What Went Wrong in Chicago? America's Most Segregated City (Poverty Documentary) | Real Stories

hello and welcome to the doc exchange a real stories podcast in partnership with the grierson trust every week i'll ask a new filmmaker or filmmaking team about three documentaries connected by a single theme that have made a meaningful impression on their work and life [Music] three two one immediately afterwards a heavy dust three two one immediately afterwards a heavy and dark cloud of ash started spreading toward the lake it's been over 20 years since chicago began to rewrite a chapter of its own story a story tucked away in the shadows of its famous skyline closing an era shrouded in an ambiguous past one that if not remembered will soon be forgotten this story's legacy the violence and poverty that plagued chicago's hyper-segregated communities but what is known about the systems that created them the laws that isolated them and the policies that abandoned them and how does a city heal from decades of heartbreaking loss at the crossroad of a nation this is chicago's story [Music] 72 murders for the month three days 68 people were shot what the hell is going on in chicago that's more people shot in one weekend than wounded in a typical month in battle torn iran putting chicago on pace for 700. shot live on facebook last night deadly gun violence is surging in chicago once again after a horrific weekend in chicago more needs to be done more than 3 000 people have been shot in chicago [Music] homicide is related to the desperation of young men and particularly black young men in the united states and that's what we're seeing in chicago when people think of ptsd as being what happens to people who've been in combat [Music] their choices are very limited but i got to lose my life [Music] you break down the city it's like a tale of two cities [Music] if you are downtown chicago you almost feel untouchable [Music] then you go south you go out to some of the neighborhoods they just are starved for resources and investment that's abandonment that's just systematic destruction [Music] it's that pot that's boiling this stuff can start spilling out or we could turn the fire down you hear people they present the problem and they say yo this is the problem this is the problem this is the problem okay you're awoke you know the problem what is the solution [Music] get your presidential t-shirts guys family of the united states of america it's been over a decade since the world's eyes were unmistakably fixed on grant park in chicago the night the nation elected its first african-american president barack obama the pride of a city couldn't have been greater chicago felt together in unison with the renewed optimism for the future especially me i grew up right around our gale gardens one of chicago's most desolate public housing projects home to toxic landfills and the abandoned industrial plants the gardens where barack obama began his career as a community organizer when i was a kid you couldn't have felt further from the luxury of the chicago loop growing up i was one of the lucky ones who made it out overcoming the odds to become a spoken word artist and a grammy-winning producer i grew up seeing the bloodshed of the gang wars in the 90s and it was at this moment america is a place where all things are possible change has come to america that i thought we had reached a new day for america for chicago but the feeling didn't seem to last forever by the end of president obama's second term the world's eyes were once again focused on chicago this time for all the wrong reasons murder was running through chicago faster than the chicagoans running from it blood was flowing through our streets what went so wrong in this city to make it the case study for murder and violence or chicago just a scapegoat for a violent nation and a testament for things to come [Music] truth be told chicago ranks just ninth in murders per capita and 24th for violent crimes but in the court of public opinion chicago is an active war zone even as mass shootings multiply and urban violence escalates coast to coast but for chicagoans we recognize the issue we know it's up to us to fix it because no one else will [Music] on monday we were told we were the deadliest month of august deadliest month in 20 years on tuesday we were told chicago has more murders than new york and los angeles together so i'll picture the people have been killed one was my son right there with the red cap on yeah richard that's my son that's jarvis when i told you about this you know it has happened again this latest victim a six-year-old girl tonight we're learning more about a six-year-old girl who was shot while playing outside on this hot summer day when i turn on here it's just leaking blood i just really want us to live in peace sometimes the only way people can cope is just to try not to cope not even to deal with it ignore it like it's not happening because it becomes too much and people are afraid when a six-year-old girl from my school says to me father mike you pray for me i just want me to pray for her she said that i'm alive at the end of the summer that a child has to even think like that at six they deserve their future they have a right to grow up mm-hmm it's going back got like afro right there what do you want to do when you grow up um a doctor a police i'm so she's gonna have two jobs he's gonna be a police officer and a doctor huh yep you're gonna be making people feel good and taking the crime off the streets at the same time that's what i'm talking about my baby what's our phrase what you want people to do what you want these men to do outside the guns down put the guns down we gotta fight shoot and kill over blocks that have been abandoned and neglected some blocks that look like third world countries and we're gonna fight over a block that other people don't give a damn about how stupid is that instead of banning together and said we're gonna be in the real fight and bring some economic development bring some jobs bring some hope bring some possibility back to our community you can't just say stop the violence give me a job give me a way out give me an opportunity this fight is in our hands how did it end up like this so