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Agents of Change
Agents of Change looks at a pivotal moment when our nation was caught at the intersection of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Anti-Vietnam War Movements. The film examines the racial conditions on college campuses across the U.S., focusing on two seminal protests: San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969. At San Francisco State, students and their supporters which included faculty and the increasingly influential Black Panther Party, launched the longest student strike in U.S. history. In addition to demanding curricular changes, the students, who yearned to learn about themselves and their history, demanded increased minority student recruitment and retention, and the hiring of minority faculty. Student activists demonstrated and faced brutal police assaults and massive arrests unleashed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. Struggling for themselves and the generations of students to come, Black, Latino and Asian student groups worked together to form the Third World Liberation Front. Their efforts birthed the first College of Ethnic Studies in the nation and ignited similar actions across the country. Told through the voices of past student activists and organizers, Agents of Change unfolds with rich archival footage, compelling interviews, and a dynamic soundtrack. Today, nearly half a century later, many of the same demands are surfacing in campus protests across the country, revealing the present intersections Americans find themselves.
