Chapter 1: Welcome to Anywhere, USA

This is a story about a community you know. Maybe you live in it. Maybe you’ve visited. Either way, you’ve heard of it.

In this community racial strife is alive and well. So are efforts to stop it. Discrimination is sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, and often just a way of doing things that’s been passed down for generations.

Here, criminal justice has a problem. Distrust between the public and their public servants is rampant. Recent events haven’t helped. People have been killed by the police. Often Black. High-profile community members have been accused of high-profile racism. At the same time, law enforcement has been accused of low arrest, prosecution, and conviction rates in service of an uptick in crime and reduced public safety.

The community feels paralyzed, polarized, and mostly just wounded. It can’t stay this way. Something has to be done. Something is being done. But will it work?