NIMBYs from Hell:
Show Me a Hero is a Riveting Miniseries for the Politically-Minded, from HBO and the Creator of The Wire 

Release Date: August 16th—August 30th, 2015
Number of Episodes: 6 (each approximately 60 minutes long)
Directed by: Paul Haggis
Written by: David Simon & William F. Zorzi (based on the 1999 book of the same name by Lisa Belkin)
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Carla Quevedo, Catherine Keener, Natalie Paul, Dominique Fishback, Ilfenesh Hadera, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Clarke Peters, Winona Ryder, Alfred Molina, Jim Belushi, Bob Balaban

SPOILER ALERT—DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE WORK DISCUSSED AND DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT KEY PLOT DETAILS

Show Me a Hero is based on a true story, adapted from Lisa Belkin's 1999 book (of the same name) by former Baltimore Sun journalists David Simon and William F. Zorzi. Simon created the masterful shows The Wire, which Zorzi also wrote for, and Treme. And Paul Haggis, the writer/director of Crash (2004), directs all 6 episodes of this HBO miniseries. With this creative team responsible, Show Me a Hero promised to be a riveting political drama, and indeed delivers as a fascinating tale that explores intersecting layers of politics, race, and class. It gives intimate glimpses into the struggles of characters occupying various places within the social system while simultaneously examining the bigger political forces that impact such struggles.  

The story takes place from 1987 to 1993 in the city of Yonkers—a suburban community bordering on New York City's Bronx borough. At the time, Yonkers race divisions ran deep—its schools weren't integrated until 1988—with approximately 75% white residents comprising a population of about 170,000 people. We're immediately plunged into a rising housing controversy wherein a federal judge has ordered the construction of 200 scattered-site public housing (SSPH) units in East Yonkers. City Council is divided between support and opposition, with many white residents of the city's more affluent neighbourhoods outraged at the proposal of low-income housing being built near their own comfortable middle-class dwellings. Their argument is that marginalized people living amongst them will lower their property values and introduce crime and drugs into the community. But underneath this is blatant racism and classism fuelled by ignorance and fear. The public housing is referred to as "desegregated" housing since it proposes to integrate poor people, mostly black, into white communities whose residents would rather them stay out of their part of town and instead in concentrated areas—ghettos—far away from them. Among other things, the show is an indictment of NIMBYism—the acronym given to this "not in my back yard" philosophy. Indeed, an anti-housing city councillor uses the very phrase at one point in the series, as a proposed public housing site is across the street from his home.

Since Yonkers has been resisting the implementation of the federally-ordered SSPH, the court threatens severe fines that would financially cripple the city. So the conflict becomes not just a question of should they build the housing, but should they defy the legal order and risk their city's public services being shut down to uphold their racist, classist ideology? Some who support compliance do so from the realization that appealing the court's decision would be futile, but remain against the housing in principle. Longtime mayor Angelo Martinelli (Jim Belushi), for example, supports compliance, but it's unknown if he's actually pro-housing. Vice versa, some councillors ideologically support desegregated housing, but publicly take an anti-housing stance because the constituents who they are dependent on for re-election are vehemently anti-housing. And so serious questions are raised about the effectiveness of first-past-the-post electoral politics and the so-called "majority rules" aspect of democracy. Voters elect a government to act on their behalf—but what if those voters are racist, classist NIMBYs who want their elected officials to act against an order that will help the community's most marginalized?

At the center of it all is City Councilman Nick Wasicsko, played by Oscar Isaac in an excellent performance reminiscent of a young Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino in their prime. Wasicsko runs for mayor with the campaign angle that he voted to appeal the court's housing order, portraying himself as an anti-housing candidate who listens to the people, unlike Martinelli. Wasicsko thus gains support from the anti-housing crowd and narrowly wins, becoming the youngest mayor, at 28, of a major U.S. city. Is Wasicsko the hero that we're going to be shown, as in the title? Because at this point it seems he's not passionately for or against the housing, but more so simply power-hungry, catering to what he sees is the most popular belief amongst constituents. But once elected he realizes that fighting the housing mandate in court would result in huge cost to the city, and publicly claims he's now for compliance. Privately he tells his wife Nay (Carla Quevedo), a City Hall employee, "For the first time in my life I'm on the right side of something, and I'm all alone".

Woven through the narrative are stories of several low-income characters—the very folks whom the new housing is intended to benefit. Norma O'Neal (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) is an aging health aid who begins to go blind due to complications from diabetes. Billie Rowan (Dominique Fishback), a troubled teen, gets involved with a local criminal and ends up pregnant. Doreen Henderson (Natalie Paul), born in public housing but raised in the suburbs, is drawn back to the projects and a life of hardship when her boyfriend dies and she's left pregnant. And Carmen Febles (Ilfenesh Hadera) is a mother of two struggling to make ends meet in menial labour jobs. All are women, single mothers, and black. Their stories are essential here as potent snapshots illustrating how they grapple with challenges of parenting, employment, illness, death, drugs, housing, and continually negotiating with government bureaucracy for support.

Another central character is Mary Dorman (Catherine Keener), a white, middle-aged housewife who, like many of her peers, is incensed at the idea of SSPH. She joins the Save Yonkers Federation, an organization of the city's most privileged white folks who oppose the housing. On the other side, in support of SSPH, are CANOPY (Citizens and Neighbors Organized to Protect Yonkers), the NAACP, and Judge Leonard Sand (Bob Balaban), who oversees the case when the city fights the housing order in court.

