Acclaimed writer, Shelby Steele, has long argued that systemic racism is more a strategy than a truth, and that the universal oppression of black Americans is largely over with. But the 2014 shooting of a black teen, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri by a white policeman shook the nation to its core. During Steele’s investigation of Ferguson, America was once again rocked by the brutal killing of George Floyd. Didn’t these killings, and the long list of others like them, put the lie to Steele’s argument?
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The triumphant story of how a little Chicago microbrewery succeeded in flipping off the president and mobilizing a community got its start after the 5 Rabbit Cervecería received a major order with a downside. Married brewery owners Andres Araya and Mila Ramirez, Latin American immigrants, rejoiced when they were selected to brew the house brand for the new Trump Tower, a coup for such a small business. Joy turned to horror with Trump’s shocking public characterizations of Hispanic immigrants. They pulled their beer out of the tower, but what to do with all that product? The answer lay in imaginative relabeling of the golden ale as Chinga Tu Pelo, or F••• Your Hair. Thirsty Chicago beer drinkers, bar owners and restaurateurs rose to the protest challenge with glee, and set 5 Rabbit on a new path to social action.
The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly multi-faceted, buoyantly propulsive documentary portrait of this irresistibly charismatic one-off — sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style by writer-director Markus Zizenbacher. There can be very few people better qualified to do justice to this particular tale. Zizenbacher befriended DeLear — born Anthony Robertson in Simi Valley, an obscure California backwater — after the latter relocated to Vienna in the early 2010s.
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On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.
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Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.
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