TV REVIEWS : ‘Retooling America’ Hits Home Tonight

“Retooling America,” an hourlong look at the effects of U.S. defense cuts and the efforts to transform the Cold War military economy, should hit home with Southland viewers, who live in an area that has lost some 150,000 defense-related jobs in recent years.

Writer-directors Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young raise all the big questions--How do we prosper in peacetime? What are viable alternatives to war-based industries? and so on--and provide a lively discussion of same.

Unfortunately, the discussion is limited by “Retooling’s” built-in assumptions: Conversion to “peaceful” industries is a given (there is, of course, no need for a strong defense industry today--just ask the North Koreans and the Russian nationalists), as is the idea of a U.S. government industrial policy (free market, anyone?).

The deck is also stacked a bit. The interviewees are largely a selection of leftist labor and community activists, academicians and politicians, U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland) to name two. Few dissenting voices are heard. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) gets to mention that not everyone is in favor of government setting industrial policy--but not enough time to explain why. A McDonnell Douglas executive defends his company’s choice to stick with defense contracting even though it means downsizing, but it’s intercut with tales of woe in St. Louis, where thousands have lost jobs.

The program includes a segment on Los Angeles.

* “Retooling America” airs at 10 tonight on KCET Channel 28.