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Volume 129, Number 21 |
February 18, 2009 |
Features
Film shows underdog politics
Posted 03-18-2009 at 3:40AM
Arleen Thukral Senior Reviewer
The promise of New York is a fulfillment of possibility and
opportunity, which idealist Raul Barcelona ’01, an award-winning
filmmaker based in New York City, transformed into a documentary, The
Promise of New York. Within, a blogger, a confrontational politico, and
a high school math teacher with a strong vision for education contend
against incumbent Michael Bloomberg and each other for the post of New
York City Mayor. The small steps that these ordinary citizens take to
define democracy and change politics can be marveled at, while
simultaneously being ridiculed for the apparent insignificance of the
process of campaigning for mayorship.
The first candidate introduced is Christopher Brodeur, a musician,
cartoonist, journalist, and well-known political gadfly in NYC. He is
best known for his heckling of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani during
the 9/11 Commission hearing held in 2004. He attempted to be the Green
Party candidate for mayor in 2001, but was defeated in the primary
election. In 2005, he ran again, but this time as a Democratic
candidate. This was so that he couldn’t be rejected from debates for
being a minor party candidate.
Seth Blum, another candidate, has been a NYC high school teacher of
mathematics for nine years at Manhattan International High School. His
agenda was to improve education by including alternative forms of
assessment and using engaging, interesting curriculum such as projects
and hands-on activities. He has used these strategies first-hand in his
classroom by removing the use of textbooks. Since the mayor is now in
control of the schools, and his appointed chancellor is not an
educator, Glum decided he needed to step up and run.
Final candidate Andy Horwitz is a writer, performer, and producer in
NYC. He is also the founder and editor of Culturebot.org. In 2005,
after reading an article in The New York Daily News about the upcoming
mayoral election, he decided to run for mayor.
In post-September 11 New York, these three unlikely characters, all
seemingly dissatisfied with Mayor Bloomberg’s job at City Hall run in
the 2005 mayor election, yet they soon discover that running for office
is no joke. They must accumulate votes while faced with mass media
indifference to their cause and an electoral system that caters only to
rich, established parties. The underdogs who run as independents—or a
separate party altogether—find it a struggle just to get on the ballot,
let alone win. It is deeply depressing to learn that even dire passion
for one’s cause is not enough to bring about change; the bureaucratic
red tape must be understood, otherwise it significantly delays even
rational progress.
Barcelona is able to successfully deliver an outsider’s perspective to
the electoral process; this is in part because he was born in Spain and
moved to Italy as a teenager. He then landed in Texas close to high
school graduation, and, finally, obtained his electrical engineering
degree from RPI. Interestingly, Barcelona did a complete changeover
upon graduation, turning down a job offer from a robotics contractor
for NASA to pursue his artistic aspirations. He spoke during the
Q-and-A session after the film screening about his love-hate
relationship with NYC. Clearly depicted in his documentary, this covers
everything from the personality of the city’s innumerable individuals
to its incessant noise.
The documentary was especially ingenious because it was very
unpredictable, as life usually is. Still, Barcelona was very
comprehensive in his coverage of the process of running for mayor,
which took him a year and 200 hours of film to shoot. From the
laissez-faire attitude of Chris Riggs (the punk who also ran for the
2008 presidential election) to Blum’s putting together a campaign with
no funds, to the notoriety of Brodeur for his numerous
confrontations—all were seamlessly captured on film. Ultimately, this
documentary shows the public all the aspects of the electoral process
that the American citizens are not generally exposed to by the media. |