‘A community torn apart by politics tries to heal in Bucks County, USA

As the country hurtles towards a pivotal and divisive by-election, it is fair to wonder whether people on opposite sides of the political spectrum will ever again be able to live in peace as neighbors, talk and especially listen to each other.

That’s a question co-directors Robert May and Barry Levinson and producer Jason Sosnoff set out to answer in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. That question led to their five-part docuseries, “Bucks County, USA,” now available online. PBS.org and the PBS administration, which has been riven by four years of bitter school board fights in a suburban Pennsylvania county poisoned by partisan personal conflict. (The finale will air Sunday, and the entire docuseries will air on SoCal PBS on October 29.)

“We don’t pay enough attention to each other,” Levinson says. “We just say, ‘I’ve established my position and I’m locked into it,’ and we don’t share interaction enough to discuss things. Democracy requires interaction, and if we can’t find a way to find common ground, that’s my biggest concern.”

The series shows how Paul Martino spent a fortune supporting Republican candidates who supported rapid school reopenings after the peak of the pandemic, but then, more controversially, turned their attention to the culture wars. They focused on what was taught in classrooms and stocked on shelves in school libraries; they left teachers feeling attacked, Black families and LGBTQ+ students feeling marginalized and ostracized.

“It’s unexpected that something like this could quickly become so contentious,” Levinson says. “It’s a situation where well-educated people in a great community can’t figure things out.”

May says national polarization is poisoning the atmosphere at the local level. “It became a life-and-death struggle for their children, but they both felt that unless they did something to save themselves from the other side, their children would be brutally mistreated.”

Filmmakers followed heated clashes in which people in the divided society resorted to screaming and name-calling. It often plays like a funhouse nightmare version of “Our Town.” This is even true of the Stage Manager version of the play. Two teenagers, Evi Casey and Paul’s daughter Vanessa Martino, guide us through each episode. Although the girls are best friends, Evi’s liberal mother and Vanessa’s conservative father view each other as hostile opposition.

“I think the series does a good job of showing the political divide and how it affects kids,” Casey says.

The series begins with a school choir singing “What a Wonderful World” beneath a group of residents who tell us how they were scolded: “I was called a pedophile.” “I’ve been called a Nazi.” “I was called anti-American.” “I’ve been called a lesbian and a babysitter.”

But the series then gets to know people in depth and allows for much more nuance than contentious school board meetings.

“My hope was that people could at least take the time to have a deeper conversation with someone they felt was harming their community and try to understand that better,” Sosnoff adds. “It starts with micro-changes where someone rethinks how they might harm someone else.”

Katherine “Kitty” Good Semisch, a retired Bucks County teacher and a key figure in the documentary, says the series is perfectly timed for the midterms because of its efforts to humanize everyone. “Dehumanization and demonization lead to the worst outcomes, and that takes away everyone’s lazy attitude that the people on the other side are not human,” he says. “Everyone is trying to find something that works for their community.”

Sosnoff initially approached Levinson with the idea of ​​a project that would humanize both parties, but his original idea was to bring people together at a summer camp with a facilitator so they could get to know each other better. “Barry wisely said, ‘This is more of a sociological experiment where you play God,’” Sosnoff recalls. “Let’s focus on a seemingly idyllic small town like the one in ‘Our Town’ and examine what happened and why,” he said.

They chose Bucks County, a purple county in the purple state. “This is not a place for extremists, but people were really angry,” Sosnoff says, noting that some people were reluctant to speak on camera. “The climate of fear was very vivid. It was a traumatized community.”

There are fights over policy that have led to lawsuits, but the real drama was the 2023 school board elections, where Democrats hope to reverse Republicans’ 6-3 majority.

While May said that she was disturbed by “people who do not care about other people and their right to exist,” especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, she emphasized that she resisted taking sides in the documentary. “When we don’t see people as people, that’s when you lose a society.”

In fact, Sosnoff says it’s bad when people are discriminated against and marginalized by those in power, but they still edit the episodes to keep things balanced, occasionally saying, “We need to give conservative characters more screen time and understand their positions.” (He also says they grew to love everyone involved.)

At the center of the drama depicted in “Bucks County, USA” is a school board election and a community grappling with political division.

(SenArt Films and Baltimore Pictures)

May says he knows some viewers will be upset with this approach, but he hopes they’ll get the full picture if they watch all five episodes. “You can’t just see part of it. You have to see it sequentially,” says May. “People reveal who they are over the course of five episodes. There’s a tremendous amount of subtlety, but if someone’s saying something stupid, we’ve got that.”

(And don’t mistake May’s efforts at impartiality for a lack of passion—the day after the 30-minute joint interview with Levinson, she called me back and talked, largely uninterrupted, mostly about biases and perceptions.)

Surprisingly, most interviewees from both sides of the community support the final version.

At the center of the action are Vanessa’s mother, Aarati Martino, who is running for the school board as a Republican, and Paul, who has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into school board elections.

“Overall, I’m satisfied,” says Paul Martino now. “I think some things don’t quite reflect reality, but they recorded 500 hours of footage and you’ll love everything on screen. Everyone is represented in this movie.”

Never fully grasping the impact of using his wealth to elect cultural conservatives, Martino says he was “unfairly attacked” and “became a handy bogeyman in some scenes.” But actually, I’m not even upset about that piece of the puzzle.” (What he thinks is missing is that he says 30% of the 300 candidates he’s funding in the state in 2021 are Democrats.)

Donte King, whose family endured both subtle and blatant racism, praises the filmmakers’ efforts to humanize people with opposing viewpoints and says he’s glad to tell his own story. “It allows people to connect with you,” he says. “We may have different ideologies, but we are more alike than we are dissimilar, so maybe someone who votes blue can identify with someone who votes red, or vice versa.”

The closest thing to a hero on the show might be the liberal Semisch, who shows civic courage in his efforts to build bridges, meet one-on-one with conservative elementary school teacher Vonna DeArmond, and organize events like an ice cream party and candle-making night. (Martino also posted a peace offer online and said he would buy everyone a drink on the other side; Semisch was the only one to accept the offer, but many interviewees, including May, say Martino’s stubborn personality may explain the lack of response.)

Semisch wishes May would fact-check some misleading claims on the right, but praises the series’ sophistication. “I understand people’s frustration, but they leave it to the audience to figure out who is being reasonable,” he says. “My side advocated for more books in the library and better training for teachers to handle difficult subjects. As you watch, it seems to me that the people on the other side are not so logical.”

There’s a sweet moment near the end of the series where Evi’s and Vanessa’s mothers come together, and another moment when one of the town’s conservatives reaches out to King in a seemingly sincere way. But there’s also plenty of bitterness and recrimination in the wake of the school board election, and a final roundtable confrontation between King and Paul Martino leaves little doubt that tensions remain.

Still, May says: “I remain hopeful and optimistic because I have seen the humanity in all of them. I think things are better there than when we started.”

Semisch, along with DeArmond, will lead discussions about the series in Bucks County, and May hopes others across the country will follow suit. He and Levinson hope that strengthening local communities could ultimately lead to stronger national ties. “Maybe people can learn something from them. Maybe this series is the beginning of a real change.”

Sosnoff is a little more measured in his final assessment and quotes one participant as saying: “We haven’t buried the hatchet yet, but it’s been put in the closet.” “I’ll consider that progress.”