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cornaviruscarwreck · 4 years

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Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history.

“in fourteen hundred and nightly three, Columbus stole all he could see.”

Someone recently said to me that America has the greatest propaganda system ever created. Then my mom said to me that the people protecting the Columbus statue at Marconi Plaza in south philly probably do not know all the horrible things he represents. That I am blessed to have an education and an interest that is more expansive. She said they don’t know what they are depending. So I decided to compile a list of the things that make Columbus basically one of the worst historical figures. He is known for two things. 1- stealing the land and the genocide of indigenous peoples. 2- starting the transatlantic slave trade. I have provided ample primary sources as evidence. I am not clear on where the confusion lies….willful ignorance? Thats as kind as I can go.

So one concern may be that its not right to judge historical figures based on todays standards. Columbus was a slaver and a pedophile. The founders were slavers and the Greeks were pedophiles but we revere them. The point is not that Columbus did these things, the point is the way he did them was barbaric and inhuman. The point is that Columbus was not just a slaver or pedophile but a war criminal who committed atrocities against indigenous peoples and stole their lands. But MY point is that the story of Columbus has an insidious message, the history we teach our children is full of lies created as a system of propaganda and myth building. The myth of Columbus teaches us to identify with the oppressor, to ignore the perspective of those the land was stolen from, and the rhetoric of discovery implies only the feats of the white man matters.

“Not understanding their past renders many Americans incapable of thinking effectively about our present and future”

“Students of the dominant social group are taught lies in the guise of fact creating an ‘inverted world’ view which hide the unjust distribution of power in the past so they do not have the tools to identify them in the future.”

Myth: Columbus was bold and brave, ahead of his time while his crew was fearful of sailing over the edge of the world. “The people of your earth believed the earth to be flat; Columbus proved it was round.“-star trek

Fact: In Columbus’s time all educated people and most sailors believed the earth was a sphere.

Proof: It looks round. It casts a circular shadow on moon. Sailors see its roundness when ships disappear over the horizon, hull first, then sails.

Proof: Washington Irving made up flat earth fable in 1828

Propaganda: The lie makes Columbus a man of science who corrected our faulty geography That those who direct social enterprises are more intelligent than those nearer the bottom.

2. Myth: Columbus on the first voyage with the pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria braved a dangerous journal and the crew almost mutinied.

Fact: It was smooth sailing and at worst rained only the last day when they knew they were close to land

Fact: there was no mutiny, at best some grumpy sailors

Fact: the journey was no more than a month and they stopped at the Canary Islands and were given aid.

Propaganda: Columbus bravely succeeded in an arduous journey even while dealing with superstitious sailors.

3. Myth: Columbus was a skilled navigator and leader who hid the distance of his journey from the crew so they would not think they had gone too far from home.

Fact: Columbus had false entries in the log of Santa Maria to keep the route to the Indies secret. Columbus was a less experienced navigator than the Pinzon brothers who captained the Nina and Pinta

Proof: Columbus admits this later in his journal

Proof: argument from Salvador de Madariaga that we would have to think the others on the voyage were fools. Columbus had no special method available only to him whereby distances sailed could be more accurately reckoned than by the other pilots and masters

Propaganda: Those at the top are smarter than those at the bottom. Columbus was a genius navigator.

4. Myth: Columbus died alone and poor without recognition for his deeds

Fact: Columbus died well off.

Proof: He left his airs well endowed with the title: ‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea’ now carried by his 18th generation descendant

Propaganda: Columbus’s story is a tragedy of a brave man wrongly treated by the world

5. Myth: Columbus did not know he had reached a ‘new’ continent

Fact: He knew.

Proof: His journal entries

Propaganda: to humanize Columbus and maximize his greatness

6. Myth: Columbus discovered a ‘New World’

Fact: It was new only to Europeans

Proof: People had lived in Americas for thousands of years

Propaganda: the white European conquest was right and natural. Implies we have a right to this land and subtly says it was empty of anyone who mattered

Propaganda: justifies American exceptionalism and natural right to the world. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush invoked Columbus as a role model for the nation: “Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith.”

7. Myth: Columbus ‘discovered’ America

Fact: Columbus not the first to discover America but the last

Fact: the rhetoric of discovery has been used to justify the stolen land

Proof: How can one person discover what another already knows and owns?

Propaganda: All the important discoveries are traceable to white Europe

Propaganda Analysis: “So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say ‘discover’ they imply that whites are the only people who really matter.” -Lies My Teacher Told Me page 66

Use of Propaganda: words matter: In 1823 Chief Justice John Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court decried that Cherokees had certain rights to their land in Georgia by dint of their ‘occupancy’ but that whites had superior rights owing to their ‘discovery’. How American Indians managed to occupy Georgia without having previously discovered it Marshall neglected to explain.

8. Myth: Columbus was the first to voyage to the Americas across Atlantic.

Fact: The Norse, The Phoenicians and Africans sailed to America long before Columbus.

