American Revolution 2

American Revolution 2

Last August, the heads got beat during the Democratic National Convention. That week seemed like a turning point. Nothing could be the same again. The Daley machine was fatally injured. The police had been the rioters, as the Walker Report said. And everyone saw it on TV.

Now it’s summer again and we might ask: has anything changed? The events of convention week which will loom so large in history have already begun to fade from our minds. Mayor Daley is smiling again from the front pages. One battle does not make a revolution or does it?

“American Revolution Two” is not really about the convention disturbances; they are only its frame of reference. It’s about what happened later, up in Uptown among poor Southern whites. While liberals wrung their hands over Lincoln Park and signed petitions for peace, an alliance was being formed a few miles north Between? Between who? The Black Panthers and the Young Patriots. And these patriots wear Confederate flags on their berets.

Not that much attention is paid to this alliance itself; if poor blacks and poor whites don’t work together, then who should? No; the film is concerned with how a neighborhood came to have a new idea of Chicago thrust upon it by convention week and my guess is that The Film Group stumbled onto this theme and had sense enough not to let go until they’d finished their movie.

The film began as shots taken during those two memorable nights last August: Wednesday and Thursday were “the big nights,” with most action downtown near 18th Street & Michigan Ave., but demonstrators actually camped out all week in Grant Park (which some cops believe is named after General Grant) while singing “We Shall Overcome” (which some northern liberals believe was written by Perry Como).

Then somebody decided to expand it backward, forward and sideways into several months (February through May); more cameras were assigned, and The Film Group team more or less lived in the ghetto during that time.

There are no credits on the film. (The Film Group, which usually makes commercials and sponsored films, is a professional Chicago company with union crews. Union rules allow credits only for specific jobs several camera crews worked on and off during both periods: first downtown [mainly], then in the ghetto, finally in Uptown.)

What we have here is a documentary a film every Chicagoan should see, but that’s not saying much… what I really want to say is this: If you were outraged by last August’s events and if you were puzzled, even vaguely, by such an apparently cataclysmic week having no apparent aftermath then go see American Revolution 2.

This documentary was made in Chicago as part of a series called “unnarrated documentaries.” Temaner and Quinn had experimented with shorter ones before (the idea being to let people speak for themselves), but this film breaks new ground by keeping its mouth shut for two hours.

Still another subtitle is “A Few Honkies Get Their Heads Beat,” and this phrase describes about a third of the movie too. We see again the scenes we remember so well: demonstrators; police; guardsmen; tear gas; march to Gregory’s home.

After convention week there comes an encore: ABC-TV newscast shows Daley’s redwood fences thrown up around empty lots (in order not to offend delegates’ eyes); boosterism from convention official (“We have more hotel space than any city except New York”); tour of Amphitheater neighborhood by taxi driver (“Here was where they put up the barbed wire; you needed a pass to go any farther”).

After this, we went into the ghetto: pool halls, bars, restaurants where black people talk; sometimes angry, sometimes ironic talk about honkies who need to get their heads beat to find out what the ghetto knows already. In one shot we start with a closeup of a black girl telling things as she sees them; then the camera pulls back and she’s an armed militant: “I’ll have my rifle on one arm and my baby on the other and I’ll fight for what’s mine.”

A smooth editing rhythm has been established by now, and we’re inside the logic of the film. (This film is as well edited and high in technical quality as any cinema verite documentary I’ve ever seen. The sound recording outdoors on Michigan Avenue is better than that obtained indoors in “Warrendale”.)

The editing builds up a rhythm of angry and amused black faces and the rhythm of the film is the rhythm of what they’re saying. This momentum begins to be broken by another kind of face: a white face with a southern accent saying earnest things. But saying the same things. This is a community leader from Uptown no, not officially a leader because bankers and businessmen run the Uptown Council and he is “only” a poor white from Appalachia.

We go to a party at which this man and many others drink Pepsi-Cola his neighbors argue passionately about their neighborhood; about being poor; about what needs to be done; about how “pigs” harass them for crimes like being poor and living in Uptown. Members of the Young Patriots are at this party; this is described as either a white street gang or white community organization (depending on your point of view) in Uptown.