violent so hopeless for so many to truly find the answers we have to go back back to the beginning most of the adults were born in rural areas of the south they came to chicago looking for a better way of life they came to the south side of the city because they found that this was a place where negroes were permitted to live about all that they brought with them were their hopes and their dreams [Music] they knew they could make it to chicago from mississippi from alabama from arkansas there was work here chicago was a gold mine if you lived in the south chicago was the place where people came so they could build their families and build their futures and you began to work at the steel mill people worked at the stockyard [Music] you could be an accountant in the north you could work for an insurance company in the north you could be a policeman in the north there was harmony cohesiveness and heaviness because people fled the south we're looking to the future there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel for southern blacks and a chance to live the american dream of the north but that light will prove to be nothing more than a mirage sometimes we talk about this era as if it was all wonderful segregation was part of the culture of the north the hope i really have and i come here to do better but after i got you and started away it looked like to me i did worse this is when the city of chicago with help from the private industry real estate and banks decided well we don't want black people living with white people and that began a host of policies that i call the jim crow north the agreement was called restrictive covenants black people come from the south they definitely can't live with us [Music] so where do we live push to the worst neighborhoods we're pushed to slums that others have moved out from racism is structured into housing that is when people who are from a different background move in large numbers you just restrict them to certain areas we will assign where to live on the one hand was the joy of our living together free of the burdens of the south then we were trapped and could not grow could not get out the concentration of people was four times that of adjacent white communities the black belt and gradually blocked by block by block the black belt just kept bursting by the seams because black people couldn't live anywhere else chicago was really notorious at this time for being a difficult place for african americans to come and find good fair housing at decent prices i was there and i saw what can happen to human beings if they're excluded from the main source of opportunity [Music] he couldn't get much worse off if it did i wouldn't be living at all [Music] chicago is one of the most segregated cities on earth you're segregated by class as well as race and so it's almost tribal i find that people of all races seem to think that this is something that just naturally happened oh well i just live around people who are like me [Music] i grew up in all black community the only time i ever saw anybody that wasn't black is when i went to go buy food i had to buy that from the arabs if i was being detained by the police a lot of times it might have been a white officer but just random white people just in your hood they was never there you feel like man it has to be some sort of plan or something behind that to make it go down like that and here we are living in it today most people on the north side the reason they don't know anything about the south side because they've never been to the south side ever ever [Music] so it's easy to say i don't worry about that that's not in my backyard you see what's happening on the news boy shot girl shot kid shot on a playground and you say to yourself i have no idea what's going on to truly understand the plight of chicago into the city that you see today we have to go back again to the city fathers who saw the blighted slums as eyesores instead of communities and its residents as second-class citizens fixing the problem while maintaining segregation would prove to be the point of no return [Music] today the endless plane is gone we must build a new city on top of the old today we have and have to have a comprehensive plan for the city of chicago taking into account the needs of all the people to have a decent place to live [Music] public housing starts in the new deal as a response to the poverty conditions and also slum conditions that existed in many cities the idea was to clear the slums build new housing and this will make better [Music] citizens and this is the kind of government flow of money from washington that mayor richard j daly was very interested in bringing to chicago this project represents the future of a great city how are we going to do this well it's cheaper to build up we're going to build up we build high rises better governments and high rises are yet nothing everyone took the high rise across the country for most of us who are living in ghettos and moving into the projects was a chance to get stabilized and then to move into the mainstream of american housing and american life when folks first moved in public housing it was the place to be african americans just tell you that veterans will tell you that we talk about the 50s 60s and the 70s i think the buildings are nice but it's just like taking one big slum and sitted in another slum because nothing has been changed [Music] so yeah let's try that again you wanted it simpler public housing failed in chicago for a few very basic reasons they went up in waves across the country partnerships between washington and local housing authorities the government would pay to build public housing and a local entity would manage the day-to-day operations and plan the construction in this case the chicago housing authority cha chicago's plan was more ambitious than any in the country a total of 29 public housing communities would grow up across chicago in just a few decades a mix of row houses mia rises and high-rise buildings were scattered and then there were the monsters cabrini green on the city's north side concentrating more than fifteen thousand whoa if cabrini green was the monster well then robert taylor was the goliath 28 16 story