Though the manifold problems of money pouring into our campaigns have become a source of daily news and mounting public backlash, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission is an opportunity to review how this transformative decision was reached – the perfect storm of politicized jurisprudence, corporate entitlement, and a narrowly tilted bench.

As Chief Justice, John Roberts has expressed such concern over corporate rights, one might think he was found as a boy abandoned, taken in, and raised by some corporations. It was Roberts who directed the narrow issue of FEC penalties over ads for Hillary: The Movie to be rewritten and re-argued as a much broader debate over the right for corporations to spend money freely on third party advertisements.

The murky reasoning in the 5-4 decision is a swirl of citations to numerous codes that apparently somehow offer sufficient paradox that a century of laws passed by lawmakers over generations of Congress that restrictions on the federal and state level had to be knocked down, leaving almost no sense of legal authority on the subject.

How has this decision stood, two years later? Well, people have literally been taking to the streets across the country in outrage over this decision and corporate influence on public policy. In fact, this decidedly undemocratic ruling — five opinions against American law and overwhelming public opinion — has been such a galvanizing injection into the populace, Citizens United vs. FEC may prove to be the birth to an era of reform.

When Thomas Jefferson warned, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” he probably wasn’t talking about the liberty of businesses to spend unlimited amounts to promote their interests in elections, particularly foreign businesses.

The Watergate scandal revealed major cesspools of money flooding into elections under Nixon, and the Watergate break-in itself was eventually linked to cover-up efforts regarding campaign money laundering through Richard Nixon’s brother. Nixon is notorious for having had ‘briefcases full of money’ flown in to Washington on a private plane, which would fly right back to its very anonymous donors, be they in Texas, Greece, or who knows where – actually, that was the problem, nobody knew where or how much.

It was thus in the wake of Nixon’s resignation that the House of Representatives introduced a wave of campaign finance legislation — because public outrage demanded it. These laws were the fundamental legal basis for much campaign regulation until Citizens United vs FEC.

In a country struggling with unemployment and under-employment, a foreclosure crisis, and Mitt Romney trying to start a war with Europe, it takes a lot to make overturning a Supreme Court decision a national priority. But the opportunity we are presented with in the aftermath of Citizens United vs. FEC is the chance to bring about new laws that improve on the loophole-ridden pay-to-play culture that allowed Jack Abramoff to thrive like bacteria in a swamp.

Two years after Citizens United, this anniversary can become recognized as a national reminder of the better democratic future we are now building.

This new short documentary covers the curious evolution of the case Citizens United vs. FEC and interviews the attorney who first argued the case, James Bopp, accomplished battler of campaign laws and Vice Chair of the Republican National Committee. Authorities contributing to this analysis include John Nichols of The Nation, Bob Edgar, Doug Clopp and Kathay Feng of Common Cause, Nick Nyhart of Public Campaign, Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog, Professor Mark Crispin Miller, Jessica Levinson, and Lee Fang.

This short is from the forthcoming feature documentary PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes, a film journey about trying to overcome the problems we face from money in politics.

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Filmmaker Donn “D.J.” Viola was struck by the odds of inclusion in the coveted landmark independent film festival: Out of 11,700 entries, only 180 were chosen, 1.538%. Parallel to the Occupy Movement’s empowering the bottom 99%, Viola sought to provide some kind of platform for the approximately 32 films made every day of the last year.

Going further, such a context could allow for more political films than might usually be included in the crop of Sundance selections. While Sundance has long been a strong supporter of environmental topics, the timeliness of a film festival is a unique challenge — where the transformative Occupy Wall Street movement sprung up in October and swept the national discourse, the deadline for submissions to Sundance was in September.

Occupy Sundance will be a chance to watch movies covering the range of topics that have fed the Occupy movement: documentaries covering the Federal Reserve and Wall Street’s incestuous ties, microfinance and social business, Citizens United and campaign reform, election integrity and voter suppression, media consolidation and broadcast activism, even the recent battle over public unions in Wisconsin. Going into a pivotal election year, these are issues that can’t wait to submit to Sundance next year and hope to make the cut in 2013.

Viola asks, “What’s the hardest thing to do at Sundance? See a movie. You have all these people who have come from all over, bundled up, packed in to this small town, just to see movies, and everything is always sold out.” In the meantime, Viola was discovering how hard it is just to get friends to watch a link to the short film he had poured his heart into, as people have become inundated with media to the point of meaninglessness. Bringing the overflow of quality content to the overflow of movie watchers in Park City seemed necessary.