Fact: Columbus was not the first, just the first white catholic to make it

Fact: Phoenicians beat Columbus by over 2000 years

Fact: at best students are taught the Norse came a little earlier but they failed where we succeeded. No mention is made of the vast amounts of evidence that show other peoples traveling across the ocean

Proof: There were people already there and all humans originated from same place, so the indigenous peoples had to have traveled somehow

Proof: the huge face stones in Mexico have distinctly African features

Proof: archeological discoveries of tools and art

Propaganda: Only the feats of white people matter. All important developments can be traced to white Europeans

Propaganda: students learn that black feats are not considered important while white ones are.

9. Myth: Native Americans walked across the Atlantic in an Ice Age

Fact: Native Americans came to the Americas between 70,000 and 12,000 BC, from Siberia to Alaska

Proof: It is impossible to walk across the ocean even in an Ice Age

Propaganda: the natives people were primitive and European whites were smarter and more advanced

10. Myth: Columbus came for exploration and trade

Fact: Columbus’s purpose from the beginning was conquest and exploitation for which he used religion as a rationale to force the indigenous peoples to work for him

Proof: the Spanish sought gold, they killed Indians, and Indians fled and resisted.

Propaganda: Columbus’s venture had good intentions and his efforts were religiously motivated

11. Possible Myth: Columbus was a Catholic Italian

Fact: this is an unproven story

Fact: some scholars believe he was a jewish convert from Spain hiding from the inquisition.

Proof: He wrote in his journals in Spanish and could not write in Italian

Propaganda: Italian American Nationalism

12. Probable Myth: Columbus yelled ‘Tierra!’ Or ‘land’ when he spotted the coast and his first act on ground was to thank god

Fact: There is absolutely no proof this is the case

Proof: Considering all the other embellishments to the myth of Columbus it seems reasonable to think this is a lie as well.

Propaganda: focus white American identify with Columbus and the moment of ‘discovery’ not what Columbus did to the native peoples and lands he ‘discovered’

13. Myth: White Europeans invented navigation and sea fairing ships

Fact: Not true. White history says the design started with Henrey the Navigator of Portugal between 1415 and 1460.

Fact: Egyptians and Phoenicians where sailing long before white Europeans. Portugal probably saw their designs and that is where Columbus got his ‘new ship’.

Fact: There was nothing special about Columbus’s navigation abilities

Proof: massive amounts of archaeological data, including coins from ancient Rome.

Proof: If everyone originated in same place, then how did any people get there before Columbus?

Propaganda: all important discoveries came from white europeans and the natives where primitive and fortunate to be ‘civilized’

14. Myth: White Europeans conquered because they are/were naturally the stronger smarty people

Fact: History tells us it was one man but it was actually many cultures

Fact: White Europeans learned medicine and without the help of the native peoples would have starved for lack on knowledge of local agriculture

Fact: Democracy came from Indigenous Peoples

Fact: ‘Syncretism’ is combining the ideas from two or more cultures to something new.

Proof: Muslims preserved the wisdom of the greeks and enhanced it with ideas from china, india, and africa, then passing it on to Europe via Italy and spain

Propaganda: only white Europeans are strong and a multiracial society is not rational. Clearly, all advancement and progress has come from the white man.

Propaganda: European world domination is natural and inevitable

Propaganda: all culture and modern Tecnology comes from white europeans

15. Origin Myth: He was good and so are we.

Fact: Some people cannot accept Columbus as a villain. “But an honest account of history does not mean Columbus was bad and so are we. Textbooks should show that right morality or immorality cannot simply be conferred upon us by history. Merely being part of the United States, without regard to our own acts and ideas, does not make us immoral or moral human beings. History is more complicated than that.”

Truth of the Legacy of Christopher Columbus:

Columbus changed the world and revolutionized race relations.

His Legacy: the class of cultures and system of domination that still exist today

A bloody atrocity that left a legacy of genoicide and slavery that endures to some degree to this day.

Christopher Columbus changed the world in two ways: Colonization in the form of genoicide and Slavery

The taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in Western Hemisphere, leading to their near extermination.

Sunday October 14th 1492: “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.”

Columbus returned with Haitian Slaves and Ferdinand and Isabella outfitted Columbus for a second voyage with 17 ships, 1200-1500 men, cannons, crossbows, guns, cavalry, and attack dogs.

The War of the Worlds allegory

When the ‘primitive’ peoples were terrified by the advance Tecnology of the aliens Wells wanted us to sympathize with the natives on Haiti in 1943 or on Australia in 1788 or in the upper Amazon jungle today

Haiti

Conquer them he did. Columbus and his men demanded food, gold, spun cotton, women, ect.

