Premiering on HBO on March 18, 2013, AMERICAN WINTER is a powerful and timely documentary that follows the stories of eight families struggling to survive in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and reveals the impact of rising economic inequality, cuts to social services, and the fracturing of the American Dream.
By Barbara Raab, Senior Producer, NBC News
“Forget the dreams, how do we make it to tomorrow?” asks Ben, a husband and father who’s been laid off from his job at the credit branch of a car company, has fallen behind on the mortgage and is struggling to provide the basics for his family.
Ben is one of the distressed Americans trying to keep his head above water in “American Winter,” a documentary produced by Emmy award-winning filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz, and debuting tonight on Monday, March 18th on HBO. It tells the story of the worst recession of our lifetime through the eyes of eight families in Portland, Oregon during one winter.
Working with the nonprofit organization 211info in Portland, the Gantz’s were given full access to monitor and record calls from families calling the emergency hotline for help. They followed some of these callers over the next several months.
NBC News talked with Joe and Harry Gantz about their film, and about what they hope to achieve with their firsthand view of the struggle millions of Americans are experiencing.
NBC News: The tag line to the film is “a documentary about a country in search of its promise. “ What do you mean by that?
Joe Gantz: The promise is that America is the land of opportunity. The American dream is that anybody can make it in this country, that we’re all having equal opportunity, and if you try hard, you work hard, and you’re talented, you can achieve a comfortable life. I think that is slipping away in a lot of respects. It’s becoming harder and harder for somebody to raise a family. The wages for many Americans even if they’re working fulltime and overtime, they’re working at very low paid jobs and they’re not able to support a family. The families we followed in this film were comfortable three or four years ago, many of them were solidly middle class, they never envisioned being in this situation. As [Portland Commissioner] Nick Fish says in the film, we’re in a ‘one strike and you’re out’ economy, and so these families find themselves falling over the cliff, struggling in ways they never envisioned.
NBC News: Were you shocked at what you found when you really got into their homes and their lives and their stories?
Harry Gantz: I wouldn’t say we were shocked, but it certainly affected us to see the level of desperation and how it affects everybody emotionally. It’s not just trying to find a job, or trying to navigate the social services. That’s a full time job in itself. But it’s the emotional impact. Hearing these kids feel like they don’t know what their futures are going to be. This is the first generation of families that feels like it’s not going to get better. And because of the lack of decent social services and decent paying jobs, people feel like, the American dream, as one of the subjects in our film says, is [just] turning the heat on, turning the lights on.
Joe: We could listen to all the [211info] calls coming in. And there are hundreds of calls every day. And that is overwhelming. You’re just inundated by the level of desperation in this country. The people who aren’t in that situation often don’t know what 211is and don’t know what it’s like for the people who are in that situation. But you listen to those phone calls, “how do I get my heat on?”, “how do I get help for getting my electricity turned off?”, “how do I get help with my rent? , “how do I get food”? It’s just call after call after call.
NBC News: In some ways, the people you got to know are in plain sight. And yet, people who are not in that situation don’t seem to be aware of them.
Joe: There may be a bit of willful ignorance, on the one hand, by the people who are making it. But on the other hand, the people who are struggling are so ashamed. Our society says if you work hard and you’re talented, you push and go by the rules, you will succeed. And they’re not succeeding, they’re struggling mightily, so they are ashamed. They don’t tell people. We were working with families, and the children’s friends would come over, and I’d meet the family of that child that was visiting, and I’d explain what we were working on, and they’d say, “We’re in the same boat.” But they wouldn’t talk to each other because the parents had so much shame, they wouldn’t want to tell what was going on in their households. The shame keeps everyone extremely isolated.
Harry: The fear of destitution is inherent in everybody. So it’s in everybody’s best interests in this country to have a strong middle class, and to help people ascend from poverty.
