Following the showing of Liberty Bound in Portsmouth on August 17, 2004, filmmaker and activist Christine Rose led an engaging discussion as she took questions from the audience. What follows is a summarized transcription from a videotape of the session.

There were numerous questions about her making of the film, and others such as: How can we be assured of an election in November? How can we get more young people involved?

She was asked whether or not she had been interrogated herself by authorities for the making of this film. She has not – yet. But it’s a question she gets at every screening and that she finds very telling of the current status of freedom and civil liberties in this country. In an interview she did, author and activist Robert Jensen told her that to a very large degree our freedoms of speech are upheld in the courts. However, she added, the problems many are experiencing are occurring before one even gets an opportunity to appear in court.

She elaborated: “The intimidation, especially when other people see it around them, causes people to self-censor and they stop talking and they stop doing. Toward the end [of the film] when I was doing the Seattle, Oakland and Sacramento filming… there was a shot of a line of police in riot gear marching toward me. Right after that shot I was assaulted and anyone that [witnessed] that would think twice about having a video camera in the street at a protest because they don’t want to be knocked down by a billy club just because they are standing there.”

Another question sought her opinion on whether or not the Bush administration had foreknowledge about the September 11th attacks. She believed that there is a lot of evidence to support that claim.

She further stated, however, that “more important than what they knew when is were they complicit in the way they reacted to it… That day we had the sympathy and the attention of the entire world. Think of the strides we could have made towards world peace if we had looked within… and said: what did we do to cause this?”

Christine continued, addressing the possible causes: “If you look at the history of the United States and their foreign policy and you look at the countries like Afghanistan and the Middle East, I think it becomes very clear. Because it’s subjugation that I certainly hope the people of this country would never stand for and that no one should have to live through. No one should have to live through things like this.”

Local longtime activist, Macy Morse, raised the issue of regime change and Kerry’s candidacy: “People keep asking me to vote for Kerry, to commit myself to voting for Kerry. And I think that if Kerry gets in office – which I don’t think he will because I think the elections might be cancelled – but if Kerry gets in office I think we will have fascism with a clean face.”

Christine had much to say on this topic. “I really don’t think there’s much difference between the Republicans and Democrats right now. I didn’t think there was much difference in 2000, there hasn’t been much difference in quite some time… you will notice some differences domestically maybe – maybe – but foreign policy won’t change…If Kerry gets in they’ll hide it better, they won’t be so arrogant about it.”

Christine continues, “I campaigned for Nader in 2000 and one of the things that I saw in 2000 was if Gore had gotten in, we would have gone along just as we had done through [the] Clinton [presidency].” No one watched all the bombings that Clinton oversaw. She believes that the whole Monica Lewinsky saga “made many people think it was just a cover up for what he was doing elsewhere – it was just a sideshow. I think they do it more subtly now but they’re still doing the same things…”

We all need to embrace Christine’s passion that “if Kerry gets in we can’t stop working. We might not be going backwards as quickly [as under the Bush regime] but we can’t stop working, because we really need a restructuring of the government, from the bottom up. The corruption has run so deep for so long that we need a complete restructuring of the government, and I don’t know how to do it, but it needs to be done. We need to take our country back.”

Lots of applause rang through the church after she finished these statements.

Christine herself became involved in politics at the age of 27 while in college. Previous to that, she spent the late 80s in the Navy, getting discharged just before Desert Storm.

Her own passion and love for this country were evident in much of her presentation. “It’s a very important time in history and we need to continue to inspire and validate each other and get out there and work.”

Many of us agree that “we have been pounded in our heads from the time we were this high that this is the best country in the world. That this is a free and wonderful society and we have all these great civil liberties….” Christine really believed that for a long time and the “reality of [the truth] hurts”. Christine wants to help create that America that she grew to love. She passionately yearns for “the ideal and beautiful freedom that every - every - being deserves.”

“People say to thank a Veteran for your freedom and I think it’s a very valid thing. But I want to add, thank an activist for your freedom, because it’s the activist throughout this nation domestically that has kept our civil liberties at the level they are at now, that has kept it from falling away even faster.”

In her film, she ended with the quote by Adolf Hitler: “What luck for rulers that men do not think.”

Tuesday’s program was a heartening example of the people of our community thinking, learning and challenging. It is a good sign for our country and for the world.