Four generations of workers in Milwaukee share their lives - their ups & downs, hopes & frustrations, as they struggle to hold onto their middle-class status.

2. SYNOPSIS
A Gen-Z restaurant manager who works 100 hours a week and has to choose between health &
car insurance. A retiree whose insurance doesn’t fully cover her MS treatment. A Millennial
mother whose welfare and Medicaid don’t cover her electric bill - cutting off the feeding tube to
her desperately sick son.
This is America in 2023. A generation ago, just showing up and working 40 hours a week
virtually assured middle-class status and access to the traditional American Dream. A living
wage at a lifetime job, a car in the driveway, a roof over your head, food on your table,
company-provided healthcare and pension. Our story, placed in the context of national policy
and economics, is told through the lives of four generations of Milwaukee workers. Their plight
mirrors those of millions across the nation.
As Americans prepare for a historic 2024 Presidential election, our three-part series examines
the choices voters will have to make. In their hands is the fate of the American Dream, which
has crumbled over the past 40 year and is today, slowly and inexorably slipping out of reach.
Sneak Peek

3. Crew
Faith Kohler
Faith Kohler is a filmmaker and visual artist who
believes that awareness is the first step towards
change. A licensed attorney and former federal
agent, Faith began filming her first feature-length
documentary, 30 Seconds Away: Breaking the Cycle,
while working in law enforcement. The film, which
premiered in the Milwaukee Film Festival in 2015,
told the story of chronic homelessness, exploring its
complexities through its relationship to the justice
system. Faith’s film work and visual art focus on
humanizing social issues and advocated for
marginalized communities and people.
John W. Miller is a global journalist and filmmaker with
two decades experience reporting from six continents
and over 40 countries. As a staff reporter and foreign
correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, he covered
elections, global trade, economics and shipping, and
multinational corporations from ArcelorMittal to
Glencore, as well as big events like the World Cup and
Tour de France. Miller has also contributed to Time,
America Magazine and NPR; he also serves as the Chief
Economic Analyst of Trade Data Monitor. He is co-
director of Moundsville, a feature documentary about a
classic American industrial town which launched on
PBS in 2020.
The
Directors
John W. Miller

4. Adam
Najberg,
Executive
Producer
Adam Najberg was a journalist for 25 years – 21 of
them at Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street
Journal as a foreign correspondent and editor in Asia,
Europe and the U.S. While at the WSJ, he worked as a
writer, director and producer on two feature-length
documentaries: The End of Wall Street and Inside the
Bernie Madoff Scandal. Also serving as executive
producer of the short film, City of Dreams, about the
Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. He has worked at
The Associated Press and has had bylines in more
than a dozen publications; including Barron’s, The
Indianapolis News, and Newsweek on Campus. He
and his teams have won multiple awards for their
work, including several South Asia Publishers’
awards, a Webby and a SABEW.
Kelsey Hubbard Rollinson,
Co-Producer
Kelsey Hubbard is an experienced TV anchor/reporter and digital broadcast
innovator with diverse experience acquired working at high profile media
organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, BBC Capital, and The
News 12 Networks. Before joining News 12 CT, Kelsey worked for BBC
Capital in New York. As a part of their global website launch, she created
and developed the 90 Second Financial Fix, an original personal finance
video series. Kelsey was also one of the first solo-anchors for The Wall
Street Journal Digital Network. Kelsey’s experience also includes working
with WABC-TV, ABC News Now, Businessweek TV, and CNNfn, among
other media outlets.

5. Colin Sytsma,
Director of Photography
& Producer
Colin Sytsma owns and operates
Wood Grain Media, a documentary
film company. A native of Milwaukee,
he worked on the Emmy-nominated
documentary, As Goes Janesville,
produced Wisconsin’s Mining
Standoff, co-directed the
documentary From Mass to the
Mountain, was a cinematographer on
Messwood and the director of
photography on When Claude Got
Shot. In 2018 he received a Brico
Forward Fund award from the
Milwaukee Film Festival to finish his
Stolen Apes film, which
subsequently won awards in Ireland
and Croatia.
Luis Zerón Rugerio,
Editor
Luis Zerón has edited series for Netflix and HBO, feature films,
documentaries, music videos, and commercials. Based in Mexico City,
he is a member of the AMAE (Spanish association of editors). Luis was
Lead Editor for the series Oscuro Deseo, the greatest release ever of a
non-English series on Netflix. He has also worked as Lead Editor and
Editor on projects like Yankee (2019) produced by Netflix and Argos,
Ingobernable 2 (2018) produced by Netflix and Argos, El Chapo (2017,
seasons 1 and 2) for Netflix and Story House, as well as Sr. Ávila (2016,
seasons 2 and 3), an International Emmy® Award-winner produced by
HBO and Lemon Films.

6. Socially Distant Productions:
SOCIALLY DISTANT PRODUCTIONS is
creating ethical, relevant and
contemporary content. We are a team
of diverse, award-winning journalists,
storytellers and artists from around
the globe. Giving a voice to diverse
communities and perspectives, our
documentary storytelling focuses on
real social issues that impact real
people - to inspire constructive
solutions.
We produce stories that resonate.
Stories that ignite positive change

