Film explores student activism and the national immigration debate
The new feature length documentary "Change the Subject", which explores labels, libraries, and activism, and how language can be weaponized to divide and dehumanize people, will be shown at the Highwood Public Library on Saturday, February 29 at 1:30pm.
It tells the story of a Dartmouth College student who kept encountering the term "Illegal aliens" as a library subject heading. As a person who had grown up undocumented in Georgia, she was disturbed by this institutionalized form of a racial slur. And so she did something about it: she and other students joined librarians in petitioning the Library of Congress to change its terminology.
This film tells the story of these students, whose singular effort at confronting an instance of anti-immigrant sentiment in their library catalog took them all the way from Baker-Berry Library to the halls of Congress. This film shows how an instance of campus activism entered the national spotlight, and how a cataloging term became a flashpoint in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill.
Immediately following the screening, co-producer Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares will answer questions about his experiences and collaboration working on the film, and his opinions on what the film can offer to immigration rights on a national scale. Cásares is a Schuler Scholar who graduated from Warren Township High School. The founders of the Schuler Scholar Program, Jack Schuler and Tanya Schuler Sharman, plan to attend the screening.
"I had the opportunity of seeing this film in D.C. and hearing the stories of these two brilliant young students from Dartmouth," said Highwood Public Library Executive Director Carmen Patlan. "One of the students was born in Mexico, but is now a DACA recipient (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) living in Park City, IL. I felt excited and honored when I saw this young man from our local Lake County community fighting for social change, and at the same time continuing his education as a now Ph.D. student at Northwestern."
Librarian Jill Baron and filmmaker Sawyer Broadley co-directed the film, with significant collaboration from the co-producers Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares and Melissa Padilla. While the narrative driving the film is of the activism of students and librarians around a Library of Congress subject heading, the film extends into a meditation on the ways that language is often weaponized to divide and dehumanize people.
"It is an honor for a young man like Óscar to be here and speak to children in our communities about breaking down barriers to accessing higher education and reaching their potential in their academic education."
Join the Highwood Public Library at this special Lake County screening of "Change the Subject" about this important national issue that affects all of us. This film will be shown on Saturday, February 29 at 1:30pm at 102 Highwood Avenue in Highwood, IL.
A trailer of the film is available on Youtube at https://youtu.be/Ebphd5Rg6c8 or https://youtu.be/dI06vR8Pn38 and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/294448570.