"Newark is the frontier of the American dream." - Cory Booker I recently watched Marshall Curry's 2005 documentary Street Fight about Cory Booker's 2002 campaign against the incumbent Sharpe Jones for the mayoral seat in Newark, New Jersey. This doc was released on PBS and was eventually nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
Booker was a city council member and up-and-coming community activist at the time of his campaign. Jones had a 16-year hold on the mayoral seat. In that time, he had created a very powerful political machine and won the favor and trust of the African-American population in Newark. However, Curry's production team and Booker himself uncover a vast system of political corruption, revealing inconsistencies in Sharpe Jones' multiple paychecks and the vast poverty of Newark's citizens. Curry and his camera crew are even assaulted several times by Sharpe's team of bodyguards and personal police force, even when they are in public settings open to the press.
Over the course of the film, Curry uncovers a lot of themes that play factor in this and almost all political campaigns: issues of race, class, age, experience, honesty, and the ubiquitous "American Dream." Although Booker is eventually beaten by Sharpe for the 2002 election, he does come back to win the election in 2006. Since then, Sharpe Jones was infamously indicted on and convicted of five federal charges of fraud and sentenced to 27 months in prison. The documentary style itself is mostly verité footage of Booker's door-to-door campaigning, political speeches and assemblies held by both candidates, and on-the-street interviews with Newark citizens. The snappy editing, mostly-verité content and contemporary hip-hop/rap soundtrack really brings out the fight in Street Fight and makes this film a very intriguing and exciting experience.
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