my work revolves around creativity and
how we can use stories to create change
and that’s something that has come into
my life both as a filmmaker and as a
poet and ironically I sort of find a lot
of poetry in filmmaking um so they’re
sort of they sort of work together and
talk to each other but anytime we want
to tackle a problem with creativity the
first thing usually is to identify what
is the problem what’s the problem that
we think we can challenge using the
power of stories and storytelling so as
many people in this room have have
talked about earlier today bullying is
something that certainly when I was
growing up and when I was in Middle
School it was considered a rite of
passage people would say oh it’s just
kids being kids it’s just a normal part
of growing up for so long it was
something that was so ubiquitous such a
part of our culture in our schools in
our communities that it was practically
invisible that began to change in the
spring of 2009 there were several cases
where young people had taken their own
lives and finally people were starting
to put a connection between the fact
that they had harmed themselves and they
had been bullied for years in their
schools for the first time people were
saying wait a minute maybe this isn’t
normal maybe bullying is not something
that is an acceptable part of our
culture’s in our schools and communities
maybe there’s a problem here so that was
that was the moment where director Lee
Hirsch and I teamed up and we decided to
say you know what we have these tools
we’re both filmmakers we’re storytellers
how can we use our tools to address this
problem that we see so we decided that
we would spend one year in the
life of bullying in America and that we
would take the opportunity to witness
and to make visible what bullying looks
like from kids families and educators
who are on the front lines of either
experiencing it every day of working in
schools and seeing it of not knowing
what to do when you witness it families
who had been affected by it in many many
different ways and young people who had
been deeply affected by it and we
thought that if we can show what
bullying looks like maybe we can
challenge this idea that it’s a normal
part of growing up maybe if we can make
this thing visible that was all around
us and yet in this way was invisible and
often overlooked maybe we could show
different possibilities for our lives so
we set out we met dozens of families and
what ended up happening was that we had
five stories of kids and families who
are in the film one person who we met
really early on was Kelby and kalbi had
come out as gay in their town in
Oklahoma and had been brutally bullied
brutally ostracized in school in the
faith community the entire family was
targeted and Calvin’s parents said you
know what look we can leave we don’t
have to stay here you don’t have to take
on this entire town and kalbi said what
happens if I leave to the next person
who comes up after me I want to make a
path for that person who may not have
the support of their family who may not
have a few friends who they can lean on
so we witness kelby’s year staying in
the town and challenging the bullying
and ignorance that they were facing
David and Tina long we met in the fall
of the school year and we met them
shortly after their son Tyler had taken
his own life Tyler had been bullied
since kindergarten the family had gone
to the school numerous times over the
years and we’re unable to get any kind
of intervention and shortly after
Tyler’s death they decided to bring
their community together
held town hall meeting and they said you
know if we’re dealing with this so
intimately with our family there must be
other people in our town and community
who are also going through this and so
we watched as they brought together
their town and really illuminated what
was happening not just to their family
but many other families in their
community in Georgia jamiah was in the
situation a lot of us have Benin where
she had transferred to her school in
September to a new school and she was
the new girl and having had that
experience myself I’m sure many people
in this room have had that experience
being the new girl is really tough and
she had a really long bus ride 45
minutes each way and on that bus she was
picked on and she decided that she would
scare off the kids who were picking on
her and she went into her mom’s closet
she found her mom’s gun and she brought
it on the school bus fortunately she was
tackled by another student before anyone
was hurt but she was facing very serious
charges and it was only after she had
taken this action that people started to
to say we’ll wait a minute people mainly
us filmmakers the story in the news is
very different but it is filmmakers and
people who were looking at this at what
was happening with young people in
schools we said well there’s got to be
something going on here and as it turned
out in fact jamaya had been being picked
on on that bus I was hoping to scare off
those people who have been tormenting
her so we spent that year with her as
her family waited to find out if she
would be tried as an adult and
potentially face many many years in
prison or if she would be kept in a
juvenile facility and have some other
form of punishment Kirk and Laura
Smalley we also met shortly after their
own son had taken his life and something
that happened almost immediately with
them is that they created this
organization stand for the silent and it
became enormous they traveled all over
the world they travel to schools they
travel
of two communities across the United
States internationally and they spoke
out against bullying and they told their
own story and they hoped that through
telling their own story they would
prevent other parents and families from
going through the kind of pain that they
were experiencing Alex for those of you
who have seen the film know that we
spent a lot of time with Alex and Alex
was a seventh grader in Sioux City Iowa
and it was really through Alex that we
got to see I think most intimately the
ways in which bullying has an impact not
only on your life at school on the
school bus but how hard it is for
families to deal with it for parents to
deal with it for parents to know what to
do for educators to know what to do when
they don’t have the tools or resources
and it was also through Alex and Alex’s
courage that we were able to show what
bullying looks like Alex have been
bullied on his school bus every day I
mean we wrote the book the bus with him
starting on the first day of school and
on the first day of school he got
punched on that bus and the violence on
the bus only continued to escalate over
the course of the year and so we knew
after this year that we we could show
how how immensely families and
communities were being affected by this
we were also able to show how many
people’s lives each and every person who
participated in the film and who
partnered with us in making this film
everyone was transformed by their
experiences with bullying to being
people who were voices for change so we
finished the film and we’re really
excited to get it out there and the next
the next part in this you know sort of
mission we’re on to to see if we can
effect change with these stories is two
to get people to see the film right we
want to we’ve now made bullying visible
we want people to be able to see it
there was a problem we were shocked when
bully was given an R rating from the
