Brave New Films Videos

Matthew Hoh was the first US civilian official to resign in protest over the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. The Washington Post called him "exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts." In this video from Brave New Films, Hoh reads his letter of resignation and explains why he decided to make a public statement. "The people that are fighting us there are fighting because they're occupied," he says of Afghanistan.

During the Great Depression, the labor movement was a major player pushing a progressive agenda and helping to put people back to work. While we've heard plenty of comparisons between the current recession and the Depression, we haven't seen a return of the kind of militancy that came from labor in the 20s and 30s. With all the anger swirling around right now, where's the organizing?Paula Finn, Editor of the New Labor Forum, Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew and Wall Street Journal columnist, Tom Geoghegan, labor lawyer, recent Congressional candidate, and author of Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back joined Laura to talk about labor's problems and suggest some solutions to help all of us, whether we're union members or not.While labor issues are lately ignored by both parties--Democrats paying lip service and Republicans using populist anger to push through tax cuts for big business--most people can agree that we don't want to be ingesting dangerous chemicals. Yet many plastics used to package food contain Bisphenol A, a synthetic estrogen with harmful effects on the endocrine system.

Brave New Films is five years old! To celebrate, we ve compiled pretty much everything we ve done over the last five years into one massive collection: Brave New Films 5th Anniversary Activist Collection, available at www.BraveNewFilms.org/boxset. It s 10 DVDs featuring every documentary film and all of our video campaigns, from Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the War in Iraq to The Real McCain and Sick for Profit ...and much more, including all new behind the scenes footage showing how the videos were made and distributed, as well as interviews with Robert Greenwald and the Brave New Films production team. There s even a limited edition version with original cover art designed just for us and signed by artist Shepard Fairey and Robert Greenwald. Get yours today!

Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio was recently stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests after repeated complaints that he abuses power and uses racial profiling to target Latinos in his community. Salvador Reza, U.S. Air Force veteran, community organizer and renowned immigrants rights activist, joins Laura for an exclusive interview on Arpaio's ongoing abuses.Dennis Gilman brought us video footage from an Arpaio raid and from protests in Arizona, where white supremacist groups showed up to support Arpaio's policies.The National Book Awards were announced this week; Colum McCann was honored for his fiction work Let the Great World Spin: A Novel , and T.J. Stiles' biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt won the nonfiction prize.

On Tuesday, John Nichols told us that the dire jobs situation in the U.S. has had an effect on the debate surrounding escalation in Afghanistan, and that the administration is actually meeting with peace groups for the first time to discuss alternate plans. Brave New Films has been a tireless advocate against escalation, with the film Rethink Afghanistan exploring the problems there and proposing peaceful and diplomatic solutions and a responsible exit strategy. With this video, they bring together U.S. military veterans, including Matthew Hoh, to ask Obama not to send more troops to continue a war that is on its way to being America's longest in history.