And so Viola has set up a venue across from the Slamdance offices on Main Street at a restaurant where there will be a gallery of viewing stations to watch films from the Occupy Sundance collection. This offers another solution to the overwhelmed festival-goer – the opportunity to see films at one’s convenience. Some projected screenings of the timelier topics may be arranged, but as much as sharing films, the aim of Occupy Sundance is to facilitate connections and foster a temporary community. As the Occupy movement has brought thousands and thousands of people out from their insulated routines to discover like minds and organize, Occupy Sundance offers filmmakers, buyers, activists, and the uninitiated the chance to meet, learn about films and issues, and get the jump on how this medium will make a difference in 2012.

Occupy Sundance is open to those who show up, like the Occupy Movement. Filmmakers not attending but wishing to submit their films do not need to pay a fee, but do need to get their films in by January 17th. Visit the Occupy Sundance website for more info at www.occupysundance.com and follow on Twitter at @OccupySundance

Occupy Sundance will be at Cisero’s Good Times Bar at the top of Main Street, across from the Slamdance offices, running Jan. 19 – Jan. 29th, from noon to 8 pm daily.

Sunday, Jan. 8, will be the final day of Mr. Brainwash’s Art Show 2011, an exhibition which has drawn thousands each day to behold the childlike imagination of Thierry Guetta. This abandoned industrial space also happens to be adorned with a significant contribution from the street art community of Los Angeles, after Brainwash allowed 20,000 square feet of the ground floor to be entirely covered with other people’s posters, paintings, stickers and spray paint.

This mammoth art show will not be viewable somewhere else down the line. In fact, after this last day of viewing, the building is reportedly slated to be demolished. Street art is not intended to last, and here it won’t even last inside an empty building.

And yet, it was the barren behemoth building that first drew Thierry Guetta to tackle it with his vision of graffiti-fueled pop art installations and wild remixes of celebrity iconography. In this exclusive short documentary, Thierry Guetta shares his dreams and travails of trying to turn a dilapidated factory into a Street Art Vatican.

But where most of Hip Hop seemed to descend into a clatter of techno-fused beats and hooks about either partying in the club or partying in the strip club, there stood out a surprisingly positive groove that seems to best put a face on this year of the Occupy genesis.

Weaving an interpolation of Modest Mouse’s 2004 upbeat hit “Float On,” Lupe Fiasco uses his verses to unify the impoverished and privileged alike, urging courage to resist everyday oppressors, drawing strength from both childhood dreams and the power that a rarefied performer gets to observe when audiences are chanting his lyrics back to him around the world.

And yet in his open-ended challenge that “Ain’t nobody leavin, nobody going home, even if they turn the lights on, the show is going on,” there seems to be the prescient call for in-person assembly and energy that so many apparently desired deep down, across America, and around the world.

For those who still don’t get what the Occupy Wall Street movement has been about, think about it like this: it’s a like a vigil for a plan, or an intervention on behalf of an country all too obligingly suffering the painful cuts and deep gouging of corporate greed run amok in our political process. That outrage and alienation turns into empowerment with shared goals and the recognition that the voices of many are suddenly much louder than the voice telling us what additional austerity we should all endure because of some bankers’ rampant criminal enterprise, which goes unpunished.

When future generations look back at us and our time, I hope they can associate this song with this tumultuous, inspiring era.

Here are the lyrics and music video for “The Show Goes On” by Lupe Fiasco, from his album LASERS. Follow Lupe Fiasco on Twitter: @LupeFiasco

Lyrics via LupeFiasco.com

Chorus
Alright already the show goes on
All night til the morning we dream so long
Anybody ever wonder when they will see the sun up
Just remember when you come up the show goes on
Alright already the show goes on
All night til the morning we dream so long
Anybody ever wonder when they will see the sun up
Just remember when you come up the show goes on

Verse 1
Have you ever had the feeling that you was being had
Know that shit that make you mad
They treat you like a slave
Put chains all on your soul
And put whips up on your back
They be lying through they teeth
Hope you slip up off your path
I don’t switch up off I just laugh
Put my kicks up on they desk
Unaffected by they threats
Then get busy on they ass
See that’s how that chi town made me
That’s how my daddy raised me
That glitterin may not be gold
Don’t let nobody play me
If you are my homeboy
You never have to pay me
Gon and put your hands up
When times is hard you stand up
LUPE the man
Cause a brand that the fans trust
So even if they ban us
They’ll never slow my plans up