motion picture association of america
why was that a problem it’s a problem
because we mainly wanted young people
people who were going through these
kinds of experiences to see the film and
so the film in our reigning was a really
big problem I got an R rating for
several uses of the f-word mainly which
was being used by young people who are
like under 13 and those words are in the
film because it’s really a part of the
picture bullying it’s a part of what
bullying sounds like so another person
who was shocked by the fact that bully
was given our rating was a high school
student named Katie Butler and Katie
Butler created a petition to ask the
mpaa to lower the rating of bully from
PG cert from our to PG 13 and she got
over 200,000 signatures and succeeded
the mpaa eventually gave the film a
pg-13 rating um and it came out and we
were able to share it with as broad
audiences as we wanted to the thing I
was interesting about the people who
were signing these signatures a lot of
them were young people and a lot of
those young people were saying these are
our stories this is what our experiences
are looking like and we want these
experiences to be seen we want our
voices to be heard we want people to
know what’s going on in our schools on
our school buses at the bus stop so that
maybe we can do something about it so we
also were hoping that if we could get
enough of a ground swell that we could
really do something about this and so we
created something called the bully
project and it was a partnership with a
lot of different organizations brands
Justin Bieber I think song for it um we
had educators young people just like
sort of anyone who we could find who
wanted to be on like the bully project
prevent bullying bus we were like get on
the bus we can all do our part we can
all contribute to this in different ways
so one of the things that we did was we
did a camp part of the campaign was 1
million kids to see bullying and when we
originally proposed this people were
like oh you’re crazy you’re never going
to get a million kids to see bully
we created this thing we’re free of cost
kids could see the film in theaters with
their educators and go back to class and
then have a really meaningful do really
meaningful work around bullying around
what they had seen and around how it
connected to their own experiences in
schools so even though originally we
were told whoops we’re crazy for wanting
to have 1 million kids we reached over
3.8 million kids as was mentioned in the
introduction we also took bully to the
White House because something else that
was really important to us was that we
affect change through policy and that we
find a way to really reach leaders in
our towns in our schools something that
that we’ve learned from being in a
school environment is that so much of
the leadership sets the tone and that
when you have a leadership that really
values compassion empathy kindness that
those are values that really get into
the whole community and so we knew we
wanted policymakers in leadership in
this country to really take this issue
seriously so we had a screening at the
White House and as you can see a lot of
people from the film came and it was
really fun Valerie Jarrett announced at
that screening President Obama’s support
of the Safe Schools Improvement Act
which would provide protections for LGBT
students from bullying so we had a lot
of kind of different approaches that we
took to bullying and a lot of different
approaches that we took to making it
visible so some of the things that we
did we had it we played it a played in
cities all over the world all over the
United States we had tons and tons of
community screenings where we brought
out leaders in the community educators
in the community parents kids and would
have public screenings and then have
opportunities for all of these people to
talk to each other and say look here’s
what’s going on in our town and this is
what we need to do about it again we had
3.8 million kids who are reached
through the million kids to see bully
and we also created an educators viewing
guide which has been downloaded
thousands and thousands of times one of
the great successes when we’re sort of
so we feel like we kind of were able to
UM implement our plan which was to get
lots of people to see the film and then
it was a question of all right this
original thing that bullying was a
normal rite of passage the bullying was
something that we were just supposed to
get through in our schools get through
in our adolescence did that change so I
think that it changed in a few different
ways one is that right now every single
state in this country either has
bullying laws bullying policies or
bullying laws and policies um no longer
is bullying something that that isn’t
talked about and southpark kind of
gently lampooned the film which we
thought was like a good a good thing you
know it’s like getting out there even
South Park is like thinking and talking
about bullying so we took that as like a
thank you um Alex himself who you saw a
few slides back who was in the film and
who was who was so invisible for so long
in his school the administrators would
not give him help it took a long time
for him to even get his parents to see
what he was going through Alex was
somebody who had really been written off
in a lot of ways by his school alex has
since become an outspoken advocate on
bullying on his experiences on bullying
prevention he’s somebody who’s out there
speaking out against pure abuse and
really sharing his own experiences and
that has become a way in which his voice
has been amplified in a way that I think
when we met him that first day of
seventh grade when he was sitting on
this bench outside of his school kind of
looking like he just wanted to be
invisible he just wanted to fly under
the radar for as long as possible so
that he wouldn’t
attention to himself and thereby bring
bullying upon himself this is a totally
different Alex and the Alex this alex is
also being met with a kind of support
people are like cheering him that I
think was really hard to imagine also on
that first day of seventh grade when we
met him um finally in thinking about
bullying I’m having may be gone from
something that’s not just totally normal
but to something that we all know to
recognize and call out last year the
word upstander was added to the
dictionary thanks to a petition from
some students in New Jersey and I think
again this speaks to something that when
we set out to make the film we hoped
that we could find ways to share new
possibilities the fact that upstander is
now part of our dictionary part of our
language I think shows that there are
other possibilities and a lot of people
are embracing that something that people
said to me over and over and over again
when i started this film was why are you
making a film by bullying there will
always be bullying what’s the point
you’re never going to change it you’re
never going to be able to do anything
about this it’s human nature the human
nature thing is something that people
said to me all the time I think if
there’s one thing that I learned in the
process of making this film is that when
it comes to bullying it’s about the
choices that we make every day when we
get out of bed and every day we have the
opportunity to make a choice to treat
others with kindness compassion to
respectfully disagree to have meaningful
discourse or we can treat people with
cruelty we all have the opportunity to
be upstanders thank you