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November 16, 2007  --  Got something to say?
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ImmigrationFilmmakers defuse bitter debate in PW
WASHINGTON D.C. A man, furious about hearing Spanish spoke at a hardware store in Prince William county, recently berated a group of Latino families with a lecture on American history, telling them my ancestors were here before the Constitution. A little girl shyly reminds him: The Indians were here before the Americans.

In another video, a woman asks county officials not to forget who was responsible for 9/11…illegals! A man answers: dont confuse 9/11 with 7 Eleven…The guys at 7-Eleven just want to work.”

These were among the exchanges culled from video clips by Nick Miroff, a Washington Post staffwriter, who is running a web serial debate over the crackdown on illegal aliens in Prince William county in Virginia. Miroffs series is titled Look at the Immigration Crucible: Pr. William Web Serial Aims to Foster a Deeper, More Civil Discourse.

In the Nov. 3, series, Miroff cites videos being prepared by three local filmmakers, including an Asian American, who plan to make it into a documentary.

Other video scenes collected by the three filmmakers show worried, frustrated residents denouncing a foreign invasion and warning of civil war, to which one scowling young man taunts: Bring it.

Another story in the Post Nov. 3 was about the increasingly ugly debate over immigration by candidates for the board of supervisors in PW county.

The Post said that In scarcely 12 months as the top elected official in Virginias second most populous jurisdiction (Faifax), Mr. Stewart has mostly ignored the issues on which he ran controlling growth, development and traffic and undertaken an ugly drive to fan and exploit concern about illegal immigration.”

The immigrant-bashing measures he has pushed, the Post said, have saddled Prince William with a national reputation as Virginias Capital of Intolerance while doing nothing to address citizens legitimate concerns about crime, boardinghouses, unkempt lawns or the deterioration of property values and neighborhoods.

The Post said that in a survey conducted in June by the University of Virginia just 3.2 percent of Prince William residents named illegal immigration as the issue they most wanted addressed about the same as the number who hoped for easier access to grocery stores. That was just before Mr. Stewart got to work inflaming his constituents. Mr. Stewart, a Republican who has run for some political office in nearly each of his six years in Prince William, has diminished and divided the county of 350,000 people, sacrificing its relative social harmony on the altar of political ambition, The Post said.
Miroff said The illegal-immigration clash that has consumed Prince William County neighborhoods and government halls is now showing up in serial form on YouTube, archived and freely available in all its raw intensity, Miroff said.

The footage, posted by local filmmakers Annabel Park and Eric Byler, is neither pretty nor polished. But the couple adds a chapter nearly every day, offering all sides a chance to be seen and heard, as well as a forum for well-mannered debate to those willing to engage in it.

Miroff continued: Park and Byler describe their project as an interactive documentary that aims to defuse tensions and explore the complexity of the issue. Their clips are loaded with the unfiltered emotions that have flooded county streets and county politics, but the filmmakers allow the material to stand on its own, without narration or commentary. A more complete documentary might come later, they say, but for now their goal is to edit and upload the footage as fast as possible to their site, http://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty ttp://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty.

What you normally do is shoot, then edit, then enter film festivals, said Byler, 35, a Gainesville resident. On that trajectory, people would see this film for the first time next summer. Thats a long time to wait. If the movie is meant to create dialogue, why release it after things may have already shifted?

With little more than a basic video camera and laptop computers, Byler, Park and a third partner, Jeff Man, have spent the past few months filming Prince Williams efforts to enact the regions toughest measures targeting illegal immigrants. Before the county supervisors voted last week to cut off certain services to illegal immigrants and increase immigration enforcement by the police, Byler and Park recorded the session of emotional public testimony, which lasted more than 12 hours.

Excerpts of the testimony have been posted in installments on their site, along with their most-viewed clip, set at the so-called Liberty Wall in Manassas which has been viewed more than 38,000 times.

