The Chris Jenkins Sojourn Conversation

A fresh-out-of-college social worker in crack-era New York, Jenkins felt the job shape his future film career

If you heard the podcast version of my Zoom chat with documentarian Chris Jenkins you noticed that it starts with some tantalizing LA gang talk preview that didn’t make it into the actual episode. The reason is that because—in the short time I’ve known him—this prize-winning indie filmmaker seems constantly involved in big, relevant projects whose production details are as interesting as his subjects themselves.

Also, because I am a tease.

Chris Jenkins

Our conversation is rooted in the idea of WhatsApp and text threads as the post-Facebook friendship alternative. The indie filmmaker put me in mind of a 9.11-era New York thread that I once belonged to, The Threadren, which I wrote about as introduction to that Zoom conversation.

The thread where I met Chris Jenkins plays out on my phone, not a Mac G-3, and I don’t know that the thread has a name. But it puts me in mind of The Threadren as it gets me instant access to candid and intellectually-developed Black men at a time when circumstance doesn’t put me with them, sons aside, so much.

Hopefully it’s not a betrayal of trust, but I came across this deep clip on the aforementioned hoops thread.

Sorry, but getting that from my children would have a different resonance than it does coming out of a thread of my peers.

Shame of Chicago, Shame of the Nation is Chris’s newest documentary. It examines the Midwestern city’s history of redlining. This Illinois microcosm stands in great for the whole United States.

Jenkins, 53, worked as a social worker in New York for five years before even going into journalism. After studying at some excellent journalism schools, he went to the Washington Post, where he was critical to the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Virginia Tech mass murder coverage.

His first film is Trapped: Cash Bail in America which has pulled in just under 3 million views as a 2020 YouTube Original. Jenkins’ feature documentary production Anthem is on Hulu. Some of the best behind-the-scenes conversation in our podcast chat concerns work on Van Jones: The First Step, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. My man was a story editor on this one, and the realness kept in our conversation about that political figure is why I wanted to have him on.

Shame of Chicago, Shame of the Nation is a four-part docuseries that came out on PBS earlier this year.

This version for you readers has been edited for brevity, clarity and politeness. I’ve decided to stop saying: “Ladies and gentlemen.” Two-spirit readers and everyone else on the spectrum is welcome to trip along.

Donnell Alexander: We have a special guest this week. I always say they’re special, but this may be the only guest that I’ve used the podcast to get to know better.

We’re on a basketball thread, and there had been enough conversation that I was like, “Let me get this dude on.” Looked at his resume and thought, We need to have him on.

Chris Jenkins: Brother Donnell. What’s happenin’?

DA: I’m really glad to see you, man! You’re in DC, right?

CJ: I am in DC, yeah.

DA: Before we get on here, I want to ask you about the thread. It’s interesting. As we are in our middle age there’s this, what do they call it? They call it the crisis of male friendships. Have you heard about that?

CJ: I haven’t, no.

DA: It’s something that’s come out of Covid. They blame a lot of conspiracy stuff that’s going on here on how men are communicating, relying on Twitter and such. And I find that thread interesting not because the basketball insights are so excellent; they range. (Laughs) But it has a bond, a kind of connection thing.

I used to be part of this thread called The Threadren. It was very Jamaican influenced, you know, like bredren? It was right around 9.11 and I’d just moved back from New York to LA and a lot of my East Coast friends were on there. And I was like, this keeps us together. I wonder, How do these threads function in terms of keeping us together?

CJ: That’s a great question. I actually have thought about the whole thread thing.

Number One: I’m on like eight different threads that are, generally speaking, sports and culture oriented. There’s another one, actually, that’s more of a WhatsApp thread that gets a little bit into business and finance and investing. What I’ve found is that it’s strengthened my relationships. I don’t know if that’s because I’m a certain age—born in 1971, early 50s—I’ve had some 45 years worth of male friendships, some of which do go back to when I was nine or 10 years old.

It’s less about getting on the phone and trying to feel like you have to talk for half an hour in catching up. And I still do a lot of that, by the way, about deeper things going on in life. But as it relates to breaking apart some of the everyday things that I’m thinking about or doing, I find that these threads, with the things that I’m actually interested in—sports culture, so on—they actually strengthen my relationships. Sharing memes and sharing clips, that sort of thing, gives a new insight into what my friends are thinking about things.

