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All posts in campaign Brave New Films
by Boston Globe - August 6th, 2009
Bernie Sanders, the iconoclastic US senator from Vermont, is launching his own series of weekly “webisodes” where he will answer questions from constituents.
Sanders, the only avowed Socialist in Congress, is partnering with Brave New Films in the venture, called “Senator Sanders Unfiltered.”
A trailer shows Sanders railing against greed and economic inequality, arguing that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing too much money, and assailing insurance companies for lobbying Congress to stop healthcare overhaul that provides universal, affordable coverage.
The first webisode will be available on his Senate website on Monday, then subsequent ones regularly on Thursdays.
Constituents can submit video questions via Twitter on twitvid.com by using the #sanders tag, and Sanders’ office is encouraging them to share the trailer video via Facebook and other social networking sites.
by Examiner - August 4th, 2009
by Madalyn Suozzo at Examiner | August 4 2009
Health care reform and Brave New Films
“I spend 40 percent of my time away from my patients doing paperwork and getting prior authorizations,” said Jim King, MD, a family physician in Selmer, Tenn. “We need to start taking the barriers that are between me and my patients away.”
At the same time American people were unwittingly forced to ‘bail out’ banks and insurance companies to the tune of 11 trillion dollars, those same companies were giving themselves a reported $33 Billion dollars in bonuses.
These catastrophically corrupt financial and medical systems are broken and apparently those who represent the common good are not going to fix it alone.
Activist and hero Robert Greenwald is doing something about it and you can too. His company Brave New Films, is affording Americans a way to gather forces and expose toxic tumors in what we wrongly term (in our oh so accepted double speak) the ‘health care’ system. It is in fact a sick care system. It doesn’t work for the majority of Americans. As countries go for health care, we are very near the bottom of the pile.
Can 450,000 doctors who are dealing with the medical and insurance system every day, be wrong? The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and Herndon Alliance (a nonpartisan coalition of more than 200 health-care provider organizations including the AARP, Mayo Clinic and Families USA) want health care reform.
Click here to watch the video
by Seattle Times - June 1st, 2009
Posted by Melissa Allison
Starbucks signed a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board last week agreeing to let Minneapolis-area employees post union materials in their break areas and discuss union issues while on the job, as long as it doesn’t interfere with their performance.
The settlement does not include financial payment, and it will not be final until the NLRB decides whether to address objections to the settlement by union organizers at the Industrial Workers of the World, according to Marlin Osthus, acting director of the NLRB’s upper midwest region office.
The IWW initiated the complaints that led to the settlement and, according to a press release, considers it a victory at this point.
It’s Starbucks’ sixth labor settlement in three years and its second in Minneapolis. In December, the coffee chain also lost a battle in administrative-law court when a judge determined that Starbucks had unfairly imposed work rules on employees who supported the IWW.
The company is appealing the court’s decision and has not acknowledged wrongdoing in any of the settlements.
Starbucks said in a statement that since early January, 15 unfair labor practice charges filed by a “small group of individuals” have been dismissed by the NLRB or withdrawn.
“Starbucks chose to settle the one remaining charge,” the statement said. It called the settlement “the latest in the IWW’s ‘kitchen sink’ approach to criticizing all things Starbucks…. [W]e strongly believe we would have prevailed had the one remaining case gone to trial, but the time and expense required to do so was not justifiable.”
Starbucks’ labor record is the subject of a new online film by Brave New Films, which is known for viral video campaigns against John McCain, Wal-Mart and others.
So far the Starbucks video, which features tales told before by union activists (and which I covered here and here), has been viewed 60,599 times on YouTube. According to a site that supports the film, a form letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz decrying Starbucks’ union stance — including its recent decision to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act — has been sent by 14,845 people.
by New York Times - April 29th, 2009
  You’ve heard the complaints from pension funds. You’ve seen the demands from unions. Now watch the video.
Ahead of Bank of America’s annual meeting on Wednesday, the activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald is helping lead the charge to fire Kenneth D. Lewis, the bank’s embattled chief executive.
Mr. Greenwald, who has made films critical of Wal-Mart, John McCain, Rupert Murdoch and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has produced a video demanding Mr. Lewis’s ouster and is distributing it on YouTube. The video, narrated by Robert B, Reich, the labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, portrays Mr. Lewis as the poster boy of corporate greed and incompetence.
The video is basically a collection of clips from news reports critical of Mr. Lewis and Bank of America for government bailouts, billions of dollars in bonuses, the Merrill Lynch purchase, high credit rates and anti-union advocacy. Interspersed between them, Mr. Greenwald repeatedly proclaims his message: “Fire Ken Lewis!”
That message has resonated with some big shareholders of Bank of America. Calpers, the huge California public pension fund, said Tuesday that it was voting against re-electing Mr. Lewis and the rest of the bank’s board. The fund joins Calstrs, the California teachers retirement fund, and several other state and union pension funds in opposing Mr. Lewis.
