'For Our Children' Urges a Renewed Focus on Police Brutality

In the current national discourse, once-prevalent concerns about police brutality have taken a backseat to conflict overseas, domestic abortion bans and a presidential candidate who is facing multiple court cases. And yet, four years after the summer of 2020’s nationwide protests and calls for accountability, the issue of officers using excessive force persists at an alarming rate.

According to data collected by the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence, 2023 brought the highest in the past decade, and 2024 is on a similar pace.

Bay Area-based journalist and filmmaker Débora Souza Silva sees this as a call to action. She’s urging others to refocus their collective attention on police brutality by listening to the stories of the survivors and readdressing the issue’s root causes.

Souza Silva’s documentary film, For Our Children, gives audiences an intimate look at the lives of those who’ve experienced police brutality, and the toll it takes on their families.

For Our Children was acquired by Array Releasing and will begin streaming on Netflix on May 10. On Wednesday, May 1, Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre will host a premiere and Q&A session with Souza Silva and select people featured in the movie, including Rev. Wanda Johnson, mother of the late Oscar Grant.

After Grant was killed at the Fruitvale BART station by former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in 2009, Rev. Johnson and family founded the Oscar Grant Foundation, and began working with mothers around the nation whose children were killed by police.

The 90-minute film opens with Rev. Johnson hosting an event during which mothers of those killed by police eat, pray, and grieve together, while taking time to intentionally say the names of their loved ones.

Rev. Johnson points out the relatives of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland. Some women dress in their Sunday’s best, while others wear shirts with airbrushed faces on them. Rev. Johnson steps to the center of the room and declares that despite mourning and dealing with grief, “You’ve got to make your child’s name known… fight for your child. Hallelujah.”

Exemplifying that fight in For Our Children is the story of Angela Williams, from Troy, Ala., the mother of a teenager named Ulysses. In the aftermath of her son surviving a beating by local police that left his face disfigured, Williams says that though Ulysses is fortunate to be alive, he “was emotionally killed.”

After Williams contacts Rev. Johnson, the two work with a team of lawyers and community members to understand what really led to the altercation between officers and Ulysses, and how to attain justice for the young man.

Souza Silva is tenacious about the systemic forces that encourage police violence; she also knows the way toward real change is by being there after the headlines are gone and the TV cameras have moved on to the next story.

“The film is a study in sustained and compassionate listening,” Souza Silva says in a statement about the film. “Rather than reduce these women to a one-dimensional portrait of grief, we have immersed ourselves into the mothers’ homes and communities, attempting to create an intimate, nuanced and honest portrait of their lives, their struggles and their resiliency.”

If something is going to change when it comes to police brutality in America, it’s going to take the masses hearing from those closest to the issue. And who knows this story more intimately than those who’ve been directly impacted?

‘For Our Children’ screens at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with the filmmakers and Rev. Wanda Johnson, on Wednesday, May 1 at 7:15 p.m. Details here. The film will be available for streaming on Netflix starting May 10.