In the winter of 2003, as the US was building up to attack Iraq, people around the world responded with a series of the largest protests in history. In San Francisco, the response was a mass uprising orchestrated by Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) that shut down the financial district the morning after the war started. But neither the uprising nor DASW outlasted the occupation.

A new documentary, Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of DASW, features interviews with DASW participants, laying out some of the success stories of the March 20th action as well as digging into some of the difficulties of DASW's organizing model. According to one of the filmmakers, "We made Shutdown to give strength and hope to ourselves as organizers as we fight this incredibly hard fight for justice, and we hope it can in fact be useful."

Shutdown screens on August 22nd at San Francisco's ATA along with five shorts about oil, war and organizing, and a presentation by a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Details