CWP Film Center Presents:
No Accident
Join us on October 19 at 7 PM for a screening of No Accident, a documentary following the aftermath of the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A documentary chronicling the seminal civil rights trial that stemmed from the deadly "Unite the Right" white nationalist rally in 2017, giving a behind-the-scenes look at this groundbreaking case and efforts to stand up to hate.
Our film screening will be followed by a talk back with NY State Assembly candidate Eli Northrup, journalist and commentator Jelani Cobb, director Kristi Jacobson, and attorney Michael Bloch.
About Panelists
Eli Northrup is a public defender and policy advocate who has spent his career fighting for equity and social justice in New York. He is also the current Democratic Nominee for State Assembly in the 69th Assembly District on the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights. For over a decade Eli has worked as a public defender in criminal court, representing thousands of individuals who are unable to afford an attorney. As Policy Director for the Criminal Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders, Eli led a team of advocates advancing policies to bring fairness and dignity to our criminal legal system. Eli has been instrumental in legislative reforms to increase transparency and due process in our legal system. A key figure in the campaign for marijuana justice, he helped to found the Bronx Cannabis Hub. Eli received his J.D. from NYU Law and his B.A. from Cornell University.
Michael Bloch is an accomplished criminal defense and civil rights attorney with an unparalleled record of courtroom success. Prior to launching his own law firm Bloch & White LLP in 2022, Michael practiced at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP and served as one of the lead attorneys in Sines v. Kessler, featured in “No Accident.” Before Kaplan Hecker, Michael spent over 7 years as a public defender at the Bronx Defenders, where he represented hundreds of clients charged with criminal matters, and 3 years at Williams & Connolly LLP. Michael graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and received his B.A. in Government from Wesleyan University. After law school, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Chief Judge Helen Ginger Berrigan on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and subsequently to the Honorable Diane P. Wood on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Michael has been a member of the faculty of the leading trial advocacy schools in the country, including Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop and the National Criminal Defense College. Michael is proud to serve as a board member of the Bronx Defenders. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, Bloomberg Law, National Law Journal, The Champion and The Forward.
Jelani Cobb joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty in 2016 and became Dean in 2022. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015. He received a Peabody Award for his 2020 PBS Frontline film Whose Vote Counts? and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary in 2018. He has also been a political analyst for MS NOW since 2019.
He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. He is the editor or co-editor of several volumes including The Matter of Black Lives, a collection of The New Yorker’s writings on race and The Essential Kerner Commission Report. He is producer or co-producer on a number of documentaries including Lincoln’s Dilemma, Obama: A More Perfect Union and Policing the Police.
Dr. Cobb was educated at Jamaica High School in Queens, NY, Howard University, where he earned a B.A. in English, and Rutgers University, where he completed his MA and doctorate in American History in 2003. He is also a recipient of fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Project, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2023.
Kristi Jacobson is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker whose work spans feature documentaries, premium series, and short-form films that have premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and DOC NYC, and reached wide audiences through Netflix, HBO, PBS, Hulu, National Geographic, Discovery, ESPN, and more. Her feature films include Solitary (HBO), winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and Independent Spirit’s Truer Than Fiction Award Nominee; A Place at the Table, PGA Best Documentary nomination and winner of IDA Pare Lorentz Award, and Emmy-nominated No Accident (HBO). Jacobson’s episodic work includes the Krystle Wright episode of Photographer, the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning National Geographic series celebrating groundbreaking visual storytellers; other credits include “The Protectors” episode of Netflix’s Dogs, the “Cartel Bank” episode of the investigative Netflix series Dirty Money, and Homefront (HBO Max), a 2021 NAACP Image Award nominee and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award finalist. Short form work includes the Procter & Gamble 2021 Olympics Series “Good is Gold”; “I am not going to change 400 years in four”, a short film about Durham NC District Attorney Satana Deberry, co-directed with Angela Tucker (ITVS/ Independent Lens).
As a producer, Jacobson champions new voices and urgent stories, with credits including Nausheen Dadabhoy’s An Act of Worship (POV/PBS), Recovery Boys (Netflix), directed by Oscar nominee Elaine McMillion Sheldon; and the Emmy-winning The Fire That Took Her (Paramount+). She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America.