Documentary Reviews: “Guest House”, “John Mendez: The Bridge”, and “Faith in Action”

Seat­tle’s annu­al Social Jus­tice Film Fes­ti­val was held about a month ago, from Octo­ber 3rd to 12th, and had the theme of “Courage.” On Fri­day, Octo­ber 4th, they showed the fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary “Guest House” and two shorts, “John Mendez: The Bridge” and “Faith in Action,” fol­lowed by a short pan­el discussion.

Screened first were the two shorts.

John Mendez does street out­reach to peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness in Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Mary­land. The film bear­ing his name fol­lows him as he meets with peo­ple, giv­ing out food and socks in all weath­er, includ­ing snow.

Mendez is a vet­er­an of the Unit­ed States Marines.

He served in Africa while the Rwan­dan geno­cide was hap­pen­ing, but troops were nev­er deployed to Rwan­da to do any­thing to stop the slaugh­ter. Today, wit­ness­ing the short­er lifes­pans of peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness, he sees the apa­thy towards home­less­ness as a slow geno­cide unfold­ing before our eyes.

Mendez also talks about the need to change peo­ple’s ideas and under­stand­ings about home­less­ness, to get peo­ple to real­ize that “it does­n’t need to be that way.” Home­less­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the large scale we are see­ing it in the U.S. today, is not inevitable, and in fact it is only since sev­er­al pol­i­cy and fund­ing deci­sions dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion that home­less­ness became the every­day occur­rence it is today. Bad pub­lic pol­i­cy cre­at­ed home­less­ness, and good pub­lic pol­i­cy can solve it.

“Either you are choos­ing to gov­ern prop­er­ly and end home­less­ness, or you’re not,” says Mendez.

The sec­ond short film shown was “Faith in Action,” about events host­ed by var­i­ous church­es and reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in the Atlanta area, in part­ner­ship with the Ful­ton Coun­ty gov­ern­ment, to help peo­ple expunge crim­i­nal records that are hold­ing them back.

Crim­i­nal records, even just hav­ing arrests on your record not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­vic­tions, can make it hard for peo­ple to secure employ­ment and hous­ing. Near­ly one in three Amer­i­cans has a crim­i­nal record, and the state of Geor­gia has one of the high­est rates of incarceration.

“When we should have invest­ed in peo­ple, we invest­ed in pris­ons,” says the Rev­erend of Ebenez­er Bap­tist Church, best-known as the home church of Rev­erend Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.

“The ten­ta­cles of mass incar­cer­a­tion are stran­gling our community.”

The church has pro­vid­ed space for the expunge­ment events.

It is “mak­ing grace real and lit­er­al­ly chang­ing lives,” says the cur­rent Reverend.

He says their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the events is part of the “spir­i­tu­al lin­eage of Mar­tin Luther King that ties faith to free­dom fighting.”

These expunge­ment events allow peo­ple to com­plete a process that nor­mal­ly takes 120 days in just a few hours. Expung­ing records for peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions that qual­i­fy reduces recidi­vism by reduc­ing barriers.

Stud­ies in states that allow such expunge­ment have proven as much.

Also involved in the events are The Tem­ple, a Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tion. The rab­bi quotes the Torah, “Jus­tice, jus­tice shall you pur­sue.” He notes how this state­ment makes clear that jus­tice does­n’t just hap­pen, “we have to make it happen.”

After watch­ing these two short films, the fea­ture-length “Guest House” delved deeply into the sub­ject of addic­tion recov­ery and rein­te­gra­tion after incar­cer­a­tion. Guest House is actu­al­ly the name of a pro­gram for women in the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area, and the film pro­files three women who are in the res­i­den­tial pro­gram and work­ing hard to get their lives mov­ing in a new direction.

Guest House is actu­al­ly just the first phase of the six-month pro­gram. Res­i­dents spend about two months at Guest House, then four months at Sheffield, an apart­ment build­ing where they live more inde­pen­dent­ly with room­mates from the pro­gram. After Sheffield, there is also an option­al eigh­teen month fol­low-up program.

