In the Executioner's Shadow - by Annalise Cruz

For my event selection I chose to attend the film screening of “In The Executioners Shadow” on April 11, which also was followed by a discussion. I actually attended the event with a friend, who was going because of one of her professors in SOC, Maggie Stogner, who is also one of the filmmakers. It ended being a lot more interesting than I anticipated, and I found it useful to discuss for this assignment. The film tells the story of death row and other stories of people who have been affected by this. One story follows Jerry Givens, who conducted 60+ executions in the state of Virginia and discusses how he’s truly haunted by how close he came to executing an innocent man. The film also follows a Boston marathon bombing survivor, Karen Brassard, who was severely injured from the event and shows her deep moral conflict while she attends the trial.

The film was followed by a discussion Q&A with the the panelists being the main characters from the film, along with Dian Rust-Tierney, who is the executive director at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The panel and film were very enlightening, and it definitely challenged you as a viewer and listener to put yourself in their positions. For example, Karen Brassard, the woman who was a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombings, explained her reasoning for not wanting to put the bomber on death row was because he was merely a nineteen-year-old child. Which I thought was very brave of her to say and to view the situation in such an empathetic way. The film told this story very well, as it didn’t harp so much on the actual bombing itself, but rather gave the focus and the attention to the survivor and not the person on trial. Most people wouldn’t go as far to consider seeing past the ‘bad’ thing that they had done, but her strength was very inspiring. The same goes for the final story of the film, which told the story of Vicki and Syl Scheiber, who ultimately decided to not put the man responsible of raping and murdering their daughter on death row. Vicki Scheiber also took the empathetic route as Karen did, and she spoke about how she imagined being the family member of that man, and how they must feel about their son having done this. I thought panel discussion was a great addition to the film because we got to hear straight from them after the fact and they were very open to all questions and being open with their stories.

Overall this film did an excellent job of using storytelling to share and stress the importance of death row and the effects it can have. The film used storytelling to also educate, raise awareness and garner support for an issue that the filmmakers were passionate about.

Storytelling Critique: Louis Delage for Like My Addiction

If you are a non-profit, telling good stories is paramount to success. With the ability to spread empathy and open audiences up to new perspectives, it is perhaps the most powerful weapon in your arsenal. But the best stories, the ones that cut through the clutter, are the ones that highlight aspects of ourselves that we were unaware of. Constructing a good story and telling it in a good way can challenge not just how we see the world, but how we see ourselves.

The first post to @Louise.Delage, August 5th

On August 6, 2016, Louis Delage posted her first photo to instagram. She was a cute young woman, with a fun, bohemian lifestyle - daily postings of her on beaches, in late night exclusive parties, eating delicious meals by the pool. Quickly, she rose from a few hundred followers to a few thousand. Within a month, Louis was a bonafide instagram influencer.

Then, on September 22nd, on her 151st post, Louis Delage revealed that she was not real in a 30 second Instagram video headlined 'Like My Addiciton'.

Louis was an advocacy campaign and social experiment done by the French non-profit Addict Aide, whose primary focus is identifying and reduce alcoholism in French society. Like many French youth, Louis Delage had a secret - she was an alcoholic. But what was most powerful about the campaign was actually rooted in the user experience with it: in each of Louis' 150 posts, she was drinking or holding alcohol. The signs were there, but not one of her thousands of followers had seen them.

'Cocooning' - September 18th

'💦 Pool 💦' - August 12th

What was so effective about this campaign is how they used the medium to boost their message. It fit itself perfectly into the cadence of modern social organizing to insert a counter-narrative through the very channel that perpetuates the dominant narrative. Actionable behavioral was obvious in that the population had acted on default in engaging with the media and was made salient to the dangers of these defaults simultaneously, making actionable opportunities for behavior change much more adoptable by the segment. Instead of telling, Like My Addiction showed the issue, causes, and solution through user engagement and phenomenal storytelling.

Addict Aide's message, that it is difficult to identify addiction and even more difficult to challenge it in your relationships, played perfectly. As a result of this ad, Addict Aide saw huge boosts in awareness. But more significantly, they planted the seeds for change in their audiences heads - supplying the tools to work towards solutions beyond cyberspace and into the real world.

