Well, I watched 9500 Liberty last night on Mtv. It was pretty much what I expected – the polar opposites on both sides of the debate spent most of the time on screen. I don’t say that to condemn the piece, many “documentary” films operate this way. Conflict sells. I did find the use of a WaPo reporter as a quasi-narrator point-maker a bit weird.
People see in films and other visual media (including real life) what they want to see. Having been involved in both very public and private aspects of this debate, what I see in the very precise editing of 9500 is a product that is very nearly propoganda. Now, I understand that this is a hell of a thing to say but I’ll stand by it and here’s why: take the scene where someone is filming Greg L. who is filming them. Greg was there that day filming the day laborers who used to flock to the 7-11 over in coverstone. When that bit was filmed it wasn’t unusual for there to be 30 dudes hanging around. After about 10:00 when most of the jobs were gone, they remaining people didn’t leave. The ground around there was stripped bare of any grass, bushes were killed and the adjoining property owners had to put up signs that were ignored. People were peeing in public. It was a wreck – still is. Did you see any of that in 9500? No, it didn’t make the cut. It didn’t help paint the David and Goliath story.
See, I was elected to City Council the spring after the repeal of the City’s family definition ordinance. I was in the middle of that debate – part of the clean-up crew. I took the angry calls from citizens demanding action. To be sure, some had motives that were less than pure but most just wanted their life back. Indeed, if you fill a house with young men of any stripe and remove supervision, you’re looking for trouble. Go to any frat house if you think I’m wrong.
As a Council member I didn’t hear from Mexican without Borders or Numbers USA or really any other group who play such a large part in the movie. I heard from people who were having their lives wrecked because the house across the street had 20 people in it. I got a letter from a guy over on Landgreen St. a couple of years ago complaining about the overcrowded house across the street and decided to go knock on his door. It was a hot day and he was a little surprised to see me on his doorstep but he came on out and we talked. I asked him about the For Sale sign in his front yard…he remarked that it was little more than a decoration. Nobody would buy his house due to the house across the street. He was right, it was a free-for-all. Cars came and went – at one point cars were triple parked out into the street. Two of them were running with nobody in them but both had their stereos at max volume in some sort of bizzare unattended battle of the bands. Young men were drinking in the front yard and there was at least one car in the back yard. It was a zoo. I recieved at least a dozen of those complaints in the first year or two of my time on Council. It wasn’t hard to find these places yet none of this appears in the film….
This is the single biggest problem I have with the film: for all of it’s claimed documentary traits, it spends no time at all on what caused all of this. To be sure, some folks would simply be uncomfortable with the demographic change but the people who rang my phone wanted their lives and communities back.
The film makers fight is clearly with the response and I’ll be the first to point out that it was ugly in places. However, the complete lack of coverage of the inconvenient side of the equation – cause – leaves me and many others suspicious of the motives behind the film. A 5 minute exposition with Chris Pannel just isn’t sufficient to convey the seriousness of the problem that locals faced. It was a nightmare then and still is in some places. It’s hard to take the balance of the work (which was pretty well done) seriously with such a glaring hole.