About this project

We want to make a web series about our campaign for Community Environmental Rights and a Natural Gas Drilling Ban. We've already started shooting interviews, music videos, campaign events, students, citizens and our community as we begin to weave together a narrative with the series. We plan on making at least seven episodes over the course of the campaign as it unfolds through January in State College and elsewhere, averaging about three to five minuets long.  The more funds we have, the bigger and better they get. We are working very hard to make change happen, and we need to be able to get a group together who can dedicate themselves to filmmaking. If we are going to be able to complete this project and get out story out to the world, we need your help to fund it. 

We need money to buy our own camera equipment, so we don't have to keep borrowing it from people. We need money to get dedicated editors and film makers to put some time into finishing each episode, so we amateurs can spend some time out of the editing room. And we need money to make DVDs, cover travel when we go to interview people outside of State College and promote our show to the world; all so we can achieve the goal of the series. If we can make the Groundswell Series, we think we can promote positive and creative change in State College, and beyond. 

So, what exactly is this campaign we want to film? Here's an excerpt from a recent press release: 

We are the first people to successfully put a charter amendment on the ballot in State College since it became a Home-Rule community forty years ago. And our borough, together with three other communities, will now host the first popular vote on Environmental Rights in the world. There is no doubt, history is being made in State College. 

If passed, a Community Environmental Bill of Rights and Natural Gas Drilling Ban will mark a dramatic turning point in the operations, governance, scope and sovereignty of the Borough of State College. By recognizing the environment as something other than just property, Environmental Rights alter the legal perception of our environment in a way that has remained unchanged in the history of Western Civilization, until now. Local Rights, like the right to Local Self-Government, alter the role of a local government in America from a tertiary role behind the state, to a Primary Democratic Institution, capable of empowering its citizens to make decisions about what can and cannot happen within the boundaries of their community. Finally, we will ban the commercial extraction of Natural Gas within the borough; a preemptive and proactive measure, designed to ensure urban drilling cannot occur in the Utica Shale under State College and meant as a powerful demonstration of the kind of decisions our community is now capable of making. 

We are one part of a movement of people who are taking democracy into their own hands and out of the hands of corporations and broken politics. Though we are only going to use the money from Kickstarter to create our webseries, we think it is important that you understand the topic of that series; our passion. American Democracy needs to be reinvigorated, and we think Community Rights are the way to do that. Our relationship with our environment is broken, and we believe Environmental Rights, like the right of clean water, clean air and healthy ecosystems, are a way to begin healing that relationship. Finally, Natural Gas Drilling is happening too fast, and is potentially too dangerous for anyone to say it's safe or will be good for the places that get drilled in the long run.

You can be a part of this too. Every dollar we get will go into making a web series that anyone can watch, anywhere in the world. Webisodes are quick and entertaining, and we think just the right medium to follow us along this campaign. Only with your help can this series happen.