We're at war -- not just in Afghanistan and Iraq -- but right here on the home front, where the battle plays out at the local level across America. Many cities are close to bankruptcy. They are laying off teachers, sanitation workers, firemen, and policemen. Meanwhile gang and drug wars escalate, while hospitals and prisons overflow.
We are now emerging from 3 years embedded in Newark, New Jersey, filming the second season of our Peabody Award winning series, Brick City, which premieres January 30th at 8 pm on Sundance Channel. Why focus on Newark? Because Cory Booker, their dynamic young mayor, promised to turn Newark into the vanguard for "urban transformation in America."
But how do you move forward in an age of austerity, layoffs, cutbacks and bankruptcy?
How do you govern in a time of partisan warfare, incendiary rhetoric, and popular rage?
How do you lead when a cynical and sensationalist media demand instant success, while constantly magnifying shortcomings and minimizing any progress?
We were convinced from the start that the key was to honestly chronicle a city's struggle to move forward through the parallel lives of frontline characters both inside and outside government. By weaving their stories into a novelistic format that highlighted their common goals and problems, while also contrasting their personalities and approaches, we hoped to stimulate a broader discussion about personal and political change.
In sports we like to root for the underdogs. Yet so much of today's news media devalues those trying to make a difference. We tried to show characters from all sides, as three dimensional people and came away with a renewed respect for those too often dismissed as "civil servants" or "community activists."
But change comes hard and in hard times it's hardcore. High stake decisions had to be made that could break careers and threaten the livelihoods and safety of thousands of people.
All the key players we followed this season, from Mayor Booker, to Police Director Garry McCarthy, to gang memoirist, Jiwe Morris, faced tremendous resistance and sometimes, outright hostility and death threats. As Jiwe, the author of The War of the Bloods in My Veins, says, "Change hurts."
We got a front row seat and unprecedented access to all of this playing out in Newark, NJ. America's hottest mayor faced a fiscal meltdown during an election year. In a grueling drama, dedicated civil servants were facing the end of an era in local government. A police director devoted to innovative crime fighting, battled his own union and community members, many of whom may never trust a white outsider. In the courts we witnessed the hair raising decision of a street warrior to defend himself, rather than take a deal. Everyone seemed to putting their personal and political lives on the line.
Our cameras were able to slip seamlessly into these scenes resulting in over a 1000 hours of footage. This gave us the material to create a new hybrid of non-fiction storytelling, shaped and styled like scripted dramas, but spontaneous like documentaries, with characters right out of reality series. When it comes to larger than life characters, Newark is a city that always delivers.
In short, we wanted to put the "real" back into reality. It takes guts to try something new and risky. Mayor Booker deserves tremendous credit for his tireless efforts. He may be the only politician in America who would ever agree to participate in a television series like this.
With the Super Bowl approaching, sports constantly reminds us that underdogs comeback, and team chemistry can produce amazing victories. But democracy is not a spectator sport. It needs an informed and active citizenry. Forget the pundits and cynics and the boring civics lessons at school. Treated with a dignity, the everyday struggle of real folks trying to make their lives better can reveal the very essence of human drama.
Join us on a journey to Brick City to see if one of our oldest and most challenging urban areas can change and lead the way into the 21st Century.
This is not just Newark's story; it's America's story.
Do you know where they got the money?NO wars.
We should be embarrassed that our country is falling apart and the 3rd world is catching up quickly.
an imperialist nation never sees its imperialism as a problem at home.
make no mistake americans love their mega military and super power status but with that status must come wars, threats of wars, and on going wars on anything they can think of like communism, drugs, illegals, national security, terrorism, etc.
if you got the big mega military you have got to use it or lose it. every manager knows that one well with their budget. if they dont spend it they lose it.
but those very same managers cannot see this same effect with our mega industrial military complex. interesting isnt it.
I live in the city of Brick, NJ. But it's not Newark. It's Brick. Right next door to Wall. Not kidding.
I say council meetings focusing on how much tax money is taken in, how it is spent, in painful detail, and the list of areas of concern to city councilmembers and mayors. Volunteers can work wonders where plodding bureaucracy sometimes falls tragically short. Civic spirit is what it all comes down to, and if the residents of a city or township are prepared to stand by and let an area go to Hot Place because that's government's job, well, eventually government gets to the point where it can't really expand anymore.
So, what are the problems facing these areas, and what are they able/going to do about them? Start there, and then escalate to county/state if it still seems like they're not able to deal with their own problems effectively. If there are problems, if it's not just a bunch of media hype. Cameras only show what they're pointed at, and there's always the political leanings of the photographers and storywriters to consider.
Not a matter of if, just a question of when...
The same can be said for our country's citizens. We are slowly being bled to death by a thousands taxes, fees, licenses and regulations that started with a good purpose but now exist only to further feed the ultimate parasite- our government.
I spoke with a guy I knew who was selling his recreational equipment company to the Chinese. When asked why, he said he could not compete with them due to the regulations, unions, etc and it was either file bankruptcy or sell it. When learning that the company would be closing, over 30 workers were suddenly "injured on the job" and either sued or filed for disability.
That is what America has become.