For Ahkeem

FOR AHKEEM          B+                  

USA  (90 mi)  2017  d:  Jeremy S. Levine and Landon von Soest

Ooh-oo child
Things are gonna get easier
Ooh-oo child
Things’ll get brighter

—OOH CHILD The Five Stairsteps - YouTube (3:22) 1970

Shot as a visual diary, bleak but starkly revelatory, this small, relatively unrecognized film has a shattering impact, much more influential than the highly politicized Whose Streets? (2017), serving as a female counterpart to Hoop Dreams (1994), as it works as a humanistic exposé, significant because the protagonist, Daje Shelton, known as Boonie, a 17-year old black girl from St. Louis, is someone rarely, if ever, featured onscreen, as she lives a life that is worlds apart from what most people experience, confined to segregated living conditions and the harsh penalties that accompany those living there, where it appears they never get a fair shake, that the system is stacked against them, as they are singled out for any routine infraction and then penalized well beyond what other kids go through, making it damn near impossible for anyone to ever succeed.  As we learn early in the film, the State of Missouri expels and suspends more black kids from elementary and high school than any other state in America, suggesting they must be the worst kids anywhere in the United States.  But this is far from the truth, as they’re really no different than any other adolescent kids, yet they’re treated differently, as their childhood is criminalized, where teachers don’t see normal, average kids, but see potential criminals in their classrooms, resorting to race profiling, calling the police when things get out of hand (with some arrested as early as age 8), initiating criminal records when other kids are simply sent to the principal’s office.  This double standard of inherent racism is an unspoken theme throughout this film, following two years in the life of a young black teenage girl, who we see at the outset facing a judge who orders her to a court-supervised alternative school (that he runs, ironically, offering the appearance of fueling a pipeline of his own self-interest) for engaging in a typical fight, where someone called her by a disparaging name, and she ends up paying the price.  The black judge in this instance has no wiggle room, as there is a zero tolerance policy in effect that seems to apply exclusively towards black kids.  Shaken to the core by this decision, Daje and her overly distraught single mother have no choice in the matter, as the same thing happened to Daje’s mother when she was in high school.  Hoping things would be different for her own daughter, that more opportunities would open up, kids in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods are constantly reminded by the cyclical turn of events that leave them with far fewer choices, where they rarely make it out of these neighborhoods, stuck generation by generation.   

Daje is convinced that she will graduate high school and go to college, that she will make her mother proud, so she enters her new school convinced she will succeed, yet on the very first day we see that same judge that sentenced her reminding all these students that they are considered “bad” kids, as otherwise they wouldn’t have been sent here, where this has a way of stigmatizing each and every one of these kids.  These are different circumstances than what most kids go through, as they are not constantly reminded of the extra hurdles and obstacles that they must overcome just to be on the same playing field.  Instead they are marked for failure, where it’s simply impossible for this not to have a staggering effect on their outlook.  Consider the differences between Daje’s prospects and the kids in Richard Linklater’s 2014 Top Ten List #1 Boyhood, as the St. Louis system categorizes “bad” children early on, marking them for trouble, where instead of high school to college to a career, their path is more commonly from school to expulsion to prison.  We hear Daje mutter to herself, “People have been labeling me a bad kid all my life.  You don’t have to really do nothing, people just expect it.  So you start to expect it of yourself.”  Their hopes and aspirations are met with a wall of resistance, which includes the deaths of several of their classmates along the way.  Daje narrates throughout the film various passages written into her journal, allowing viewers to follow a timeline, and while it’s difficult to follow her slang vernacular without subtitles (which do occasionally appear), she repeats the names of kids who have been killed, speaking almost casually of a bullet wound she herself took to the stomach, where the effects are obviously traumatizing, yet this is simply the landscape of their existence, matching the mindset of returning war veterans who are equally scarred by post traumatic stress when attempting to reintegrate back into their lives at home.  There are no grief counselors talking to these kids, no psychologists or social workers, as budgets have been cut down to the bare necessities.  One might think counselors are a necessity, but they don’t exist here.  The events taking place in Ferguson are a backdrop to these kid’s lives, as the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer that is not even charged reverberates throughout their community, with eyes riveted on the nightly newscast covering the Ferguson unrest, where police routinely target innocent lives of black protesters, giving a face to the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Almost instantly, Daje is again targeted for talking in class and using profanity, with her mother called in for another disciplinary hearing, where it’s hard to comprehend how these coming-of-age kids are supposed to react when faced with discovering the realities of racism in their everyday lives without resorting to anger and disappointment, where discussing it among themselves is part of what’s needed in coming to terms with it, yet they’re punished for expressing themselves.  Given this atmosphere of extreme repression, Daje gravitates to a boyfriend, Antonio, who allows her to be herself, though Antonio’s path is another story in itself, as it’s riddled with even more roadblocks.  Nonetheless, he’s a nice kid who cares about Daje, but he inevitably runs into trouble, having fewer and fewer options, with no jobs and no money, in a system where minors are routinely charged as adults, urged by the courts (as they can’t afford lawyers) to plead guilty to avoid jail time, accumulating felony convictions by the time they’re only 16 or 17, disqualifying them for federal help, eventually forced out of school or dropping out altogether.  One of the more revealing scenes shows Antonio waiting in line to meet with a judge in what amounts to a typical hallway, not even in a courtroom, with the judge dispensing life-altering verdicts with alarming speed, spending only a minute or two with each suspect before moving on to the next in assembly-line fashion.  Daje also gets pregnant, to no one’s surprise, perhaps, as she knows better, but simply refused to listen to all advice to the contrary.  Her mother freaks out, calling her a “whore,” knowing how this mirrors her own life, where things never get any easier.  With her baby Ahkeem arriving in time for her senior year, Antonio is a doting father (when he’s not locked up in jail for petty offenses with major consequences, unable to raise money for bail, which is $500, crimes that more affluent whites would never spend any jail time), and her mother can’t help but welcome this adorable new kid to their lives.  But it’s a struggle balancing a pregnancy, parenthood, and a relationship with a full load of classes, where she’s obviously sleep-deprived with a newborn on her hands, finding it difficult to navigate the few hours needed for homework.  While the teachers and various workers associated with her alternative school are not only helpful, but offer positive feedback of constant encouragement, and Daje needs every bit of it, as she initially falters, failing courses that she needs to graduate, absolutely devastated that she falls short of her dream to graduate, but through help and intervention she’s given another opportunity to retake final exams, where the smile on her face finally says it all.  This is not the typical path to high school graduation, but it’s hard-earned and eye-opening, exhibiting a kind of effort that goes unnoticed by the rest of the world, as these lives are largely invisible, off the radar, with precious little understanding for what they have to go through. 

