BY EILEEN STUKANE | Rosa does gymnastic twists on the Elliott-Chelsea playground bars as she expounds the wisdom of an eight-year-old: “I hate money. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate money…People fight over money, and I hate that they fight over money. Money was made by the Devil, I think, because God didn’t say, ‘Oh, you have to pay for this.’ ”
The words from the Book of Isaiah, “and a little child will lead them,” could be the subtitle of the Blowback Productions documentary “Class Divide,” which engages children on both sides of 10th Ave. between W. 25th and W. 26th Sts. — those growing up in the Elliott-Chelsea Houses on the east side and those attending the private Avenues, The World School on the west — and lets them speak in their own voices about lives that are close geographically but worlds apart economically. Anyone watching “Class Divide” during its upcoming run at the IFC Center (Apr. 13–19) will learn more from the soulful insights of the young in this film about the rapidly changing West Side, the effects of income inequality, and the gentrification of Chelsea, than they will from the many urban economists who write books and give speeches. The result can be emotionally charged.
Originally created as an HBO documentary, “Class Divide” will air on that premium cable channel in the fall. The movie won a 2015 DOC NYC Grand Jury prize, which included the IFC theatrical release that is part of the qualifying process for Academy Award eligibility.
Blowback director/producer Marc Levin and producer Daphne Pinkerson had produced two other documentaries for HBO that focused on the way global economic forces touched the lives of real people: “Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags,” about the risk and fall of the Garment Center, and “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island,” about unemployment after the Crash of 2008. “Class Divide” is the completion of a trilogy, and it manages to cover a lot of ground — income inequality, housing, gentrification, immigration, education, the history of Chelsea, hopes, and dreams — in a 74-minute running time that never feels crowded.
Last week, the two producers spoke with Chelsea Now from their W. 26th St. production office, where they recalled the moment of inspiration for “Class Divide” — watching a scene unfold on the spur of the High Line, in view of the Elliott-Chelsea Houses and Avenues School.
“We had looked at the tech bubble and gentrification in San Francisco, Florida where the housing crisis had hit hard,” says Levin, “and watching all the tourists taking photos and speaking in French, Italian, Chinese, we looked at each other and said, ‘Do they even know what’s in that frame? Avenues on one side and the projects on the other!’ Then we said, ‘Maybe what we’ve been looking for is right here where we live.’ ” Levin and Pinkerson went to Hudson Guild. One introduction led to another and they met Juwan, Brandon, Danny, Rosa, Joel and others. At Avenues, one student introduction led to another until Isabella, Sophie, Nick, Luc, Yasemin and others agreed to talk to them.
The understanding, empathy and parallel life experiences the filmmakers found reveal the humanity that can get lost in policy debates over economics. Juwan’s mother and brother died when he was young. Across the street at Avenues, Isabella’s mother died when she was barely 10. Juwan says, “It’s not your fault if you’re born poor, but it is if you die poor.” At Avenues, 16-year-old Edgar says, “I think anyone who goes to a school like this feels the pressure to succeed in life, to get As, to get a good job.” On each side of the street, children express concern about how they are perceived by the other. At Elliott-Chelsea, Hyisheem, who by the end of the film has graduated from college and is progressing to a masters degree in social work, offers a profound personal reflection: “It’s not racism here, it’s classism. They don’t care what color you are. It’s the fact that you don’t have what they have. I can go up to an African-American male, a doctor say, from Cornell or Harvard, and he will look at me like anyone else will look at me — as a kid from the projects.”
THE WEST SIDE LAND RUSH | The push by landlords and developers to make life as uncomfortable as possible for rent-regulated tenants, through tactics that include harassment by construction, the shutting-off of cooking gas, and the falsification of Department of Buildings permits, has succeeded in causing an exodus of low-and-middle-class wage earners, and a head-spinning influx of high-wage earners and foreign investors into newly renovated or newly constructed buildings.
Meanwhile, the 2,400 residents of Elliott-Chelsea public housing pay 30% of their income for rent, which averages about $436 a month, according to New York City census data. The latest Manhattan Market Rental Report notes that a Chelsea studio apartment without a doorman averages $2,400 a month, while a studio with a doorman is about $3,200. Mayor de Blasio’s Tale of Two Cities paradigm for describing the NYC class dynamic is more powerful than ever. The children in Elliott-Chelsea attend free public school or low-cost parochial school. The children in Avenues go to classes that cost over $47,000 a year in tuition.
