Judith Mayer

Judith Mayer is a lecturer in the Sociology Department at Humboldt State University in California. She assigned the film in a 2014 graduate seminar called Community, Ecology and Social Action, and also shows it in undergraduate environmental planning courses. Mayer used the film to explore the topics of community organizing, urban redevelopment, and planning.

“DSNI has inspired so many,” by providing a powerful example, says Mayer. “This is a success story that does NOT avoid issues of race, or the ups and downs of collaborating with community groups with which one’s own group does not necessarily share an agenda. It’s thought-provoking for students, especially community organizing types, who tend to see everyone as either ‘ally’ or ‘enemy.’ That doesn’t get us very far in supporting long term community efforts and capacity building. And this movie is surely about capacity building across a couple of generations.”

Mayer’s students also liked the representation of the youth group opting to have lower wages on their projects in order to ensure that they could employ more people. “It seemed to be the essence of pro-social community building,” she says.

Other resource materials Mayer used with the film include its predecessor, Holding Ground, and Come Hell or High Water, a documentary by Gaining Ground filmmaker Leah Mahan about a community in coastal Mississippi settled by former slaves that was confronting urban sprawl and environmental racism when Hurricane Katrina hit.