by Susan Dugan

Denver native Jason Bosch never went to college, but not for lack of passion for in-depth study and faith in the power of education.

DENVER NATIVE JASON BOSCH'S PASSION FOR IN-DEPTH STUDY and faith in self-directed education led him to create ArgusFest, an annual multi-media human rights film festival more recently turned sponsor of frequent, more manageable shows and speakers at coffee houses, theaters and cafés. Photo: Paul Kashmann.

“Creating and developing ArgusFest has been an education in itself: my own personal college,” he says. “Much of what I’ve done has been to further my own education.”

Bosch’s brainchild ArgusFest – an annual multi-media human rights film festival more recently turned sponsor of frequent, smaller events – grew out of self-imposed immersion in film and film making in the late 1990s. “I was trying to write a screenplay, ironically based on the Borgias family, which is now a cable series. It was this epic story but I knew it wasn’t good. I wasn’t mature enough. I thought, maybe when I’m 40 or something I’ll come back to it.”

Having in the meantime studied, and become outraged by, the subject of the civil war in Sierra Leone, Bosch decided to take a stab at writing and producing a documentary about it. But after losing money on the fundraiser he sponsored to garner support, he appealed to the Human Rights International Film Festival in New York and arranged to bring nine of their films to Denver in 2001.

He then took some time off to develop a larger, broader, human rights-themed festival and created the nameArgusFest, reminiscent of the Greek mythological giant with 100 eyes known as the guardian or watchman. “I liked the name because I wanted ArgusFest to represent the eyes of the world. To help show people what’s really going on.”

In November 2002, Bosch hosted the first official, four-day ArgusFest, screening a couple dozen documentaries, a performance of the play Speak Truth to Power by Kerry Kennedy Cuomo (which he directed and performed in), a photo exhibit on modern-day slavery, with imagery amplified by thoughts from modern slavery expert Kevin Bales, and a concert featuring the band Samples. “My real intention was to offer a multi-media event to really raise awareness about human rights issues rather than just focus on fundraising. I was already starting to see a lot of problems with nonprofit models that put pamphlets and materials out to target your heart but don’t really give you a deeper understanding of why people are starving in Africa, for example. I guess I was kind of sickened by that.”

Although well-attended, the event lost money and Bosch again took time off to reconsider his options. He decided to make ArgusFest a year-round event, sponsoring regular, more manageable shows at coffee houses, theaters and cafés five days a week as well as hosting guest speakers several times a year, a model that continues to this day. But financial sustainability has remained elusive.

“A lot of it is because I don’t take the typical nonprofit approach of going after grants,” he says. “I’ve wanted to keep it really independent and I think that nonprofits that put so much effort toward fundraising begin to lose track of what they’re doing and begin to self-censor. I attended a conference in 2002 called ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Funded’ put on by women of color and talking about all these amazing grassroots organizations that do really good work and can’t get funding. Their point was that the lion’s share of money goes to big, bloated organizations that aren’t doing anything in the community.”

But how to make a grassroots gig sustainable without traditional resources? Bosch admits he doesn’t have a definitive answer but believes there’s a bigger issue at stake. “Lately I’ve had times where I’m thinking, what am I doing showing a film to five people at the Mercury Café? But I know I have such a better understanding of human rights just from showing these documentaries. I see how we compartmentalize problems and that they all come from an economic system that incentivizes environmental destruction, incentivizes things that most of us individually are at odds with. And dis-incentivizes education and other things we really care about.”

He refers to scholar Richard Gross-man’s article Corporate Personhood, in which the author criticizes the single-issue approach to problem solving rampant in the organizational world. “One organization fighting to keep their river from being poisoned over here and another fighting another cause over here – and when you step back you see we’re losing the war. He (Grossman) compares it to the game of Whack-A-Mole. It’s one reason people who work in nonprofits for 10 years get burned out. These are good people we really need to fix dire problems.”

He believes nonprofits agree on more than they disagree, and need to build on common interests. “A perfect example is around the issue of internet neutrality (advocating no consumer restrictions to internet access). “This reaches across all spectrums. They have the National Organization for Women as well as the Christian Coalition and I think that’s beautiful. If we would start joining with other people (who we may disagree with on other issues), to take on expansive issues we do agree on, we’d all be a lot more effective.”

Although at times discouraged, he still believes in the transformative power of education and providing an alternative to traditional communication channels. “We just need to continue to educate people to counter a country being intentionally divided, I believe. I participated in March to Fulfill the Dream last year from New Orleans to Detroit, the poor people’s campaign Martin Luther King was working on when he was assassinated. We need to educate and unite poor whites and blacks and Latinos, who all have much more in common than they have culturally different. Those people are being divided by the media. In my own education I am slowly working toward understanding how to help change that.”

Through ArgusFest Bosch continues to connect people from different organizations, offering them a venue in which to inform and recruit volunteers. This summer and fall, he’ll travel to Philadelphia to manage homeless champion Cheri Honkala’s campaign for sheriff. Long an admirer of her activism, Bosch first brought her in a couple years ago to speak to the Denver VOICE – dedicated to exploring the roots of homelessness and poverty through storytelling – on which he serves as a long-term board member.

“She was a single mother living in her car and her son was seven or eight, and to get into shelters they wanted to separate her and her son, because as a male he was seen as a threat or something. So she discovered these abandoned HUD homes where they keep the heat on in the winter, moved into one, and said, ‘I’m not moving out until you guys find me affordable housing.’”

Fast forward three decades and Honkala (endorsed by the Green Party) has organized the poor, helped house them in abandoned properties, and set up tent cities. She’s been arrested hundreds of times for her efforts. “They held rallies around the foreclosure process and the banks making out like bandits while hardworking people continue to lose their homes. There’s been a lot of demonization about people taking out loans they shouldn’t have, but the banks were giving loans they shouldn’t have, giving bad loans to people who were actually eligible for better loans, and targeting people in impoverished neighborhoods and people without economic literacy.”

Bosch hopes working for Honkala will not only put her in office but offer him a better understanding of the economic and political dynamics involved in homelessness and home ownership. “She’s basically saying that if she’s elected she will not use the sheriff’s department to evict anybody from their homes. This is kind of radical, but we’re living in times that call for radical action because right now people are sweeping poverty under the rug. Pretending things are OK when at home they are barely hanging on. I have friends who are indebted to check-cashing places, and you get caught up in that and can’t get out. One purpose of this campaign is to bring the issues surrounding the corrupt banking system to awareness and get people to think more about alternatives to the credit mindset.”

Although he doesn’t know exactly where his personal education will lead him next, Bosch plans to continue the VJ work he does on the side – mixing  and projecting video clips to accompany musical performances – and to one day return to scriptwriting; this time, a documentary. “Film can help people understand in ways straight narrative can’t. It can really drive home stories and change people’s thinking. I still want to do that.”