Hot Docs - We Are Wisconsin

Rating: ****

In November 2010, the American political movement known as The Tea Party suddenly became a political force the likes of which had not been scene since an Illinois attorney and politician became the first Republican President in 1860. With a seeming political mandate, many of these politicians, many of whom elected to state governorships, began promoting an economic agenda that attacked unions and the poor. But in Wisconsin, the process came to a screeching halt when teachers, police officers, health workers and students begin protesting at, occupying if you will, the state capital in Madison.

As fortune would have it, director Aime Williams was there to capture it all on video, and combining her own footage with news clips, You Tube videos, and an eventual second camera operator, she’s created We Are Wisconsin, a kind of war movie chronicling what happens when the people wake up to the fact that their democracy’s being taken out from right underneath them.

Yes, it’s true, this film will resonate with the “Fight the Power” crowd more than any passive observer, or apolitical cynic, but there is a visceral and immediate kind of power to Williams' film; a mixture of Michael Moore’s fight for the little guy gusto with the intimacy and outrage of the work of Michael Winterbottom. Williams also mixes after the fact observations and interviews with her first person footage, both of which paint a more simple and serene picture of the protests than was portrayed by the media at the time. And as the Occupy movement seems to be gearing up for a spring campaign, there’s a fair bit of foreshadowing here too.

But what was most interesting to me was that laying aside the fact of the issues, there’s almost an apolitical feeling to We Are Wisconsin. The majority of people recognized that what Governor Scott Walker was doing, eliminating collective bargaining amongst state employees and the way he was able to work around it in the end despite the outrage, galvanized the people in a way not scene since Vietnam. The small victories of these Wisconsinites are inspiring, as they prove that the old adage about not being able to fight city hall isn’t always the case.