Chorus
Alright already the show goes on
All night til the morning we dream so long
Anybody ever wonder when they will see the sun up
Just remember when you come up the show goes on
Alright already the show goes on
All night til the morning we dream so long
Anybody ever wonder when they will see the sun up
Just remember when you come up the show goes on

Verse 2
One in the air for people ain’t here
Two in the air for the father that’s there
Three in the air for the kids in the ghetto
Four for the kids that don’t wanna be there
None for the n—s tryna hold them back
Five in the air for the teacher not scared
To tell those kids that’s living in the ghetto
That the n—s holding back
That the world is theirs
Yea yea the world is yours
I was once that little boy
Terrified of the world
Now I’m on a world tour
I will give up everything
Even start a world war
For these ghetto girls and boys, I’m rappin round the world for
Africa to New York
Haiti then I detour
Oakland down to Auckland
Gaza Strip to Detroit
Say hip hop on a destroy
Tell him look at me boy
I hope your son don’t have a gun, and never be a D-Boy

Chorus
Alright already the show goes on
All night til the morning we dream so long
Anybody ever wonder when they will see the sun up
Just remember when you come up the show goes on
Alright already the show goes on
All night til the morning we dream so long
Anybody ever wonder when they will see the sun up
Just remember when you come up the show goes on

Verse 3
So no matter what you been through
No matter what you into
No matter what you see when you look outside your window
Brown grass or green grass
Picket fence or barbed wire
Never ever put them down
You just lift your arms higher
Raise them til your arms tired, let em know your there.
That you struggling, surviving that you gon persevere yea
Aint nobody leavin, nobody going home
Even if they turn the lights out, the show is going on

And in the center of Los Angeles, just off Santa Monica and La Brea, he found an urban adversary worthy of his determination: an abandoned industrial complex, over 80,000 square feet. What first seemed like a Russian temple waiting to be christened became a never-ending barrage of repairs, inspectors and maintenance, while he was hoping to use it as an art studio rather than an urban renewal project. “I almost gave up,” he says wearily. “It was too much.”

But perseverance paid off, and the long announced Art Show 2011 will in fact be opening in 2011. This marks an art opening not just for Mr. Brainwash, but for the scores of street artists that were welcomed to decorate 20,000 square feet on the first floor of the Brainwash building. Over several days in October, Thierry threw open the doors to the public to decorate his walls with street art. The open house that ensued was dubbed a “Woodstock of Street Art” by venerable street art blog Melrose & Fairfax. Local street artists could work without fear of arrest, and also get to watch other artists work that they might not get to meet otherwise. Many older artists showed up and contributed pieces of art they had made, which they would not dare risk putting up on streets. This cavern of creative contributions is the setting for only part of Mr. Brainwash’s show.

The space is now filled with grandiose sculptures and huge paintings that are signature to MBW’s over the top zeal. To apply conventional standards of artistic merit or technique is to somewhat miss the point of a Mr. Brainwash experience. In almost every direction, there are signs of kid-like inspiration, executed with realistic detail, on a scale of unrestrained aspiration.

Why would you not want to make a life size metal elephant, crushing a giant spray can? There are various old cars jutting out of the floor or piled up in the front of the building. Rock star iconography adorns the walls, with huge paintings of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, David Bowie, Slash, Kate Moss and others. One room is filled with a huge boom box sculpture that barely fits the giant space it is in. A massive sculpture of Poseidon rolling paint on the floor can greets guests. The scope of Art Show 2011 in many ways is defined by the building itself — an empty factory space with endless rooms and cavernous floors, setting a high ceiling, both literally and metaphorically, for Brainwash to maximize his larger than life vision of celebrating pop art about pop art.

The preview show Thursday night, Dec. 22, at 7 p.m. was free to the public, offering the first 300 new original limited Mr. Brainwash prints. Hundreds were lined up before the show opened. Official opening is Dec. 25 running through Dec. 29, at 960 N. La Brea Ave., LA, Calif. 90038, visit artshow2011.com.

View Slideshow photos by Melrose & Fairfax.

John Wellington Ennis is following street art for his upcoming film PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes.