buildings located directly on the raised south side slums one of a cluster of housing projects that spanned nearly four miles as far as the eye could see so those were five different public housing developments on this one corridor concentrated in the heart of the south side of chicago that many buildings with that many poor people in one place it decimated the south side of chicago the city planners had come too far to turn back now the decisions to maintain segregation in chicago would come at a price because there were massive holes in their master plan but nobody said segregation would be easy beginning with the basic function of paying for the exorbitant upkeep of the buildings themselves the income to maintain the massive structures relied mostly on a scaled portion of tenant wages and the bottom would soon fall out of urban industrialization and the funds to operate public housing much like the jobs that had lured millions from the south would all disappear too i'm building this through i'm 33 years old i've been here 33 years the heating systems it's not working girls this don't make no sense i actually had some heat y'all think the flux in the bills the water the pipes and busted and everything like that [Music] when i moved into public housing there was rigorous background checks there were social workers who checked in on you they no longer did any of that they simply took people threw them in they said if you want to live in public housing come on go in there [Music] the quality of life was hell hell on earth you might go to sleep and it might be roaches crawling from up under your pillow you may get on the elevator in the elevator smell like urine you may be outside playing basketball hooping and somebody that you just pass the ball to might get shot in the head i lost a good friend of mine he was out just shooting jumpers and he came through and shot him 19 times automatic the police always used to say they don't go into cabrini until the shooting stops you hear a lot of residents say they feared for their life because the lack of protection [Music] planners made a choice to build housing for large families families with five six seven children originally there were seven persons to every unit when you couple that with female headed families and average incomes of five thousand dollars [Music] they didn't think about how many kids they were putting in a building versus the number of adults people who were concerned about their children playing were up 16 floors while their children were 16 floors away all of a sudden the children are now creating their own rules for living without the connection to their mothers their fathers your uncles your grandparents if you could imagine a 16-story building pouring out children and then the children deciding what they wanted to do what was good whether or not they wanted to fight whether or not they wanted to steal you have to put all of this shift in public housing at the feet of public policy the government would not pay for a child who had a father living with that child fathers of some children in this building found their families could be helped by the welfare department but only if they left home or died the father leaves all of a sudden the rent drops hey that's a pretty good deal it became a financial incentive for the father to move out my father could not live with us and we had social workers come to our homes to find out if there were men's clothes or if we had a new television this is mr stewart glenn mr how are you i'm here to help you find a place to move what would happen then is that you've got a lot of children now without adult supervision from men and the dropout rate in the schools began to increase dramatically many of the boys were put out of school and they were in the streets they terrorized the communities this community and others across america public housing is in ruins called a national disgrace cabrini green to some folks it has become a hell on earth life at robert taylor is dominated by welfare women and children either cha is going to manage its real estate or we should just declare openly that the gangs have control of our property and uh and let them have it it's like it's like some bad movie you mean is there something that can be done right now the only organized activity in public housing is the gang and the drug dealer everyone has agreed on one single point place has to be changed well you see it's probably stricken basically they need a lot of jobs somehow you always make it through a circle right back here i like to see some jobs come to us where we are to make money get off aid and just live like we want to live because we see right now we are struggling i'm struggling for money food and everything else five reports from chicago where the u.s government has just seized control of the local public housing authority today's takeover in chicago makes the federal government landlord of america's poorest most crime infested public housing projects in the end these high-rise public housing developments were awful places to live by any measure high-rise public housing development should have been closed for housing code violations like any other slum building in the city by the late 1990s everybody realized this had been a mistake in big cities across america the consensus is public housing doesn't work and in chicago it's coming down chicago will destroy more public housing than any city in the country the debate over what should replace them and who should live there has been fierce maybe the thing that was most detrimental to this city was the federal government and the chicago housing authority pouring folks out that they didn't prepare that they had for generations hundreds of gunshots are reported more than a dozen killings in one weekend many of the victims are teenagers new gang wars are breaking out in chicago and as the homicide rate is at a near record high frustration over conditions in chicago housing authority developments has reached a new high in chicago an upsurge in violence and the debate over how to combat it brought the secretary of housing to chicago after uniting robert taylor homes he called conditions deplorable american women and children are living in a setting that is violent and demeaning and fearsome and introduces their children to a world without hope what those conditions meant said the mayor is that public housing in chicago has failed the bottom line is that high-rise public housing does not work isolating has pointed out low income people and 10 or 20 story concrete boxes has failed so cha chairman vince lane pressed this narrows for a loan of 1 billion dollars to do what lane says may be the only thing left to do totally change public housing as we now know it there's a failure of the city a failure of the housing authority a failure of the federal government in washington to allow conditions to spiral down to that level once you withdrew maintenance it was only a matter of time for years community activists at cabrini green have been saying the city's ultimate plan was to move them out of these buildings and off this land because cabrini is only minutes from downtown chicago making the land very valuable public housing was located on some of the most desirable land in the city the most valuable land do cha residents really want to move and so the people who lived in public housing said we just want to stay here it's the american dream a little house in the suburbs with a picket fence the american dream for me is to be left alone if you could live anywhere you wanted to where would you live i still here i've been raised up over all my life comfortable here we get prepared for the worst right now [Music] okay and it went down fast cities had erased high rise public housing from their city plan [Applause] the entire area will be transformed into a middle-class white yuppie style community that's what is happening that land is worth a billion dollars if it's cleared there's a conspiracy theory that what's really going to happen is that everyone's going to be squeezed out they will make way for the big buck developers is that going to happen no it won't happen and i'm committed to make sure that public housing residents are not displaced from their communities [Music] it's very difficult to maintain peace and tranquility in the midst of confusion [Applause] they don't love you and they never will [Music] if we leave here where are we going to go if we leave here where we're going to live there were 30 000 families living in public housing where were people going to go was there going to be a revolt could this be pulled off my primary concern is where's the next generation gonna live you think they're thinking about the american dream what is the american dream these days the infamous era of high-rise public housing in chicago and most of the country was over a testament to public policy gone wrong a failure on all levels of government the design was flawed the vision was short-sighted the empathy was lost but the root motivation of these massive warehouses for the poor was much more sinister when there were too many black people they said what are we going to do well let's build these high rises but we can't put them in the white areas let's rip down houses in the black community and house people within those neighborhoods and all of those projects with the exception of cabrini were built in all black neighborhoods and cabrini then became an all black neighborhood the reason that high-rise public housing was built in chicago was an attempt by the city government to constrain the black population of the city in the smallest geographic area that's not a recipe for success that's a blueprint for disaster [Music] it was too late those buildings were destined to go [Music] [Music] it's now been two decades since the first brick fell from the mortar of chicago public housing what followed was known as the plan for transformation now we find ourselves in the 21st century there's a whole lot of people in the united states who need stable housing that's affordable even the city of chicago's estimates is that there's a lack of about 120 000 units of affordable housing [Music] now you have taken away the housing but you don't have anything to replace it instead you have condominiums that are costing eighteen hundred dollars for one bedroom and two thousand dollars for two bedrooms there are some neighborhoods in chicago that are becoming unaffordable because rents are too high but there are some neighborhoods in chicago that are unaffordable because people don't make enough money communities that are poor people that are poor are getting pushed into a smaller and smaller box as gentrification takes up more and more space [Music] and we sort of gave up on conventional public housing we decided that a whole lot of public purposes should be privatized infusing it with incentivizing the profit motive in the public housing realm we decided to turn it over to private developers so the section 8 programs came into existence tenants have vouchers where they can take those vouchers and have the rental assistance follow them to whatever landlord in whatever building they live in which is an experiment [Music] the buildings are all gone only a memory transfixed in the minds of the former tenants as if you could still feel the rubble drifting in the wind what was promised was new mixed income communities though only a fraction of former public housing residents were actually allowed to move back into the new communities most were never built leaving vast expanses of land just vacant a lot of places have not even started construction yet they still have been empty for more than a decade that was the centerpiece of the plan for transformation overall where did where did people go that's the big question life has a way of just moving on but for some form of residence it feels like it was just yesterday i think about snowball stands on the corner i think about basketball tournaments i think about fun days and no matter where i went in the world for however long i could come back home it's heartbreaking a lot of us are running around lost trying to figure out who we are and where we come from because we can't take our kids and be like that's where you come from the building i was brought to from the hospital is the one over there on the other side of the park like you can see it can you see it playground playground and still this little area right