7. One Nation. Two Parties. Four Generations. See The Impact.
Take an in-depth look, in three acts, at the erosion of the American middle class over
the past 40 years. This film shows the long-term impact of trickle-down economic
policies on the lives of millions of American workers. Told through the lives and
voices of generations – Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial and Gen-Z – this story is set
in Milwaukee, long an extreme microcosm of the economic patterns and outcomes
seen across the United States. It demonstrates what has changed over time, with a
look at wages, health benefits, home ownership, retirement savings and other
expectations for full-time work. And we illustrate how our characters’ struggles as
their piece of the economic pie casts a dark shadow on the future of the U.S.
economy, the middle class and The American Dream, which is becoming out of
reach to millions of workers.
A key part of our story focuses on Master Lock, long a bastion of
manufacturing in Milwaukee. Family run until the late 1970s, the lock
maker sold to larger corporate interests and offshored jobs to China and
Mexico. With a push in the early 2000s to bring manufacturing back to
America, Master Lock again became a Milwaukee industrial power. The
company was the workplace of several of our key characters, who have
been both lifted up - and slammed down - by its ups and down over the
past several decades. Master Lock announced in mid-2023 that it would
eliminate all manufacturing jobs at the Milwaukee plant and shutter the
facility in 2024, laying off our characters and showing the city’s - and
country’s - industrial slide continues. And the urgent imperative to create
new pathways to the American Dream.

8. The Baby Boomers
Meet Nancy, age 74. She still remembers buying the plot of
land where she still lives, decades after her husband bought
it and her father’s contracting company built her house. That
house symbolized her family’s arrival into the middle class.
And, with her battle against multiple sclerosis and shrinking
health insurance, it’s hard to onto that hard-won status.
Anette, 70, can you tell what it’s like as a Black woman
raised by her mother and grandmother, growing up with tight
finances, living on welfare and finding a way to propel
yourself into the middle class. But she and her family made
it! And has spent half her life preparing her children for the
hard path ahead to hold onto that status. Mark, 66,
reminisces growing up on 150 acres of farmland, then
“hitting it big,” earning $4.75 an hour as a welder in high
school, when minimum wage was $2.25 an hour – and his
unexpected entry into his state’s Republican politics. Mike,
62, a senior union representative for Master Lock speaks of
an era where unions protected workers, company owners
and worker would send their kids to the same schools and
live in the same district. And he counts the time to his
retirement, hoping his meager pension and side hustle as a
cabinetmaker will keep him in the middle class when he
stops working.
It wasn’t that life was easy, it’s that hard work used to be
rewarded fairly. Someone could stay in a position for 20+
years and have enough to provide for their growing family
and stay in the middle class until they died.

9. The Gen Xers & Milennials
DiAndre, 35, works at Master Lock, but his side operation of renovating and selling houses is
what he believes is the key to financial independence. Decorah, 35, is a trained paralegal
that instead works at We Energies; she finds herself in insurmountable debt because of the
time she needed off after childbirth to care for her disabled son. Ashley & Jessica are two
sisters, 32 and 30, that run their own small businesses - a salon, as well as a bakery. If you
ask them about one of their biggest regrets as a business owner, it’s that they don’t turn
enough profit to even offer health insurance to their employees.
The normal 9 to 5 isn’t enough to support a household anymore. For many, it’s barely enough
to support themselves. So they look elsewhere, towards entrepreneurship for some way to
get their heads above water.

10. AJ, 25, says, “my dream for the future, is not having to worry
about the present - I want to be stable, not living from
paycheck to paycheck.” But he’s doubtful, he’ll get there,
because he already works over 100 hours a week at his job in
the hospitality sector. Edwin, 27, tried cabinetmaking, like his
father, hated it and is betting his future on the crypto market -
assembling and hosting cryptomining computers for customers
across the U.S., while doing some of his own mining on the
side.
Their generation knows little of a social safety net. They’re
chasing stability. Something that was once a foundation of the
American worker, is now a dream fading over the horizon.
Gen Z

11. Our Voices of Reason
Since 2003, John Schmid has covered
global and economic topics for the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He has
reported extensively on the parallels in
manufacturing between industrial Southern
China and Wisconsin, the devastation of
Milwaukee's urban workforce and the
crippled Wisconsin paper industry. He has
won awards from the Associated Press
Media Editors, the Fund for American
Studies, and the Society of American
Business Editors and Writers.
The author of nine books, including A
Nation of Victims, Dumbing Down Our
Kids, Profscam, The Hollow Men, The
End of Privacy, 50 Rules Kids Won’t
Learn in School, A Nation of Moochers,
and Fail U. The False Promise of Higher
Education and his most recent book,
How the Right Lost Its Mind. He is also
a contributor to NBC/ MSNBC.
Sykes has written for New York Times,
The Atlantic, The Weekly Standard, The
Washington Post, Commentary, The
Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Los
Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time.com,
USA Today, National Review, The New
York Review of Books, the New York
Daily News, and other publications.
Mandela Barnes is Wisconsin's 45th
Lieutenant Governor, elected on
November 8, 2018. He is the first
African-American to serve as a
Lieutenant Governor in Wisconsin,
and the second African-American to
hold statewide office there.
Born and raised in Milwaukee,
Barnes is the son of a public-school
teacher and a United Auto Workers
member.
John Schmid
Charlie Sykes
Mandela Barnes

13. Caption
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14. Filmed in Milwaukee, WI
“No major urban center in America has suffered as much as
Milwaukee’s from the economic upheaval of a globalizing economy,
an exhaustive analysis by the Journal Sentinel has found. The
result: A depression in the region’s urban core far more severe than
the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
John Schmid, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“There was an implicit social contract, that if you played by the
rules, stayed and you were loyal to your employer - that your
employer was loyal to you and would provide you with something
close to lifetime employment.”
Charlie Sykes, political commentator and author

15. For more information, please contact:
Adam Najberg, executive producer
adam.najberg@gmail.com
Faith Kohler, director
mobile (414) 305 - 0139
faithkohler@me.com
https://www.outofreachfilm.com/