Ron English’s latest collection, “The Seasons of Supurbia,” is a journey through pop surrealism, realized in English’s universe as tableaus of toys with twisted features in a foreboding landscape. Many of English’s motifs appear through the paintings – superheroes, action figures, and classic characters of his such as MC SuperSized, the bloated Ronald McDonald image seen in Super Size Me. But in a trippy world with the disorienting array of characters one might breeze past in a dream, this re-imagining of Ron English’s domain is both disquieting and compelling, with any graphic evocations softened by the subdued stationary setting of the subconscious.

But it is not meant to be all dark, says English: “The thing that is often misunderstood about pop surrealism is, especially my work, it seems very cynical. But it is also embracing, too. It’s like, ‘we love this stuff and we hated it.’ And I think that’s confusing to people because they want you to pick one side or the other. They don’t like if you can see all sides and actually see something of value on all sides.”

To discover inspiration for this show, English revisited the town he grew up in, which he hadn’t been back to for 30 years. While drawing from deep developmental attachments to Charlie Brown and long-forgotten favorite toys, English still summons the present context in his implicit commentary, invoking corporate hegemony, war, and the world we leave our children.

In this insightful interview, Ron English discusses what pop surrealism means to him, how he got started working for a protégé of Andy Warhol, and how Disney so closely guarded its corporate icon that it had U.S. Copyright Law re-written to protect Mickey Mouse.

Ron English’s latest collection, “The Seasons of Supurbia,” is at the Corey Helford Gallery until December 10th. His website is popaganda.com.

John Wellington Ennis is following the growth and impact of political street art for his upcoming documentary, PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes.

Actions included “reclaiming” houses that banks are leaving vacant, and “home defense” to stop banks from foreclosing and accept payments from the homeowners, which banks like Chase and Wells Fargo are refusing to do in some cases.

Some of the groups involved in the community resistance effort include ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), The New Bottom Line, ReFund California, New York Communities for Change, Occupy Wall Street, Take Back the Land, SOUL (Chicago), SEIU, and The Coffee Party.

In South Gate, CA, twenty minutes south of Los Angeles, dozens of supporters rallied around the home of Ana Casas Wilson, with several pledging to camp out in her front yard while she defies eviction, and face arrest if necessary.

Ana shared her story with the assembled media and demonstrators: Living with cerebral palsy and battling stage four breast cancer, she was stalked by loan reps assuring her they could lower her payments for the home she has lived in with her family since 1975. After relenting to get more money for her health care and refinancing in 2005, Ana eventually found that her loan was acquired by Wells Fargo, who has since refused to make any modifications or accept make up payments.

ACCE leader Lynn Motley asked the crowd to take out their phones and call the CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, at 415-396-7018, and ask that he stop the eviction of Ana Casas Wilson and her family, and work to modify their loan, since they have three steady incomes in their house. An activist and advocate for other disabled Angelenos, Ana has held off the eviction order from being enforced for the time being. Now, she is not alone.

This video covering the South Gate action shows the media interest and community support for this cause, as well as the energy building from the Occupy movement.

The Occupy Our Homes actions came on the same day that the Attorney Generals of California and Nevada announced a joint investigation into bank practices that precipitated the housing crisis as well as the handling of foreclosures.

As one might gather from her tales of debauchery, outrageous performances, and much wandering, Rev. Jen is a creature of New York, pedestrian and poor but outlasting the thriving gentrification which has seen her neighborhood evolve from immigrant marketplace to artist haven to college town. It was there, in that last century, she launched her own open mike to support oddball performers and alternative comics. Her hapless theatrical endeavors and self-deprecating humor won her a cult following among lovers of ironic and quirky comedy, including Janeane Garofolo, Moby, Jonathan Ames, and Amy Poehler. Above all, her stories of perseverance through bizarre part time jobs and continually disappointing relationships won her attention for their realness, disarmingly delivered in a chirpy voice by a girl wearing elf ears and dressed like a go-go dancer.

I had the pleasure and joy to work with Reverend Jen on my TV show Toolz of the New School on New York cable access from 1996-2001. A number of our escapades are detailed in her book, such as her wandering around the city dressed as a washed up Teletubby, or staging the reunion of an 80’s Christian Glam Metal band. Revisiting that time in pre-9/11 Manhattan when you could run amok with a video camera and costumes carefree, all I can say is: this happened. Vivid without sensationalizing, Reverend Jen’s style of writing is like Hemmingway detailing the exploits of a misfit looking for love and laughs on the Lower East Side.

A true writer invents language to express that which has no other description. Reverend Jen coined a term for which there is no other word in our vocabulary: Hal. When something is pathetically half-assed, yet sincere and somewhat beautiful, that would be Hal. Easily misconstrued with irony, particularly in a hipster vein, Hal is more than liking something that is so un-cool, it’s cool. Inherent in that term is a sincere effort, and sincere failure, with beauty and sardonic self-acceptance nonetheless. Having grown up an outcast picked on for being the weird kid, Reverend Jen has made it her mission to preach the principle that being different is cool.

In the spirit of Hal, we arranged a poolside photo shoot and interview with Reverend Jen lounging at the luxurious Days Inn on Sunset Blvd., next to In-N-Out Burger, for the morning after Rev. Jen’s book reading in Redondo Beach.

ME: Hey, who were those two guys leaving your hotel room just now?

RJ: One was Tommy Bigfinger, an art star who, years ago, engaged in some notorious misadventures with me that appear in the pages Elf Girl. The other was his friend, Dillon. We did karaoke last night across the street at Happy Ending bar and afterward, came back here. I’d like to claim there was some kind of wild trashing of the hotel room or rock star mud-shark incident but we- all innocently passed out fully clothed. However, this morning we convinced Bigfinger to go into the hall buck-naked and ask for more lotion. When he did, we sadistically locked him out.

ME: How did your reading go last night? What did you read?

RJ: It was swell. Mysterious Galaxy was full of sci-fi books and the crowd was mostly female. During the Q&A, I came out of the closet as a Twilight fan and was not shunned. I read a few chapters including one about when I used to dress as “Doo-Doo” the “Pete Best of the Teletubbies.” Doo-Doo appeared on Toolz of the New School (an old cable access show) doing things like getting tossed from toy stores, snorting lines and stage-diving. I also read an essay about when Bigfinger and I went to Church of the Subgenius’s X-Day, took acid and waited for aliens to abduct us.

ME: How have you enjoyed your visit to Los Angeles?

RJ: It’s been glamorous: lounging by the luxurious Days Inn pool, meeting West Coast Art Stars in Venice Beach, talking at length to a delightful Hare Krishna and helping a friend put up street art, which was relatively easy given all the cops were busy at Occupy LA.

ME: Can I have some of your truffle fries?

RJ: Those are from In-N-Out Burger next door. I’m not sure how they got here. What are truffle fries?

ME: Never mind. How has the rest of your book tour gone so far?

RJ: There have only been three stops: Atomic Books in Baltimore, Powell’s in Portland and LA. Baltimore is always tremendous, as it is an almost entirely hipster-free zone. It’s cheap, haunted and wrecked just like me. I’d never been to Portland, but I had a blast there too, going to seedy strip clubs and cheap bars and sleeping on the floor of a residential hotel — one of the comfiest floors I’ve ever encountered. There was, however, an incident on “More Good Morning Oregon” where I passed out in the green room and was deemed unfit to appear on the show. In the future, I will avoid appearing on anything with “morning” in the title unless of course, it’s “Good Morning America.” I could probably wake up for that.

ME: What is your book about?

RJ: It’s my memoir. There are tales of awkward adolescence, art school madness, bohemian extremism, disastrous love affairs, open mike hosting, cable access shenanigans and visionary underachievement. La Bohème meets Freaks and Geeks with plenty of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

ME: Why did you write it?

RJ: Because I really only have two skills – writing and painting. I try use this very limited skill set to rock the world.

ME: What did it take to get this book published?

RJ: My last book, Live Nude Elf did well. It was not Da Vinci Code popular or anything, but a few thousand copies sold so that an agent was willing to take Elf Girl on. I met her through Jonathan Ames who’d been Live Nude Elf’s agent (but had to quit being my agent after his TV show got hugely successful.) At first, there were a few rejections, but I’ve come to accept rejection as no big deal. It’s just someone deeming worthless everything you’ve poured your heart and soul into. Luckily Simon and Schuster recognized it as a remarkable work of genius or at least, great toilet reading.

ME: What have you learned from the process?

RJ: Don’t stay out all night before you have to appear on a morning show and always carry a sharpie in case someone wants you to autograph her breasts. Oh yeah, and work your ass off.