Columbus used punishment by example to ensure cooperation

When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose. Disfigured, the person was sent back to his village as living evidence of the brutality the Spanish were capable of

At first the resistance was passive but eventually they took up arms, their resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war

Ferdinand Columbus’s biography of his father: “The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike and with God’s aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed.”

Columbus’s created a tribute system where natives received a medallion after paying tribute and were safe for three months where they would have to provide another tribute or have their hands chopped off.

The encomienda system came later but was of Columbus’s design

Pedro de Cordoba wrote a letter to King Ferdinand in 1517 describing the Haiti that Christopher Columbus had created, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth . . . Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery.” -Lies My Teacher Told Me pg 57

The Haitians impaled themselves, drank poison, jumped off cliffs, hanged themselves and killed their children

Haiti Pre-Columbian

Estimates as high as 8 million.

1496 estimates of 3 million

1516 estimates of 12,000

1542 estimates of 200 full blooded Haitian Indians

1555 none.

The methods unleashed by Columbus are the larger part of his legacy. Other Nations rushed to emulate Columbus. “In 1501 the Portuguese began to depopulate Labrador, transporting the now extinct Beothuk Indians to Europe and Capa Verde as Slaves. After the English established beachheads on the Atlantic coast of North America, they encouraged capture and sell members of more distant tribes. Charleston South Carolina, became a major port of exporting American Indian Slaves. Pilgrims and Puritans sold the survivors of the Pequot War into Slavery in Bermuda in 1673. The French sipped virtually the entire Natchez nation in chains to the West Indies in 1731.”

2. The transatlantic slave trade which created a racial underclass

Columbus sent the first slaves across the Atlantic

Columbus sent more slaves across Atlantic than any other individual (5,000)

On Haiti Columbus did not find gold at first so he found another source of wealth

Columbus in letter to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1496 on Indian death rate: “Although they die now, they will not always die The negroes and Canary Islanders died at first.”

“there now began a rain of terror in Hispaniola”- Hans Koning

On The sexual slave trade

Columbus rewarded his lieutenants with native women to rape. They raided villages for sex and sport

Columbus wrote to friend in 1500 “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a women as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from 9 to 10 are now in demand”

African slave trade

To replace dying Haitians, the Spanish imported tens of thousands more Indians from the Bahamas, to extinction

Because the Indians died, Columbus imported slaves from Africa. Beginning the massive slave trade the other way across the Atlantic, from Africa

Haitian revolution

Site of first large scale revolt, when blacks and American Indians banded together in 1519. The uprising lasted more than a decade and brought to end by Spanish in 1530s

In 1791-1804 Haitians Revolted in the first successful slave rebellion in the West

Who are our US History Textbooks written for?

Who are ‘we’? Columbus is no hero in Mexico even though Mexico is must more Spannish and might be expected to take pride in this hero of Spanish history. Why not? Because Mexico is much more Indian than US, and because Mexicans perceive Columbus as white and European.

‘the fundamental epistemic asymmetry between typical white views of blacks and typical black views of whites: these are not cognizers linked by a reciprocal ignorance but rather groups whose respective privilege and subordination tend to produce self-deception, bad faith, evasion, and misrepresentation on the one hand, and more veridical perceptions, on the other hand’

Continuing to use terms like ‘discovered’ and ‘civilized’ allow whites to think of selves as master to the native (even though colonization is over) and superior morally and intellectually.

“When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. When they omit the possibility of African and Phoenician precursors to Columbus, they offend African Americans. When they glamorize explores such as de Soto just because they were white, our histories offend all people of color. When they leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbooks prod us toward identifying with the oppressor. When textbook authors omit the causes and process of European world domination, they offer a history whose purpose must be to keep us unaware of the important questions.” -page 69, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

#lies my teacher told me #decolonize #columbus #phillyprotest

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learningrendezvous · 5 years

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Sociology of Health and Illness

MEDICINE IN MARIJUANA, THE

Directed by Ben Daitz, Ned Judge

What we know, and what we don't know, about the most popular new medicine in the U.S.

This year, 55 million Americans will spend about 55 billion dollars on the medicine in marijuana. In 32 states and the District of Columbia, they will use it for a myriad of medical conditions, depending on anecdotal advice about the frequency and dosage of cannabis, a plant with over 400 different chemical molecules. It's a messy mix of medicine, policy and politics--while cannabis is still federally classified as a Schedule 1 drug.

Based on the 2017 National Academy of Sciences report about the effectiveness of cannabis for treating the side-effects of chemotherapy, chronic pain, epilepsy, and PTSD, The Medicine in Marijuana tells patients' stories, and those of the practitioners and researchers involved in their care: an infant with unremitting seizures; a man with an inoperable cancer; a woman with chronic pain; a veteran of 5 tours of duty with PTSD.

Across centuries and cultures, people have told stories about the healing powers of cannabis, but the plural of anecdote is not evidence. Now, the science is catching up with the stories, and The Medicine in Marijuana tells it like it is.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adults) / 35 minutes

PLANE TRUTHS

Directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin

With the "Pivot to Asia" increased activity at the navy base on Whidbey Island, WA is making life unbearable for locals and wildlife - collateral damage in the ever increasing militarization of our society.

