Facing Poverty at UC
About
AFSCME 3299 hired Making Change Media to produce a series of short online videos that were used as a critical component of their “Facing Poverty at UC” campaign, including marches on the boss where workers asked their bosses to watch these videos to learn about their experience as low-wage workers at the University of California.
“In 2008, I was working on a statewide contract campaign with low-wage service workers at the University of California. I hired Regan to create a 10-minute documentary that could frame the workers’ difficult working conditions and their campaign for justice. This project exceeded our expectations and, in fact, ended up establishing our entire communications strategy for the whole campaign that eventually won significant economic improvements for thousands of mostly immigrant and Black workers.
The impact of the documentary was so great that we actually hired Regan again and turned the film into an even bigger project that encompassed dozens of short videos from workers in 10 different campuses and two commercials that aired on television during university football games.
For me, however, the greatest impact was seeing how the film inspired and motivated the workers themselves. Worker leaders were so moved by seeing their stories on screen that they did delegations with dozens of their co-workers on each campus to demand that the administration actually watch the documentary with them. It was truly a beautiful and powerful moment to see the interplay between film and activism that Regan was able to create with this project.”