, the overselling of the “Yes we can” motif to an uneducated group of people. But I feel bad for the kids.
I feel bad for a couple of the adults too but not most of them. The woman telling the Supervisors they would go to hell for this, not at all. People like her and GF, their sense of utter entitlement, is not something I want to reward or encourage.
At one point Park says (something like) “The immigrants felt that people were screaming at them, telling them to leave”. Yes! That’s it in a nutshell. No apologies.
One guy was crying “If you deport me, how do I get back here?” You don’t! We don’t want you back!
These people just DID NOT GET IT and I hope that more of them understand now that MOST AMERICANS DIDN’T INVITE THEM and WANT THEM GONE. That is the case, and will be the case.
Even a lot of people who are very cautious about the means actually want illegal immigrants gone or discouraged.
All the fantasies about their children rising and crucifying Corey Stewart or whatever, spare me. Take responsibility for your actions and respect our laws.
Because we don’t all have trust funds to do it with, cindy.
Rick, I have always said that the people in the neighborhoods had some very valid points. I know what happened in neighborhoods. Where I will beg to differ with your opinion is timing. I do think HSM and the blog fanned the flames. I was not at that meeting you described with Chief Deane. I don’t know how he came off other than what I saw on film. We do know that he opposed anything that undermined trust in the community with law enforcement. He also saluted doing what he was directed to do.
I felt he should have given his opinion. However, deliberately attacking him over the community meetings was vile. Just horrible vicious behavior and that behavior was a definite misstep. Stewart was foolish to get involved with it. It will haunt him every place he goes.
Big Dog, I was interested in hearing your opinion. I don’t disagree with you regarding GF. I have always felt that his actions did more to foster bad feelings between the Latino community and everyone else than any other event. But that’s just my opinion.
My question for you is, having seen the story of Prince William County, could the GF part of the story really be left out? I don’t think so.
How do you feel the city response to the change in demographics differed from the county response? Better, worse, the same?
Rick, I think you have brought up some good points. Not sure the trust fund remark was a fair response. Do we know of anyone who has a trust fund?
I am going to try to respond to a couple things you mentioned. Property issues–I think that was, in part, Chris’s role. E & A had to walk a fine line regarding property. They couldn’t just go up and start filming in front of a house. There are serious privacy issues. Of course, crowded streets etc. could have still been shown and that was a huge problem. That problem continues, to some degree.
I am going to say I half agree with you there. The full impact of what neighbors had to contend with was not addressed. I say half because you could have agreed to be interviewed. I don’t see you holding back. I expect E & A would have been willing to let you go on film incognito.
Your interviews with contractors or people who left …not so easy. Would POW have been someone you would have liked to have seen interviewed?
I do think that bvbl was very much setting policy in this county. Apparently so did the rest of the politicos in this county. That’s another discussion for another time though.
@Rick,
The school information would have been hard to obtain. That was mostly for the blogs. I t wouldn’t have made very good film footage because of the privacy restrictions.
Actually ESOL wasn’t the biggest budget bite. One big problem was NCLB coming in on top of demographic changes. Remember that kids leave ESOL…and they are still at school and still having to be educated. Just having lots of extra kids, having nothing to do with ESOL counts.
If you will email me a current email address I will send you something you might find..significant.
M-H,
Tonight Dr. Pope is slated to give a report to the Manassas Council on the
start of the school year. My guess it will show a continued increase in the ESOL
population, who on average, cost 25% more to educate than children who
speak English. That, plus NCLB requirements, have put enormous fiscal
and operational pressures on our local schools. The state and feds
seem to enjoy pumping out mandates, but ignore their actual impact.
(MCPS have been minority majority for several years).
Demographics are key. In 2008 UVA’s Weldon-Cooper Center noted
the three Virginia jurisdictions with the highest Hispanic Population were:
1) Manassas Park – 30%
2) Manassas – 27%
3) PWC – 19%
And until it reached a “tipping point” around 2008, the growth had been taken
in stride. (Had local numbers tracked Fairfax City and County, both 13% in 2008,
I doubt any major flare ups would have happened here).
Too many immigrants – too often poor, unskilled, illiterate, illegal, and
indifferent to their new neighbors – too quickly.
I am thinking how to be politically correct in my response. It is my understanding (from people who sat in various meetings with the country) that several years ago staff was informed that there were different waves of immigrants who came to the area. Those in the latest wave with children often came from villages where there was very little formal education. Therefore the skill level of kids entering school was significantly more limited than what they had seen in the past.
