Warning: Spoiler Alert
The independent movie “Green & Golden,” featuring Craig T. Nelson, is about the struggles of a family farm in Wisconsin in the 1990s.
As the owner of a small labor publication, I found myself crying when I watched it at the Three Rivers Film Festival last November. The film is now available on Amazon Prime, and anyone involved in community organizing should go see it.
The film, set in 1993, is based on the writings of Wendell Berry and focuses on a 4th-generation dairy farmer played by Craig T. Nelson, who refuses to adopt the techniques of industrial agriculture. Instead, he relies on tending the land using horses and labor-intensive methods that he believes maintain the land's richness.
The bankers, who are threatening to foreclose, repeatedly chide him for operating his land in a 19th-century manner. Many of his neighbors go into foreclosure as the 1990s Wisconsin landscape becomes dominated by corporate factory farms.
His granddaughter hates the farm and wakes up the other residents each morning by trying to shoot out a light post. She has set up a recording studio in the barn and dreams of moving away and becoming a songwriter. Her grandfather resists her demands to modernize, holding a fist full of dirt, saying that all they have is the land.
One day, a banker shows up and informs Nelson that they are going to foreclose on his farm. The banker laughs and says to Nelson that he has as good a chance of saving his farm as the Packers have of winning the Super Bowl.
Nelson offers a bet to the banker that if the Packers win the Super Bowl, his family can keep their family farm. The banker laughs and takes the bet.
The Packers, the only community-owned, for-profit sports team in all of sports, have a loyal following in rural Wisconsin. At first, it looks pretty bleak as the Packers drop their first three of four games and Nelson becomes depressed, realizing that he is going to lose the farm that his family has run for four generations.
Then, under the leadership of Brett Favre, the Packers won their next 6 out of 7 games. Each game seems like an act of deliverance as family and friends gather to watch the Packers after church. Even the pastor gives them tailgate tickets and offers prayers that the Packers win so they can keep their farm.
The Packers compiled a 9-7 record and made an unexpected playoff run, advancing to the NFC Division Championship Game.
Sadly, the Packers lost to the Dallas Cowboys by 27-17. His granddaughter goes on a local radio station, talks about how the family is gonna lose the farm now that the Packers lost, and sings a song about the decline of the family farm
That night, an unknown car shows up in the middle of the night. Fearing that someone is dropping off a foreclosure notice, Nelson opens the mailbox with dread. Then, he discovers it's a check for $150 with the phrase “Go Pack” written on the front.
Soon, other cars show up, dropping off checks as people pass by and shout “Go Pack.” The scene in many ways evokes the ending of Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life when friends and neighbors show up with baskets of money to save Jimmy Stewart’s community bank from financial ruin.
I started crying at the end, thinking about my own publication, Payday Report, which has been in business for 9 years and has published 1400 articles.
At a time when the corporate media system is shifting towards TikTok influencers, with fewer people reading articles, I’ve tried to stick to traditional methods of investigative labor reporting, going out and talking to people. Going out and talking to people is something that the corporate media no longer does.
Much like in the movie, somehow people keep showing up with checks and messages like "Solidarity," cheering on my small labor publication.
At a time when the forces of corporate power seem so overwhelming in America, we need films like “Green and Gold" to remind us that the power of community can help us overcome the power of profits.