I’m old enough now to have been in my 20s and in my 30s and not having these tools, not having the insight on, an everyday level, to friends of mine who may live across the country and are thinking things about the world, about sports. I’m not calling them every day and saying, “Hey, what did ya think about this?” Or, “What did you think about that?” We weren’t doing that. Maybe what’s in crisis is that women have more of those everyday kinds of conversations with one another.

I do find that these thread conversations, whether its WhatsApp, texts—they’ve actually migrated off of Facebook. Ten years ago it was Facebook threads. So many of us are done with Facebook now that it’s migrated to SMS.

DA: I think that in other eras this kind of talk would seem like a luxury, but it’s a necessity in the era we’re in. That’s a great answer, and it’s why I wanted to talk to you. I know that you dip in and out of the quote-unquote serious issues and the sports issues, you’re a culture dude.

I don’t know how you got there. You just told us that you went to Oberlin. Did you start out at the Washington Post? How did you make the transition from being a print journalist to being a documentary filmmaker?

CJ: My life is just one—and Donnell you’ll understand this, too—is just one stumble/man-I’m-gonna-try-this-now after another.

After I left Oberlin in the early 90s, I was a social worker in New York. I worked with foster kid teenagers in the South Bronx. I did that for five years—

DA: Woah!

CJ: Yeah, man. It was God’s work. That was some of the best job—I love what I’m doin, love what I’ve done over the past 30 years, but that was the best job I’ve ever had, working with kids.

DA: What was so great about it?

CJ: Because I was 22 and they were 16, 17, 18 and I was in their lives every day, in a way that could really have an impact in steering lives, I think for the better. I actually still keep up with what I call “my kids,” even though they’re in their late 40s now, and they ain’t kids. (Laughs) Like a lot Black men coming out of a place like Oberlin [asks] “What kind of impact can we have on our community?” In the early 90s “How are we going to continue to try to make our communities better places?”

I thought about teaching. But, to me, being a social worker in the way I was—with teenagers—where you can talk and go back and forth and somewhat be rational with young people was a joy. Like I said, you can be in their lives every day. You’re in their house: So, what’s going on today? How are going to get over this problem? Yo, alright, I’m comin’ with you. Let’s go, let’s do some research. I’m going to find this new program for you. You’re trying to go to this school over here? Okay, let’s figure it out. And work with them. Because at kids that age are growing in leaps and bounds every year—and I would hope that I was actually doing my job well—you could actually see some development and some growth in how kids were making decisions or dealing with circumstances that are really, really tough.

‘All of my Black professors and mentors told me, “You get an offer to go to the Washington Post, go. And you’ll figure it out. You go and you get into that institution of power and do what you gotta do to get in that roaster.’

The trauma that those kids are going through—keep in mind that they were born in the 1970s—they saw their parents go through the crack descent. These kids are 10, 11, 12 when crack took over in New York in the 80s. By the time I get there in the early 90s, they’re pissed and have been through incredible amounts of trauma. Being in that environment was a blessing, for me, and I think we had changed some lives. So, I got to journalism from there by wanting to write about what I was seeing. Applied to journalism school, when out to California. That’s where I met our mutual friend Richard Adams.

The Washington Post was my first job, actually, out of journalism school. I know you want to talk a little about the business side of journalism and that piece of my career, and I always say the young journalists who came in in the early 2000s were the last sort of expansion for newspapers before the great collapse because of the web. The Washington Post at the time was trying to expand into the suburbs and basically get more readers by doing the equivalent of—for your Los Angeles readers—going as far north as, say, Santa Barbara and South as far as Orange County. And as east as Imperial Valley. Like, Rancho Cucamonga or whatever. The Post was trying to get that kind of coverage area under it’s belt.

DA: That was very good, I’m gonna give you props for that.

CJ: You know I cover LA! You know I love LA!

But, um, The Post was trying to get that under its belt, so they started getting all of the reporters coming out to start covering stuff. It was before September 11, you know, the newspapers were fat and happy. The old 20th-century days of 40 percent profit margins and the whole thing, that was The Washington Post’s existence at the time.

So, hiring people like me, I just worked my way up. That was the idea. All of my Black professors and mentors told me, “You get an offer to go to The Washington Post, go. And you’ll figure it out. You go and you get into that institution of power and do what you gotta do to, you know, just get in that roaster. So, for 17 years, I was a reporter and editor covering national politics, poverty, race, all that sort of thing. Then got into editing, to make a little more money.