The recent expansion of Navy training activities in the Northwest has many local residents concerned. Will more of our communities become collateral damage?

Community members on Whidbey Island, the San Juans, and the Olympic Peninsula are disturbed by an increase in noise caused by new EA-18G "Growler" jets based at Naval Air Station Whidbey (NAS)--and a significant proposed expansion of daily Growler test flights. On Whidbey, communities have been additionally impacted by water system pollution caused by chemicals (PFOA & PFOS) used for firefighting on NAS landing strips.

PLANE TRUTHS explores a variety of perspectives on these issues from farmers, current and retired military personnel, environmentalists and other citizens of the affected areas. Viewers will learn how the noise of the Growler jets has affected daily life and business operations in many communities, about the regional environmental impacts of expanded Growler flights and newly approved Navy training in Olympic National Forest, the potential economic ramifications of increased Navy activity and associated population growth, and the status of--and Navy response to--water system pollution on Whidbey Island.

As the ideology of perpetual war becomes ever more embedded in our economy, communities near US bases here and around the world face similar problems.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 7-9, Colleges, Adults) / 33 minutes

POWER TO HEAL: MEDICARE AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION

Directed by Charles Burnett & Daniel Loewenthal

The untold story of how the twin struggles for racial justice and healthcare intersected: creating Medicare and desegregating thousands of hospitals at the same time.

POWER TO HEAL tells a poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the tale of how a new national program, Medicare, was used to mount a dramatic, coordinated effort that desegregated thousands of hospitals across the country in a matter of months.

Before Medicare, disparities in access to hospital care were dramatic. Less than half the nation's hospitals served black and white patients equally, and in the South, 1/3 of hospitals would not admit African-Americans even for emergencies.

Using the carrot of Medicare dollars, the federal government virtually ended the practice of racially segregating patients, doctors, medical staffs, blood supplies and linens. POWER TO HEAL illustrates how Movement leaders and grass-roots volunteers pressed and worked with the federal government to achieve justice and fairness for African-Americans.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 56 minutes

CRACKING CANCER

Directed by Judith Pyke

A clinical research trial at the Personalized OncoGenomics Program is changing the way scientists think about the future of cancer care.

Six years ago Zuri Scrivens, the mother of a toddler, was very ill with incurable breast cancer that had spread to her liver and lymph nodes. Today Zuri has no signs of cancer, not because of a miraculous new cancer drug, but thanks to a diabetes medication.

CRACKING CANCER follows a group of patients with incurable cancer on a trailblazing journey through a highly experimental clinical trial at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver called POG -- Personalized OncoGenomics.

The trial compares patients' normal DNA -- each cell's complete set of instructions -- with that of their tumors, to find the genetic mutations causing their cancer. Zuri's cancer driver was a mutation that caused a very high growth factor. The team plowed through decades of data to isolate which drug in all of medicine, not just cancer, might block that growth factor. They zeroed in on a diabetes medication. Zuri received the drug and standard hormone treatment. Within 5 months, her cancer became undetectable.

POG offers a radical new way of treating cancer, not according to where it originates in the body, but rather as a disease of genetic mutations. Thousands more will join the trial, all hoping for their own salvation, all helping science to crack the cancer code.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 44 minutes

DANGEROUS IDEA, A: GENETICS, EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

Directed by Stephanie Welch

Examines the history of the US eugenics movement and its recent resurrection, which uses false scientific claims and holds that an all-powerful "gene" determines who is worthy and who is not.

There is a dangerous idea that has threatened the American Dream from the very beginning. It is a strong current of biological determinism which views some groups, races and individuals as inherently superior to others and more deserving of fundamental rights. Despite the founders' assertion that "all are created equal," this idea was used to justify disenfranchising women, blacks and Native Americans from the earliest days of the Republic.

A DANGEROUS IDEA: GENETICS, EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM reveals how this dangerous idea gained new traction in the 20th century with an increasing belief in the concept of an all-powerful "gene" that predetermines who is worthy and who is not. The film reveals how this new genetic determinism provided an abhorrent rationale for state sanctioned crimes committed against America's poorest, most vulnerable citizens and for violations of the fundamental civil rights of untold millions.

Featuring interviews with social thinkers including Van Jones and Robert Reich as well as prominent scientists in many fields, A DANGEROUS IDEA is a radical reassessment of the meaning, use and misuse of gene science. Like no other film before it, this documentary brings to light how false scientific claims have rolled back long fought for gains in equality, and how powerful interests are poised once again to use the gene myth to unravel the American Dream.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 106 minutes

DR. FEELGOOD: DEALER OR HEALER?

