At a screening of their new documentary on New Haven’s ruthless turf wars, youth media-makers like Chastity Navarro and Bianka O’Bryan (left and right) posed a challenge to the adults: We wouldn’t have to rep our ‘hoods so hard if you’d give us something else to take pride in.
“The Tribe and the ‘Ville, the Tre and the Hill: What does it all come to? What’s it doing for you?” asked B‑Roca (aka Brandon Foster, pictured below) at a Thursday night premiere of a new film from Youth Rights Media (YRM), on the inter-neighborhood beef making this a dangerous city for guys his age to walk through. Nothing, comes the answer from the artfully-shot Nevah Wen: Reflections on an All-American City.
The documentary’s youth producers chose a theme “that affects everyone,” explained one of the leaders, Ashley Burney: The intense territory loyalties that make it “unsafe to go the store in another neighborhood.”
“The whole idea of the film is to shine a light, open people’s eyes to see that there is a problem,” said Karl D. Gray, Jr., long-time YRMer and another lead youth producer for this project. They got that done: through on-screen interviews with an all-neighborhoods cast of New Haveners living and losing in the turf wars, Nevah Wen exposes the consequences of “repping the ‘hood” as too bloody grave.
One scene shows a public librarian lamenting having to run distinct programs at every different library, because kids are too scared to cross neighborhood lines. Another introduces a Newhallville mom who’s got two sons in prison, another wounded, and her oldest dead from turf war bullets. Choked up, she gets out her plea: “Step back! Step back and try to see the bigger picture!”
A live example Thursday was Lamont Swint, past YRM participant in the audience to support. It was his cousin shot dead in Newhallville Wednesday, he said. “It was a kid from the Tribe. It does need to be stopped.”
A lot of Nevah Wen screen-time is given to the question: How did New Haven get so fiercely divided in the first place? If few turf warriors interviewed could answer where the beef had come from —” “I rep my ‘hood because it’s my ‘hood. I rep because it’s where I’m from” —” then the YRM team was going to try.
In a highlight scene, they take mic and camera to Dwight’s Elm City Cutz for some insight from the older generation. First came the affirmation that divisions are worse than they were. “This ‘hood mentality is new. We were trying to get out the ‘hood!” and, “This generation, they’re more ruthless.” Next came some speculation why that might be: These kids rep the neighborhoods because they have nothing else to rep. Whereas previous generations were in touch with black history and the struggle for rights in this country, this generation has nothing better to fight for than their few home blocks.
The film let that suggestion hang, as if it bought it. But in a Q & A with the audience after the screening Thursday, the media-makers had other fingers to point. “They want to bunch it up and make it one thing, but they’re not here, they don’t know what it’s like for us,” said B‑Roca. He and his colleagues filled them in: Not enough youth centers, not enough job opportunities, nothing to do, nothing to do, nothing to do. (Too much incarceration, added YRM executive director Laura McCargar (pictured), who had better ideas for what New Haven could do with the “$83 million it spends locking up its residents.”).
In general, not enough support and leadership, said B‑Roca. “They’ll say youth don’t have a real vision, but who’s going to give it to us? They can say we don’t know about history, but who’s teaching us?”
Ife Michelle Gardin (pictured) of Youth Continuum got up to call on fellow audience-members to heed the cry. Clapping is not enough. Make donations, start programs, give these youth jobs, she said. “Put your money where your mouth is!”
Former Panther and long-time New Haven activist George Edwards (pictured at center with media-maker Antwan Madden) agreed it’s time for community-wide action. The diagnosis of youth out of touch and “disconnected from the history” is old news, he said, so let’s stop talking and start doing. We need to build an “ongoing structure of intergenerational communication.” Now or nevah.