TV REVIEWS : ‘American Promise’ Looks at Grass Roots

“The American Promise� should be a resonant clarion call for democratic values. It should explain to young viewers what the American brand of grass-roots politics is all about. It should keep you watching through its three hours, starting Sunday and airing through Tuesday.

What it is, though, is a mess.

Like a collage without enough glue, this feel-good survey of what everyday citizens are doing to invigorate democracy offers easy-to-swallow tidbits rather than a solid, sustained approach.

It’s sad, since producers James C. Crimmins and Carmine Satandrea enlisted such program advisers as Jane Mansbridge and Benjamin Barber, leading intellectual lights on reviving grass-roots democracy. Instead, this is the Attention Deficit Syndrome approach to documentary filmmaking.

Each hour covers three amorphous themes (from “Responsibility� to “Information� to “Common Ground�) with examples of the themes in action from seemingly every corner of the country. Each of these examples is seldom more than five minutes long, and several are shorter. Democracy works best when people know each other; here, we almost never get to know anyone, since there’s a curiously frantic need to get on to the next story.

We would like to know more, for instance, about “The Monday Group� of students who have won fights to save Southern swamplands, or the people behind the West Hollywood-based homeless support group, Queue-Up. The slow revitalization of Chelsea, Mass., once mired in corruption and near-bankruptcy, is a complex tale requiring more time to explain than we get here (“60 Minutes� once delivered a meaty report on the town’s problems).

A confusion also arises in the three hours between democratic process and plain, old citizen initiative to solve a problem. The former is less telegenic, which is why the visually appealing New Mexico village’s water management system is one of the few examples in “The American Promise� of applied democracy.

The latter is easier for TV, and best exemplified with the heroic Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, a neighborhood-run, privately supported emergency ambulance service in Brooklyn’s meanest streets. The images here are instant, action-packed, but anyone who has sat through a democratically run meeting knows that the process is slow and deliberate.

Is that why we never see here the functionings of a decision-making meeting, such as the New England town variety? Could it be that it’s just too boring for the tube? * “The American Promise� airs 8 p.m. Sunday through Tuesday on KCET-TV Channel 28.