Brick City Season Opener: Sneak Peek

by: Rosi Efthim

Fri Jan 28, 2011 at 10:38:07 AM EST

Season 2 of Sundance Channel's Peabody-Award winning documentary series Brick City finds Booker caved under Newark's financial problems and violent crime. The first episode, premiering Sunday, picks up Booker's story just before the Christie era, the mayor firing up police academy recruits.

We remember that day - October 13, 2009. Former sheriff Kim Guadagno had just said she was afraid on the streets of Newark. And in a show of solidarity, Jon Corzine ran through those streets with the mayor, and those recruits. I never liked the optics. If the message was that Newark's streets were safe, leave the recruits home. But there's another reason we remember that day; Jon Corzine ran wearing a Blue Jersey tee shirt, the workout wear of the Blue Jersey Road Runners Club. (Get a glimpse of that at the 2:48 mark).  

I don't know how far into the last few months Brick City 2 goes. But the series' director/producers - who include acclaimed actor Forest Whitaker - suggest in they captured at least the brewing of tremendous strain inside Garry McCarthy's police department, that led to ACLU-NJ's petition for federal oversight of the department, followed by a rocking vote of no confidence in McCarthy by the police union.

There's no ease in Newark for Cory Booker. Nothing's simple. Facebook and Oprah money just are a Band-aid. And as Brick City 2 documents, his city's populated by as many who revile him as see him as savior. But no other city, no other mayor, has the spotlight and the cameras this guy does. And New Jersey cannot rise without Newark rising.

This is Brick City's season opener, running time: 45 minutes.