A reader writes, “Katie Dean from Wired went to one of the 100 (!) screenings of ‘Eyes on the Prize’ yesterday, organized as part of downhillbattle.org’s ‘Eyes on the Screen’ campaign.”
Civil rights activists and copyright reformers convened for a screening of the first installment of the landmark documentary Eyes on the Prize Tuesday night to send the message that it is “morally wrong” to deny people access to information and history.
Many of the 30 people (a handful of reporters among them) who crowded into attorney Don Jelinek’s living room here worked in Mississippi and Alabama during the civil rights movement themselves — registering black voters, staging sit-ins and marching, as well as getting harassed, shot at and jailed. These members of Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement meet monthly and decided to screen an illegal digital copy of the film when they learned that it was currently unavailable for broadcast or on DVD.