About the Program

Not In Our Town Northern California: When Hate Happens Here looks at five communities dealing with deadly hate violence over a five-year period. Together, the stories reveal that whether the motivation is racism, anti-Semitism, or crimes motivated by gender or sexual orientation, hate is the same. But Californians are finding innovative ways to respond when hate happens here.

From the state capital to the center of San Francisco, from the shadow of Mt. Shasta to the suburbs of Silicon Valley, community leaders and ordinary citizens have found new ways to see through controversy and difference to create a safe place for all residents.

After a transgender teen is killed by local youth in the Silicon Valley suburb of Newark, high school students, residents and civic leaders struggle to deal with a brutal and preventable crime; Sacramento mobilizes after the worst anti-Semitic arson attacks in the California capital's history; Redding citizens find new strength in diversity after a prominent gay couple is murdered; the Shasta County town of Anderson joins forces to make their values clear when a cross is burned on an African-American family's lawn; and the San Francisco Public Library turns the mutilation of gay-themed books into an opportunity for creative community action.

Not In Our Town Northern California is a co-production of KQED-TV and Oakland-based production company The Working Group, producers of the Not In Our Town films and www.pbs.org/niot Web site. This new hour-long documentary is the first regionally-focused episode in the Not In Our Town series.

ORDER A TAPE

Segments of Not In Our Town Northern California are available for purchase. To order segments of the program, email info@theworkinggroup.org or visit The Working Group's Web site.

THE NATIONAL TELEVISION SERIES

In 1995, The Working Group told the uplifting story Not In Our Town , about how the residents of Billings, Montana, joined together when their neighbors were threatened by White supremacists. Townspeople of all races and religions swiftly moved into action. Religious and community leaders, labor union volunteers, law enforcement, the local newspapers, and concerned individuals stood united and spoke loudly for a hate-free community, proclaiming in no uncertain terms, "Not In Our Town!" One year later, a follow-up, Not In Our Town II , presented six compelling new stories about people working to create hate-free towns, cities, workplaces and schools. These critically acclaimed PBS specials sparked a national movement against hate crimes that continues to grow each year.

THE NOT IN OUR TOWN CAMPAIGN

The Not In Our Town campaign combines the public television broadcasts with grassroots events, educational outreach and online activities to help communities battling hate talk to -- and learn from -- each other. Not In Our Town has grown to become one of the country's leading resources for community organizations seeking to prevent and respond to hate crimes. To learn more about the hundreds of communities that have participated in this nationwide campaign against hate, Visit the national Web site (at pbs.org). Practical tools for organizing, from a sample city proclamation to campaign posters, are also available on the Web site.

THE PRODUCTION TEAM

WILL DURST
Host
Will Durst, host of the Not In Our Town series, has also hosted the national PBS series Livelyhood and We Do the Work. He was also the host and creator of KQED's political humor series The Durst Amendment. Durst has been called "a modern day Will Rogers" by the Los Angeles Times, "heir apparent to Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory" by the San Francisco Chronicle, a "hysterical hybrid of Hunter Thompson and Charles Osgood" by the Chicago Tribune, and "the dark Prince of doubt" by The Washington Post. Durst writes a daily Internet column, was a contributing editor to both National Lampoon and George magazines, and continues to pen frequent contributions to various periodicals such as The New York Times and his hometown San Francisco Chronicle. This five-time Emmy nominee is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio and CNN.

MICHAEL ISIP
Executive Producer
Michael Isip oversees television production and programming for KQED-TV. Isip's background in television production includes work on numerous national, state and local public affairs programs. Recent national programs include Hope on the Street, a one-hour documentary on mental illness and homelessness; The Nobel: Visions of Our Century, a one-hour documentary celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize; and Springboard, a weekly half-hour program on science and technology issues. Isip is also KQED executive-in-charge of California Connected, a statewide weekly public affairs program on public television. He has led innovative, live multiplatform programs such as KQED Election 2004 and On the Homefront, during the first weeks of the war in Iraq. In 2003, Isip was one of five journalists from around the United States to receive a Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellowship in Health. He was also one of seven journalists awarded a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health in 2000. Before coming to KQED, Isip worked five years at KVIE-TV in Sacramento as executive producer of news and public affairs and was a two-time winner of the California Journalism Award for Television Coverage of State Government and Politics. He began his career as a field producer at WLS TV, the ABC affiliate in Chicago. Isip received his B.A. from Cornell University and his J.D. from DePaul University; he is a licensed attorney in Illinois.

