FANZINE: Although many of the historical figures referenced in the film are unassailable––at least from the perspective of someone whose politics are to the left––you include a number of people whose stories may be more complicated. The first memorial shown in the film, for example, is for Anne Marbury Hutchinson, who is described in stone as an "exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." But the memorial also mentions that she was killed in a Native American raid, which could alter how we understand her story. Then there are controversial people like Sacco and Vanzetti, who are included in your history alongside confirmed heroines like Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth. Was it your intent to ask us to create a kind of revisionist history for these more ambiguous figures?

JOHN GIANVITO: As the preponderance of the individuals and events are drawn from the pages of Howard Zinn's book, they comprise a wide-ranging approach to the collective theme of individuals striving to better the world around them. Whether through organization building, direct action, through their writing, or public speaking, their art or public deeds, some via pacifist methods, some pushed to militancy, these are the stories of people with a passionate commitment to addressing injustices and inequalities of various kinds.

The intention is not to necessarily endorse all tactical approaches as obviously there are contradictions to be found. More crucially it is to encourage the simple recognition that these contributions and these stories have a vital place in the recounting of our history and in our ability to grapple with where we are now. The eradication of a proper understanding of this history only fosters further alienation, and confusion about how power really works in this country.

The story of Anne Hutchinson is just one example. Without further knowledge one is left to surmise her story and contribution from the few words on her monument. This was a dilemma I wrestled with at first. Should I provide text, or voiceover, summarizing the lives of these individuals? My worry was that it might turn the film into a sort of shorthand, Cliff Notes version of A People's History. As well, I was concerned this would also give it more of a PBS-style caste, which I was clearly wanting to stay away from. While not being pedagogical, at least in the standard ways we think of the term, I felt the film might inspire one to ask oneself, why do I not know these names and events? And potentially to turn to books such as Howard Zinn's landmark work as a starting place.

Anne Hutchinson was not in fact an enemy of native peoples and was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Indians on the shores of Long Island mistook her and her family for those who had recently defrauded them of their land. Hutchinson and her family, and the 35 families who joined her, would not even have left Massachusetts had she not been officially banished on charges of heresy and challenging government authority. What was her crime? She believed that "ordinary people could interpret the Bible for themselves" and she organized regularly and expanding study groups in her home, attended largely by women though not exclusively. For a woman to assert her knowledge and capacities as equal, if not superior, to men was deemed intolerable to the elite of the time. And the one person who spoke up in Hutchinson's defense during her trial, Mary Dyer (the second monument you see in my film), was herself eventually hung on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not the typical colonial history that gets repeated in classrooms and stirs flag waving.