Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream

Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream asks the question: how much inequality is too much? In New York, 740 Park Ave is home to some of the wealthiest Americans. 10 minutes to the north, over the Harlem River, is the other Park Avenue in South Bronx, where more than half the population needs food stamps and children are 20 times more likely to be killed. In the last 30 years, inequality has rocketed in the US – many Americans now think the American Dream only applies to those with money to lobby politicians on Capitol Hill. Through the story of the two Park Avenues, this film puts forward the argument that the extreme wealth of a few has been used to impose their ideas on the rest of America. As New Yorker writer Jane Mayer explains "They've managed to take the resentment of the middle class, which has been quite economically squeezed over the last couple decades, and turn their resentment against the people beneath them...rather than having it point upward to the people on the top of the one percent who are really walking away richer than ever."
Following the worldwide broadcast, the series of documentaries is available online for downloading to be used by organisations, schools and anybody wishing to stimulate debate around poverty.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AND WATCH THE FULL "PARK AVENUE" DOCUMENTARY ONLINE.
This one-hour documentary is part of a series of documentaries that form part of the Why Poverty? campaign, a cross media event taking place in November 2012. Eight award-winning film makers were asked to produce this series of documentaries about poverty, with each documentary looking at a different aspect of poverty. The series will be broadcast by 70 broadcasters from around the world reaching more than 500 million people via television, radio, internet and live events.