This skill level intensified educational impact because there were many more students who in addition to being non-English speaking, were far below grade level. The impact of NCLB issues was simply insurmountable. There is a state impact aid for ESOL, although last I looked, it wasn’t a significant amount. The feds ought to be chunking in a bunch. I think too much has been made of ESOL education. It doesn’t last forever. Overcrowding of schools, regardless of who it is, caused by rapid influx of people into communities often skews school populations. Certainly that happened in Prince William on a huge scale in the late 60’s, early 70’s, when PWC was the most rapidly growing county in the United States illustrates that point. PWC opened several schools a year for decades as well as experiementing with year round school (which was a failure).
“Manassas cultures separate, peaceful”
Arizona Republic headline (8-25-2001)
“There is little non-commercial contact between the immigrants
and longtime residents. At the same time their is little tension
or social friction.”
“Stephanie Williams, who conducts cultural awareness programs for
Manassas and Prince William County, said she would ask new immigrants
‘Why Manassas?’ and they would reply ‘ a cousin likes it here or
someone from the village and they said there are good people and lots
of work in Manassas.'”
Maybe we were too nice?
Would you like to see that we are all worthless nasty bastards in the AZ newspaper?
How and why are children placed in ESOL classes? I’m curious because a legal resident I know has had a couple of her US born children placed in such classes despite their very proficient use of English. She’s fighting to get them removed from those classes.
I think that the film’s depiction of FAIR as being behind the PWC resolution is accurate. Those people in affected neighborhoods don’t realize – because of their very real problems within those neighborhoods – that a great many people in this county were completely unaffected by immigration issues and only became aware of any problems because of the publicity which followed Greg and his blog. Older, more affordable neighborhoods were probably the hardest hit. Most neighborhoods around me – in Marty’s district – were unaffected. My neighborhood has had similar problems but those problems weren’t caused by immigrants.
“I do think HSM and the blog fanned the flames.”
You could state it that way. I also think it’s a valid perspective that they cared about the issue, and worked to address it constructively.
“deliberately attacking him over the community meetings was vile”
I was a minor part of that, and in retrospect it was somewhat over the top. But some level of attack was proper. The man was/is part of a status quo working against country residents. It took that kind of belligerance to break through that status quo. So no apologies for any posts I made that attacked him. And for Deane to work with someone like Linda Chavez trying to undercut our efforts – I lose all respect for him, and don’t want him as Police Chief.
I respect someone like Maureen Caddigan. She obviously LOATHES stewart’s leading the Board, but nevertheless voted for what is right for her County and what is desired by its residents. Deane I think is on a more ego-laden path.
MH, if Eric and Annabel were looking for angry people to talk to, they were at HSM meetings and could have met many angry people, some of whom may have been more articulate about things than what they chose to use on film. And probably wouldn’t have brought some view of Christianity into it or had their young child dramatically out their hand on their shoulder when they talked about our children, etc. They got what they wanted. their dream interview was the guy at the start of the film, they’re pretty much openly gloating about contrasting the old angry man with the kids.
@Rick,
You would be surprised how many people wouldn’t consent to interview. I don’t think Chief Deane was arrogant or belligerant at all. You are looking at him through Greg eyes. It colored your thinking. I was fortunate enough to have other eyes or I might have ended up with your vision. Greg is very persuasive. I have never questioned his talents or skills, just his integrity and honesty.
ESOL expenses are one thing. A bigger issue is many families to one house, people paying less taxes per capita and the schools not having enough funding to handle all the children. Of course it’s politically incorrect to suggest that hispanic immigrants cram into houses, so no one talks about what is plain as day and real.
The way i see the world, Stirrup Stewart and Letiecq are generally trying to talk about real things. The Lyalls and Juarez’ of the world are virulently attempting to shout them down and to fight against objective measurement or logical arguement.
Juarez and Lyall are irrelevant in the entire discussion. They fought the war with outdated tactics. They never affected their desired change in any way. I would say THEY were given more attention in the film than they warranted. About all they did was give Greg some ammo. And he was typically cruel, despite recent attempts at a make-over.
“Extremism In Defense of Not Allowing Elitist Liars to Flout US Law At Will If It makes Them richer” is no vice.
What they did do though was promulgate a false and divisive picture to the illegal community about what was even being discussed or why.