Divided We Fall

You can’t wait for the leadership to catch up to the people!

2017

90 mins

A film about the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising

When newly elected Tea Party governor Scott Walker sought to impose an anti-union and austerity agenda in 2011, Wisconsinites fought back, in the tens of thousands, occupying the statehouse and filling the capitol square for nearly two weeks.

Informative, complex, and inspiring… poignantly illustrates the challenges of doing democracy, of mobilizing for a just cause, and of coalition-building. Divided We Fall cogently resonates with what I've experienced and learned across my career as an activist-scholar. I hope this film is widely distributed and extensively viewed.

Professor Robert Benford

University of South Florida

Synopsis

In the spring of 2011 Wisconsinites staged one of the largest sustained protests in US history. Tens of thousands of people from around Wisconsin converged on the capitol for almost two weeks to oppose newly elected Governor Scott Walker’s signature legislation to effectively end collective bargaining for public sector workers.

Divided We Fall explores the internal challenges of the rapidly developing and diverse social movement; where activists shared common goals, but often had conflicting ideas about how to achieve them. Weaving original in-depth interviews with dramatic citizen-produced video and photos, Divided We Fall creates a compelling narrative of the battle to resist an anti-labor and austerity agenda. Interviewees include graduate teaching assistants, labor leaders, scholars and pundits such as the late Marty Beil (executive director, AFSCME Council 24), the late Frank Emspak (Workers Independent News), Professor Katherine Cramer (author, The Politics of Resentment) and Matthew Rothschild, long-time editor of the Progressive magazine.

Reviews

This important documentary is an inside look at what really happened in Wisconsin in 2011 and provides some of the best history available about these events… A powerful cinematic narrative filled with drama and finally, unfulfilled hope.

Professor David Nack

University of Wisconsin School for Workers

First-time filmmaker Katherine Acosta goes beyond the iconic images of the protests to ask organizers a simple question: What went wrong?

Rob Thomas

Capitol Times

Director Commentary

In the opening sequence of Divided We Fall, long-time editor of the Progressive magazine, Matthew Rothschild, says, “I waited and waited for the people to rise up. And suddenly, they were rising up!”

Rothschild’s words expressed my feelings – and those of many activists. It was a thrilling political moment, as thousands of activists and ordinary citizens converged on Madison, rolled up their sleeves, and began building resistance. The positive energy, good will and camaraderie of those days is indescribable.

How could so many well-intentioned, creative, politically engaged, thoughtful citizens work so hard, yet fail to achieve our goal? What can we learn from the experience, so that next time the people are inspired to rise up, we are prepared to win?

These are the questions that motivated me to make Divided We Fall. Although my training and experience is as a sociologist, I thought film would be a better medium for this story. A long-time documentary film and film fest aficionado, I had always wanted to try my hand at filmmaking.

My goal was to stake out some middle ground between art and sociology. I wanted to tell an engrossing story, yet also to convey critical analysis. The graduate teaching assistants in sociology who are our primary interviewees were ideally positioned to help us create this fusion. As scholar-activists, they were at the center of the action, but are also trained to analyze sociological phenomena.

Theirs and other interviews, combined with dramatic citizen-produced video and photos, create a compelling narrative intended to initiate a conversation about how various factions in social movements can work together for positive social change.

Features and Languages

Film Features

Closed Captioning
DVD Extras

Subtitle/Caption Languages

English
Spanish

Promotional Material

Promotional Stills

Katherine M Acosta

Katherine M Acosta holds a PhD in sociology, was an award-winning teaching assistant and lecturer at the University of Nebraska, and briefly worked on grant-funded research projects for the University of Wisconsin. She has a passion for documentary film and learned through teaching that students were most readily engaged in sociological analysis through film. Storytelling, after all, is the way that humans have shared history and knowledge for millennia. Divided We Fall is her first film.

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