Two influential investor advisory groups, the RiskMetrics Group and Glass Lewis, have also recommended voting against Mr. Lewis.
Go to Video from Robert Greenwald via YouTube »
by Brave New Foundation - April 14th, 2009
What: Easter Bunny Egg Hunt
Where: New York, & DC – Union Square, D.C. – In Front of White House on Pennsylvania Ave.
When: New York & DC, April 12th, Sunday morning at 9am
As the White House conducts its traditional egg hunt, Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan campaign will have several Easter Bunnies distributing and hiding more than 6,000 Easter eggs in New York City and Washington DC. The eggs will be stuffed with toy soldiers serving as a reminder of the troops currently stationed in Afghanistan along with a series of poignant questions that have yet to be raised about the war on Afghanistan.
Thousands of soldiers serving in Afghanistan will be away from their families this Easter. These soldiers will soon be joined by an additional 21,000 troops. Congress has yet to call substantial oversight hearings on whether the troop escalation makes sense.
“Easter is a time for renewal. As American families celebrate this important holiday, we must renew our commitment to world peace. We need to reengage the country in a national debate and ask the important questions that have yet to be raised about the Afghanistan war.” Pastor Peter Laarman, Executive Director, Progressive Christians Uniting
In a recent trip to Kabul, Hollywood director and activist Robert Greenwald interviewed with local Afghans who consistently expressed a desire for the US to end its seven-year occupation in Afghanistan. Many of them cited the US occupation as fueling pro Taliban sentiment in Afghanistan.
”Congress needs to assert its role in critical oversight as we continue to ad troops and money to a war that has already cost billions of dollars. The American people deserves answers to important questions such as, are we really helping in Afghanistan if human rights are getting worst.” Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films
View the ‘Rethink Afghanistan’ documentary here: http://rethinkafghanistan.com/. For more information on the campaign or to host an interview or speaking engagement with Robert Greenwald, please contact: Martha De Hoyos martha@bravenewfoundation.org 310.402.9048
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by New York Times - November 14th, 2008
From Virginia Heffernan at The New York Times
During the presidential election, YouTube turned from a hectic mosaic of weird video clips to a first-stop source for political everything. Every gotcha moment, spoof, pundit’s musing, TV clip, campaign speech, formal ad and handmade polemic cropped up there. Star posters like Brave New Films, Barely Political and Talking Points Memo TV emerged; they cranked out parody and propaganda much faster than the campaigns themselves. Was YouTube just a new place to envision an election that would have gone the same way without it? Or does the unpredictable new form of online video carry its own ideology — a new message to go with a new medium? Continue reading →
by US News and World Report - November 7th, 2008
From Nikki Shwabb at US News and World Report
A key turning point in the long and brutal presidential election involved a YouTube battle between dueling online videos.
It was primary season and Barack Obama was being battered in the press because of his relationship with controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Some of Wright’s more inflammatory sermons were captured on video and were flying around YouTube.
Continue reading →
by The Guardian - July 7th, 2008
From Sarfraz Manzoor at The Guardian
When the furore about the Rev Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama was at its height a few months ago, one of the biggest hits on YouTube revealed that the Republican contender John McCain had his own pastor problem.
Sandwiched between the kind of comic clips for which the site is best known, the video produced by Brave New Films showed the Rev Rod Parsley, a spiritual adviser to John McCain, making incendiary comments about Islam. When the mainstream media ran the story, McCain was eventually forced to distance himself from the church leader.
Continue reading →
by New York Times - June 29th, 2008
From Jim Rutenberg at The New York Times
CULVER CITY, Calif. — The video blasted across the Internet, drawing political blood from Senator John McCain within a matter of days.
Produced here in a cluttered former motel behind the Sony Pictures lot, it juxtaposed harsh statements about Islam made by the Rev. Rod Parsley with statements from Mr. McCain praising Mr. Parsley, a conservative evangelical leader. The montage won notice on network newscasts this spring and ultimately helped lead Mr. McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, to reject Mr. Parsley’s earlier endorsement.
Continue reading →
by Los Angeles Times - April 8th, 2008
(Robert Greenwald and the crew at Brave New Films. Photo by Bob Chamberlin / LAT)
From Maria Russo at Los Angeles Times
A shot of a dark bedroom. Soothing music. A little girl and boy slumber easily. It’s 3 a.m. when, yes,
… the phone rings.
Think you know who’s going to be answering that call? Don’t be so sure.
“Ghostbusters,” says Annie Potts.
That’s one of the many alternate endings to Hillary Clinton’s original late-night phone call commercial that you can find on YouTube. Other interpretations have the call being answered by Bill Clinton (he’s expecting a call from the pizza delivery guy), Sesame Street’s Martian Yip Yip puppets, and Alfred, Batman’s butler.
Continue reading →
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