Knock Down the House Comes to West Virginia

Join us on Sunday, May 19 for the first public screening in West Virginia of this documentary, which won the 2019 Sundance Festival Favorite Award.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. (stop by the OVEC table!) and the program begins at 7 p.m.at the LaBelle Theatre, 313 D St, South Charleston, WV 25303. The event is free, but seating is limited. You’ll need to obtain your free ticket on Eventbrite in order to attend. You can also get your ticket here, on the Facebook event. If you use FB, please do share and invite your FB friends. 

t’s time for ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Let’s raise some hell and take our lives back.

– OVEC member Paula Jean Swearengin in Knock Down the House

I felt like we had to do something to bring change to our state, to bring the power back to our state. If we don’t, our children aren’t going to have anything here.

–  Paula, to the Beckley Register-Herald

We really hope that everyone who sees the film comes away with the sense that their voice matters in the democratic process, whatever their capacity is. Anywhere from voting to feeling called to run for office.

– Filmmaker Rachel Lears to Vanity Fair

Knock Down the House is the inspiring story of four working-class women who embraced the challenge of running for Congressional office in the 2018 midterm elections. One of them is long-time OVEC volunteer Paula Jean Swearengin. 

Paula Jean and another woman featured in the film, Amy Vilela of Nevada, will be at the event, and will take your questions after the final credits roll. Missouri’s Cori Bush is alos in the film; we are hoping to have a video-taped statement from here. You may have heard of the other woman in the film, the only one to win her campaign—Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Like all the women in the film, Paula ran without taking a single corporate donation. She’s highly supportive of the non-partisan Pro-Democracy Anti-Corruption platform of West Virginia Citizens for Clean Elections. We will do well to educate all candidates running for office in the 2020 election about the agenda and ask if they support the agenda. We will also do well to educate them and ask them about some of the issues Paula—and so many other of our members—have been working to address for so long, such as an end to mountaintop removal, protection of clean water, a just transition to a renewable energy economy, the need to erase racism, misogyny and homophobia, the need to diversify our state’s economy, and the need for all-out efforts to curb climate change.

While OVEC can and does encourage people to register and vote, and take part in the democratic process, as a 501-C-3, we neither endorse nor oppose candidates running for public office.

Help spread the word about the screening by sharing the FB event, sharing this blog, and posting this flier, below, in friendly locales: