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Can’t We All Just Get Along: The Movie by Eric Protein Moseley
Activist and filmmaker Eric Protein Moseley, despite being homeless, felt it was critical to research and report on the subject of police violence. photo: courtesy EP Moseley
ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 2009, OSCAR
Grant, a 22-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot just after midnight by Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California.
A Bay Area Rapid Transit train, returning from San Francisco, was reported to have passengers aboard who were causing a disturbance. When the train arrived at the Fruitvale station in Oakland, Grant and several others passengers were detained by BART police.
Grant, who was unarmed, was forced to lie face down on the platform by two officers, one being Officer Mehserle. For no apparent reason, Mehserle pulled out his pistol and shot Grant in the back.
After being treated at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Grant was pronounced dead on January 1st, 2009. Local and national news outlets obtained several videos of the incident from a few different sources.
Protests took place soon after. While some were peaceful, others were violent.
All across the country, animosity between African-American communities and police departments have long existed.
Both sides continue to find it difficult to understand the opposition’s point of view when it comes to having a certain level of respect for one another.
The African-American community has, by way of video tape, proven that their community has been and continues to be targeted by violence from white officers. On the other hand, statistics have shown that the African-American population has been no stranger to violence projected towards white police officers.
In recent years, several other video tapes have surfaced showing police officers unlawfully killing African-American males. In retaliation, we have also witnessed several events where police officers were senselessly gunned down by those who believe that violence is the only way to stop violence from being thrust upon them.
Rapper 65 is interviewed in Moseley's 'Can't We All Just Get Along'. photo: courtesy EP Moseley
Both parties continue to point fingers at each other while, in the meantime, there seems to be no solution in sight whatsoever.
"No one should have to die!" is how I feel as a documentary filmmaker, father and black man. To elaborate, I made "Can’t We All Just Get Along", an hour-long documentary, starting in 2016 and covering police brutality dating back as far as the early 1960s.
Now that police brutality is off and on in the headlines, I feel I have to take responsibility and to try to raise awareness by producing my film. This main purpose of "Can’t We All Just Get Along”, which can be viewed here, is to bridge the gap between the African-American communities and the police who are sworn to protect them.
I will be the very first to admit that the production of this film is low resolution. Reason being is that I made it when I was homeless while in New Orleans in 2016. On July 5th, Alton Sterling, a 37 year-old African-American was shot to death by a white police officer in Baton Rouge.
The tension around the entire state of Louisiana and the country had been feed up with prior events concerning African-American males being shot and killed by white officers. I had no camera equipment at the time except for a low grade, not-so-smart camera phone.
Trying to figure out ways to shed more light on solutions to the problem, I knew that I could either wait until I got the proper equipment or I could start capturing stories as they were unfolding.
I decided to go with storyline over the production, content over form. I first arrived in Baton Rouge while tempers were flaring over the recent police shooting that occurred there. And right after that, three Baton Rouge police officers were killed in retaliation for the killing of Alton Sterling.
In 'Can't We All Just Get Along', a woman during the 1965 Watts event says: 'I don't check it and I'm laying on the burn.' photo: courtesy EP Moseley
The animosity was as deep as a Louisiana swamp after Hurricane Katrina.
When I first arrived in Los Angeles, Andy Bells the CEO of Union Gospel Mission provided me with an Apple iPhone, which helped bring up the quality of the film a small amount. The phone also gave me access to a free editing app.
I then found several news clips and whole stories to support events of police brutality that had taken place in the US dating from back in the early ‘60s to currently. But I was somewhat disappointed in the quality of the film and decided to can the whole project.
But when the recent police shooting of African-American males occurred recently in the Bay Area, I said to myself, “I have to go with what I have.”
The film may lack in production values but hopefully it makes that up with the indepth message it contains from the interviews that I captured.
For example when I spoke to Rapper 65 from Central, he shared a story with me on how he remembered the Rodney King riots as a child. It immediately took me back to the time that my father had taken our entire family on a cruise through the Watts Riots/Rebellion in the summer of 1965.
As a four-and-a-half year-old child , I was terrified and still remember the situation clearly to this very day.
But what struck me the most about Rapper 65 was when he went into full detail on how the majority of the police who patrol the African-American communities , know nothing about the everyday life or the obstacles residents face on daily base.
I have to agree with that as well. I believe that police departments need better training when it comes to stereotypes. I also make it a point to let it be know that African-Americans (under certain circumstances) are no stranger to shooting police officers.
Filmmaker Eric Protein Moseley feels that, whatever your experience, you can do research and tell stories. photo: courtesy EP Moseley
My film’s sole purpose is to bridge the gap between the African-American communities and the police who are sworn to protect and to serve those communities.
I take the viewer on an hour-long journey through Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Dallas, Texas and on to Los Angeles, where we review the Rodney King beating of 1992 after its 25th anniversary.
Also being addressed in the film are the issues concerning police brutality among the African-American communities in other places. Their role is expanded dramatically when I learned that, in a Bronx, New York processing center, a single-parent and pregnant woman was denied medical attention when she couldn’t walk to the door.
My main objective is to try to get both sides to see that there are good and bad people on both sides. No one should be stereotyped as a bad person, rather you are just a cop or an African-American, living in the United States. No one should be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Eric Protein Moseley is a filmmaker, homeless advocate and father who lives in LA and can be reached . Posted on Jun 06, 2018 - 11:05 PM