Joe: The way people ignore this vast chunk of America that is falling off the financial cliff is by using these derogatory stereotypes about people who need help. They say they’re lazy, they made their own mistakes, if they were capable they would be succeeding, they should pull themselves up on their own. But when you follow these families as we did, over months, and you live with them and walk in their shoes and see what they’re dealing with, these families are all extremely hard-working, they’re loving families, and they want nothing more than to get back on their feet and be a contributing member of society.
NBC News: When you talk about help, what is your answer? Is it to put more money into the traditional safety net, or something else?
Harry: Whether it’s from taxpayers, or secular social services, or religious social services, it takes all of those three in order to deal with this problem. That’s the short term solution. Of course the longer term solution is a living wage job and a safety net that if you have a bump in the road and your kid gets sick or you lose your job, that there’s a net that society provides to help you get back on your feet.
Joe: And not just a net that helps you barely survive, not just a safety net that allows you not to starve. But a safety net that really helps you get back to where you once were so you can contribute once again.
Harry: There’s such a backlash right now about anything the government is doing. [Poor people] have been demonized to the point where it’s better just to cut government spending and “good luck, we’re all on our own, we’ll make it that way, leave me alone.” There are people in our film who felt that, and then found themselves in this situation and suddenly they had so much more insight and compassion for people in this position. What I learned is that no parent is perfect – most of these people got in this situation through no fault of their own. But even if it was their fault, and they made a bad decision – do the children deserve to suffer? No.
Joe: When the children suffer, the repercussions last for 20 or 30 years. They don’t graduate from high school, they don’t get a good job, they can wind up in prison – and the repercussions and costs for those kids go on and on.
NBC News: Do you feel after doing this project that there’s some takeaway that’s optimistic or some reason for hope?
Joe: What’s not depressing is spending time with these families. And seeing how their backs are against the wall, and seeing how these families come together because they have no one else to rely on. Most of these families don’t have financial help through their circle of friends or family. They have this core of love for each other and they’re determined to get through it. When you’re in a low paying job that takes a tremendous amount of your time, it takes a tremendous amount of time to track down social services, they don’t just come to your door and hand it to you. You spend so much time just calling and going to places and seeing what you can get, so it’s difficult. The difficulties of being on the financial edge are unimaginable if you haven’t been there. And yet these families have this much love for each other and this much struggle to keep going and be positive and keep their hopes up. The human spirit is something I’m optimistic about on an individual basis.
Harry: I feel the same way as the families do. If you’re not at least optimistic, what are your children going to say? They’re going to feel like they’re doomed. Part of the American spirit is to be optimistic and if you’re not optimistic, it’s hard to get up in the morning and go on in that situation. This film is advocating for not cutting social services. The system can’t take any more.
Joe: Demonstrations are good too! People have to get together and show, this is the majority of this country. And if by putting these faces in front of the public rids the shame that’s associated with being poor, that might empower more poor people to advocate for themselves.
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Our government could do something about this if they wanted. Instead of sending billions of dollars overseas in foreign aid they could and should keep the money right here.
Foreign aid by itself is nothing compared to our wars and nation building. (Did anyone ever find any WMD?)
And yet we citizens do absolutely nothing to stop it, all out of fear that our gov'mint will imprison or drone strike us, and you wonder why they don't want us to have assault rifles. OWS should have shown up with more than just signs in their hands.
We should nevr have spent trillion of dollars on meaningless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should cut Congressional health care to medicaid and end pensions to congress for less than 30 years service. That would probably save billions that could be used to help these people. Vote out the Teapublicans that want to penalize the poor and kill the middle class.
Even these families would seem well-off to their grandparents' generation - or to most of the people living in the world today.
We forget just how much we've benefited from the freedom we have had to pursue what we want and keep the fruits of our labor. The media seems particularly unable to have any sort of long-term memory or viewpoint.