Even when one thinks he or she may be getting a boost in crossing the divide, there can be downsides. Brandon, who works as a doorman near Lincoln Center, grew up in Elliott-Chelsea, gained an apartment in a neighborhood luxury building through an affordable housing lottery, and thought he was doing well. He explains in the film that in the upscale building where he lives, people have locked their doors when he walked down the hall or looked at him as if he didn’t belong there. These are real, on-the-ground issues that affordable housing policies just do not address.
In “Class Divide,” Clinton Housing Development Company Executive Director Joe Restuccia explains: “In the ways of gentrification and what’s happening on the West Side, always the new residents have integrated into the neighborhood. This is different. This is trying to create a new identity for what our neighborhood is. The development you see here has all happened since 2005. There has been a land rush west of 10th Ave., and there has also been the museum of architectural innovation. Every building is trying to outdo each other.” The High Line has driven a real estate boom in Chelsea, as has the development of Hudson Yards, which in “Class Divide” Restuccia calls “Our Hong Kong on the Hudson. There are going to be 13 residential buildings, some of which are 60 to 90 stories.”
CROSSING THE DIVIDE | Nevertheless, hope springs forth. Yasemin Smallens, who was a 17-year-old junior at Avenues during the making of “Class Divide,” undertook a project she calls “115 Steps” (115steps.com), named for the number of steps it took to walk across 10th Ave. from Avenues School to Elliott-Chelsea Houses. Her aim was to start a dialogue between Avenues and Elliott-Chelsea through photographs and interviews with students. The filmmakers captured her making connections with Juwan and others as they learned about each other.
“The interviews weren’t, ‘Tell me what you think about Avenues and the community, what you think about gentrification,’” says Yasemin today. “I asked those questions, but more than that, it was interesting to see the people being human, getting their biographies and showing the similarities, the shared experiences that exist on both sides of 26th Street, because there are a lot of things about being a teenager that I think both sides can kind of relate to; general struggles.”
Yasemin’s crossing the divide had a personal impact on her. While realizing that she has been fortunate in her life circumstances, “It has made me seek out environments that are diverse and seek out colleges that have diversity in terms of race and socioeconomic class.” The 115 Steps project has also had an impact on Avenues itself. The school instituted its first annual Awareness Day and it is becoming more involved in the community.
Avenues Community Engagement (ACE), as Yasemin explains, “has started doing cooperative projects at Elliott-Chelsea. For instance, some of the language classes visit the senior citizens who speak Spanish and Chinese and they talk together about their experiences. The kids from Avenues learn about their life stories, what they faced, and I think the people at Elliott-Chelsea see that we’re really trying to engage with the community as much as possible.”
Avenues also accepted its first student from public housing, from Fulton Houses, for the current 2015–16 school year. In an email statement, Bill Leahy, Global Director of Admissions and Enrollment Management at Avenues, writes: “Avenues actively recruits qualified students from local public housing as part of our efforts to foster economic diversity, with an emphasis on low and moderate income families in the Chelsea community. Avenues offers financial aid, including full scholarships for qualified students with demonstrated financial need, with students in CB4 receiving preference. We are proud to have a student from Fulton Houses who is a strong contributing member of our community, and we look forward to expanding our student body. For the 2016–17 school year, we have admitted five students from low and moderate-income families in Chelsea, and one student from public housing. In addition, we are offering eight full summer scholarships to students from Elliott-Chelsea, Fulton and Harborview Houses.”
Hudson Guild Executive Director Ken Jockers says he had two reactions to the film. “The first is that it is painful to watch because it so starkly describes how different people’s experiences are based solely on how much money they have, and how people who are poor or working poor in this neighborhood struggle every day just to meet their basic needs. That’s hard to watch. It’s painful,” he admits.
“My second reaction, though, is that Chelsea is now the poster example for gentrification. We’ve got the widest variety of economic circumstances of any place in the city of New York. We have an opportunity to be the example for how individuals and families can live together in the neighborhood. We have the opportunity to be the example for how rich and poor and people in the middle can share a neighborhood successfully. We’ve got to figure out how to do that, and that’s exciting.”
“Class Divide” will have an Academy Award-qualifying run at the IFC Center (323 Sixth Ave., at W. Third St.), Apr. 13–19, as part of the DOC NYC Grand Jury prize programming. Q&A with director Marc Levin will follow the evening screenings on Wed., Apr. 13 and Thurs., Apr. 14. For info, visit ifccenter.com/films/class-divide.