The five-minute video tracks the fate of a large banner in Manassas that reads Stop Your Racism to Hispanics and hangs from the last wall of a recently demolished house at 9500 Liberty St. - at the intersection of Liberty and Prince William Street, the filmmakers note. The banner has been a symbol of the countys tension, as well as a target for it, having survived a dud Molotov cocktail attack only to later be ripped in half by vandals.

People are writing to us and saying, What can we do? Park said.
They want to get involved.

Park, 39, was born in Korea but grew up in Houston and Rockville. Before Prince William became a flashpoint for the nations immigration debate, she led a successful campaign for a U.S. House resolution to apologize for the sexual enslavement of comfort women” during World War II.

Since then, Park said she has declined several job offers from lobbying groups, opting instead to follow Prince Williams rocky effort to rid its communities of illegal immigrants. Park said she and Byler, as Asian Americans, are able to bridge the conflicts undercurrent of antagonism between whites and Hispanics.

We went into this feeling it was about election-year politics and racism,” she said. But the more we learn about it, the more we see how multifaceted it is.”

In one video viewed 26,000 times in its first week, a group of Latino children run and play outside the chambers of the Board of County Supervisors, seemingly oblivious to the charged debate unfolding indoors. A Woodbridge high school teacher cautions the boards chairman, Corey A. Stewart: The very people you are trying to oppress today, their children may rise up tomorrow and stand in judgment of you.”

For Byler, an independent director whose 2002 film Charlotte Sometimes was hailed as a breakthrough for Asian American filmmaking by critic Roger Ebert, the roots of the 9500 Liberty project trace to George Allens calling an Indian American macaca last summer.

Byler, the son of a white U.S. Army officer and a Chinese American mother, spent much of his childhood in Burke, Virginia. He said he was teased often about his appearance.

Watching George Allen look into the camera and point and say you are not the real Virginia , the real Virginia is the people who are laughing with me at you, reminded me of this whole thing that was never resolved,” Byler said.
Ive always been sensitive to situations where people are being singled out.”

After the macaca incident, Byler and Park moved back to Virginia from Los Angeles and volunteered for Democrat James Webbs Senate campaign against Allen, helping to raise money among Asian Americans.

Although they worked on a Democratic campaign and their video clips show a sympathy for Latino immigrants fears about racism and discrimination, Byler and Park have sought to capture all sides of the debate on illegal immigration. One of their most-viewed videos shows a meeting of the anti-illegal immigrant group Help Save Manassas, and others include interviews with Stewart, whose reelection campaign slogan is Fighting illegal immigration.”

Theyre really trying to do a service, said George Taplin, director of the Virginia chapter of the anti-illegal immigrant group Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, who appears in two videos about the now-defunct Herndon day-laborer center. Taplin praised the videos fairness but said he thought the couples editorial balance was missing in their administration of viewer comments on their YouTube page.

What Im seeing as far as the reaction is rhetoric and people calling each other names. Thats not going to help anything,” Taplin said. You dont get dialogue going by fanning hatred and discontent.”

Like Taplin, some viewers have accused Byler and Park of censorship for rejecting their comments on the 9500 Liberty page. Byler and Park maintain that they are trying to keep the discussion free of hate speech or racism, especially as viewings of their videos have increased and comments have begun arriving from viewers elsewhere in the United States and abroad.

We dont approve the ones that are going to lead to violence, Byler said. Some of the hate-filled diatribes that arrived in the past week were so disturbing that they notified federal authorities, he said.

Byler says that viewers need to watch several of the videos to understand the larger picture of Prince Williams illegal-immigration debate. The clips have appeared on blogs and elicited hundreds of comments. But despite the couples efforts at peacemaking, there is little sign of reconciliation in their videos, though no shortage of resentment, fear and bitterness.

Still, Park said she is not discouraged.
I see a lot of hope in this, she said. Ultimately, the only way to heal the community is to work together to end the fighting and to collaborate on solutions that address the real grievances people have.”


Posted by News Team | Filed Under Articles/Stories 

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