Captain America dreams of the Americans sticking shape and becoming concerned about the political process.
On Tuesday, Sudbury-born actor and activist Chris Evans announced the launch of A Starting Point, a civic engagement featuring videos of more than 150 elected officials from both sides of the political corridor discussing end-to-end disorders in short, easy-to-digest videos.
Evans, co-founder of A Starting Point with actor/filmmaker Mark Kassen and medical generation entrepreneur Joe Kiani, said in a video posted on social media that the concept of homework first came to him in 2017.
“I watched the scoop and there was something I didn’t understand, and I went to Google. And right away, it was in the undergrowth,” Evans said. “You have to go through this mountain of facts. And I thought, “What if there was any way for me to not only get concise answers to the average questions, but also the answers of the elected officials themselves?”
The video begins with an appearance through Senator Ed Markey, the politicians Evans visited on Capitol Hill in February 201 during the project. Other household names on the list of participants on the site include Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), Senator Mitt Romney (Republican of Utah) and Evans’ Uncle, former U.S. Representative Mike Capuano , who recently represented the 7th Bay State District in the House of Representatives.
At one point of birth, the videos are classified into major topics such as economics, schooling and immigration. Each topic has a chain of queries, with answers to a consultation of six elected officials: 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Some of the most definitive queries, such as “What is DACA?”, while others, such as “What is the positive or negative influence of illegal immigration in our society?”, are more open. Each page also provides links for visitors who want to receive more information about a particular topic.
The site also provides a segment titled “Daily Points”, which allows elected officials to make percentages of videos of their choice. On Tuesday, for example, U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-California) watched closely a video of the completion of adolescence at university during the coronavirus pandemic.
Evans said that in addition to helping Americans be better informed, he hoped that a birth point would lead more Americans to participate in the political process.
“The more Americans worry about politics, the better,” Evans said in the video. “And I hope that other humans without delight in this picture will find this place as an intuitive and easy-to-use point.”
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