We the People 2.0

Increasingly, toxic sludge, industrial farms, fracking, strip mining, pipelines, and drilling sites are littering the countryside, often close to homes and schools. Residents say they feel trapped in their homes, and that well-funded lobbyists backed by corporations are "stealing the air from our children's lungs." Filmmaker Leila Conners’s grassroots call-to-action documentary, narrated by Walton Goggins, describes a system in which people feel that they are locked out of the process and made a "sacrifice" to corporate greed. Often, local municipalities say they can do nothing, their hands tied by recent court decisions granting personhood rights to corporations, as well as by a little-understood process known as preemption, which seeks to strip the rights of local communities to stop unwanted development or restrict polluting activities. Residents claim democracy is subverted by campaign cash spread by lobbyists, and a legal system in which community groups must pay for their lawyers, while the expenses of corporations in challenges are tax deductible. In recent years, activists note that environmental regulations mostly regulate environmentalists, and that corporations win when farmers sell their mineral rights, retire, and then leave the consequences to others, or when the Catholic Church sells drilling rights within their cemetery. At the film's midpoint, the focus abruptly shifts to skewed government priorities, the need for a new value system (even a new Constitution), and a demand for a sustainable environment (deforestation and offshore drilling are also briefly considered). Overall, We the People 2.0 is more effective when it sticks to local rather than national issues, but it could be useful to concerned community groups. Extras include a "Where It All Began" featurette filmed at the 2004 Bioneers Conference. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (S. Rees)