Tarana Burke and the #MeToo Movement - by Bisah Suh

On February 1 I went to go see Tarana Burke speak at the Women’s Initiative Activist of the Year Award Ceremony. Although I was familiar with the #MeToo movement and some of Tarana work, being able to see her speak about how her work started opened a whole new window into the #MeToo Movement.

During her speech she discussed her upbringings in a radical Black household where her parents encouraged her to educate herself on Black leaders and their ideologies. In highschool, she started her career as an organizer by organizing a protest against Donald Trump because of his opposition of the Central Park Five. She later went to college in Alabama where she continued her work as an organizer while learning from key figures of the Civil Rights Movement.

Her entrance into working with victims of sexual violence came from constantly meeting Black girls in Selma that had been sexually abused. This pushed her to create a program in Selma schools which was grounded in African teaching and used to heal young Black and Brown girls that had been sexually abused or felt voiceless. Her work in Alabama later morphed into the Just Be Inc and the #Metoo movement.

During her speech she described her initial fear when she saw that #MeToo was trending and she had nothing to do with it. She was afraid that her work was going to be co opted by white women. However, she said that after seeing so many people sharing their stories and seeing the impact of the movement she knew that she had to allow it to be a movement for all women.

Hearing Tarana speak helped me to understand her and her work. Her work is rooted in Blackness, at the core it is about giving a voice to those who have been silenced, particularly women of color. Moving forward I know that will continue to be at the forefront of the #MeToo movement. She is currently organizing to shed light on the abuse that R-Kelly has brought on dozens of Black women, which has been ignored for years.

Additionally, I believe the fact that she studied under leaders of the Civil Rights movement answers the question of longevity. The Civil Rights Movement was one of the most organized and international movements of the past few years. It was a movement with clear goals that were able to organize to reach many of them. I believe Tarana will take what she learned from them and apply it to the #MeToo movement. My only fear is that similarly to the Civil Rights movement, when you have a movement with clear leaders people always try to neutralize those leaders in order to silence the movement. I really hope that doesn’t happen with Tarana. I believe this movement has the ability to make a real change for women, particular women of color.

In the Executioner's Shadow - by Meaghan Sweeney

Earlier this month I attended the talk back surrounding the documentary “In the Executioner’s Shadow”, made by Maggie Stogner and American University, School of Communication Professor, Richard Stack. The documentary was about the injustices surrounding the death penalty in the United States. At this talk back, the audience got to see a small snippet of the official documentary and then we got to engage in conversation about the documentary. In this conversation we got to speak with four people who are featured in the documentary. The first person was Jerry Givens. He was the chief executioner for the state of Virginia. Givens had conducted 62 executions throughout his career. He could no longer have a career in this field when he found out that he had executed a man on death row that was later exonerated.

We then heard from a woman who was hospitalized with her husband and daughter after the terrorist attacks at the Boston Marathon, and a woman whose daughter was raped and murdered in her apartment while attending graduate school in Philadelphia. Finally, Diann Rust-Tierney was on the talk back panel. Rust-Tierney was the Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in 2004, the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project and has a lot of experience in criminal justice lobbying.

Each person on the panel went into detail about why they do not believe in the death penalty as a punishment. Each person spoke from their own personal experience with the death penalty. The most shocking was Vicki Schieber who chose not to put the killer of her daughter on death row. She shared that she did not put him on death row because he came from a good family and just got lost on the way. She put herself in the position of the killer’s family members and thought about how it could have easily been her son who was the one killing people. Karen Brassard shared that she didn’t want to put the Boston Bomber on death row because he was only nineteen years old. She said that although she believed he should pay for what he did, he was just a nineteen-year-old child.

This event used storytelling to its advantage. Like we have discussed in class, storytelling is one of the most beneficial ways to get people to believe in your movement or cause. It also adds credibility when you speak from experience, as everyone in the documentary and on the discussion panel did. Story telling in this case was used to raise support and awareness for the reasons why America should have a death penalty free justice system. By getting the general public on the cause, there is a better chance that future elections will include the topic of the death penalty on the ballot. This event created a strong argument for people who are anti-death penalty.

To find out more and watch the trailer for the documentary visit: http://intheexecutionersshadow.com