‘Beyond the Wire’: A Grassroots Perspective on Baltimore

competed with Sobop, you know, like popular Sobop, popular things on TV.

It became popular, like everybody was rushing to see.

One, why did you feel the need to like, and you still going on narrative, why did you feel the need to like do Beyond the Wires? And two, why do you think this specific perspective is so critical in telling the story?

Yeah.

So many times, whether I'm talking to other Baltimoreans or on my travels, when people learn that you either live in or are from Baltimore, they say, oh, the wire.

And the way that they say it is they're equating it like every time I'm walking down the street, I'm ducking bullets or something like that.

You know what I mean? It's a way in which that particular piece of artwork has kind of flattened the image of the city and just flattened into this is all we are.

Now, they aren't the only one.

They aren't the first television show of their kind.

There's also Corner.

There's also Homicide.

There's We Own This City.

There's a multitude, but none of those have the traction of...

Of the wire.

So that's one of the things that I just really wanted to articulate.

And then I will also say I wanted to go beyond.

And this film does not say, oh, Baltimore don't have no crime.

It doesn't say, you know, this is Disneyland and everybody is safe.

It's just saying, let's tell the full story.

Let's talk about how black people got into the conditions that they got

into.

Right.

And it's beyond redlining.

I think a lot of our issues tend to get flattened down into just redlining is that that's what happened to the city.

But it seems to forget the industrialization of the working class black man when sparrows point and those things went away.

competed with Sobop, you know, like popular Sobop, popular things on TV.

It became popular, like everybody was rushing to see.

One, why did you feel the need to like, and you still going on narrative, why did you feel the need to like do Beyond the Wires? And two, why do you think this specific perspective is so critical in telling the story?

Yeah.

So many times, whether I'm talking to other Baltimoreans or on my travels, when people learn that you either live in or are from Baltimore, they say, oh, the wire.

And the way that they say it is they're equating it like every time I'm walking down the street, I'm ducking bullets or something like that.

You know what I mean? It's a way in which that particular piece of artwork has kind of flattened the image of the city and just flattened into this is all we are.

Now, they aren't the only one.

They aren't the first television show of their kind.

There's also Corner.

There's also Homicide.

There's We Own This City.

There's a multitude, but none of those have the traction of...

Of the wire.

So that's one of the things that I just really wanted to articulate.

And then I will also say I wanted to go beyond.

And this film does not say, oh, Baltimore don't have no crime.

It doesn't say, you know, this is Disneyland and everybody is safe.

It's just saying, let's tell the full story.

Let's talk about how black people got into the conditions that they got

into.

Right.

And it's beyond redlining.

I think a lot of our issues tend to get flattened down into just redlining is that that's what happened to the city.

But it seems to forget the industrialization of the working class black man when sparrows point and those things went away.