Abstract
Gentrification and policing frequently go hand in hand. Gentrification, however, does not occur solely in urban areas. Furthermore, there are more places and spaces that the poor and marginalized are policed than on the streets. They are often policed by changes in social policies bestowed unto them by others outside of their communities who have the power to disenfranchise their physical, mental, and material well-being. These two documentaries collide at the crux of these dynamics. On one hand, Every Mother’s Son chronicles the experiences of three New York City mothers from different ethnic backgrounds who become social activists to try and bring the police officers who killed their sons to justice. On the other hand, in Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek, Derrick Evans squares off with local and state officials to preserve from rural gentrification one of the first towns in the South with freed slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Every Mother’s Son profiles Iris Baez (mother of Anthony Baez), Kadiatou Diallo (mother of Amadou Diallo), and Doris Busch Boskey (mother of Gary [Gidone] Busch). All three are mothers whose sons encountered death by legal intervention, which is defined as the killing of a person by a law enforcement officer or other peace officer with specific legal authority to use deadly force acting in the line of duty, excluding legal executions.
On Thanksgiving Day in 1994, Anthony Baez was playing two-hand touch football with his younger brothers outside of their mother’s row house. The football accidentally hit the back of a police car. The police officers, one being Francis Livoti, got out of the police cruiser and proceeded to accost the Baez boys, calling them a gang. The brothers tried to explain to the officers that they had on the same shirts for the holiday. An altercation ensued, ending with Anthony Baez being choked to death by Livoti. Baez was a married father of two and planned to join the police academy. Despite the medical examiner ruling the killing a homicide, the grand jury referring the case over for trial, and Livoti having at least 15 complaints against his treatment of citizens, Livoti was found not guilty due to a typographical error during the indictment. The parallels between the Baez death and the Eric Garner chokehold death 20 years later are uncanny.
Less than five years after the Baez incident, another police killing would rally protesters in New York City and across the country. On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, who was an immigrant from West Africa, was shot 19 times in front of his apartment building door while reaching for his wallet by four plainclothes police officers, who fired a total of 41 shots. Though the officers claimed they saw a gun, Diallo was unarmed. Despite being charged with second-degree murder, the four officers were acquitted of all charges. In 2000, Kadiatou Diallo sued the city of New York for $61 million ($20 million plus $1 million for each bullet fired) for racial profiling and wrongful death. The case was settled for $3 million in 2004, which is one of the largest wrongful-death settlements in the city’s history.
Six months after Diallo’s death, police officers responded to a disturbance call in a Jewish neighborhood reported to have favorable relations with police officers. Gary Busch, who was a dean’s-list computer science student, was engaging in his evening prayers when the doorbell rang. Gary answered the door wearing his prayer shawl and holding a small ceremonial hammer. The police officers pepper sprayed Gary, and then as he ran out his apartment yelling in discomfort, he was fatally shot 12 times. While the officers claimed self-defense, some eyewitnesses claimed the contrary. After an internal investigation, the police administration ruled Gary’s death justifiable self-defense due to the hammer and Gary’s history of mental illness.
Through these three different incidents with Puerto Rican, African, and Jewish families, we get an important glimpse into the lives of mothers whose children are taken from them too soon. Every Mother’s Son is a heralding true story that provides some insights into the lives of Sabrina Fulton (mother of slain 17-year-old Trayvon Martin), Samaria Rice (mother of slain 12-year-old Tamir Rice), and Lucia McBath (mother of slain 17-year-old Jordan Davis). Viewers see how criminalization is more than individual, isolated incidents. They see how encounters with police are structural. Accordingly, the continuation of police brutality over time speaks to a systemic form of bias that manifests in how alleged criminals are assessed and profiled.
Instructors can use this documentary to help students make sense of the current #BlackLivesMatter movement (Krieger et al. 2015), incorporate race and social psychological theories on criminalization into classroom contexts (Ray 2015), and engage in important discussion about fear as a plausible self-defense and mistrust of police and the criminal justice system. Fittingly, instructors can highlight empirical research showing that whites are more likely to perceive black men as aggressive, describe having a similar fear of black men as they do of snakes and spiders, and pull the trigger of a gun more quickly on an unarmed black man compared to an unarmed white man and even, at times, an armed white man (Eberhardt et al. 2004; Correll, Urland, and Ito 2006; Trawalter et al. 2008). The flaws of New York City’s infamous stop-and-frisk program can also be illuminated, in particular, research showing that of the 700,000 stops performed by police officers in 2011, only 2 percent of stops resulted in the discovery of contraband. Blacks and Latinos represented over 80 percent of these stops and represented over one half of the stops that involved physical force (Center 2012). Consequently, when the social psychology of fear is racialized, it contributes to the disparity that black males are 21 times more likely than white males to be killed by a police officer (Gabrielson, Jones, and Sagara 2014).
Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek follows Derrick Evans, who was teaching social studies and history at a high school in Boston. He owns a couple of rental properties and is living the American Dream. However, this all changes when his mother tells him that the town in Mississippi he grew up in was scheduled to be redeveloped. He immediately drives south with his dog to see if he can stop the process.
In 1866, a group of emancipated slaves purchased 320 acres of land along the uninhabited swamplands now known as Turkey Creek. Some members of that original group were Evans’s great-grandparents. The land was passed from generation to generation and families were mostly self-sufficient. Residents grew their own fruits and vegetables and fished out of the creek. Upon hearing the news that Turkey Creek was scheduled for demolition to make way for an airport and mall, Evans felt compelled to act. After 12 years of trials and tribulations, including dealing with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the BP oil spill, Evans was able to conserve, protect, and restore Turkey Creek.
What makes this documentary so poignant is the physical, mental, and emotional toll this process had on Evans. We literally see his health deteriorate during his 12-year battle. The documentary also shows how development in rural areas has the same deleterious affects as gentrification in urban areas. The documentary revitalizes much-needed attention on rural areas and the ways that race and class shape communities. In particular, Come Hell or High Water draws attention to the environmental justice movement and how it intersects with race, social class, and power (Bullard 1990; Pellow and Brulle 2005; Boone and Fragkias 2013; Taylor 2014). Environmental justice addresses inequities where people live, work, and play (Taylor 2000). In this case, minorities’ exposure to higher levels of pollution, more crime, less green and walkable neighborhoods, fewer trees, and worse schools than that of their white counterparts is an issue that blacks address in their communities that aligns with the environmental justice movement (La Veist and Wallace 2000; Charles 2003; Sewell 2010; La Veist et al. 2011).
Come Hell or High Water becomes a powerful portrait to discuss how economic development becomes racialized. It will help students to think about the changes in their own neighborhoods and towns over time and put a face on the demolished houses that seem to go unnoticed. Finally, the unspoken health consequences of economic development and gentrification on local residents who are displaced and/or stressed at the possibility of losing their homes are highlighted. Come Hell or High Water will be appropriate for Introduction to Sociology courses, Environmental Sociology courses, Medical Sociology courses, and courses that address race and class disparities.