Now comes an illuminating scene: A spokesman for the Young Patriots attends a meeting of concerned citizens from Lincoln Park. They’re mostly, yes, “white liberals.” The spokesman starts to talk about being poor and about the police.

“Oh God,” says the chairman, bored, “we’ve all heard this so many times before.” He’s resentful: It appears the meeting was called by a clique that wanted only to congratulate itself on its progressive views. How embarrassing now to sit here and listen to a hillbilly who doesn’t even know he’s using clichés.

But no. The group decides to let the hillbilly talk. This is ultimate liberalism, isn’t it? To be bored by someone rather than admit you feel superior to him? And this brings us to the most poignant moment of revelation in the film.

Because when those liberals from Lincoln Park start talking with the Young Patriot, and asking him questions they condescend! They use simple words. They talk slowly, clearly afraid he won’t understand them otherwise. And there’s one problem: This young man and his friends already have demonstrated more verbal facility (talk faster, more colorfully) than these people condescending to them.

“However, what’s the program?” a curious person asks him. “For those who have a specific proposal…” replies another. “Bring it to your grown-ups,” suggests a third. A fourth says that if the Young Patriots could get a program together, the Lincoln Park group might be able to help might even “get it in Royko’s column.”

At this point, the film moves permanently uptown. In Uptown, a Black Panther organizer named Bobby Lee comes into the community to offer support to the Young Patriots and dominates the last part of the film.

In an amazing scene, Lee confronts and wins over a roomful of suspicious, even hostile, Uptown whites. God only knows what these people thought of Black Panthers before they met one! Bobby Lee wheedles and reasons and argues and asks: “What’s bugging you, brother? This black beret? Here, I’ll take it off. We been through a lot together. You poor? You ever been in jail?” The man nods his head; he holds up two fingers. “Tell us what you been through,” Bobby Lee says.

One person gets up; then another speaks out; then another gets up; Bobby Lee coaches them along; finally this shy young mother stands up with her baby in her arms she finds courage because she has to: The words come tumbling out: “The cops had my brother up against the squad car. He was out in front of our house. The cops had a knife they were pricking him with it. I said, what’d he do? They wouldn’t answer me.”

And others: “The cops said ‘what’s your height?’” says a boy. “Then they took me over to this wall where there was this stick stuck in the side of it for measuring your height and then they reached down and grabbed my hair and slammed my head up against the wall. If you’re poor, they don’t care. That’s it, man. If you got the bread, the pigs are scared of you.”

“Right on!” Bobby Lee intones, “Right on!”

The meeting ends in camaraderie and purposefulness; this committee will go to the Uptown Council meeting where a Model Cities program is being decided without them.

At this meeting, and at a later meeting with the district police commander, does the group find an identity for themselves; with the policeman is perhaps most revealing. He starts off by congratulating the gang on its name: Young Patriots. He admits his men may harbor some resentment against people whose appearance doesn’t fit their idea of “correct” appearance. “What we’re trying to do,” he says, “is to teach policemen that everyone isn’t like them.” But then he says: “The poor neighborhoods have been exploited by a person, or persons, who are less than American. They may be pink or even red.”

Outrage from audience. They’ve come to air their grievances; now they’re being told they’re Communist dupes these poor people couldn’t have grievances unless a red a pink at least told them they did.

For years people have been saying why don’t they make a movie about Chicago? Now one has been made: Not a Hollywood movie with imported stars and directors using Chicago as backdrop but a movie in and of Chicago.

It is a fact that the “Second American Revolution” shows that once voiceless and even opinion less Uptown whites came together as a community after the Democratic Convention; this community was disillusioned. These folks recognized their foe: not black people (or any other scapegoat) but rather an establishment which dismissed them as dirt-poor hillbillies who were therefore beneath notice.

They joined forces with Black Panthers, adopting some of their organizational strategies and methods of protest. And what they’ve done is made with the remainder of (you’re educated until unless you have clout if you are not white or wealthy) city speak up a place where nobody speaks out unless he’s rich or knows somebody in power; unless she’s educated or white-skinned; except where they are influential or well-off do they get heard at least for now.

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