Directed by Eve Marson

The case of Dr. William Hurwitz educates audiences on the complexities involved in opioid painkiller prescriptions.

The story of Dr. William Hurwitz - a preeminent pain specialist sentenced to 25 years in prison for drug trafficking - provides a window into the ethical dilemma of opioid prescriptions. Painkillers give doctors tremendous power to relieve pain, a primary goal of any physician. But this power begets trouble when the same drugs can lead to addiction, abuse and death.

In 2004 Dr. William Hurwitz was convicted of over 50 counts of narcotics distribution and handed a 25-year prison sentence. DR. FEELGOOD traces Dr. Hurwitz's trial and eventual appeal, detailing the events that led to his arrest.

Testimonies from the witnesses in Dr. Hurwitz's case contradict one another - some revere him, while others condemn him. Taken together, their accounts reveal a profile of a compassionate yet flawed doctor. The film, in telling his story, underscores the tension between every patient's right to pain relief and the lawful need for drug control. There could not be a more critical time to spark discussion on the topic, and call for careful thought and action.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 84 minutes

ANTIBIOTIC HUNTERS, THE

Directed by Bruce Mohun

Scientists are hunting urgently for new antibiotics -- a challenge that is taking them to some remote and unusual places.

Increasing resistance to antibiotics has been called the most pressing global health problem of our time. Medical experts are predicting a post-antibiotic era, in which people will die of infections easily treated just a few years ago -- unless we find more of these miracle drugs.

THE ANTIBIOTIC HUNTERS follows drug researchers as they investigate the slimy green fur of sloths, the saliva of Komodo dragons, the blood of alligators, and the bacteria in British Columbia caves and on the ocean floor off the coast of Panama -- all part of the urgent hunt to find the building blocks of new antibiotics.

DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 44 minutes

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY

Directed by Helen De Michiel

Passion, creative energy and persistence come together when Berkeley advocates and educators tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and in the neighborhoods.

How are citizens transforming local food systems? How are innovators changing the way children eat in schools? How do we talk about culture, identity and responsibility through the lens of food and health?

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is a beautiful and engaging story of how a diverse group of pioneering parents and food advocates came together to tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and neighborhoods of Berkeley, CA.

Through a mosaic of twelve interconnecting short documentaries, the film explores food and education, children and health, and citizens making democratic change. This is a rich and multi-dimensional story of passion, creative energy, and idealism -- a project linking the ways we teach our children to eat and understand food to the traditional passing of powerful values from one generation to the next.

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is divided into three thematic programs - Heart, Body, Mind - each containing four short films.

DVD ( Closed Captioned) / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 78 minutes

ADDICTION INCORPORATED

Directed by Charles Evans Jr.

The true story of the tobacco companies' commitment to addicting the human brain and how the world came to know about it.

DDICTION INCORPORATED tells the true story of how former Philip Morris scientist Victor DeNoble's unexpected discovery of an addiction ingredient in tobacco led to more addictive cigarettes, and how his Congressional testimony forever changed how tobacco is sold and marketed.

The public revelation of long-held tobacco industry secrets leads journalists, politicians, attorneys and whistleblowers into an unexpected alliance that achieves the first-ever federal regulation of the tobacco industry.

Victor's unwavering determination to "do some good" leads to a career as an educator that informs kids about the world's only industry where success is measured by a corporation's ability to addict.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adult) / 76 minutes

BRINGING IT HOME: INDUSTRIAL HEMP, HEALTHY HOUSES, AND A GREENER FUTURE FOR AMERICA

Directed by Linda Booker, Blaire Johnson

Extols the many benefits of industrial hemp for the environment and human health, while revealing the obstacles to what could be a thriving industry for U.S. farmers.

Industrial Hemp is making headlines in American media with the recent Farm Bill amendment allowing hemp research crops in ten states. But why does Federal policy still classify and confuse this non-psychoactive plant with marijuana as a drug? BRINGING IT HOME tells the story of hemp's past, present and future through interviews with global hemp business leaders and entrepreneurs, archive images, animation and footage filmed in Europe and the United States.

The film features the designer of "America's First Hemp House" and his quest to find the healthiest building material available to construct a safe environment for his daughter with chemical sensitivities. He discovers non-toxic, carbon neutral hempcrete that is recyclable, pest-fire-mold-resistant and cuts energy bills in half. But the major drawback for U.S. builders is that the fiber for hempcrete must be imported. Current U.S. Federal policy does not distinguish hemp from its psychoactive plant cousin marijuana, despite a long history of hemp farming in America up until the 1940s.

BRINGING IT HOME follows the hemp trail to the U.K. where business owners, researchers, farmers and Kevin McCloud, TV host of Grand Designs, discuss industrial hemp use in their country. Also featured are interviews with CEOs of million dollar U.S. companies that are importing hemp for healthy, sustainable products, and those working for policy change at the state and federal levels. A lobbyist for the CA Narcotics Officers Association gives voice to the opposition.

