Stockton on My Mind
Director Marc Levin has always had an interest in social issues, whether it was a fictional drama like “Slam” or a documentary like “Protocols of Zion.” His latest is a documentary about Michael Tubbs Jr., who, at 26, is the youngest mayor in Stockton, California history. When he took over in 2016, the same night Donald Trump was elected president, Stockton had been known more for crime, poverty and homelessness than any successes. A native of the city, who previously became a city councilman, his first few years have been ambitious and radical in trying to bring Stockton back from the brink of where it was headed. The way Levin frames Tubbs’s story is successful in engendering more than documentary “show us the man”; this is about showing us the community he came from, and how he’s trying to improve it.
One of the tricky things about political documentaries, especially if they’re about a particular politician, is trying to figure out how you should approach your subject. Sometimes, it can be a fly on the wall approach like the Mitt Romney doc from 2014 charting his election. Sometimes, you frame it within a particular issue, such as Michael Moore’s documentaries. Sometimes, you let that politician reflect on their life, and put their political action in context of it, like the recent John Lewis documentary. Levin approaches Tubbs Jr. from a combination of all of them, and the result is personal, emotional, and inspiring. A big part of that is Michael’s individual story, which includes him being conceived while his mother was still in high school, and how he didn’t really know his father until he met him in prison when Michael was 12, but larger still is how he saw ways he thought he might be able to help his community in trouble, and improve it through a different way of thinking. Naturally, it makes him some enemies, but it also gives people a chance to be a part of the change in the community, like his idea engage ex-cons in trying to keep at-risk youths from sliding into the same criminal lives that they found themselves in.
“Stockton on My Mind” is, actually, as much about Stockton itself as it is about Mayor Tubbs. One of the hardest hit cities in the country during the 2008 housing and financial crisis, it was the first major US city to declare bankruptcy, and it had been floundering ever since. After going away for college, Michael Jr. came back, and became a rising political star that eventually led to his 2016 election as mayor. Some of his boldest ideas are the aforementioned community outreach to at-risk youth, as well as an economic program that is designed to give people in need a set amount of money each month to show how effective and important a universal basic income is, the results of which will be fully known in 2021. He’s also worked to put in place programs as a way of trying to inspire people to stay in school. He hopes to close the pipeline from school to prison that has been part of the city forever. It’s inspiring seeing him take his own life experience, and try and make sure no one in his city has to go through the same thing again. He talks, at one point, about how the activists of the Civil Rights movement had to operate from the outside of the political process, and how he hopes to effect change from the inside. If things continue to trend the way they seem to be by the end of Levin’s documentary, I can see him being an important figure in the modern fight for Civil Rights like those men 60 years ago were.
