"PAY 2 PLAY" Film at ICPL, Sunday, 1:30 p.m.

Move To Amend - East Central IA,

and Public Citizen [IA affiliate]

Present:

“PAY 2 PLAY”

Public Interest Pictures & Shoot First Inc.

Executive Producers HOLLY MOSHER & REBECCA LYNN MINKIN,

Written & Directed by JOHN ENNIS

(2014, 87 min)

WHEN: Sunday, Feb. 22, 1:30 p.m., Meeting Room A

WHERE: Iowa City Public Library, 123 Linn St.

ADMISSION: Free, donations welcome

Holly Hart of the local Move To Amend group, will talk about the important role of Iowa in the national campaign for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and related cases.

“PAY 2 PLAY”

Money in politics: The issue has been a growing concern for many years but has taken on new urgency with recent Supreme Court decisions. Has our democracy become a “Pay 2 Play” system? Filmmaker John Ennis, driven by the most basic of human motives - to make the world better for his baby girl, pieces together the cycle of pay-to-play politics that rules America and finds some solutions along his surprising journey.

The “great American” board game “Monopoly” is used as a symbol of our money culture and is a recurrent motif throughout the film. Ennis looks to find a way out from under a system where politicians reward their donors with even larger sums from the public treasury -- through contracts, tax cuts, and deregulation. When insiders control the game, how can an outsider have a voice? Inevitably he must confront the infamous Citizens United decision in which the Supreme Court, determining that money is speech and that corporations are persons, allows unlimited contributions to political ads with very few regulations. Enter the billionaire Koch brothers and their extensive and successful campaign to influence American elections. The Kochs have promised to spend nearly $1 billion influencing our elections in 2016.

Ennis journeys through high drama on the Ohio campaign trail following candidates who refuse to take big money and what enormous obstacles they face. In addition to gaining insight into the nuts & bolts mechanisms of how politics work, he also uncovers the secret history of the game Monopoly along the way, and explores the underworld of L.A. street art, all on a humorous odyssey that reveals how much of a difference one person can make.

The film moves along at a lively pace. In the process his film serves as a layman’s guidebook to taking back our democracy. Ample use is made of footage of vibrant colorful street demonstrations against various manifestations of corporate power; from Occupy Wall Street to a May Day demonstration in L.A. that unfolds a massive Monopoly Board designed to cover a whole city intersection.

Interspersed are interviews with ordinary Americans as well as commentary and analysis from a long list of well known luminaries in the social justice field: Robert Reich, Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Lessig, John Nichols, Van Jones, Marianne Williamson, Mark Crispin Miller, Thom Hartmann, Bob Edgar, Chris Hedges, and more.

COME SEE THIS IMPORTANT DOCUMENTARY and learn how YOU CAN HELP CREATE REAL DEMOCRACY IN IOWA.