About Upstander Project

Upstander Project’s work is drawn from our vision for the future and our mission for today. Every project we embark on, event we host, and workshop we facilitate is part of our effort to move toward the better world we believe we can build together.

Our vision

We envision a world rooted in responsibility and respect for all where upstanders confront injustice and repair harm to ensure all beings thrive together.

Our mission

Upstander Project uses storytelling to amplify silenced narratives, develop upstander skills to challenge systemic injustice, and nurture compassionate, courageous relationships that honor the interconnection of all beings and the Earth.

WHAT WE DO

Upstander Project produces Emmy® Award-winning documentary films, creates learning resources, facilitates educator workshops and impact campaigns.

Built around our films and learning resources, our educational programming aims to create opportunities for deep engagement for K-12 classroom teachers, museum professionals, faith leaders, public sector workers and officials, and community educators.

We hope to inspire and guide them to create more inclusive curricula, schools, public spaces and conversations, so that in turn, they influence others to become truth-tellers and upstanders.

Our story

Upstander Project’s work is rooted in the idea that the Earth and its inhabitants thrive when humans acknowledge and nurture the complex relationships that connect us all. In 2009, Mishy Lesser and Adam Mazo founded Upstander Project (then the Coexist Learning Project) in response to the conflict they were witnessing in societies around the world. They believed — and still do — that when we forget that we are part of a larger, interconnected community, we are more likely to cause harm. We lose our power to protect and nurture ourselves and our communities.

The devastating effects of colonization span all aspects of our lives, from wealth inequality to climate crisis. Rather than working together toward a better world, we find ourselves constantly responding to social and environmental challenges. Out of exhaustion, frustration, and fear, we become numb — indifferent to suffering and injustice.

Only by nurturing our sense of connection to the past and responsibility for the present and future can we work together as upstanders, confronting injustice and healing past harm for a stronger future together.

There are many paths to becoming an upstander, but we at Upstander Project believe one of the most powerful is storytelling. Our small team is dedicated to telling stories that have been silenced, and through them encouraging people to engage in self-reflection and meaningful dialogue. We do not view our documentaries as films to be sent out into the world on their own, but rather as part of a constellation of resources to help people see that it is possible to face hard truths about ourselves personally and collectively, find our place in the world, and use that understanding to build strong, just communities.  

Wherever you are in your lifelong journey toward being an upstander, we invite you to explore the resources on our website. Watch our films, reflect on the stories, learn from our guides, and engage in our community. We are all learning together here.

Upstander Project in the news

Featured
Considering History: The Troubling Story of Scalp Bounties

“In 1755, Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Royal Lieutenant Governor issued a scalp bounty proclamation, offering substantial cash payments to any white colonists who brought in the scalps of indigenous men, women, and children. This was just one of approximately 70 scalp bounty proclamations issued in New England in the century before the American Revolution; U.S. governments issued at least another 50 throughout the new nation in subsequent decades. These planned genocides are a profoundly painful part of American history, but are often little remembered or discussed.”

Insider Interview: Bounty with Upstander Project

“Revolutionary Spaces recently sat down with the Upstander Project team, including co-presidents Adam Mazo and Mishy Lesser, to discuss their film Bounty, which follows Penobscot families as they read a scalp bounty that was signed in the Old State House’s Council Chamber. Bounty is currently screening in the Old State House.

What is Bounty? Why is it set in the Old State House?

Adam Mazo: Bounty is a filmic testimony of the immeasurable resistance and survivance of Indigenous Peoples. The film is the cornerstone of a media ecosystem which includes a nine-minute documentary film, several educational videos, a four-lesson comprehensive Teacher’s Guide, digital timeline, and the Bounty Rewards Archive. In the film, Penobscot parents and children resist erasure and commemorate survival by reading and reacting to one of the dozens of government-issued bounty proclamations that motivated colonial settlers to hunt, scalp, and murder Indigenous people.”

Bound together by stories: Māoriland Film Festival 2024

“Ōtaki is a small town on the southern side of Te Ika-a-Māui, the North Island of Aotearoa. Like many small towns in New Zealand, Ōtaki centres on a quiet main street of family-owned cafes, takeaway restaurants and two pubs, with the Ōtaki Civic Theatre on one end and Te Wānanga o Raukawa Māori University on the other. Drive in one direction and you will hit State Highway 1 to Wellington; drive in the other and you will reach Ōtaki Beach, a thin strip of sand facing out onto the Cook Strait and the Tasman Sea beyond. Over recent decades, Ōtaki has become a hub for Māori cultural identity and language, sixteen percent of its residents and half of the Māori population speak Te Reo Māori—well above the national average of three and 20 percent, respectively.1 In 1921, an Australian production company established a film studio in Ōtaki to make the most of the region’s varied scenery and form ‘Maoriland Films’ as a subsidiary of The New Zealand Moving Picture Co Ltd to shoot short actualities and Charlie Chaplain impersonations.2 Māoriland Film Festival, the largest Indigenous-run film festival in Aotearoa, now in its eleventh year, draws its title from this remnant of early film history.”

Continue reading at Senses of Cinema.

Annual reports

 
 

Upstander Project is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council, administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture.