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Seeing the film was a revelation for my 14-year-old self. The Bed-Stuy milieu bore a certain resemblance to the neighborhoods around the magnet schools I’d attended in West Pullman and Morgan Park. But Brooklyn seemed different than Chicago too. Instead of going home to islands of relative homogeneity at the end of the day to talk smack on other groups amid the safety of our own ethnicity, it seemed that the New Yorkers were in each others’ face 24/7.
“I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn’t mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don’t even call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.”
