Convincing U.S. Rep Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, to star in a documentary was almost as challenging as getting a massive infrastructure bill hashed out in Washginton, D.C.
But Oakland filmmaker Abby Ginzberg specializes in persistence and persuasion, and doesn’t mind being a pest when it’s warranted.
Given that the Peabody Award-winning director is also a constituent in Lee’s 13th district — representing Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, Piedmont and San Leandro — she knows full well of Lee’s tenacity and integrity, and the fact that she has inspired other women of color to run for office. And that fueled Ginzberg’s insistence in getting the film made.
She refused to go away, popping up at events and rallies that Lee attended while making her presence and intentions known to Lee’s staff who might help further the idea along.
“She would not take no for an answer,” Lee recalls with a chuckle, wedging in a phone interview during one of her long days on Capitol Hill. “Somehow I stumbled into it because she made me do it.”
Ginzberg’s determination paid off. “Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power,” a documentary that provides insight into the politician, the person and the role model, opens Friday at the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley and the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, and will also be available for streaming that day on iTunes, Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, among other platforms.
The documentary heralds Lee’s principle-driven voting record and her maverick moments, including the potentially career-ending lone vote in 2001 to oppose granting broad war powers to the president in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — a “no” vote that triggered death threats against her — along with her steely conviction on brokering the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2003 and which has since provided more than $90 billion to combat HIV/AIDS worldwide.
The film features insights from the late civil rights icon John Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, CNN’s Van Jones and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), along with family members and other notables.
In addition, Lee’s personal story of resiliency gets explored in a respectful manner, from her early years in racially segregated El Paso, Texas, to her life as a single mom of two boys and survivor of domestic abuse. Lee recalls how being on food stamps helped her and also how her education from Mills College in Oakland ushered her onto a path of career-defining volunteerism with Shirley Chisolm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, and then to a job with her other mentor Ron Dellums, the late U.S. rep and former Oakland mayor.
Lee says she was mostly reluctant about doing the documentary because she values her privacy.
“I knew in many ways this was going to get into my personal and private life, so I kept running from that knowing that ‘Oh God, 2 percent of my privacy was going to be invaded,’” she said. “But I knew that (Ginzberg) had a lot of integrity; that she would respect the parameters.”
But Lee didn’t always make it easy for the filmmaker.
“We had to drag her into some of those scenes,” Ginzberg recalls.
But an agreement to not “go beyond the four corners” of Lee’s 2008 book “Renegade for Peace and Justice: Congresswoman Barbara Lee Speaks for Me” imbued confidence and trust.
“Her autobiography was a little bit more broad than it might have been, if it would have been totally up to Barbara, and that gave me enough wiggle room that I thought I could tell an honest and important story,” Ginzberg said.
What comes into sharp focus in Ginzberg’s documentary is Lee’s commitment to listening to her constituents and then taking action with their requests.
During the interview, Lee recalls attending a Berkeley town meeting in the ‘90s and hearing from a speaker about the need for a national registry of people with benign tumors. Lee took that back to D.C., asked her staff to research the heck out of it, and then introduced legislation — HR 239, Benign Brain Tumor Bill — to create such a registry. It was signed into law in 2002.
“She listened and she acted,” Ginzberg said. “And that’s what led me to make this movie. We just don’t have enough people like that in Congress.”
So what’s her secret to gaining respect from from both sides of the political aisle and navigating today’s ever-more more divisive climate?
“One of the things that I learned early on is I don’t call anyone my enemy,” said the 75-year-old. “They’re my adversaries. We may disagree (but) they’re not my enemy. I start there. Secondly, we’re human beings. You can’t forget that. I worked with Ron Dellums, our beloved, for many years, and he said ‘Never hit below the belt.’ You debate ideas and principles but don’t hit below the belt. Don’t use personal attacks in trying to get your agenda passed.”
That can be challenging at times, Lee said, recalling how she almost quit Chisholm’s presidential campaign in 1972 when Chisholm visited racist Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace in the hospital after he was shot and almost killed.
“She said: ‘Look, you never really know. I may be able to convince him of something and we have to remember that we have to be able to relate to people’s common humanity. … The man’s been shot and the right thing to do is to visit him in the hospital.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”
But that and finding common ground when approaching an issue from a progressive agenda does work, she said. Dellums taught her that.
“If you start out in the middle, if you start out as moderate or a liberal as a Black woman, you’re never going to get anything accomplished. But if you start at the far left and you’re dealing with the far right, you have a lot of play — you can go a lot of way to reach common ground.”