One of his first jobs was at
U.S. Rubber, where a manager told him that he "had to have a U.S. Rubber attitude... ready to go anywhere at anytime" but found that he "didn't have the U.S. Rubber attitude." After his car broke down while he was on vacation in
San Francisco, Ballis decided to live there and took a job writing headlines for article in
The Wall Street Journal, where he was called in by his boss about his use of creative phrasing. Moving to Fresno in 1953, Ballis became editor of the
Valley Labor Citizen, a labor newspaper, a position he held until 1966. As director of National Land for People, Ballis opposed a June 1980 decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that a 1902 law limiting irrigated farms to did not apply in the
Imperial Valley. Ballis called the decision "Morally, legally, socially, politically and economically, a bankrupt decision", saying that there were a disproportionate number of large corporate and foreign-owned farms that benefited from federal subsidies for irrigation, and Ballis expressed concern that the ruling could lead to the repeal of such limits in other agricultural areas of California. While directing the National Land for People, Ballis made a 23-minute film titled
The Richest Land that juxtaposed small farmers and corporate farmers, and
Jessie Lopez De La Cruz and
Dolores Huerta both made cameos. In 1969, Ballis worked as the cinematographer on the
Luis Valdez short film
I Am Joaquin. In 1971 Ballis produced
The Dispossessed, a documentary film which examined the
Pit River Tribe’s struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands in
Shasta County, California from corporate and governmental control. The film highlights a nighttime occupation by Pit River activists on land held by
Pacific Gas and Electric, framing their resistance within a broader history of broken treaties, land dispossession, and systemic exploitation. Through interviews, legal arguments, and a visual analysis of corporate influence over public policy, the documentary critiques the economic and political structures that sustain Indigenous poverty and powerlessness. Praised for its incisive analysis,
The Dispossessed won the Grand Award at the Foothill Film Festival and remains a significant work on Indigenous resistance and corporate dominance. ==Personal life==