here and you come up on the tree okay i guess it's like in my dna it's a flock back i'm not trying to downplay the violence it was very violent some people came out shell-shocked ptsd and all of that this was a war zone but at the same time it was a paradise i ride past here often i say to myself man i miss the ickys i know a lot of people that were or just put out we don't care you need to go by if someone can just come in and snatch your whole world and livelihood from you then what are you you know i'm lyntessa williams former resident of the harold icky homes [Music] public housing had become so problematic in chicago that many people just wanted it to go away and in fact that's what's happened but what happened is that the buildings came down at a much faster pace than anything that was being rebuilt what we have found is that most displaced public housing residents have lived on a section 8 voucher a section 8 voucher says you the tenant can go find an apartment in a private housing market and we the federal government will help pay your rent and those vouchers have placed them in racially and economically segregated communities on the south and west sides it meant you're going to a community that will accept your 800 a month voucher that's what it meant now no one said that a lot of people don't get it unless it's broken down but what you've done is you've recreated the concentration of poor people in particular buildings and sometimes whole blocks there was a cleansing happening it was called internal displacement from one impervious neighborhood to another one it was a plan for re-segregation if you look at where people ended up almost all the residents were forced into nine or ten communities the communities were under siege at that point [Music] these young guys right he's 15 years old [Music] his father in jail his grandfather in jail his mother on the street he the oldest he got a sister 13 years old he got a little brother eight years old now here man he just got eighth grade two years ago [Music] so he got to take care of family their choices are very limited the drug trade is probably one of the largest employers on the west side and i did that calculation of number of people who've been arrested and prosecuted for dealing drugs out there and then comparing that with employment numbers what i got to lose my life that's the best thing to happen for me i can get away from you is it any surprise that open-air drug markets are such a large employer no much of it hasn't been rebuilt since the riots in 1968 when martin luther king was killed they're just wastelands we're from the gutterist parts of the city from the most impoverished parts of the city so you can't put that on those jaw resumes we can't say oh yeah i trapped the block for 10 years and this is why you should hire me the only thing that's left to do is to hustle sell a drug sell it back drug commerce in chicago is a very violent business and it's settled not with ritz and subpoenas it's settled with guns i think the murders in chicago are mostly due to the drug trades in chicago just came from a funeral man and wasn't good we're not good about it at all it's like i'm almost immune to it a little bit but then they make you think about like how your feelings are gonna be what's gonna happen when you die the realities on these blocks can be all too harsh for the young men and boys who congregate on the corners and stoops of two flats and old brownstones left with few options in a seemingly hopeless existence you have to take the time to really find a community that will accept you as a section 8 recipient with a voucher i ended up down here at garfield park a lot of times you end up in a community like this you're going to see drug dealings every day you don't hear shooters it's not like you're living in beverly hills you know at the same time what can we do i have two boys two girls my oldest son his name is edwin dorsey growing up it's always tough in chicago you know everybody all these murders happening everybody down you know there's a lot of killings around here so it's really a crazy neighborhood kids getting shot every day so you get accustomed to it you know any altercation could pop off it can start from from some little and escalate to so big and that all kids thinking their mind is go get a gun you know [Music] one thing about these guys that i found very unique is that the brotherhood and the family environment that they have that they try to create amongst themselves they got one or two houses that they can take all the guys in and they kind of all chip in together where they all kind of put their money together they're like we're all that we have absolutely i worry i mean it's a chance that they take every time they go outside we're living in a really bad environment where we just need to really change our ways some kids may turn to the streets you know try to hustle yeah the money fast but i was always going to find a way to catch up with you you don't know that your enemy right around the corner watching you from the whole situation you all know that the police are watching too it's always different circumstances you know so keep your head up always just second thinking everything well you gotta watch your back every day it's the most dangerous job in america does anybody ever sit down and ask them like what do you want to do i'm pretty sure selling drugs is not gonna be the first thing out of their mouth they're just getting money with that that's not that passion somebody's got to be there to say hey you can do this let me show you this over here and then you got to want to do it you got to want to do it he has a lot of potential in a job or something opposed to just selling drugs out here and just being caught up in you know in this vicious nasty world that we're living in they love money too much and don't know how to let it come to him instead him got to go and get it all the time he think i'm always trying to be his mama when really i'm just being his girlfriend he don't want to listen each time i tell him he'd get in trouble right after i had to i got a son i just want to provide from him so it was just always hard just getting your mind focused got to keep your mind straight