Special Screening of Restrepo

The Common Good presented an exclusive screening of the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury award-winning documentary, Restrepo. This powerful documentary chronicles the one-year deployment of a platoon of American soldiers at one of the most dangerous outposts in Afghanistan. Featuring a Q&A session with directors, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, and moderated by ABC news host, Cynthia McFadden, the evening was a rousing success.

From June 2007 to July 2008, Hetherington and Junger followed the soldiers of Second Platoon, Battle Company in the remote Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, as they fought to build and maintain a remote 15-man outpost named “Restrepo,” after a platoon medic who was killed in action. The filmmakers avoid all outside commentary and political context in order to present us with war as it is actually lived by soldiers, through their own eyes and in their own words—the backbreaking labor, the deadly firefights, the boredom, and the camaraderie.

Sebastian Junger is an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated director, war journalist and best-selling author. He has written The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, and Fire. Junger is acclaimed for his coverage of major international news stories across the world, including in Sierra Leone and Liberia. He has contributed as an editor to Vanity Fair and ABC News with his captivating reporting, and has received many awards for his endeavors, including the National Magazine Award and the SAIS Novartis Prize for Journalism. His debut as an author proved to be successful—The Perfect Storm remained on The New York Times best-seller list for more than three years, set sales records, and was picked up by Warner Bros. for a major motion picture.

Tim Hetherington, a photographer and filmmaker, spoke to the Common Good in 2010. Sadly, he was killed while covering the escalating violence in Misrata, Libya at age 40 on April 20th, 2011. At the time of his death, he was working along side three other photographers on the city’s front lines when they came under fire.

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The Primaries and the Presidential Election

The Common Good hosted a lunch panel of expert to discuss the primaries and the presidential election. This panel consisted of: Jonathan Alter, Kellyanne Conway, Mark J. Green, Joel Benson and was moderated by Cynthia McFadden. This program was convened by William Hubbard, Chairman and President of Center Development Corporation, and underwritten with the generosity of Peter Worth.

Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist and television analyst from Chicago.For a decade in the 1980s, Alter was Newsweek’s media critic, where he was among the first in the mainstream media to break tradition and hold other news organizations accountable for their coverage, a precursor to the role later played by blogs. In total, he spent 28 years at Newsweek, where he was a longtime senior editor and wrote hundreds of columns and features on a wide variety of subjects. He is also an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. His 2010 book, “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” was #4 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List and was one of the Times’ “Notable Books” of the year. “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope,” published in 2006 was also a bestseller.

Kellyanne Conway is an American pollster, political consultant, and pundit. Previously she held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party and was former president and CEO of The Polling Company, Inc./Woman Trend. In 2016, she was appointed as Trump’s campaign manager and now serves as a counselor in his presidential administration. Within polling, Conway is one of the most quoted and noted pollsters on the national scene, having provided commentary on over 1,200 television shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, HBO, Comedy Central, MTV and the Fox News Channel, and numerous radio shows and print stories. Throughout her two decades in market research, Conway has provided primary research and advice for clients in 46 of the 50 states and has directed hundreds of demographic and attitudinal survey projects for statewide and congressional political races, trade associations, and Fortune 100 companies.

Mark Green was a public interest lawyer, working with Ralph Nader from 1970 to 1980, ultimately as director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. He founded and ran The Democracy Project in NYC from 1981 to 2014. Green served for 11 years in citywide offices, first as the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs under Mayor David Dinkins (1990 to 1993); then as the twice-elected Public Advocate (1993 and 1997), before narrowly losing the mayorality to Michael Bloomberg in 2001. (3)

Joel Benenson is the founder and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group, and the only Democratic pollster in history to have played a leading role in three winning presidential campaigns. Joel has been the chief pollster, chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, a senior strategist for President Barack Obama beginning with his 2008 campaign, and worked on President Bill Clinton’s polling team during the 1996 race.oel’s corporate clients have included CEOs and top executives at Campbell Soup Company, HBO, Toyota, the NFL, Procter & Gamble, Panera Bread Co., Hearst, Blue Star Energy, and MSNBC. In the advocacy and nonprofit sector, he has worked with leading institutions including AARP, League of Conservation Voters, SEIU, Clean Energy Works and Grocery Manufacturers of America.

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(3) Material from the Bright Infinite Future website.