The conflict escalates, with the anti-housing gang appearing as hostile racists one step away from a lynch mob. All they're missing is pitchforks. They threaten riots in public meetings, shouting angrily so that the mayor can't even get a word in. Having reneged on his anti-housing campaign, they now view Wasicsko as a sellout. One spits in his face following a press conference, and he receives death threats including single bullets placed in envelopes. The court-ordered fines amount to as much as $1 million a day, and basic city services such as garbage pick-up, running water, and the fire department begin to shut down. Yet the NIMBYs remain steadfast, fighting for something that jeopardizes their own quality of life in a way much more immediate and real than the prospect of public housing, as not building it now results in fewer city services, more crime and unemployment, etc. A complex political dilemma is thus presented for Wasicsko and the pro-housing politicians. It's the will of the people versus the will of the elected politicians versus the will of the law. Somewhere in there, one hopes, is justice.

Show Me a Hero is as much Wasicsko's story as it is the story of the Yonkers housing conflict. He shows moral ambiguity earlier in his career but then grows a backbone and seems to genuinely care for the public housing cause. His maneuvering finally results in council approving the housing, but with all the legal and political wrangling, the project is stalled for years, and he loses the next election (after a 2–year term). The new mayor takes credit for the housing amongst the pro-housing crowd, more time passes, and regardless of Wasicsko's attempts to regain some semblance of political power, he's relegated to the status of a backbench councillor. The SSPH finally starts to get built, but the NIMBYs from hell are relentless, protesting with effigies, noosed and bannered with names of pro-housing officials. They attack the housing sites with pipe bombs and paint "KKK", and "No Ni---r" on them.

Meanwhile, the marginalized characters we've gotten to know end up candidates for the new townhouses, emphasizing the housing initiative's true aim: to help people like these in genuine need. Some applicants with disabilities, like Norma, immediately qualify, but most apply for a "lottery", and in a scene showing them overjoyed to be selected we see how much the prospect of starting a new life means to them. A housing consultant (Clarke Peters, in another great role following turns in Simon's The Wire and Treme) is hired to assist with the integration. He puts together a committee to visit the candidates in their current project homes, approaching Mary Dorman as a potential participant from the Save Yonkers side. She tentatively agrees, starting out as an angry anti-housing activist who regards the low-income folks as "animals" with lifestyles of drugs and crime that threaten the "good white folk" in her community. But a fascinating character change occurs as Mary's compassion is awakened upon meeting the candidates—mostly women and children who've struggled with hardships inflicted upon them by her own privileged class. The stories of the low-income folks are increasingly compelling as we see the positive impact that living in the new housing, away from the slums, has on their lives, including Doreen Henderson who becomes an impressive advocate for tenants' rights.

The events that Show me a Hero portrays took place over 20 years ago, but are still highly relevant as NIMBY philosophy rages on. The show makes a strong case that desegregated, scattered-site public housing is a positive initiative, giving underprivileged people access to resources and amenities not available in concentrated low-income areas. Indeed, numerous studies show that rates of drug use, crime, and unemployment decrease amongst disadvantaged populations who reside in SSPH, offering a greater range of opportunities rather than being pushed to the fringes in neglect-ridden ghettos. Show Me a Hero examines this, getting really interesting when it delves deeper into the project logistics—one of the advisors on Yonkers' SSPH being architect, city planner, and urban safety theorist Oscar Newman.

Newman wrote books about how the physical layout of buildings and surrounding spaces impact the behaviour of those who occupy them. His "defensible space theory" developed in the early 1970s contains studies concluding higher crime rates exist in areas of high-rise public housing buildings than in areas of lower-height buildings, because residents feel less control or personal responsibility for an area occupied by so many people. The significance of environment on crime prevention, neighbourhood safety, and public health includes concepts of territoriality, physical design, and proximity to commercial areas and urban resources. Various environmental factors contribute to residents' well–being, such as views afforded through apartment windows, trees and green spaces visible or nearby, the number and size of floors and units, and design of hallways, courtyards, and other common areas. Such studies fall into the multi-disciplinary field CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design), developed by people like Newman, criminologist C. Ray Jeffery, and urban theorist Jane Jacobs. Oscar Newman worked closely on the Yonkers SSPH, and several of his ideas, while sometimes controversial, have since been commonly adopted in city planning initiatives.

The NIMBY story hits close to home for me. Vancouver—the city where I was born and lived my whole life—has rapidly developed from a moderately-sized city to a major cosmopolis. In Vancouver, not only is construction of public housing, addiction rehabilitation centers, and homeless shelters vehemently opposed by the city's most privileged home owners, but also rental housing and condominiums. In contrast to 1980s Yonkers, the folks who such developments are intended to benefit in Vancouver are not strictly black people, but rather largely Indigenous, as well as new immigrants, the poor, and working people of all ethnicities and colours. This provokes thought about the relation between class and race as forces of marginalization. While historical and current factors of European colonization and American imperialism result in massive oppression of certain ethnic groups, it seems to be the perceived characteristics of the economically disadvantaged that NIMBYs actually fear, regardless of specific ethnicity. As such, they perpetuate a class-stratified, divisive, "us-vs.-them" mentality in which they regard liberation of others as a threat to their own privileged status, to the detriment of us all.

Signs of hope punctuate the dire narrative, but there's a sad, poignant poetry to Show Me a Hero, a story that conveys the hard-edged reality of a society approaching the dystopian. Upon Wasicsko's re-election loss for mayor, one character comments, "If there was a hero in any of this, it was Nick." Another answers with an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, "Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy." The story concludes on November 2nd, 1993—Yonkers’ election day—with a chilling ending that reminds one of the "you can't make this stuff up", "truth is stranger than fiction" sayings. By the end of Show Me a Hero, Fitzgerald's saying is fulfilled. Reality is tragic, but we carry on as best we can through the complex and often confusing narrative of modern-day life.
• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
April 17th, 2016