and what you want to do in life if you think you could do it you probably could do it is it tough to live in the city right now yeah it is it's tough and when king get older i'm actually i'm trying to move out before i get fired move out of chicago out of the illinois period too many people getting taken out this world for no reason nowhere to raise my son at you don't want to just wake up to hearing your best friend getting shot on the news you know you don't want to wake up to that air day have you had friends get killed yeah one of my one of my friends here recently just about a month ago yeah some people get away with some things some people go to jail every action is reaction so it's consequences to everything so you never know never really know edwin is at a critical age no longer in school and left with few options to provide for his young family the days can be long in these chicago streets edwin has reached his crossroad which way will he go [Music] [Music] i've seen a variety of reasons as to why some kids turn to the streets to sell drugs it can be as simple as feeding themselves when you're 14 15 years old it's hard to get a job so this tends to be the fastest easiest way to get money a lot of times it's the younger guys who are the ones selling the drugs on the street because the consequences are lower for juveniles a lot changes when you're convicted of a felony we call these i guess in the legal world the collateral consequences of a felony conviction it's really hard to see one of my 17 year olds get arrested as a young 18 year old and seeing how their lives have changed and how great the consequences can be for adult cases i met edwin about a year ago in custody at the juvenile temporary detention center he was really at risk the whole time of being committed to the illinois department of juvenile justice we always try to prevent incarceration unfortunately it didn't work out the judge in edwin's situation was unwilling to give him that third or fourth chance basically edwin was charged with possession with the intent to distribute narcotics and sentenced to six months in a juvenile detention center he now faces an all-too-common reality as a black man in america there's nearly an 80 percent chance that he will return to prison within five years after being involved in the federal justice system it feels good to be back you happy to be out running these streets [Music] [Music] feel great you know waiting a little long time but it's finally here [Applause] [Music] you see the baby yeah happy to see the sun man i see them in a minute [Music] you want to go to the store [Music] he's an adult now so he got a therian conducts himself as an adult i mean he got to be a role model to his son at the end of the day i can't be my son was guilty of the crimes that he committed he did his time i won't judge him that's part of the past i strongly believe you got to stand behind your children just don't turn your back on them you know before it's too late unfortunately these younger guys are the ones that are losing their lives i just want him to take the time become a father the way that he's supposed to be towards his son and just become a respectful man in society i seem to happen many times somebody just come home out of jail been gone for a couple months or so come out it's the circumstances they're still in you know they still around the same place with the bad negativity so kind of drags them back into it you know they don't got that many opportunities they got felonies on their background so trying to do something productive but end up you know going back towards down the wrong road you ain't gonna achieve what you want to achieve by tomorrow there's always going to be distractions so you just got to be focused on anything you want to do you got a dream just chasing your life then in there [Music] we're working with guys aged 17 to 25 guys who've been on the street dropped out of high school maybe didn't even finish eighth grade the ones who have records the ones who nobody wanted every other program kicked them out these are the ones that we're going after because these are the ones that are causing the most ruckus our objective is high school diploma no new cases clean drops a marketable skill in other words a new identity they didn't come to us with five minutes worth of trauma they come to us with 18 21 25 years worth of trauma and they've navigated that trauma the best way they could figure out so our desire is to say yo you count we see you you're significant we really want them to kind of get unplugged from the streets and we want to be able to have them get plugged in with a life coach and kind of start to work on doing something different with their life i tell them when we first talk to him you suck as a criminal you suck as a criminal i mean just let you know now that's why you're on parole or probation that's not perhaps maybe the design you're created to be maybe you're designed to start a business maybe you're supposed to run this firehouse it's not about bringing a kid to a program and being with them for a couple of hours and then sending them back out but really walking life with them being in their life to help transform their life the language of success that is preparation meets opportunity determination and have a plan you can kind of have an approach of that these guys have had all these hard times in the past what i found is that the guys have an incredible hunger to get ahead i've seen guys go through drug treatment programs and then get union jobs i've seen guys get their high school diploma at an age when they thought that was completely beyond them and it was never going to happen for them it's just an incredible experience when you get to be part of a guy doing something for themselves i was thinking like damn i can't be doing the same thing to put me in the same position that i'm in already some had to give some have to change i can't help to think about this quote right here man go out and do something great with your day came across this program and then that was looking bright for me we believe in you man that's what we want you to do we want you to succeed in whatever you want to do all right go out man it's from the great what's