Once I got into the editing game, I realized… it was obvious that the fortunes of newspapers were starting to crumble, our obsession with what was becoming the rise of Donald Trump really turned me off. And, I had opportunities to do something different.

I got a call from a producer in Ottawa to build out a project that I’ve been working on. And I just left, basically. Never done broadcast journalism, had never done any film making. I said, this is just another opportunity to try telling stories in a different way.

DA: Is story your specialty? Is that the thing that you carried over into documentary? Tell me how that worked out. You were story editor on that first thing, right?

CJ: That’s right. A producer-writer, to the extent that you write some certain scripts, obviously, for some kinds of documentaries. But mainly producing. Like, finding people—characters—doing the interviews and then letting the editor and the director and the the editor and the dp start putting together the elements, working with all of those folks with more visual experience than I have. Particularly on the editing side, because look, there’s a steep learning curve to understand it’s less words, not more words. The images tell the story, not the words, right?

I think it actually did some good in the world. It opened a lot of eyes to what goes on in the front end of the criminal justice system. We hear a lot about what goes on in the prisons. We hear a lot about people coming back from prison, returning citizens as we say. The injustice around sentencing, but where it all starts is whether you’re able to make bail or not.

In any script, whether its for a documentary or for scripted, the visual medium did take a while for it to click. You don’t have to over explain like you do in newspaper journalism, where you’re trying to create a picture through words. Yeah, obviously the economy of words is the way to be, but either way, the words are not the driver. It’s the images. That was my steep learning curve, understanding that piece of it.

My model for that was just working with really smart people who understood what value I brought to what they were doing, and then understanding what they brought to what I was trying to do. Putting that together. And hiring. And talking about story, figuring it out. Figuring out, What are we trying to say here? It’s all What are we trying to say? And how to say it most effectively and with the most strength possible.

Ultimately, it’s do you have a deep sense of empathy and a sense of story development. That I’d honed over years. Also, understanding how to be super aggressive in terms of finding characters and interviewing.

DA: You started with Van Jones, right?

CJ: My first feature actually was a film that explored cash bail, the injustice and inhumanity of how the cash bail system works around the country.

DA: This is Trapped.

CJ: Trapped, yes. It was for YouTube Originals. I don’t know how much you pay attention to what YouTube is trying to do, but YouTube obviously is what it is—supposedly a trillion-dollar entity. But back in the late teens—2018-19—they were trying to create a platform. They were buying and acquiring projects. I knew some people there, so they asked my director friend and I to put together a film that explores cash bail. Justice around cash bail, how it works, how it doesn’t work. The incredible classist issues that go on with people who stay in jail only because they can’t pay their monetary amount.

That was my first feature, and it did really well. It wasn’t just throwing it up on YouTube. It was actually acquired by YouTube. I was really proud of that film. I think it actually did some good in the world. It opened a lot of eyes to what goes on in the front end of the criminal justice system. We hear a lot about what goes on in the prisons. We hear a lot hear about people coming back from prison, returning citizens as we say here in DC. The injustice around sentencing, yes, but where it all starts is whether you’re able to make bail or not.

That’s the beginning side from over arresting, over policing and overcharging, up and down the criminal justice system, from the time the cop looks at you to the time you make it out of prison, there’s all types of injustice and racial bias across the board. But at the point of attack, for you sports fans, it’s about bail and whether you are able to afford your bail or not.

I’m sure many of your listeners are not going to be surprised about it, when it comes to Black and Brown folks, but it really is a class issue. If you have enough money to pay your bail, mainly for low level crimes… people come after me sometimes, like, “Aw, he’s gonna let murderers out?” And I’m like “Whoa, hold on. First of all, most people in this country when they’re arrested it’s for low level crimes. Misdemeanors.

Those are generally the people who we’re taking about with cash bail as an unjust practice, because you’re talking about people who’ve passed a bad check or done some crimes of poverty and they can’t get out. So, they’re sitting in some of these jails around the country for six, nine months. They don’t even get a hearing, right? They haven’t even been indicted. 