PATRICE O'NEILL
Executive Producer, The Working Group
Co-founder of The Working Group, Patrice O'Neill has been producer and executive producer of successful national series on PBS for over 15 years. The Working Group's story of how the town of Billings, Montana, responded to a rash of hate crimes, Not In Our Town, set a new standard for television that builds community. What began as a half-hour PBS special 10 years ago has turned into a national movement. Not In Our Town Northern California: When Hate Happens Here is the third installment in this series and the first special with regional content and a localized Web site. Her passion for television that creates community dialogue continues with The Fire Next Time, a national PBS special that examines burning divisions over growth and the environment in a northwest Montana town. As executive producer and producer of the 10-part Livelyhood PBS series about workplace change, O'Neill experimented with an innovative approach to storytelling and created what was called "a stroke of television genius" by the San Francisco Examiner and an "off-beat and uplifting series ... with uncommon humor and grace" by The Wall Street Journal. Her award-winning documentaries with Rhian Miller for the We Do the Work series include Family Fuel: A Coal Strike Story, This Far by Faith and Leaving Home. O'Neill was also executive producer of The Working Group's special Test of Courage: The Making of a Firefighter. Before launching The Working Group, O'Neill was a freelance public affairs producer, with credits including KQED's "Express" and KRON's "Weekend Extra" and "Home Turf."

RHIAN MILLER
Senior Producer, The Working Group
Rhian Miller is a senior producer and co-founder of the Oakland-based documentary company, The Working Group. She was a producer of Not In Our Town, Not in Our Town II and Not In Our Town Northern California. Together with executive producer Patrice O'Neill, Miller has helped lead various Not In Our Town outreach campaigns, which have accompanied the PBS broadcasts of each program and continue today. In 2000, at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, Miller helped lead a delegation to screen Not In Our Town in Prague for civic leaders and students troubled by hate crimes against the Republic's Roma population. Miller has also produced many of The Working Group's other award-winning programs, including titles from the series Livelyhood and We Do the Work, which have garnered several CINE Golden Eagles, gold and silver plaques from the Chicago International Television Festival, Gold and Silver Apples from the National Educational Film Festival, and the National Education Association's Learning Through Broadcast Award. Before joining The Working Group, Miller directed the award-winning film Strikestory, about the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, and edited the internationally acclaimed independent feature Shuttlecock.

PAMELA CALVERT
Co-Producer and Campaign Director, The Working Group
Pamela Calvert is director of outreach for The Working Group's Not In Our Town series, and she co-produced the company's recent documentary, The Fire Next Time. A longtime professional in the field of media and social change, Calvert was the former outreach manager for the Independent Television Service, where she developed award-winning campaigns for such public television productions as Frontline: The Farmer's Wife and La Ciudad. Prior to joining ITVS, she was outreach and organizing director for Judith Helfand's Peabody Award-winning documentary, A Healthy Baby Girl. Calvert co-produced Kirsten Tretbar's independent documentary, Zenith, on a small Kansas town's response to the farm crisis, which aired on NBC and was a 2004 Templeton Epiphany Award nominee. She was a founding board member of Working Films, which develops strategic partnerships between filmmakers and activists.

KELLY WHALEN
Producer, The Working Group
Kelly Whalen's television and radio documentaries have aired on the Public Broadcasting System, MSNBC, TechTV and American Public Media. Her most recent television producing credits include The Working Group's PBS productions, The Fire Next Time and Not In Our Town Northern California, both of which document community responses to hate, intolerance and the threat of violence. Whalen was also a producer of The Working Group's national PBS documentary series, Livelyhood, about work and globalization, and a field producer for Life's Labors, a Marketplace Productions radio series about the changing economy. She was a co-producer of an MSNBC Investigates documentary about girls in the juvenile justice system and is a frequent contributing producer to the statewide PBS public affairs program, California Connected. Also a magazine and feature writer, Whalen has published work in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine and online for the PBS international documentary series, FRONTLINE/World. She received a master's in journalism from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Whalen was one of eight journalists recently selected for the International Reporting Project Fellowship to document hate-crime activity in St. Petersburg, Russia.

JON FROMER
Producer, KQED-TV
Jon Fromer has been producing compelling television since 1970. Before joining KQED in 1992, he worked for KRON-TV for 22 years, when it was the Bay Area NBC affiliate. His work has received high ratings from viewers as well as from his peers in the broadcast industry. A partial list of Fromer's honors and awards includes 13 Northern California Emmys, one national Emmy, two Iris Awards from the National Association of Television Program Executives, three Broadcast Industry Awards and "Best of Festival" at the International Latino Film Festival in Los Angeles. More important than the honors Fromer has received is the human touch and appreciation for the diversity of the community that is reflected in all his work. Fromer has produced more than a thousand programs, ranging from popular youth series to powerful documentaries. He has worked with The Working Group and Patrice O'Neill on several productions and was a segment producer on Not In Our Town II.

KATE MCLEAN
Associate Producer, The Working Group
Before joining The Working Group in 2004, Kate McLean worked as a public radio news reporter for National Public Radio affiliate KAZU in Monterey, California. Mclean also worked as a general assignment reporter at the Santa Cruz Sentinel. She was an associate producer for The Working Group's The Fire Next Time and an associate producer for Not In Our Town Northern California. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in journalism in 2003.