Filmmaker Marshall Curry’s Academy Award-nominated documentary, Street Fight is a story about how a nice guy in politics finishes last.
Or did he?
Street Fight is now out on DVD with a short update added at the end of the film — and, oh, what a difference the short update at the end means….
The documentary centers on the 2002 mayoral race in Newark, New Jersey pitting 32-year-old starry-eyed reformer Cory Booker against incumbent Mayor Sharpe James, a man who held that office for more than 30 years — and had a formidable machine in place as efficient, coldly ruthless and power-sated as any political machine in American history.
Is the campaign a battle of ideas? Or is it a no-holds-barred street fight? Can you guess which it is?
And can you guess who has the advantage in a street fight? The young guy with ideas and little power…or the older, self-assured guy who seemingly uses the police and other government employees to do his bidding at the snap of his fingers?
It’s a film that is MUST viewing by people of ALL political parties because of the tale that unfolds in utterly mesmerizing, take-no-prisoners documentary style — all within a superbly edited and brilliantly narrated, forever memorable 81 minutes.
Booker, brimming with zest and eagerness about running on the issues in this campaign that offered voters two quintessentially different African-American politicians, didn’t expect to run into the political buzzsaw of machine politics. And much of the film chronicles his shock at facing the “realities” about dirty politics where there are no consequences for using power to thwart the ideal of democracy.
He runs into it almost immediately at the start of the movie when he goes out knocking on doors to meet voters, and a building security officer tells him to leave. When he disputes it, the police are called and eject him. It’s trespassing — except when the Mayor and his supporters go to the same place to talk to voters.
Fairness, shmareness. James has the power…and you can feel that blantantly used power in every minute of Street Fight.
Booker is talking about change and responsive government. But he finds its hard and challenging — and nearly impossible — to get his message out.
Stores that put up his signs get visits from the police, and are closed are various prextexts. Others are warned not to put the signs up. Merchants are afraid to put his signs up. A rally at a club is cancelled because the police shut it totally down down. Some 200 of his signs are pulled. There is a stunningly shocking and enfuriating scene showing stores with Booker signs, then the stores with the signs gone, and James supporters removing Booker signs with no consquences.
Jame’s political machine leaves no stone unturned in a campaign that reeks of voter intimidation, harrassment — a campaign that making virtual mockery of the ideal of democracy.
Yet, this is indeed is a kind of democracy that has been practiced in America — big city machine politics, a politics of the most reprehensible kind that was more prevelant during the 20th century.
Booker at one point notes he wants to win on the issues. Fat chance because that entailed getting his message out. The machine stifled it.
No accusation or attempt to use the city’s police force is too flimsy. His office suffers a Watergate style burlgary. There’s a sex scandal. After a heated televised debate, James accuses one of Booker’s people of being a terrorist and has police hold him for a while.
Meanwhile, just as shamelss racist white politicians play the race card indirectly or directly in their comments or ads and seemingly are rewarded for it at the polls, James raises questions whether Booker is REALLY black (his supporters even broadcast questions about it as they go by in sound trucks, planting suggestions that Booker is not really black, disrupting his rallies and press conferences).
At one point the Mayor suggests Booke might even be Jewish or is getting support from the (dreaded) Jews.
A subplot here is the way the Mayor uses his bodyguards and police to go after Curry by trying to get his camera, putting their hands over his lense and ejecting him from being near the Mayor. There is an ineffible stench of bloated power and abuse of power and (until the update) no consequences throughout Street Fight and you watch it ashamed that power has been usurped and used in such a way that it makes a mockery of free elections.
It ends with Booker’s crushing defeat — and the knowledge that he particularly trailed in the black precincts….a sign that the sleazy, hardball and at times racist campaign waged against him did work. But he vows it is just the beginning of his fight.
So nice guys finished last?
Not really.
Because the producers tacked on a little P.S. — an update to Street Fight.
It notes that in 2006 James collected signatures but pulled out a few weeks before the election. And Booker ran again — this time winning one the biggest landslides in the city’s history.
So the idealist lost. But, in the end, the idealist won.
PS: We consider this DVD required viewing for all Americans.
UPDATE by MvdG
To read more about the 2006 elections / Cory Booker go here (his official campaign website), here (the official website of Newark, NJ) and here (NYT).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.