BRINGING IT HOME makes the case for all the benefits of a misunderstood plant that will leave viewers wondering: why aren't we growing it here?

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 52 minutes

CODE BLACK

Directed by Ryan McGarry

Unprecedented access to the ER at Los Angeles County Hospital provides a doctor's-eye view into the heart of our complex and overburdened healthcare system.

In his vivid and thought-provoking filmmaking debut, physician Ryan McGarry gives us unprecedented access to America's busiest Emergency Department. Amidst real life-and-death situations, McGarry follows a dedicated team of charismatic, young doctors-in-training as they wrestle openly with both their ideals and with the realities of saving lives in a complex and overburdened system. Their training ground and source of inspiration is "C-Booth," Los Angeles County Hospital's legendary trauma bay, the birthplace of Emergency Medicine, where "more people have died and more people have been saved than in any other square footage in the United States."

CODE BLACK offers a tense, doctor's-eye view, right into the heart of the healthcare debate - bringing us face to face with America's only 24/7 safety net.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 81 minutes

GREAT VACATION SQUEEZE, THE

Directed by John de Graaf

This film shows why vacations are important for productivity, happiness, family bonding and especially health.

Americans have the shortest vacations of any rich country. And they are actually getting even shorter. The US is one of only five countries in the world -- the others are Burma, Nepal, Suriname and Guyana -- which have no law guaranteeing any paid vacation time for workers. The average US vacation is a bit over two weeks, while the median is only about a week and a half, and American workers give back about three vacation days every year. Europeans enjoy five or six weeks of vacation each year and are healthier than Americans.

Vacations matter -- for productivity, happiness, family bonding and especially, health. Men who don't regularly take vacations are a third more likely to suffer heart attacks than those who do; women are fifty percent more likely, and far more likely to suffer from depression.

Making the case for more vacation time are: Shelton Johnson, a ranger naturalist in Yosemite; Rick Steves, the world's best-selling travel writer; and Sara Speck, cardiologist and director of a cardio-vascular wellness program, who tells patients to "take two weeks and call me in the morning."

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

FUTURE FOOD: FAT OR SKINNY? (INDIA)

Directed by Arjun Pandey

The people of India are faced with a choice: indulge in a Western-style fast food diet, or embrace healthy and indigenous alternatives.

Everyday, as India awakes, 1.2 billion people need to be fed. By 2050 it could be 1.7 billion. Half a billion small scale farmers supply most of India's food. Traditionally, Indians have eaten the healthy cuisine of India's 29 states, but as people move to the cities there's a growing demand for fast processed food, the so-called 'junk food' accused of causing obesity and chronic health problems.

Now India is a country on the edge of two possible futures: a future that's well fed and healthy; or a future with Western diets and Western obesity. With so many hungry people to feed, is it possible to eat in ways that are nutritionally and environmentally sustainable? What role do governments have to play in creating economic incentives for sustainable diets?

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes

MONEY & MEDICINE (NEW EDITION)

Directed by Roger Weisberg

An investigation of the dangers the nation faces from runaway health care spending as well as the dangers patients face from over-diagnosis and over-treatment.

As rising health care costs threaten to bankrupt the country, MONEY & MEDICINE tackles the medical, ethical, and financial challenges of containing runaway health care spending. In addition to illuminating the so-called waste and overtreatment that pervade our medical system, this timely documentary explores promising ways to reduce health care expenditures and improve the overall quality of medical care.

MONEY & MEDICINE was filmed at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles and Intermountain Medical Center in Utah. While UCLA ranks among the nation's top academic medical centers, it spends considerably more than the national average on patient care. In contrast, Intermountain spends about a third less than the national average and is a model for low cost/high quality medical care. The dramatic doctor/patient stories filmed at these two hospitals illuminate the powerful forces driving soaring health care costs as well as proven strategies that effectively reign in excessive medical spending.

With remarkable candor, MONEY & MEDICINE captures the painful end-of-life treatment choices made by patients and their families, ranging from very aggressive interventions in the ICU to palliative care at home. The film also investigates the controversy surrounding diagnostic testing and screening as well as the shocking treatment variations among patients receiving a variety of elective procedures.

As the focus of health care reform shifts from the access crisis to the cost crisis, MONEY & MEDICINE makes a timely contribution to the debate over cost containment and deficit reduction that is heating up as we approach the 2012 presidential election.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2012 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 83 minutes

SUN KISSED

Directed by Maya Stark and Adi Lavy

One gene exposes a nation's dark past. A Navajo couple with two children born with an extremely rare genetic disorder investigate the cause of the outbreak.

For fifteen years Dorey and Yolanda Nez thought they were the only family on the Navajo Reservation who had children with an extremely rare genetic disorder that only shows up at a rate of one in a million in the general population. Behind the closed curtains of their trailer, parked in the stark desert of New Mexico, they care for their 16-year-old daughter Leanndra. Just like her brother who passed away at age 11, Leanndra was born with Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP), a rare genetic disorder that makes any exposure to sunlight fatal.

