Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

The Best Show You’re Not Watching….

…. but you have a chance to catch it again, starting on Saturday.

Brick City, a documentary on the Sundance Channel, about Newark: the city, the mayor, the politics, the people. You will be riveted. You will see parallels to Kansas City, and you’ll see where we diverge. (Like having a passionate, gregarious mayor, for instance. I kept wondering while I was watching scenes with the mayor meeting with the police chief: does that happen here? And if it doesn’t, why the hell not? Why aren’t the mayor and the head of the police department AT the sites of the shootings, in front of the cameras, denouncing it? Instead we just get talking heads, relishing another if-it-bleeds-it-leads news night.)

Cory Booker will probably become a senator someday, and move on from Newark, he’s just that good. Which would be sad for Newark, because he cares SO MUCH about making it a better place. The world needs more people like him, like the Vice-Principal of Discipline at the school, like the police director. But at the end of the five hours, you will also be struck by how much needs to be done by the community. We saw a lot of parallels to the community James works in, a class full of freshman boys and they’re asked how many are being raised by a single mom. (Nearly all raised their hands.) Nobody’s teaching boys how to be men, so they join a gang, they have camaraderie and acceptance, they think that a life of violence is normal. To have to even confront that thinking, to have to TELL people, this is not normal, yet you watch the school principal do just this.

You can talk about how it takes a village – and it’s true, every bit of it – but the village has to be comprised of individuals who are going to step up and do the hard work. Monitor their kids and make them do their homework. Have consequences for bad behavior. Privileges taken away. It’s hard work, no doubt. Being vigilant, setting and enforcing boundaries – none of that’s easy.  But it has to happen, because very few are like Jayda, one of the other featured people in this documentary, who turned her life around and still had to suffer the consequences of her actions, years later.

It’s worth every second of your time. Forest Whitaker is the Exec Producer. Watch it. Episode 1 runs again tonight; the whole series starts re-airing this coming weekend. DVR it.  It’s on Time Warner Cable #285. Lots of F-bombs, FYI, strong language & violence.

1 Comment

  1. Beth

    Loved this show! The quote “a sick village raises a sick child” was painful, but true.

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