your day just like to learn new things trying to yeah just learning new things learning new ways and just applying them to the real world it's a lot of stuff that people out here need such as job training getting my education through the programs helps you deal with emotional stress therapy very much thankful it's a blessing you know decent blessing yeah can't complain you know the guys say to us you guys are the only men who are with us who don't want nothing from us nobody believes that anybody gives a [ __ ] about them so i'm going to do what i'm going to do because i walk right by you and you knew i needed some help and you didn't do anything you saw a situation and you didn't come through the community is tired i mean we got elders who say i stay in my house in the summertime i am not coming outside because guys are shooting up and down the block not with some bb guns with some ak-47s 50 round clips so i'm not coming outside i'm not going to be the village we believe in journeying with you we're going to journey with you we'll love you until you can love yourself you now begin to wear down what was done in the village to you with the school with the teacher with family with the police there's a small number of guys who are actually keeping up the drama is actually keeping up the violence and if we can tap into those guys and show them other options and really help them that's going to begin to turn the relationship and begin to change the dynamics of how this young man thinks and how he views life if you got up and went to the lakefront and watched the song come up now the day is yours [Music] that's rare you're a different dude i'm gonna stay focused because i know what i want to do if you make a wrong decision it's going to be a consequence to that action so i learned that younger i'm 19 but i learned that at a young age i learned that at 16 17. every action is a reaction so it's up to you to do with the right [Music] thing [Music] hey i was really supposed to graduate last year but i made it this year as long as i get that deployment it's something that nobody can ever take away from me so happy that i'm getting it for the homies who died i know they watching down on me knowing i'm doing the right thing and they're happy for me but i mean homies in jail i know that they could hopefully they get a chance you know get an opportunity like i got and get that life on track everything works out for the best [Music] there's drug dealing life the consequences will be either you end up in jail or you'll be dead and it's sad because these are young kids that are dying but then again i'm thankful because you got to go through something in order to come out and my son has definitely has went through a whole lot and he's finally coming out of it [Music] graduation is going to be alphabetical order so folks will be in alphabetical order so it's a whole group of everybody else from other cohorts all together [Music] graduation felt successful at that moment being able to give my mama something that a lot of my family members didn't have very proud of myself very proud it's my pleasure to welcome you to the chicago bread [Applause] and so for all the challenges we face for all the pain we sometimes feel i am wildly optimistic about where our city is going to go the only thing i'm going to ask is you reach back and bring two or three or four or five with you if we do that the numbers of this start to turn the city in a very different way in a short amount of time so congratulations i couldn't be more proud of you one step a long journey you guys make me proud every single day you know i come from poverty but the road is brighter so i know how i got some potential potential to do a lot of good things now i always just add that potential's always been there just having a chance to sort of rise to surface and he's not a different person he has a good heart all of our guys have good hearts they just maybe haven't had the chances the opportunity to support and honestly the love and there's a lot of love in the room like this and people who believe deeply and what he can accomplish not just today but for the next 10 years for the west side but also for the city all right so proud so proud great job how you feeling edwin dorsey [Applause] i've always told them the sky is living you just got to have the willingness effort and the faith and believe in yourself ain't nobody gonna do it for you and hopefully this is just the beginning to to a great future it's rooms like this that have led the way in reducing chicago's spiraling murder rate in recent years with investment into the communities that need it most by leaders within these communities but more needs to be done to combat chicago's stark poverty and violence epidemic edwin's story embodies the struggle for so many young black men in chicago and cities across america today at the crossroad of success and failure life and death it's a city that rose from the ashes to become a global city once called the city of the century the city of broad shoulders so why not here why not now to mobilize a sustainable and equitable city for all perhaps serving as a model for others to follow [Music] but the biggest questions still remain where will people live [Music] where will they work and what kind of city will future generations inherit because chicago's story is the american story written by those searching for a better way of life and understanding how we got here may be the only path forward [Music] you

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 1,041,133

Rating: 4.7448044 out of 5

Keywords: Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full documentary, full episode, chicago at the crossroads documentary, chicago, shootings, afrika porter, brian schodorf, chicago at the crossroad, documentary, gangs, bloody chicago, violence, schodorf, media, public housing, chicago cred, credtalks, chicago at the crossroads, emmy nominated, maggio news, trailer, malik yusef

Id: ot7xCM-Oeig

Length: 60min 23sec (3623 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/amynoacid]

Great documentary, great direction and production, and a sad story of life in Chicago. Thanks for sharing, OP

[u/Ericthedude710]

Why is this uploaded again.