I worked on this film about Van Jones. I was actually story producer on that. I came along after the  producer and director, a really great brother team. Like, literally brothers, Brandon and Lance Kramer had done a lot of the filming and producing. They asked me to come in and help shape the story around… a very controversial thing that Van was trying to do, which was back in 2018–during the early days of the Trump administration.

Van was in on criminal justice reform and trying to get something called The First Step Act passed. It was a bill that would do a little bit of sentencing reform, change the conditions in prisons. So, Van teamed up with Jared Kushner to try to get this bill passed. Van was caught in middle of the left and the right. The left was like, Why are you working with Trump to get this bill passed? You’re going to help him get elected. The right was like, This soft-on-criminals shit, the whole thing. 

The movie is about that fight, trying to thread the needle on this issue and, you know, Van is…an interesting cat. I mean–

DA: When you say “interesting cat,” I know we’re verging into euphemism. And I have so many questions right now.

CJ: I knew you weren’t going to let me get away with it. 

DA: I remember that whole imbroglio–

CJ: Perfect word.

DA: Wasn’t the Kardashian woman, Kim, involved?

CJ: Yes, Kim.

DA: Was there a point where you asked, Is he too… pie in the sky with his aspirations? Do you mute that sort of thing when you’re going in? Or is it a matter of being purely professional and following the story? How did you deal with your perspective on that as story editor?

CJ: If I had been the producer or in on some of the early parts of that film development… I do have an answer for you, but I want to make sure I’ve given you some context. I really came in after a lot of filming had been done. I will say that how I know things developed is that the director Brandon Kramer and his brother Lance Kramer, the producer, had been spending time with Van for years. And the film actually kind of developed real organically, because they had begun filming him before he began on that journey. They were just filming him, because Van’s always trying to do something, right? He wanted to go around the country and have these tough conversations with the left and right and blue states and Red America. Actually, his show was called The Messy Truth, I think. They were right to think there was going to be a film in Van’s journey, at some point. So what came out was what turned out to be The First Step.

 But to speak to your question as it speaks to me… I’ve told him this publicly, I thought my job coming in on this film was to really push them to be a little harder on Van than I think the film actually was. They had spent some time with Van. They’re professional filmmakers, they know what they’re doing. But in all honesty–and I’ve said this to them, too–they’re white guys, and Van has a lot of complicated issues in his background that I think a lot of Black people–particularly a lot of Black filmmakers understand. [That’s] as being an African-American cat who–as he describes himself–who is super-nerdy growing up. He said in one of his interviews, I didn’t rap, I didn’t play ball–I was just trying to find my way.

Van was just caught in the middle of expectations about what Black masculinity is supposed to be. A big ol’ nerd. I don’t know if you saw the film, but he’s really into Superman and comic books. He’s always envisions himself as Superman. The guy’s got a lot of existential issues going on with him. My view on this film and where it was heading was, with Black audiences you gotta be real about the fact that there’s a lot of skepticism about Van from a lot of Black people. 

A lot of Black people think he’s a plant. A lot of women look at him like, Bro? From my point of view, Vans not too much older than me. He’s done very well for himself. He has navigated the roaster that is Washington in a really effective fashion, to the tune of the now $100 million that he got from Jeff Bezos to continue his work.

DA: Woah!

CJ: You didn’t hear about that?

DA: Uhhh… no.

CJ: Sidenote, dear listeners. In 2021, Jeff Bezos–literally when he got out of his rocket–he gave away several hundred million dollars to people he felt were advancing democracy without polarization. One of the people who got that money was Jose Andrés, the chef. One hundred million dollars, no strings attached. Van got $100 million, no strings attached for the purpose of advancing democracy… however you see fit. So, Van obviously had navigated these spaces.

Have you seen The First Step? 

DA: No I haven’t.

There’s a really important first scene in there. Van is being interviewed by a pretty lefty Black radio journalist, who’s basically like, A lot of Black people are looking at you like, “What’s he doing?” You’ve got the white wife, you’re over hanging out with Jared Kushner…

I fought really hard to get that scene in, because it’s really important for the film, not because I’ve got some bone to pick with Van Jones, but because it was important for the film, Number One, to not be like a puff piece. Van is trying to do something really important. How do you get through the polarization and get something passed. That’s actually a decent existential question for the country: How do you pass a controversial bill that would actually help Black and Brown people? Which it did. Fifteen thousand people got out of jail because of the first step. The majority of those people are Black or Brown. 

