Cai Thomas

Cai Thomas is a Liberty City native and Chicago based storyteller whose curiosity was born and nurtured in the "Moonlight" neighborhood. She's a filmmaker/DP interested in stories at the intersection of identity, self-determination, and location. Cai is a NeXt Doc, Sundance Ignite, Sisters in Cinema, Double Exposure and Kartemquin Diverse Voices in Documentary Fellow, and was a Berlin Capital Fulbright awardee in 2017 as well as a Tribeca Film Institute IF/Then Finalist in 2019. She's an Emmy award-winning producer from her two-season tenure at CBS Sunday Morning. A graduate of Boston College, she was a Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar.

douglass

5th grade activists canvas the trains of Chicago in hopes of garnering community support to change the name of a park currently named after a slave owner to Frederick Douglass Park as part of their grass roots campaign curriculum.

The film features 5th grade activists from Village Leadership Academy and exhibits the power of encouraging Black youth to be involved in the democratic process from a young age and the culture of activism in the city. There is also power in seeing a Black educator empower her students to enact the change they want to see in the world.