PBS Independent Lens: Represent, Season 22, episode 2

Independent Lens is one of the documentary programs on PBS, like American Experience.  Programs also repeat on the PBS World channel, which many PBS stations broadcast on one of their additional digital channels (if they haven't sold them off, like Howard University did with WHUT).  Sadly, neither WETA in Virginia nor Maryland Public Television carry PBS World. 

"Represent" follows three women running for political office in the Midwest.  It's an important program because it demonstrates that politics is more than national government--the House, Senate, and President in Washington.    

The original broadcast was Monday night, but it is rebroadcast throughout the week on some PBS Stations, as well as PBS World, and it is also available online.

Bryn Bird ran as a Democrat for Trustee on the township board in Granville, Ohio.  Myya Jones ran for Mayor of Detroit at the age of 22, in 2017 while she was still a student at Michigan State University.  Korean-American Julie Cho ran for Illinois House of Representatives as a conservative Republican in a district in Evanston, which borders Chicago, is in heavily Democratic Cook County, and is the home of Northwestern University.

Bryn Bird is seen in this production still from the new documentary campaigning at a community event in front of the Granville Inn.

Bryn Bird, who got a graduate degree in public policy at GWU, worked in politics for a number of years on farming issues, but went back to work on her family farm, won ("PBS to air documentary on female politicians featuring Granville's Bryn Bird," Newark Advocate).  The others did not.

Jones was not on the ballot, because she hadn't been registered to vote in Detroit, and she continued her campaign as a write in ("Myya Jones, Detroit's millennial mayoral candidate, now running as a write-in," Metro Times).  The top two candidates, the incumbent Mike Duggan, and Coleman Young II, son of the former mayor, garnered 94% of the vote.

Julie Cho has since created a nonprofit called Fairer America, focused on supporting minorities with conservative views, and she continues doing health care consulting. Myya Jones ran for Michigan House of Representatives the next year and lost as well.  Now she works for Google.

The documentary focuses on their campaigns, but since Bird won, also shows some of the meetings and activities she's been involved in since taking position as Trustee.  

You'd maybe think that pedestrian issues wouldn't be an issue in a rural area, but one of the items she's working on is providing pedestrian access to a local elementary school.  A neighboring farm owner agreed to provide an easement for a walkway to the school, but the process is still underway.