Now, 15,000 out of 2.3 million ain’t a lot. But your theory of change has to take into consideration that he actually did get something passed that did help thousands of people. How he goes about it what people are always worried about. Is he doing this for his own “commercial” interest. I put commercial in air quotes, because it is about his own stature. That’s the question. Is he doing it for his own sensibility, his own ego, essentially. And there are some pieces in that film that point to the fact that Van is very into his ego, his self, what he’s able to accomplish. 

That’s why I said “interesting” five minutes ago, when we first started talking about this. It’s because the dude is… can be… hard to take. On the other hand, he got 15,000 people out of prison.That’s the complicated of all of this. You have to be, especially in a place like Washington, you do have to be able to touch the levers of power to be able to make it work for us. How far you go will always be a line in the sand. 

(Caitlin Clark) has capitalized on what Steph (Curry) has pioneered, which is this long-range shot that people are wowed by–by a smaller person.

Soon after film came out, he’s cheesin’ at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with Eric Trump. Like, Bro, how far does it go? You asked about Kim Kardashian. His ability to be able to tap that–

DA: So to speak.

CJ: –piece of gestalt actually helped get that First Step Act passed. So, look… I am struggling with this answer, but I’m trying to be transparent about what we’re up against when we’re trying to make change, someone like Van, who clearly has been able to figure out a way of getting into halls of power, to make substantial change at the highest levels of government. But at the same time (laughs) he’ll piss a whole lot of Black people off! 

Which in his mind may be worth it. I’d probably say in his mind Van will think it’s worth it. It’s a very long answer.

DA: Here’s the thing: You’ve cut into our hoops talkin’ time. I have to get this out of the way, because it’s everybody’s topic. Are you one of the people who feel like they have to become attuned to the WNBA?

CJ: No, I don’t although I have been attuned to the WNBA for several years. It’s another of those cultural moments in our country, where everyone loses their mind. There is an evolution for everything. There is. 

I think we would agree about what’s going on with Caitlin Clark and that phenomenon. Let me just posit something, aside from the crazies. Let’s just look at it from a sports-race point of view: Isn’t Tiger Woods’ ascent force-multiplied because he’s Black, essentially in a white man’s game. It’s a analogy, but aren’t we dealing with something similar?

Forget about the extreme culture that’s going on right now. Let’s just look at it, if we can just dial back for a second, at that piece of it. Tiger Woods was a phenom, obviously. Whether Caitlin Clark is a Tiger Woods-level phenom, I won’t argue that she is. But, you know, she did beat a hallowed record–Pete Maravich’s all-time scoring record.

DA: Nice stat. Way to have it handy.

CJ: And she has capitalized on what Steph [Curry] has pioneered, which is this long-range shot that people are wowed by–by a smaller person. So, there’s a little bit of Steph in here and what he has pioneered with the little guy playing against these tall trees. The distance and the completion rate of Steph have turned the game around. And she’s white. So, there’s a lot of things going on. 

I would say it’s similar to why everyone is googly-eyed about Tiger Woods and what he did for golf. What Earl knew he could do for golf. One thing is not like the other pattern we have in our heads. Tiger Woods was not like the other–the generations of white men playing golf, a white sport. A country club sport. Caitlin in this mound of tall, Black women. 

And obviously we have the incident a couple of years ago in the Finals. That was force multiplied by our particular moment. And our poor journalism, by the way, and our poor media that’s looking for ways in which to force multiply those tensions for Likes and clicks and profits and so on. I’m glad we’re pushing back, with the forces of light, to remind everybody that the Angel Reeses and the (Diana) Taurasis and there’s a constellation of women who will get a little bit of shine. And that’s the way these things kind of go. The rising tide of Caitlin Clark will lift some other boats. 

As long as we keep taking the media to task, like Christine Brennan and other columnists who think that every single side eye to Caitlin Clark is the end of the world. Just keep fighting. It’s the same fight we’re always fighting. 

DA: I’m not going to let you go without saying who wins the NBA East next year.

CJ: The New York Knicks!

DA: (Howls with laughter)

CJ: The New York Effin Knicks!

DA: We’ll save it for the thread.

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These conversations…

Reach into my professional life and personal life. Sometimes the interview topics are simply people I want you to know. Sharing these dope folks is quite satisfying, but so is new cash in my bank account. Thanks!

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