Followed around by two white filmmakers with cameras using a cinéma vérité style through the hallways of a nearly all-black school, it’s never clear how Daje was selected in the first place, as she has no distinctive qualities, but is the same story of millions of black teenagers across the country, where her pathway calls into question existing practices in the state of Missouri, as black lives are simply treated differently, punished with greater regularity, and with harsher sentencing.  For a small, relatively unheralded film without an ounce of pretense or editorial content, this film clearly shows how black lives are uniquely different than white lives in America, quietly revealing just how different.  For Ahkeem, there are two strikes against him before he’s even been born.    

Whose Streets?

WHOSE STREETS?                 B                    

USA  (90 mi)  2017  d: Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis         Official site

An explosive film that reveals, among other things, that activism is not pretty, or filled with romanticized ideals, but is dedicated and hard corps work that involves confronting constant rejection, continually placing your body in harm’s way, and rarely are you ever allowed to feel the satisfaction of your efforts, as mainstream media minimizes what happened in just a few short seconds, or offers misleading comments and editorials, where much too often it seems like all your efforts are in vain.  Yet that’s just after day one, as the next day you have to get up and do it all over again.  It’s hard to keep the juices flowing and not burn out, as it requires so much energy, as the work continually saps your strength, where you’re on the losing end of most confrontations with police, as they have more brute force, more weaponry, can inflict more serious damage, and the media almost always sides with them, often reporting verbatim what comes from press releases that confirm the police side of the story.  But anyone that’s ever been part of a protest movement knows that’s just the nature of the game, something you must be mindful of, where you can’t let it get you down.  Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as democracy must be learned by each new generation.  As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  All of which suggests that real democracy is a messy business, where people are liable to be battered and bruised, where it’s easy to get your feelings hurt.  It’s reminiscent of how Tina Turner used to introduce “Proud Mary,” Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary - YouTube (6:03), revealing “We never ever do nothin’ nice and easy.”  While the film does have a ragged-around-the-edges feel, which is certainly not conducive to “easy” watching, where this is a film about moral indignation and righteousness and anger, using a scattershot approach that may not be for everyone, as it skips over large chunks of time, but the passion is genuine.