I dont think so. My grandparents were considerably better off. They were able to afford a two story home in Conn with only my grandfather working so that nanny could stay home and be mom to the 4 children they had. She had a big garden and everything she needed, but she had the time to be there because she didn't have to grind herself to the bone at some minimum wage job just to make sure the house note was paid and the heat kept on. Hell no things are not better... The average American spends over 50% of their income on housing.. and often much more.
Long term memory? I recall our family of 4 doing ok on a military man's pay and now most families of 4 on base qualify for food stamps.
I'd like some of those rosy glasses...
I do not believe there is any relevance regarding what previous generations have suffered or what people in other countries are enduring. The issue is now and here. We are living in a country with an extractive economy where few profit off many. Unless we can provide good paying jobs and maintain our middle class, we are going to see a continuation of our current economic mess and possibly some form of civil unrest.
No one is well off if they have no food, no electricity/heat, and no roof over their head. I agree we need to turn the table on government spending from war to caring for our own. THAT would indeed inspire long lasting prosperity for the middle class and future generations.
I live in Oregon. This is a state that is devastated.
The government unions have been putting tax increase measures on EVERY SINGLE BALLOT. The teachers union is taxing us from our homes at the same time they give themselves acrosss the board raises. Thousands of homes are in foreclosure.
The Oregon PERS government pension plan is paying out billions in pensions that are 100% , 200%, 300% of final salary. Oregonians have been massively screwed.
Big government has crushed the private sector in Oregon. But you will NEVER hear our leaders tell you any of this.
And at this point, I despise the government unions and our government leaders. This is a navy blue state, with Democratic governors for the last thirty years. One-party rule has wrecked Oregon.
Perhaps the same amount of time could be spent asking the majority of the middle class that found their way through the downturn, holding their own, just how they accomplished that. Most will tell you it had nohting to do with the free stuff and everything to do with self determination. That would be worth teaching our children!!
Determination and hard work is not cutting it for many former middle class people.Many had good jobs,homes and a decent life.Then came Nafta,the mortgage meltdown,the companies reducing pensions,stagnant wages,401k's tanking and employers who either stopped paying for healthcare benefits or asked employees to contribute more for those benefits.You need to see the whole picture in order to understand how families can end up homeless.The jobs aren't there and working part time minimum wage jobs is not enough to get people back on track.And you haven't seen anything yet.Most baby boomers,in spite of working hard and planning are going to be very poor senior citizens.It's coming soon to a city near you.
Check out the VIDEO at GRITtv.org- Laura Flanders interviews the Gantz Brothers about American Winter! Might be a nice thing to watch before or after the HBO screening tonight at 8pm!
Check out this VIDEO at GRITtv.org - Laura Flanders interviews the Gantz Brothers! Might be nice to watch before or after the HBO screenings this week!
I just realized I posted this twice. oops...oh well. I really liked the interview
Unless you have experienced this desperate dilemma, you cannot begin to know the anguish of not being able to feed your family. This appears to be another "great" depression. Only then, a lot of people lived in areas where they had a garden, Or, knew someone who did. The cities had soup kitchens . I do not remember the amount of sarcasim that is going on now. "There are none so blind as those who refuse to see". If you know someone in need do what you can, anonamously. It wil be the right thing to do, both, for them and yourself.
No doubt we have to do something. However, this article is about people who did everything right and got caught up in the financial mess. With a little help they will work their way out of it.
The problem is that since the 1960s and LBJ's so called War On Poverty, the taxpayers of this country transferred over $17 Trillion of their hard earned money to the poor and low income through means tested welfare programs. We have over 80 such programs. All of this was to eliminate poverty. We now have a huge poverty problem and are $16 Trillion in debt. I guess all that transferring didn't work out very well.
The cost of all the wars this country has ever been in are a drop in the bucket compared to this giveaway fiasco that relieves people of all responsibility to care for themselves. I know the current financial situation exacerbates the long term problem but that does not change the fact that it is a long term problem about people being told by the government that they don't have to be responsible for themselves, they can always "qualify" for somebody else's hard earned money. As long as that attitude continues we will have growing debt and a weaker country.
