A timely Sundance doc is an ICE-breaker around community action

It is met, almost immediately, with equally targeted benevolence. Not only do angry neighbors start pouring out of their homes, one quickly dives under the Border Agency van holding the detained men, latching onto the chassis and refusing to let go. (This burly punk hero, defined by a cut-off vest festooned with anti-fascist patches, conducts his interview through a proxy: Emma Thompson.) Reluctant to drive off and doom this Samaritan to the asphalt meat grinder—certainly another difference between the doc subjects and ICE—the immigration officials are stuck.

That gives the burgeoning protest—growing from the unassuming seeds of babysitting exchange groups, apartment WhatsApp chats, religious communities, and friends of friends—the time it needs to mature. But it’s not the turnout that’s all that impressive; plenty of demonstrations have organized larger groups of people for mass public showings of indignation. It’s that the outpouring of support was immediate enough to be protective, and organic enough that this essential speed was possible. 

Much like the literal whistleblowers currently helping keep their streets safe from federal agents in cities around the U.S., the people of Pollokshields were simply ready to drop everything and stand up for a stranger. In Everybody To Kenmure Street‘s endless series of interviews, what’s winning isn’t just that the bad guys lost, but that they lost to a high school student who skipped an exam to stick around, to an older guy down the block who worked from home, to young parents wondering what all the ruckus was about, to a nurse who spent her day facedown on the pavement checking in on the “van man.” Each new talking head has a different story about how they got involved, but they’re all driven by the same simple compassion. 

They’re also able, in that same organic and rapid way, to coordinate the necessities for a day-long protest—bathrooms, refreshments, sanitation, warmth—amongst themselves. They won’t be dispersed because there’s nowhere to pee, no water to drink, no blankets to fight off the cold. It’s a perfect encapsulation of how public safety can be maintained sans law enforcement, created off the cuff by a few hundred strangers united by decency. It was also peacefully sustained for eight hours, an unimaginable amount of time for an ICE agent to go without assaulting a bystander.

At the end of those eight hours—a time during which local cops were called in to support the immigration officials, and one additional person dove under a car to prevent its escape—the police chief called it in: For the good of public safety, the men must be released. It’s a heartwarming end to a feel-good documentary, a festival film that gleams with optimism as it’s released into an era bludgeoned black and blue. Those demonstrating the same civic-minded care Stateside as the people responsible for this film are being kidnapped, gassed, beaten, tortured, blinded, and killed. And still, Everybody To Kenmure Street makes me hopeful. Not because these are one-to-one situations, with similarly sane governments and gun control laws. But because these are one-to-one communities, composed of individuals who surprise each other with their own interconnectedness. Even if Americans have to respond to attacks on their own Kenmure Streets in different ways, adapting to the rampant aggression they meet at every turn, this film is a start-to-finish example of why it’s worth fighting back in the first place.