UPROOTED: Refugees of the Global Economy
(National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights with Sasha Khokha, Ulla Nilsen, Jon Fromer, and Francisco Herrera, 28 min, 2001)

Nominated for a 2002 Northern California Emmy Award for Current Affairs programming!

Finalist for the World Hunger Year’s 2002 Harry Chapin Media Award for innovative coverage of hunger and poverty issues

Best of the Fest at Cine Accion’s Cine Latino Festival, 2002

UPROOTED: Refugees of the Global Economy is a compelling documentary about how the global economy has forced people to leave their home countries. UPROOTED presents three stories of immigrants who left their homes in Bolivia, Haiti, and the Philippines after global economic powers devastated their countries, only to face new challenges in the United States. These powerful stories raise critical questions about U.S. immigration policy in an era when corporations cross borders at will.

This documentary weaves together the stories of three immigrants into a compelling tale of how the global economy (including U.S. corporations and the International Monetary Fund) has forced immigrants to leave their home countries. Maricel is one of thousands of women encouraged by the Philippine government to work abroad as a domestic in order to pay its international debt. Her employer, a top New York corporate executive, refused to pay her the minimum wage. Free trade destroyed Jessy and Jaime's family business in Bolivia; they came to the United States and worked as janitors despite their engineering degrees. Luckner left Haiti after working for 14 cents an hour at a U.S.-owned baseball factory that moved to China, in search of cheaper labor costs.

"These beautifully filmed and movingly told stories of lives uprooted by corporate globalization make real and undeniable the personal price that ordinary people in Asia and Latin America pay for the debts that their governments incur"Great material for high school and college classroom use and community programs, not to mention the corporate boardrooms!"
— Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor and Chair, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder

"Uprooted is a highly informative, moving and well-produced educational tool. Each time we've used it in workshops with faith-based and community-based organizations it has gotten a great response. If you're working on issues of globalization, migration, or the changing ethnic and racial mix in the U.S., you need to get this video."
— Linda Burnham, Director, Women of Color Resource Center

The Making of Uprooted:

It was Seattle, 1999, at the huge WTO protest. Sea turtles and anti-Starbucks folks alike took to the streets to raise their voices against corporate globalization. But where was the voice of immigrant rights? Wasn't there something out there that could help anti-globalization activists - and the immigrant rights movement - make this important link? As the Network's BRIDGE (Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue in the Global Era) project kicked off, we wanted to find a video about globalization to help explain some key concepts to immigrant rights groups. Unfortunately, the globalization videos out there didn't seem to factor in the immigration connection.

Frustrated with the options, we decided to create our own film, hoping to pull it together in a few months and use it as a tool to raise awareness about the upcoming World Conference Against Racism and Xenophobia. We had no idea what a long - and fascinating - journey we were about to take.

The project took over two years to complete. We managed to raise a small amount of money and find some dedicated activist-filmmakers interested in collaborating on the project. We spent hours talking about the concept, deciding whom to interview, and how we wanted to illustrate our ideas. Did we want it to be a bunch of talking heads and experts? Or did we want to show personal stories? We decided that personal stories would help us reach the broadest possible audience. Then came filming and researching for footage that could illustrate some of our interviews as immigrants talked about the impact of globalization on their home countries. We recorded an original score (featuring music in English, Spanish, Tagalog, and Haitian Creole) and put subtitles throughout the piece so it could be used in bilingual settings. Throughout, input from National Network members and allies - as well as staff involvement through all stages of the process - made this project a true collaboration between the organization and the filmmakers.

Praise for Uprooted: Refugees of the Global Economy

"A painful yet powerful and poetic human portrait that reaffirms the vision of the U.S. as a multicultural democracy"
— Ronald Takaki, author of A Different Mirror: A History of Multiracial America

"Confronted with destructive forces much larger than they can possibly engage, these migrants leave their countries only to find abuse and exploitation in their jobs in the US. But each one turns the table on their abusers and becomes a fighter for the rights of immigrants. These are astounding lives. A great film!"
— Saskia Sassen, author of Guests and Aliens

"Uprooted is a highly informative, moving and well-produced educational tool. Each time we've used it in workshops with faith-based and community-based organizations it has gotten a great response. If you're working on issues of globalization, migration, or the changing ethnic and racial mix in the U.S., you need to get this video."
— Linda Burnham, Director, Women of Color Resource Center

"It is not dead presidents but the faces of immigrant workers that should appear on our currency notes. This film is a vivid portrait of global capital's great inhumanity "and the even greater strength and resilience of the workers who struggle under it."
— Amitava Kumar, author of Passport Photos

"Uprooted is an extremely timely and important video that makes the devastating effects of globalization accessible, understandable, and emotionally moving through the personal stories of sojourners whose lives have been directly impacted. Uprooted is a great educational tool to help non-immigrants make a human connection with the refugees of the global economy."
— Scot Nakagawa, Highlander Center, Knoxville, TN

"These beautifully filmed and movingly told stories of lives uprooted by corporate globalization make real and undeniable the personal price that ordinary people in Asia and Latin America pay for the debts that their governments incur in the misnomer called Free trade."All Americans should view this video and think about our silent complicity in condoning and sustaining this immense global human tragedy so that we, who live in the belly of the beast, can enjoy our extravagant lifestyle and wasteful consumption. Great material for high school and college classroom use and community programs, not to mention the corporate boardrooms!"
— Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor and Chair, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder

"The global economy is creating a single reality, and this video shows whose backs it rests on: people of color, working people, and people from the global South. Uprooted is going to be an immensely valuable tool for organizers, popular educators, and anyone who is trying to awaken this country to the world inside and outside it."
— Mike Prokosh, United for a Fair Economy, Boston, MA

"Through the voices and experiences of immigrants to the United States, Uprooted explains where the people go"when the global economy forces them from their homelands"he voices of immigrants are featured as opposed to academic Experts" on globalization. These are the folks that should have a say in how global policy is set! They know how globalization can steal jobs and resources to the profit of multinational corporations. Grrrrrr."
— Stacy Kono, Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, Oakland,