This Is North Preston…

Since the release of this documentary there are many mixed emotions about what people have watched. Some people have seen the entire documentary and say it’s great, others say “this is not North Preston”. It’s a bag of mixed emotions and those emotions are running high.

Truth is when I first watched the documentary I said “this is some real bullshit right here”, this is not telling the the whole story of North Preston. I have to apologize for my first reaction to the documentary…it was unfair and not justified and totally based on the image this may portray about the community. It took me some time to readjust my thought process around this documentary. I came to realize that I didn’t like seeing that part of our historical black community being publicized. Truth be told, it isn’t telling the whole story of North Preston but it is telling the “truths” about some individuals that are from North Preston, that live(d) there and their experiences growing up in the street life. I had to take that into account and readjust my thought process when speaking on this documentary.

So the million dollar question is, is it the title of the documentary or the content that people are so upset about?

Most of the comments I’ve read online are those outraged that this is depicting a negative image of the community as a whole and that it is misleading to those who will watch it that are not from the community. Strong perspective and for the most part you’re right, many will look at this documentary and think nothing but negative thoughts…truth is they’ve most likely felt that way prior to this documentary anyways. This documentary isn’t to change their minds about the community. You see if anyone wanted to know about the community prior to this documentary then they would already be aware that this documentary is the story of a few individuals and their judgement should be left at the door…this story happens in lots of communities.

This is a documentary about the life of a not one but many individuals from North Preston, you can’t deny their truths because they were part of this documentary. So when I asked the million dollar question “is it the title of the documentary or the content?” I was asking this because you cannot deny the real life stories being told of those in the documentary. You may not be proud of where they came from in terms of their life journey, you may be angry that they told their stories of growing up in North Preston and you may be yelling from the rooftops ” This is NOT North Preston” but for them it was “their” North Preston. Take a minute and think about this…these were “their” experiences growing up in “their” community. It’s unfair to discredit them for speaking their truths.

There are many eras of the community that could’ve been written about, the era when our people first settled there and built a community that the government didn’t expect to exist today, essentially dropping blacks off to die in the area we now know as North Preston. The people of the community pulled together and developed land by foot, horse and buggy and built a sustainable community. We look up to the people who developed a community even when the city refused to give the very essentials such as clean water and public transportation. We can’t deny this happened, it’s been documented. Anyone still alive over the age of 40, this would be what their documentary would be about, I suspect.

We move forward and times changed as they do throughout our lives. There becomes a different kind of group of people to “look up to” Another lifestyle is introduced into the community and the young folk take to it. We all know the stories around the street life and we surely can’t deny it happened in any one of our communities. If we deny it, we are denying an era where things were most definitely about the “street life”, which too is part of our history. Is it pretty? no the street life isn’t pretty and this is the era to which this documentary speaks of. Those in the film reflect on the old school hustlers who showed up with their shiny new Cadillacs, with their fur coats, their gold chains, bright white smiles and wads of cash. The younger generation was introduced to the street life and found it exciting and another way to “survive” so to speak. Can we deny this?

It doesn’t mean that it is a reflection of North Preston as a whole, this happened in many communities and continues to happen to this day…that era is not over it just evolved. Since this is a documentary about North Preston we don’t get to hear about how the evolution of the street life affected other communities because the focus of this documentary is the experiences of those individuals that grew up in North Preston. This documentary could be written and titled “This is Uniacke Square”, “This is Mulgrave Park”, “This is the Bean”, “This is the Pubs”, “This is Spryfield”, This is…on and on and on and on.

I believe the title has a way of suggesting this is all that North Preston is about but in fact we all know that there is more to any community than just negativity. Maybe negativity is not the right choice of words, maybe I should’ve said…tells a story of the side of our history the community doesn’t like to speak about.

Truth is, there is nothing that is made up in that documentary and it’s hard to see it in film unfiltered and unscripted, it’s hard to accept that this is part of the community. To let others have access to this information from outside of the community probably feels like betrayal. We need to stop feeling guilty and hiding our stories, good, bad or ugly to those outside of our communities. We need to let people live in their truths and we need to start accepting ours. We can only sweep the dirt under the rug for so long. At some point someone comes along and lifts the rug up and tells the stories that have been hushed for generations.

We know the heart of the community is the church, the elders, the entrepreneurs, the educators, the health care professionals, the corner store clerk, the custodians, the men or women getting up at 4am every morning to catch a bus to go to a job to provide for their family. We know that many people in the community still have that “if you need something I am hear for you” attitude. There are “go to” elders in the community, those who will fix a pipe, your roof, dig a hole with their equipment, give you a job when you are down and out, feed you when you are hungry, shake your hand on a deal and so on and so on. That is the heart of a community, especially a black community.

So as this documentary tugs on our heartstrings and touches us emotionally, it is the reality of some of those within the community. To silence them about their truths is simply unfair …don’t we want to lift the rug and have our stories told without judgement from those who know the stories are factually based and most importantly don’t we just want to stop pretending that we live in a perfect world, a perfect community…let’s be honest with ourselves when judging those who tell their journey in life…let’s just be honest and supportive and say “damn we got to do better”.

The harsh realities of what we are seeing on the screen, hearing from the mouths of those who have lived it is going to let the next generation see that the street life is a tough life. You lose people, friends and family members when you’re in that life. It’s not all about new cars, gold chains and wads of cash it’s also about the loss of life and the toll it takes on them and their families. The street life should not be desired but often it is, they speak on that desirability and how it drew them in. It becomes a way out for some who are lost in life…let’s be supportive and accept that this is part of the history of the community and let’s move forward to write a new chapter for the next generation.

We should not silence those who have lived a life different from ours, we use their voices as a platform to make an impression on others going down the path they wish they hadn’t chosen. Through it all they become better people when they get to exhale their truths…we can’t continue to shame those who sin differently than us…we just can’t. ~ Sherry Anne Crowe