They serve about two hun­dred women per year, and demand for the pro­gram is so high that they turn away over fif­teen women for every­one they enroll in the pro­gram. Their pro­gram mod­el is high­ly suc­cess­ful, with only a ten per­cent recidi­vism rate among their clients.

While in the pro­gram, the women go to recov­ery class­es every­day, which often assign home­work for women to fur­ther explore their addic­tions. They also have class­es at the house, such as yoga, knit­ting, and self-defense.

One of the res­i­dents fea­tured in the film is a young woman named Grace. She became addict­ed to opi­ates after she sus­tained nerve dam­age in her hand and was pre­scribed painkillers after surgery. While at Guest House, she talks about need­ing to find a job that pays enough to actu­al­ly cov­er all of her expenses.

In the past when she has got­ten clean, she has strug­gled to get work that pays enough, lead­ing her to start sell­ing drugs to make ends meet, and then she has start­ed using drugs again.

Anoth­er res­i­dent fea­tured in the film is Maddison.

She dis­cussed how being in jail is not ben­e­fi­cial, in terms of mak­ing life bet­ter, oth­er than detox­ing off drugs while there.

Mad­di­son was aban­doned by her par­ents at age nine, her adop­tive fam­i­ly was abu­sive and she found her birth moth­er again at eigteen. Her moth­er used drugs, and Mad­di­son start­ed using with her.

Guest House helps women to con­nect to employ­ment and edu­ca­tion, in addi­tion to their oth­er pro­gram­ming. The clin­i­cal direc­tor talks about how their pro­gram empha­sizes love and accep­tance, along with account­abil­i­ty. Res­i­dents need to feel like they are in a safe enough space to unpack their emo­tions, past trau­mas, and face things. Grace dis­cuss­es how she is get­ting used to feel­ing emo­tion­al pain, some­thing in the past that she always numbed with drugs.

Grace and Mad­di­son both found jobs and moved to Sheffield, then after com­plet­ing the pro­gram, they moved togeth­er into an after-care facility.

Pro­grams like Guest House prove that peo­ple can be suc­cess­ful in addic­tion recov­ery and re-entry to com­mu­ni­ty after incarceration.

Guest House — the film — is cur­rent­ly on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit and also being shown at oth­er re-entry pro­grams, said Han­nah Dweck, one of the direc­tors of the film, at a pan­el dis­cus­sion after the film. Dweck said when they have shown the films at oth­er pro­grams, peo­ple have said they see them­selves in the sto­ries being told, and it makes them feel like they aren’t alone and that they are seen.

The pan­el was mod­er­ate by Mar­cy Bow­ers, Direc­tor of the Statewide Pol­i­cy Action Net­work at Sol­id Ground, one of the spon­sors of the fes­ti­val. Along with Dweck, oth­er pan­elists were Mike Kuba, direc­tor of “John Mendez: The Bridge,” Tim Har­ris of Real Change News, and a vol­un­teer from Books to Pris­on­ers.

Bow­ers asked Har­ris about his thoughts and insights on the con­nec­tions between incar­cer­a­tion and home­less­ness. Har­ris not­ed that the tra­jec­to­ries of mass incar­cer­a­tion and home­less­ness are sim­i­lar, with rates being low in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, then grow­ing in tan­dem since then.

Now, about one in one hun­dred Amer­i­cans expe­ri­ence home­less­ness, while the same ratio of Amer­i­cans are cur­rent­ly incar­cer­at­ed. Both home­less­ness and mass incar­cer­a­tion are embed­ded in insti­tu­tion­al racism and inequal­i­ty, Har­ris not­ed. While that may make the prob­lems seem insur­mount­able, the films just viewed show that peo­ple can make a dif­fer­ence, he said.

“Guest House” does­n’t have any more screen­ings sched­uled after Octo­ber, but groups inter­est­ed in host­ing a screen­ing can get infor­ma­tion on the film’s web­site.

“John Mendez: The Bridge” is avail­able to watch for free on Vimeo.

“Faith in Action” can also be viewed on Vimeo, and there is also a web­site for the expunge­ment cam­paign that includes a toolk­it for peo­ple that are inter­est­ed in plan­ning an event in their community