ME: Weren’t you supposed to leave for the airport?

RJ: Oops. Forgot.

Reverend Jen’s Hollywood Poolside Photo Spread

Here is the online premiere of “Doo Doo: Exile in Teletubbyland,” the award-winning short film starring Rev. Jen as the fifth Teletubby who was kicked out of the group before they hit it big.

This short was produced for the television series Toolz of the New School, which aired from 1996-2001 on Manhattan Neighborhood Networks public access television in New York City.

John Wellington Ennis’s current project PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes is a continuation of his work in documenting hilarity and chaos with pathos.

Ohioans go to the polls tomorrow to decide on SB5, a bill passed by the Ohio legislature that intends to dissolve public employee unions. This law is similar to one that was enacted in Wisconsin earlier in the year, but it goes further, to include the dissolution of firefighters and police unions. The placement of this ballot measure to be able to vote down SB5 was achieved by a referendum submitted with over 300,000 signatures. Along with a referendum on whether Ohio will recognize any national healthcare legislation, this off-year election has shaped up to be a contentious one, with significant Get Out The Vote efforts on both sides.

Besides being a perennial swing state, Ohio itself is a bellwether for the national mindset and prognosticator for political trends. The presidential election of 2004 revealed rampant breakdowns in election administration by Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, disenfranchising thousands from voting in a close election. A subsequent investigation of the House Judiciary Committee led by Rep. John Conyers reported:

“We find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.”

In the wake of the 2004 election meltdown, concerned citizens banded together to document the 2006 national elections, using the newly-launched YouTube for real-time reporting on voter intimidation, closed polling places, misinformation, long lines, or any other problems.

My feature documentary FREE FOR ALL! studies what happened in the 2004 election, reviews Ken Blackwell’s extraordinary steps to suppress voters, and chronicles the grass-roots formation of Video the Vote nationwide in the run up to the 2006 elections. This video was our call to arms:

The current Ohio Secretary of State, Republican John Husted, is not offering an exclusive voter hotline like his predecessor, Democrat Jennifer Brunner, but is otherwise maintaining the same procedures her office implemented when it sought to clean up the electoral process in the ensuing controversy surrounding Blackwell’s tenure, according to Husted’s office.

The fight over voter access has continued in Ohio, with a Voter ID bill yet to be decided, along with a redistricting map proposed by the Ohio GOP that the Ohio Democratic Party is challenging in court.

A coordinator for Video the Vote Ohio, J.R. McMillan, explains that this election year presents an opportunity to prepare for the 2012 elections, while taking stock of the fallout from the foreclosure crisis.

“Of significant concern this year is the potential for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans to be denied their right to vote as a direct result of the mortgage crisis which has had an enormous impact a state already facing 15 consecutive years of increasing foreclosures. Layoffs, work stoppages and lack of new hiring, especially in the auto industry and larger manufacturing sector, have pushed many more into home foreclosure or an unexpected move in search of steady work. One of the often unforeseen consequences of such widespread relocations is the adverse affect moving has on voter identification and eligibility.

Even those lucky enough to move from a home into an apartment in the same school district or general vicinity may be surprised to find their polling locations have changed. Many have yet to update their voter registration, something of little immediate concern for those trying to find a job or just feed their families.

Worse still, Ohioans who may be in the process of foreclosure or living with friends and family while looking for work or a place they can afford, many not have the necessary documentation to prove residency. Drivers’ licenses will still have their former addresses, and those living on the kindness and compassion of others aren’t likely to have a utility bill in their names.

Even with Ohio’s proposed voter ID law failing to move forward in the Ohio Senate and opposed by Ohio Secretary of State Job Husted, hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters who have been forced to move since last November are at risk. As if losing their jobs and losing their homes weren’t bad enough, many Ohioans will discover on Election Day that they have also lost their right to vote.”

Originally based on a bucket-brigade model of dispatchers, shooters, runners, and uploaders, technology has made portable video sharing ubiquitous. Tech advances assist in learning about voting problems as they arise, as well as offer platforms for sharing reports by citizen journalists. Video the Vote Ohio will be following the efforts of organizations like Election Protection and tracking Twitter hashtags and Facebook posts for trouble reports to proactively dispatch filmmakers to problem-plagued precincts.

For more information, visit http://www.videothevoteohio.org