Sarah Mondale, Vera Aronow, and Stone Lantern Films have created an excellent professional documentary about the fight to save our public schools from corporate reformers. It is called “Backpack Full of Cash.” They have been showing it at local film festivals. You can host a screening in your community.

When PBS aired the slick privatization propaganda called “School Inc.,” the Network for Public Education called on PBS to show “Backpack.” NPE generated nearly 12,000 emails to PBS. The Daily Kos duplicated our campaign and generated more than 160,000. See the film and you will agree that it deserves a wide audience.

I received this message from the Backpack team:

“Tell your friends, our campaign is up and running!

“We’re happy to announce that our BACKPACK FULL OF CASH grassroots screening campaign is up and running! BACKPACK, a new documentary narrated by Matt Damon, explores the real cost of privatizing public education. The film focuses on how charters, vouchers and other market-based “reforms” are impacting the 90% of American students who rely on public schools. Thank you to the hundreds of people around the country who have inquired about screening opportunities so far. We are making our way through the list and are grateful for your enthusiasm and patience. We’ve begun planning screenings with parents, teachers, students, universities, civic groups, churches, and more. If you haven’t heard from us yet, we’ll be in touch soon.

“In the meantime, you can see the film in a few places this summer:

“1. The Macon Film Festival (Macon, GA) –– Friday, July 21, 3:30pm, Theatre Macon and Saturday, July 22, 11:45am, Cox Capitol Theatre.(filmmakers in attendance)

“2. The Wisconsin Public Education Network Summer Summit (Lake Mills, WI) –– Wednesday, August 9, 3pm, Lake Mills High School.(filmmakers in attendance)

“3. The New York State Writers Institute, University of Albany, SUNY (Albany, NY) –– Friday, September 8, 7pm, Page Hall. (filmmakers in attendance)

“In addition to all this action, we just returned from wonderful film festivals across the country including Seattle International Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, FilmFestDC and a five-event tour of Alberta, Canada, hosted by Support Our Students Alberta––where privatization is an emerging issue. Backpack attracted a big crowd in each place.

“Get involved this summer! Go to www.BackpackFullofCash.com and request information about how you can host a screening in your community. Make a tax-deductible donation to help fuel the BACKPACK Community Engagement Campaign. We cannot do this without your support.

“Thank you!

“Sarah Mondale, Vera Aronow, and the BACKPACK team”