All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020)

By: Mike Ward on Friday, September 18

PG-13 Running Time: 102 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

Timed for release two months before the 2020 Presidential election, All In: The Fight for Democracy clearly has a purpose - to make every vote count in this and future elections.
Engaging, informative, and powerful, All In… is a movie that could serve as required viewing for civics classes across the country.
By walking viewers through the history of voter disenfranchisement - from the formation of the Constitution through Reconstruction through the Voting Rights Act and into today, All In… tells uncomfortable truths about our democracy that we, as a country, must acknowledge.

NO

Co-produced by, and featuring emerging Democratic politician Stacey Abrams, some will dismiss this as a partisan film. That’s a mistake, because you should want democracy for all, and not for some, but hey - you do you.
Might preach to the choir and the choir alone.
Sadly, if you’re looking for reasons to not watch All In…, then you were never going to watch this in the first place. Which is a shame and a loss for you, because we ALL should care about letting age-eligible people have a say in our democracy.

OUR REVIEW

On the afternoon I watched the stirring and powerful new documentary, All In: The Fight for Democracy, I received voting information in the mail from the United States Postal Service. The postcard listed some important reminders for registered voters with the upcoming 2020 elections in November. In my home state of Washington, we vote exclusively by mail, with ballots sent to registered voters approximately three weeks or so before election day. Notably, when looking at the postcard, I saw that I was instructed to request my mail-in ballot by a particular deadline.

Problem is: Here, I actually don’t need to request one. Ballots are sent automatically. And while the misinformation was innocuous and some might argue more a blanket statement for everyone in the country, as we face a pandemic that will see more mail-in voting than ever before, the inaccuracy was a bit galling. Right now, the entire idea of voting by mail is called into question by our own President and others in the media. President Trump publicly vacillates between distrusting, then trusting the process; then cites vote-by-mail as fraudulent, but has participated in it for decades. The swirl of confusion and uncertainty regarding how to vote, when to vote and where to vote only intensifies.

But in the context of me and my life - like… I’m a white guy. Voting has really never been a challenge for me. Complaining about a confusing note on a postcard sounds so incredibly privileged, when placed in the larger discussion of how difficult it has been for people, not like me, to simply have their vote count in this country.

Also for people like me, a movie like All In…, co-directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés, is a sobering, necessary, and jaw-dropping reminder of the struggles people, again different than myself, have endured in this country. We are told repeatedly the most important civic duty and obligation is the right to vote.

So why has it been so hard for women, Black, Brown, Indigenous and Asian people to exercise that obligation in our nation’s history?

Exemplifying stories of resilience, All In… includes an impressive array of political leaders, historians, scholars, professors, and people with first-hand experiences directly connected to the practices and policies which have attempted to disenfranchise and limit the right to vote in this country.

Premiering on Amazon Prime after a brief theatrical run, and dropping seven weeks before the 2020 Presidential election (lest we forget), the film is co-produced by Stacey Abrams, a rising star in the Democratic party who fell just short of winning Georgia’s gubernatorial race in 2018. Her story is key to a recent example of voter suppression, but one of the most effective tools within the film is how the individuals frequently speak directly to the camera (i.e. directly to us, the viewer, one-on-one), underscoring the obviousness and gravity of this message…

The legislating of hate, in an effort to limit people’s vote, is an unimpeachable truth America will never be able to explain away.

Abrams, as a touch-point throughout the film is an interesting decision. While some will point to her producer’s credit and feel this is self-promoting and something of a resume builder, she is deeply studied and credible on this subject. While relatively new to the national stage, Abrams has been a tireless advocate against voter suppression, gerrymandering practices, and barriers to voting accessibility, since she was a young adult attending Spelman College, an HBCU in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia.

She shares a personal connection, as do her parents, of how voter suppression and voter intimidation has impacted their lives. The film further documents her gubernatorial run against Brian Kemp, the current Governor of Georgia, who, as Secretary of State, purged more than 670,000 individuals off of voter rolls in the year prior to the election. At the time of voting, more than 50,000 voter registrations had not been processed in the state by election day (75% of whom were Persons of Color). Widespread signs of voter suppression and malfeasance were popping up everywhere. In the end, Abrams lost by ~54,000 votes, or 1.4%.

More consistently effective is the depth of archival footage and the stories shared from history. For those who do not know about Maceo Snipes - you’ll want to pay attention. Also telling: Two years after implementation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 67% of African-Americans in Mississippi had registered to vote. Prior to that, just 3% were registered in the state.

We also learn of The Mississippi Plan of 1890, which instituted poll taxes and “literacy tests” to trip up and dissuade Black people from voting and involving themselves in the electoral process. The instituting of “The Black Codes” is another significant history lesson.

As we learn about the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments to the Constitution, the impact of the Ku Klux Klan, Reconstruction, the Voting Rights Act, and moments like the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma March, as well as voting rights restoration to more than one million felons in the State of Florida in 2018, All In… feels like, even demands to be, required viewing material.

We are at a tipping point in our history. Not simply because we are potentially more polarized as a population, politically speaking, than ever before. Not simply because our political ideologies have become tribal in the era of social media. Not simply because Donald Trump and Joe Biden represent two vast, contrasting views of an America trying to decide what it is and where the country is headed.

In a world where it feels as if we are one tweet or Facebook post away from our nation erupting in a territorial, cultural civil war, we must continue listening and learning. In its best moments, All In… delivers a stunning, disquieting walk through an aspect of racial injustice rarely explored to this degree. While uncomfortable and unnerving to rationalize, All In shows us that these practices and actions are part of the definition of American democracy. And we should not ignore these truths any longer.

CAST & CREW

Documentary Featuring: Stacey Abrams, Carol Anderson, Debo Adegbile, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Desmond Meade, Eric Holder, Marcia Fudge, Andrew Young

Director: Liz Garbus, Lisa Cortés
Written by: Jack Youngelson
Release Date: September 9, 2020 (theatrical); September 18, 2020 (Amazon Prime)
Amazon Studios

Timed for release two months before the 2020 Presidential election, All In: The Fight for Democracy clearly has a purpose - to make every vote count in this and future elections.

Engaging, informative, and powerful, All In… is a movie that could serve as required viewing for civics classes across the country.

By walking viewers through the history of voter disenfranchisement - from the formation of the Constitution through Reconstruction through the Voting Rights Act and into today, All In… tells uncomfortable truths about our democracy that we, as a country, must acknowledge.

Co-produced by, and featuring emerging Democratic politician Stacey Abrams, some will dismiss this as a partisan film. That’s a mistake, because you should want democracy for all, and not for some, but hey - you do you.

Might preach to the choir and the choir alone.

Sadly, if you’re looking for reasons to not watch All In…, then you were never going to watch this in the first place. Which is a shame and a loss for you, because we ALL should care about letting age-eligible people have a say in our democracy.