"Silence on the Streets" is a ground-breaking documentary that explores the journey of addiction through the perspective | dG1fWDdJQUotWVJjNlE
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Short filmTranscript
00:00The opioid crisis out here is worse.
00:04It's like jumping in from the pond to the fire.
00:08In 2021, 93% of deaths caused by overdose involved in opioid.
00:15There is such a high level of people that are mixing it with stuff,
00:20that people are fooled more than they think.
00:23When you're in the picture, you don't see the picture.
00:28Drug overdose death rates are increasing at an alarming rate
00:32among black and brown populations compared to the non-Hispanic white population.
00:45People are dying, and particularly for African Americans and Latinx,
00:50we're dying at very high rates due to the overdose crisis.
00:56The things that I notice most about fentanyl is now people actually look for fentanyl.
01:01They say the game don't change, only the people do.
01:05That's BS. The game just changed.
01:08Straight up and down, just changed.
01:10And they're introducing something that's a straight killer.
01:13I agree with Nina Simone when she said,
01:16an artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.
01:20As a playwright, I found myself curious about what was happening in my community around 2019.
01:26I kept seeing posts on Facebook with,
01:30These were young people of color from New Haven, Connecticut,
01:33who were dying from illicit opioids.
01:35Many of the comments in the posts referred to fentanyl as the killer.
01:38So I did some research and wrote and produced a play,
01:40along with the support of Clifford Beer's clinic as an outreach effort.
01:43I reached out to the playwright,
01:45and we started discussions about how we could come up with a new film
01:50that really addressed a lot of the issues
01:53that the playwright had brought up in Matthew Rising,
01:56and create something that could be used as a resource
01:59in community settings, at schools,
02:02to really hit on those issues,
02:04and really put a spotlight on some of the struggles
02:07that the black and brown communities have
02:10when we're talking about mental health and trauma
02:13and poverty and addiction.
02:17And that's really the genesis of this documentary.
02:21We spoke with several individuals in Connecticut
02:23to gain deeper insight into some of the factors that led us here today.
02:27We went to New Haven, New London, Norwich, Meriden, and Harford
02:30to speak with people with lived experience,
02:33as well as New Haven EL doctors, professors, mental health providers,
02:36recovery coaches, city officials, and young adults
02:39who are surrounded by this crisis on a daily basis.
02:42As we started the project,
02:44I realized we needed to dial things back.
02:46We needed to go back to a time familiar to me
02:49when so many of our families were impacted by violence,
02:52illegal substances, and incarceration.
02:55We needed to break the silence on the streets.