Filmed over three years, with unprecedented access to the Navajo community, Sun Kissed follows Dorey and Yolanda as they bravely confront long-held tribal taboos and question the rebellious choices of their youth. Ultimately their journey leads them to the shocking truth: Their children and other Navajo children are still paying the price for the American conquest of the tribe in the 1860s, a brutal campaign culminating in an almost-forgotten chapter in American history -- the Navajo "Long Walk" of 1864. Despite its importance as the defining moment in modern Navajo history and the beginning of their assimilation into American society, discussing the tragedy of the Long Walk remains a taboo topic within the Navajo community.

What Dorey and Yolanda find challenges the core of their identity and everything they believe in, and exposes a fresh perspective on the complex, cross-cultural identity of modern day Navajos. Focusing on the continuing implications of American colonialism and the genetic imprints it has left on this community, Sun Kissed presents a rare and realistic window into the issues confronting Native Americans today.

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 85 minutes

WAITING ROOM, THE

Directed by Peter Nicks

A day in the life of a public hospital's ER waiting room captures what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance.

The Waiting Room is a character-driven documentary film that uses extraordinary access to go behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients. The film - using a blend of cinema verite and characters' voiceover - offers a raw, intimate, and even uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers each cope with disease, bureaucracy and hard choices.

The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. We witness the minute-by-minute Sisyphean struggle that plagues public hospitals, where emergency rooms have to field the overwhelming health care needs of the inner city. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and small business owners who lack insurance. The film weaves the stories of several patients - as well as the hospital staff charged with caring for them - as they cope with the complexity of the nation's public health care system, while weathering the storm of a national recession.

The Waiting Room lays bare the struggle and determination of both a community and an institution coping with limited resources and no road map for navigating a health care landscape marked by historic economic and political dysfunction. It is a film about one hospital, its multifaceted community, and how our common vulnerability to illness binds us together as humans.

DVD / 2012 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 82 minutes

COCAINE UNWRAPPED

Directed by Rachel Seifert

Documents the devastating effects of the war on drugs and suggests realistic alternatives.

COCAINE UNWRAPPED tells the story of cocaine: coca farmers in Colombia, drug mules in Ecuadorian prisons, cocaine factories in the Bolivian jungle, dealers on the streets of Mexico, law enforcement officials on the streets of Baltimore -- and the everyday consumers around the dinner tables of the West.

It's a story of politics, death, economic and environmental devastation and human suffering, and explores realistic alternatives to the war on drugs.

The film features front line reportage, exclusive access to the political leaders of Latin America, such as Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, as well as revealing interviews with drug czars. Watch this film and you will never think the same way again about the "War on Drugs".

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 83 minutes

PLANEAT

Directed by Shelley Lee Davies, Or Shlomi

Makes the case for a plant-based diet which is good for our bodies, good for the environment and mitigates climate change.

Where have we gone wrong? Why has the death rate from heart disease and cancer exploded in recent times? Why are the ice caps melting, the oceans dying and the forests being cut down as we produce the food necessary to support our burgeoning populations?

Against a backdrop of colorful and delicious food grown by organic farmers and prepared in the kitchens of world-famous chefs, PLANEAT for the first time brings together the ground-breaking studies of three prominent scientists who have made it their life's work to answer these questions. Dr. T. Colin Campbell in China by exploring the link between diet and disease, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's use of nutrition to treat chronically ill heart disease patients, and Professor Gidon Eshel's investigations into how our food choices contribute to global warming, wasteful land use and lifeless oceans.

PLANEAT inspires you to make the right food choices: choices that can dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer, protect our environment and make our planet sustainable while celebrating the joys of food.

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 7-9, College, Adult) / 72 minutes

TAR CREEK

Directed by Matt Myers

Tells the incredible story of the Tar Creek Superfund site in NE Oklahoma and the massive and deadly remains left by the lead and zinc mines there.

TAR CREEK is the story of the worst environmental disaster you've never heard of: the Tar Creek Superfund site. Once one of the largest lead and zinc mines on the planet, Tar Creek is now home to more than 40 square miles of environmental devastation in northeastern Oklahoma: acid mine water in the creeks, stratospheric lead poisoning in the children, and sinkholes that melt backyards and ball fields.

Now, almost 30 years after being designated for federal cleanup by the Superfund program, Tar Creek residents are still fighting for decontamination, environmental justice, and ultimately, the buyout and relocation of their homes to safer ground. As TAR CREEK reveals, America's Superfund sites aren't just environmental wastelands; they're community tragedies, too...until the community fights back.

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 54 minutes

WAR IN THE MIND

Directed by Judy Jackson

Gives voice to soldiers living with PTSD to help erase the stigma, examines the growing number of military suicides, and shows a successful group therapy program.

