Joel Engardio

Joel P. Engardio (born September 17, 1972) is a local news columnist in San Francisco. He is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and civil liberties advocate. Engardio served as a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. Engardio's PBS documentary Knocking won the jury award for Best Documentary at the USA Film Festival. At the American Civil Liberties Union, Engardio developed a new plaintiff-finding process. He used journalism methods to determine which plaintiffs would best represent court cases brought by the ACLU involving LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, voters, free speech rights and upholding the rule of law. Engardio found plaintiffs with the strongest legal cases to win in the court of law. Then he looked for plaintiffs with the most compelling narratives — the stories that could also win over the court of public opinion. Engardio also created the first online video department for the national ACLU. He produced advocacy videos based upon plaintiffs he found for cases. The videos were used for public education, media outreach, and fundraising. Engardio’s role at the ACLU was featured in the book The Genome Defense by Jorge L. Contreras, which chronicled how the ACLU won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the government’s ability to issue patents for human genes.

Joel Engardio
Born (1972-09-17) September 17, 1972
OccupationJournalist, documentary filmmaker, writer

Career

Joel Engardio was a guest columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and P.O.V. magazine. He has written essays broadcast on NPR’s This I Believe series and KQED-San Francisco’s Perspectives. Engardio wrote, narrated and directed Knocking, a documentary on Jehovah’s Witnesses that was nationally broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens. It was named Best Documentary at the USA Film Festival. Engardio began his career at ABC News in New York working as an associate producer for the newsmagazine 20/20. He appeared on camera with host Hugh Downs in a segment about aging that compared the cognitive abilities of then-25-year-old Engardio and 76-year-old Downs.

Awards

Engardio's San Francisco Examiner column won the 2016 Excellence in Journalism Award for Commentary by the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California. Engardio also won the first place award for feature columns and commentary every year from 2015 to 2021 by the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club. He won first place in columns/criticism at the 2014 Freelance Journalism Awards sponsored by the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Engardio won a national opinion writing award at the 2010 American Academy of Religion Journalism Awards. His short film "Voices from Guantanamo" received the Global Justice Award at the 2010 Media That Matters Film Festival, with screenings in New York and London. His film Knocking was named Best Documentary at the 2006 USA Film Festival. Engardio was the recipient of the 2000 National Press Foundation award for science writing. In 2003, his opinion writing was recognized with a first place award by the Society of Professional Journalists in Northern California. He was a finalist for the Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award in 2000.

Background

Engardio graduated from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government in 2011 with a Master in Public Administration. He attended Harvard on a full-tuition scholarship from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. His undergraduate degree is from Michigan State University, where he majored in journalism and history. He was born and raised in Saginaw, Michigan. Engardio currently lives in San Francisco with his husband Lionel Hsu.

Political career

Engardio was appointed to the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee in July 2015 and served until July 2016. The DCCC is the governing body for San Francisco's local democratic party. In 2016, Engardio was the only candidate endorsed by both the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner in his race for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Engardio finished second in a field of five candidates. He was the first openly gay supervisor candidate to run in San Francisco’s conservative District 7, where half the voters in some precincts supported a 2008 ban on same-sex marriage. In 2020, Engardio ran again for San Francisco supervisor to represent District 7. He finished first among seven candidates. He was also endorsed again by the San Francisco Chronicle. While Engardio won the most first-choice votes, he narrowly lost the race under ranked choice voting after the final reallocation of votes. Engardio serves on the board of directors of San Francisco's United Democratic Club and Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club. Engardio is executive director of the non-profit group Stop Crime SF.

Knocking Documentary

Engardio's documentary film Knocking explored how the unpopular religion of Jehovah's Witnesses played a major role in First Amendment history, setting Supreme Court precedents that expanded individual liberties for all Americans. In interviews, Engardio said Knocking is not about the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses but instead uses the religion as a case study to examine how disparate and disagreeable groups can hold their unique beliefs without marginalizing or limiting the freedom of others. "We may not be each others' cup of tea," Engardio said on NPR, "but tolerance allows a variety of kettles to peacefully share the stove." Knocking won several film festival awards including Best Documentary at the USA Film Festival and was covered in Newsweek, USA Today and newspapers across the United States. Entertainment Weekly named it "What to Watch." Knocking was broadcast in the United States on PBS. It was also broadcast in Australia, Canada, Greece and Israel. Knocking was released on DVD in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Korean. Critics of Jehovah's Witnesses said the film did not deal harshly enough with controversies surrounding the religion, like the practice of shunning. Engardio told film festival audiences that "Knocking" contained criticism organic to the film's story. Engardio has written Washington Post essays critical of Jehovah's Witness practices, including shunning and refusal of blood transfusions. Engardio has also written essays for the Washington Post and USA Today about civil rights issues involving Jehovah's Witnesses outside the scope of his film. Most notable was the 2010 ruling by a federal judge that overturned California's ban on gay marriage, in which the key legal precedent cited by the judge was a 1943 Supreme Court case won by Jehovah's Witnesses. Another Washington Post essay by Engardio warns that a ban on Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia is a dangerous precedent that could lead to the loss of freedoms for other unpopular groups in Russis.

References
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