Fruitvale Station
July 30, 2013
Have you seen “Fruitvale Station”? If not, please stop reading this (seriously) and take a moment to make plans to go out and see it. It is probably playing somewhere close to you and, yes, it is that important of a film. The film is difficult and triggering but profoundly beautiful and timely. If you know someone like Oscar (or the thousands of others of young Black men who have lost their lives via extrajudicial killing) this film will hurt. However it succeeds in doing what mainstream portrayals of Black men almost never do by portraying Oscar as a whole, complex, deeply lovable person.
I went to a midnight showing alone (not the original plan but how things happened… ahem, friends, you know who you are!) this past weekend. There were 10 of us in the theater and by the film’s end, nearly all of us were in tears.
Since seeing the film, I have been asking everyone I know that has seen it the following questions:
– Are we close to reaching a critical mass of people ready to build a mass movement to dismantle structural racism? What actions might take us closer?
– What would communal spaces look like if they were designed to maximize human potential instead of exploit it?
If you’re so inclined, please share your thoughts & feelings below.