It's called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): the unending echo of battle etched in the brain which may affect up to 15% of soldiers by some estimates. It can destroy families, and can leave its sufferers unable to work, addiction addled and changed.

All the soldiers who bravely speak out in this film are doing so because they want us to understand what they endure. They also want to reach out to others who are suffering in silence, and may feel the only way of ending their pain is ending their lives.

Senator and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Romeo Dallaire of Rwanda fame also plays a major role in this film. For many years he has heroically spoken out in public to declare that he suffered intensely from PTSD and had attempted suicide. And today he continues to campaign on behalf of all soldiers who suffer.

War in the Mind also investigates the issue of soldier suicide. Statistics from past and present wars tell the sad story of the magnitude of this problem. Currently more soldiers are dying from suicide than in battle. Families who have felt invisible, their sons' stories unacknowledged, tell of the impact of their loss.

Yet this film also discovers that with effective treatment suicide can be prevented. Our cameras gained unique access to a UBC/Royal Canadian Legion program which helps soldiers undo the wiring that military training has implanted in their brains, confront their pain, and learn to live again.

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 64 minutes

CUBA: THE ACCIDENTAL REVOLUTION - PT. 2: HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

In spite of the economic crisis and US embargo, the Cuban health system is an outstanding success story around the world.

In Health Care System we learn that Cuba has been blockaded since 1961, but today Cuba has the highest quality of life in the region, the highest life expectancy, and one of the highest literacy rates in all of Latin America.

With the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, Cuba lost the foreign exchange needed to pay for expensive drugs and medicines. As a result, much of Cuba's medicine today is based on medicinal plants. These are grown on farms, processed in small labs and made available to patients through an extensive network of medical clinics. Today Cuba's advances in alternative medicine could have important consequences for other countries around the world.

Cuba boasts other firsts as well: The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana is regarded as the flagship biosciences lab in the developing world. Cuban scientists are working on an HIV vaccine, a meningitis vaccine, a Hepatitis C vaccine, and other pharmaceuticals.

Cuba has also embarked on a program of medical internationalism. There are 25,000 Cuba doctors serving in 68 poor countries around the world. The Latin American School of Medical Science has 10,000 students from developing countries primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean. They are educated for free with the understanding they will return to their home countries to practice.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2006 / 45 minutes

LIFE 5: THE GREAT HEALTH SERVICE SWINDLE

Directed by Kim Hopkins

Reversing the brain drain in doctors and nurses from developing countries.

For over forty years there's been a trickle of Ghanaian nurses to the English-speaking developed world. One widely quoted source says almost two thousand nurses left the country between 1995 and 2002. The exodus is set to continue as nurses opt to leave a crumbling health system to earn more abroad. In the UK, some nurses can earn more in a day than they could in a month back home.

Spending on health in Ghana has gone up but its value has declined. In 1990 it was $4.5 dollars per person per year. In 2004 the figure was $13.4 dollars. However, inflation means that Ghana is spending less in real terms per person. Most of that money goes to wages. For almost everything else, patients have to pay because the health service operates on a "user pays" principle, the so-called "cash and carry" system. The stresses of this system is one reason health workers leave.

DVD (Color) / 2005 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes

CITY LIFE: THE HEALTH PROTESTORS

Health care advocates demand universal health care for the world's population at international convention in Dhaka.

In 1978, the World Health Organization's Alma Ata conference promised to deliver basic health care for all the world's population. Today, that promise remains unmet in too many countries and cities of the developing world where health is still the prerogative of wealthy elites -- and the poor remain trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and ill-health.

Frustrated by the failure of the international community to deliver on its promises, doctors, health professionals, and civil rights activists from around the world convened in Dhaka in December 2000 at the People's Health Assembly. Their mission was to draw up a charter of their own demands for health care, framed in the new People's Health Charter.

This third episode in City Life follows the process -- from a fifty thousand-person rally in Calcutta, through heated debates with World Bank spokespeople in Dhaka and argumentative late-night drafting sessions -- to the final triumphant publication of the Charter on the final day of the Assembly.

DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

LIFE: AN ACT OF FAITH - THE PHELOPHEPA HEALTH TRAIN

A group of health professionals tours the most deprived regions of South Africa providing care.

Lillian Cingo has one great luxury in her life -- a mini whirlpool to soak her sore feet. It's a small self-indulgence for a woman who spends all day on her feet, from dawn to dusk. Lillian's job is, literally, to keep her hospital on track. She's the manager of the Phelophepa health train that spends nine months each year touring the poorest, most remote areas of South Africa.

This Life program catches up with the train in the province of KwaZulu Natal, where there's just one doctor for every 4,000 people. With a full contingent of volunteer doctors, dentists, optometrists and health educators on board, the "Good Clean Health Train" delivers quality health care to deprived rural communities.

DVD (Color) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 25 minutes

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