Opening with a quotation from the infamous 1856 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, a landmark ruling that denied blacks basic human rights, concluding that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens, instead they were “beings of an inferior order, so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”  As odious as this sounds, this was the law of the land, as it basically divided the country into two halves, one that believed in slavery and one that didn’t, where the case became a lightning rod for sectional bitterness and hostility that was only resolved by war.  More than 150 years later, despite electing our first black President, many institutions, especially the police force, remain thoroughly entrenched with his racially divisive mentality, though refuse to believe it, where this film in particular shows how racism in American society has stayed embedded within our society.  The film provides an on-the-ground view of the Ferguson Uprising, where the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year old black man, by a white policeman sparked an angry response from black residents, especially after leaving his body on the ground for several hours, preventing even his family from coming anywhere near, where hostility was rising almost immediately, eventually met by increased militarization from the police, wearing riot gear during peaceful marches, including leashed dogs, like Alabama and Mississippi in the pre-Civil Rights era, firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the assembled crowds, which only angered them more.  The filmmakers openly side with the marginalized blacks who are protesting against a police cover up, while also pleading to be treated as human beings, basically re-arguing the Dred Scott case, but on the streets of Ferguson.  One of the quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. is especially pertinent, observing that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”  Street protests continued on a daily basis for over two weeks, then started up again when a decision was made whether or not to charge the police officer, where every night the city was transformed into what resembled a war zone, where people were tear gassed even while standing on their own front lawns. 

One of the biggest advances in fighting for social justice has been the use of the cell phone camera, allowing average citizens around the world to become film documentarians, much like Haskell Wexler’s brilliant film, Medium Cool (1969), where protesters on the streets of Chicago in 1968 chanted “The whole world is watching” in front of television cameras covering the events, where their actions became front page news.  In this film, the directors use their own footage of marches, looting, and police confrontations, where coverage is mixed with interviews with other activists, local TV news reports, and social media tweets, which include a participating public, with someone chillingly mentioning “I just saw someone die, OMFG.”  Adding to this are frequent characters seen returning to the front lines, including Brittany Farrell, a nursing student and single mom who brings along her 6-year old daughter Kenna.  In a strange twist, after dropping her daughter off at school, we see Brittany get married at City Hall to her activist lover, Alexis Templeton, both of whom place social activism at the top of their agenda, and together they form Millennial Activists United.  David Whitt is a Ferguson resident who lives in the Canfield Green apartments directly across the street from where Michael Brown was gunned down, who indicates the security camera from his building was pointed at the street, but has been mysteriously replaced by a different camera.  Whitt is a constant presence and has taken it upon himself to become a professional observer, joining a national organization called Copwatch, where he uses his camera as a surveillace device to monitor police brutality and document police interactions.  Due to his notoriety, his lease was not renewed and he along with his family were forced to move to a different neighborhood. 

Perhaps the spokesperson for the Ferguson Uprising is local hip-hop artist Tef Poe, whose passionate and fiery oratory provides an alternative urban narrative that resonates deeply, questioning where black leaders, and specifically black clergy are during this recent rebellion, as they failed to show up.  Unsurprisingly, no charges are brought against the police officer, which happens so often that it already feels like a throwback to another era, yet it’s a continuation of the present, with a disenchanted crowd once again assembled outside police headquarters.  As we see and hear the chants on the front lines, with placards that read “Don’t Shoot,” keeping their hands up in unison, as Brown allegedly had his hands up when he was shot, perhaps the chant that feels most synonymous with the making of this film is “This is what democracy looks like,” as this film documents what seems like a neverending standoff between police and angered community residents who simply refuse to continue being oppressed.  This hit home with the sole black officer lined up in front of the police station, a young woman in a sea of white cops, who seemed to clearly understand the plea for justice, as this has been a long time coming.  Whatever progress might be made always takes place long afterwards, where there’s never any guarantee something good will come of it.  Parts of the untold story are the effects of repeatedly getting gassed, or being slammed to the ground and arrested, with many individuals losing their jobs or receiving a flood of death threats, where a sad truth, unfortunately, is that Ferguson remains an impoverished and segregated community.  While the film may feel a bit indulgent, like patting themselves on the back, yet withstanding all, Maya Angelou has suggested, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”  The film is dedicated to Darren Seals, a leading Black Lives Matter activist who was found shot dead in a burning car shortly afterwards, and Josh Williams, a black teen who was sentenced to eight years in prison for admitting to starting a fire inside a Quick Mart during a 2014 protest, acknowledging, however, that the store was completely demolished before he lit the fire.  Just as a note of comparison, a day earlier a retired white St. Louis policeman, Ronald Oldani, age 66, was sentenced to five years in prison for possessing more than 100 computer files containing child pornography.