Imagine you just moved to Los Angeles. You can’t find a job and are temporarily homeless. And just when you think things can’t get worse, you’re arrested for blocking a sidewalk when you set up a tent to sleep. You appear at your court date and because you can’t afford a lawyer, the judge tells you to speak with a public defender.

But that’s not free. The public defender immediately hands you a form that says that you must send a check for $50 to a private collections agency to “register” for an attorney. The fee is due in five days, and the form doesn’t say anything about what to do if you can’t pay it.

For many years, low-income defendants in Los Angeles who needed a public defender have faced this dilemma. But today, all of that changed when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to end the collection of upfront “registration fees.”

The ACLU of Southern California, which recommended the elimination of the fee in Los Angeles County, has released a report on the little known fee requirement that exists in many courts. The report calls for the elimination of registration fees statewide.

Forty-three states charge fees for using a public defender, and 27 of these charge upfront “registration fees” like the one that was just repealed in Los Angeles. These upfront fees can range from $10 all the way up to $480 in some states, and defendants can be charged thousands of dollars after a case is over.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide a lawyer for everyone who is too poor to hire one. Charging a “registration fee” to indigent defendants violates this right.

It also undermines effective representation. In investigating this issue, the ACLU spoke to many public defenders who are deeply troubled by this practice. When a client walks in the door, public defenders almost immediately have to hand the person a form saying that they owe a fee and could be sent to collections if they don’t pay it. This isn’t exactly a recipe for building trust between an attorney and a client.

Even worse, some people may opt to represent themselves when they hear about the fee.

It’s time for other counties in California to follow Los Angeles’s lead. Public defender fees are still authorized in many large counties in California, including San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside, and these counties should take swift action to end public defender fees.

Across California, there are several fees that shift the costs of our criminal justice system onto members of our communities who can least afford to pay them. When a person is convicted of a crime, a multitude of fees are added, often dwarfing the original fine that is the intended as a punishment. These include things such as a “state penalty assessment” to fund state projects, a “court facilities fee” to fund new courthouse building projects, and a fee for the “DNA identification fund,” even if no DNA was collected in the case. These fees add up to a mountain of court debt that can prevent people from getting a job or housing after a criminal conviction.

Eliminating unjust court fees can protect access to justice for low-income residents throughout California.

Political action doesn’t always have to take the form of marching, holding a house party or calling your local representative. You can make a bold and necessary political statement just by buying a movie ticket.

Go see Wonder Woman.

Opening this weekend, Wonder Woman is a Hollywood unicorn: a big-budget action flick centered around a strong female character and directed by a woman. If Hollywood is (it is) a "white boys' club," the action genre is like the exclusionary club’s invitation-only VIP wing.

Women get less than one-third of all speaking roles in top films, let alone top billing as the center of the story. The percentage of high-grossing films directed by women each year is in the low single-digits. The number of women who have been allowed to direct big-budget action films is basically zero percent. It was big news this week, for example, when Gina Prince Blythewood was tapped to be the very first woman of color to direct a superhero movie.

It’s 2017, people. That’s why, at the ACLU’s insistence, the federal government has reportedly charged major studios with systemic gender discrimination against directors.

Why does this matter to you?

The vast majority of film and television we consume are made by white men, telling stories about white men, from a white man’s perspective. Who gets to use their voice to create and produce our nation’s most influential cultural products in turn shape how we see ourselves, our peers and our world. Bias in Hollywood storytelling – the very stories chosen to be told, who gets to tell them and who gets to make the art itself – is a subtle yet pernicious perpetuator of cultural stereotypes, and a foundational component of how white supremacy and patriarchy remain alive and well. We don’t always feel it when we watch, but it’s there, shaping our minds, attitudes and beliefs. It helps determine whether we feel “normal” or “other,” visible or invisible or even whether we see ourselves or people like us reflected in our own culture. Researchers at USC’s Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative, UCLA’s Bunche Center, San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film have repeatedly proven that what happens on the screen and behind the camera impacts us. And that’s especially true for our children.

So how can buying a ticket to Wonder Woman make any difference in the world?

Well, the old adage is still true: women have to work twice as hard to succeed. Despite reams of monetary and statistical data showing that consumers really do want to see stories about and made by women and people of color, studios still see these projects as a gamble, even with a proven, talented, respected and successful director like Patty Jenkins.

There is enormous additional, unwarranted and unfair pressure on projects like Wonder Woman to succeed and succeed big. If films like Wonder Woman underperform, it may be eons before we get to see something like this again. And it fuels the false perception that women can’t be “trusted” to direct big-budget films and that consumers don’t care about sexism and racism in Hollywood. So we actually have to show up and see these films.

Plus, politics aside, I’m pretty sure you’ll like Wonder Woman: it has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth.

These days it’s really easy to feel powerless. But here is something you can do to help make change, effectively, and it doesn’t even require a magic lasso. In addition to seeing the film, join Women in Film’s tweet campaign. While you’re at it subscribe to Women and Hollywood and regularly follow people like Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) and April Reign (@ReignofApril), who started #OscarsSoWhite, to learn about film and television projects about and made by women. Or folks like Shadow and Act (@ShadowandAct), Danny Woodburn (@DannyWoodburn), GLAAD (@Glaad) and National Hispanic Media Coalition (@NHMC) for more on Hollywood inclusion and people of color, people with disabilities and LGBTQ people.

You have enormous power to demand inclusive storytelling in Hollywood, and you can start this weekend.