Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?
KQED’s Devin Katayama and Sandhya Dirks explore that question, taking us into the ordinary spaces of suburban life to find extraordinary stories about race, poverty and belonging.
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Chapter 1: The Tipping Point
A police chief in Antioch leads a team to investigate citizen complaints. But some say the complaints mostly target newer black residents. Across town, a lawyer is determined to bring down the Antioch Police Department, accusing them of ethnic cleansing. In between, neighbors are fighting neighbors over who can call this place home.
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Chapter 2: Friday Night Lights
With the country’s No. 1 high school football recruit - Najee Harris - Principal Louie Rocha and the Antioch High School football team haven’t had it this good since 1978. It was a nearly all-white team then. It’s not that way anymore. And there have been racial tensions since the city started to change. Now, Rocha has a chance to change that. But only if he can bring the older generation back to cheer for a team that doesn’t look like them … on and off the field.
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Chapter 3: How to Survive an Exodus
When African-Americans priced out of Bay Area cities like San Francisco, Fremont and Oakland move to suburban Antioch looking for better schools, more affordable homes and safer streets, they find a mixed blessing.
When church is a refuge, it means either commuting on Sunday morning back to the cities they left behind, or creating new church in Antioch. This is the story of a migration to a new home, and three men’s search for sanctuary once they arrive.
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Chapter 4: Make Great America Again
A small group of Muslim families were meeting out of garages before they purchased an old dentist office for their new mosque. After the Islamic Center of the East Bay was torched in 2007, the group must decide whether to rebuild in Antioch or leave the city.
Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them? KQED’s Devin Katayama and Sandhya Dirks explore that question, taking us into the ordinary spaces of suburban life to find extraordinary stories about race, poverty and belonging.
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