The issue is, the safety net only keeps you from starving, not to pay your rent, or utilities..In other words, it keeps you in poverty, with no assistance to get out of it other than telling you to apply for every low wage, no benefit job you can.
Then, they cut your benefits, so that now, you are working 32 hours a week and getting LESS than you would before.
All of you look to the government to solve this issue, but as the Documentary points out: how does a working class family with limited skills make it in America today when all of the industries that used to provide this: manufacturing, steelmaking, textiles are outsourced? How do you encourage Industry to create jobs that are not necessarily thrilling but pay better than fast food. That is the challenge
Poverty in America where homeless people collect upwards of $60,000 a year in cash, from standing on the street with a sign.
Where low wage workers making $15,000 a year also qualify for child care, rent subsidies, food stamps, utility subsidies all of which when added up, amount to almost a middle class wage.
Anyone in poverty, true abject poverty can't be the average Joe or Jane, Juan or Juanita, low wage worker. Not will all the social programs available to them.
well, were in the hell can you go and pander 60 grand a year? Tell me, so I can move there and do the same thing.
I think you're quite off on your figures, but, please, if you've any data to back up that claim, I'd actually like to see it and I think everyone else would as well.
The film is interesting, but flawed and colors their facts considerably. I say this as someone who lives in PDX, is a progressive and survived the economic downturn and found work again, and I'm 47!
To begin, most of these people were NEVER middle class: one family had always lived in a trailer, one family received no life insurance after the husband died, the family without water looked like tweakers, the $40K the one woman bragged about her husband earning was pretty low for a family of 4 and the woman who was a tech, clearly had gone to a "career college", not an actual college/university (because tech positions with even an associate's degree start at $17 per hour on the low end, not minimum wage).
Additionally, there ARE jobs in Portland (again, older and unemployed/underemployed for 3 1/2 horrible years!), just not particularly good ones. But the claim there were no minimum wage jobs is patently untrue. ACS/Xerox is always desperately looking to hire for their call centers, even at the height of the recession was never able to meet their recruitment quotas and isn't the only such employer.
How do I know this? Because when my unemployment was going to end, I was fully prepared to go work for them for $9.50 per hour and a horrible schedule. Because better that than lose my house. Likewise, the stores at the mall, Target, Fred Meyer, all always hiring. If I lose the position I do now have tomorrow, I'd happily go and work at any of these places to keep my family fed.
Which partially returns me to both the trailer family and the apartment dwellers:
With the trailer family, A) again, plenty of minimum wage jobs, however, frankly, he looked terrible! Time to clean yourself up, dude. B) his termination was completely illegal and also time to file a BOLI complaint and then a lawsuit.
With the apartment family, really only 12 interviews???? I sometimes had 7 in a single week and still didn't get hired. Even when the economy was good I might've gone on 12 interviews before receiving any sort of offer.
But....if he earned around $20 per hour, F/T then his net pay would've been about $650 per week, Oregon unemployment benefits currently pay $500 per week (and would've been higher when he was collecting). Since he would've been better off, not having the amount pre taxed, he's only down by $150 per week.
Which could've easily been made up for by his wife working while he looked for a better job. Yes, they had two small children, but so what? He was home, her mom was nearby and I'd much prefer to juggle schedules for awhile than be evicted or have to get razor blades from charity. A 20 hour per week (which might've done her good to be out of the house, etc) cashiering job would've forestalled all of this.
In the case of the dad with the down syndrome kid. Sell your farm, go live with your parents. Yes, it's embarrassing etc, but that IS what family is for. Be happy you had that option, versus the poor homeless lady and her son.
As for the "no food" family----I get food scarcity, but currently Fred's has Noodle Ramen every day priced at 5 for $1. I'm kinda struck that for people who never had much, most of these families were remarkably ill-equipped to survive being poor.