A movie depicting homelessness throughout the 1990s kicked off this year's Human Rights Film Series Tuesday afternoon, highlighting similarities between poverty a decade ago and poverty today.
Filmmaker Peter Kinoy and poverty rights activist Willie Baptist introduced their documentary, "Living Broke in Boom Times: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty," which is a combination of three films made by Kinoy in the 1990s.
Kinoy added his own commentary to the film to emphasize the fight against homelessness from the perspective of those desperate for change.
The film started with the beginning of the recession during Ronald Reagan's presidency to set the context for the rest of the documentary. Kinoy documented the Union of the Homeless, a grassroots organization determined to house the poor in cities like Minneapolis and Philadelphia. Members of the audience grimaced as the film showed police arresting the homeless and union members.
"I'm gonna die trying to make a home for myself," one poverty-stricken individual commented in the film.
The movie progressed throughout the '90s, following one activist in particular. Cheri Honkala attempted to escape poverty for herself and her son by establishing "projects of survival" and outreach teams called the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and The Outriders. In the film, Honkala camps out with other poverty-stricken Americans, is arrested while creating a children's center in an abandoned building and takes garbage-bound food from grocery stores.
The documentary drew frightening parallels between the poverty in the '90s and the economic crisis today.
"We're just one health care crisis away from homelessness and poverty. This crisis is [undermining] our economic security on a growing scale," said Baptist. He asked the audience to understand the message the featured members of the film had for modern society as it approaches a 10 percent unemployment rate.
"It seems like the numbers of underinsured keep going up and [homelessness] keeps going up," said Amy DeFlumere, an assistant to the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, who watched the film. "So I wonder what the rallies are really accomplishing. It's sad that you don't see a decrease in the numbers."
The audience acknowledged that scenes from the film seemed hard to relate to at times. Much of the documentary took place in northern Philadelphia and Minneapolis, two of America's most impoverished areas, with poverty that many college students will never witness firsthand.
"I'm from the suburbs, so I don't see a lot of poverty," said Nancy Keefe, a 1st-semester ancient Mediterranean studies major. "It made me think that I want to help more because I don't want that to happen to me."
While the film emphasized the relentlessness the homeless have maintained in their fight for basic necessities - The Outriders successfully launched a United Nations investigation into violations of human economic rights - it also showed how much work remains to end poverty in our nation.
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