American Suburb

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.

A school counselor and local pastor arranges a middle school graduation celebration for African American students, but protests against the ceremony lead to racist graffiti on the pastor’s church door.
Nowhere are the changing demographics of suburbs like Antioch clearer than in the city’s classrooms. But while the population of students is shifting, many of the educators still remain the same, and black students are far more likely to be suspended or expelled from school. How do young people learn to claim Antioch? And how does the city embrace the new class in town?

More African Americans are now living in suburbs than anywhere else. And some of the country’s most recent controversial police shootings of unarmed black men took place in the suburbs outside St. Louis, St. Paul and Orlando.
In suburban Antioch, police chief Allan Cantando is trying to bridge divides with the new community. To do that, he meets with a class of college students and asks them to role play as cops. Meanwhile, a budding group of community activists who say they’ve faced police brutality are learning how to organize. The challenges of policing and protesting in suburbia, in this episode of American Suburb.