By Darlene Donloe
Contributing Writer
On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed by the New York police officers in the borough of Staten Island.
His declaration, “I Can’t Breathe” as he was being held down and administered a chokehold by one of the four officers who pounced on him, causing chest compressions, became a rallying cry for protestors across the country who took to the streets questioning why yet another Black man was killed at the hands of the police. Garner was a Black man who was selling loose cigarettes.
Garner’s story is being told in “Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner,” a 30-minute Oscar-qualified short documentary that tells what happened that fateful day and how his mother, Gwen Carr, channels the grief of losing her son into a relentless fight for justice and systemic change.
Brad Bailey, the first African American to win the 2019 Student Oscar Gold in Documentary for “Hale,” directs the documentary.
Bailey, who graduated from Columbia University with a master of arts in oral history and completed a master’s in education at Harvard University focused on social justice, vividly remembers July 17, 2014.
“My brother had a similar body build, and he looked similar,” said Bailey, who also produced the film. “When my brother saw the video, he cried. I had never seen him break down like that. He imagined himself in that position and its injustice. The impact it had on him.
“The brutality of the video. ‘I can’t breathe’ permeated the national discourse. It affected me. Four years later, I would be with Ms. Carr.”
This year marked the 10th anniversary of Eric Garner’s killing.
With a myriad of stories to tell about the killing of Black men and women at the hands of police from which to choose, Bailey chose Eric Garner’s. For six years, he followed Gwen Carr.
“We followed her for years,” said Bailey, who is in talks to obtain distribution. “We had 100 hours of footage. There is a lot of footage of the other mothers who lost their children, but this is about her perspective.”
Bailey initially thought the project could be completed in three months.
“One thing after another started happening,” he said. “Then we’d turn on the television, and something else would happen. When you think about it, this is the only year we could have released it. This is the 10-year anniversary.”
Currently, there are screenings around the country to enlighten people on the subject of systemic change.
“I hope this film is an educational tool,” Bailey said. “I approached it as an oral historian. I’m a teacher at the end of the day. It’s about education. Civic groups or any other groups can use it. There is a duty to care. It had to be higher than any aspect of this film.”
One of the things Bailey said he had to get right in producing and directing the documentary was how Carr keeps photos as the only memories of her family.
“I had to find a way to show how she processes the photos,” Bailey said. “They prevent her from going to a dark place. She does a meditation trick. She uses the photo as a conduit for seeking justice for her son. Second, I had to get Ms. Carr right. As a historian, I approached it as a journalist and videographer.”
One of Bailey’s goals was to show what happens to family and friends when the chaos dies down and they return to their lives.
“Yes, we’ve seen many of these stories,” said Bailey, who recently earned a New England Emmy nomination for a short-form piece featuring Gwen Carr. “What happens to real people behind these news stories? What happens when the cameras go away? What is the ripple effect? What happens years later?”
Gwen Carr, born in 1949 in Brooklyn, has a compelling story. It’s no less than a story of a woman who endured much but didn’t let it stop her from her mission. A lesser woman may not have survived.
After 10 years, Carr decided to take her story to the big screen because “No sense in someone else telling it. I didn’t want to be an extra in my own story.
“I wanted to speak his name,” said Carr, who added she draws a sense of strength from the photos of her family in her home. “There’s a sense of comfort looking at photos daily.”
Carr, who worked for the New York City Transit Authority for 23 years, was widowed at 27 with three kids — two boys and a girl. Garner was the oldest. Her husband, who had high blood pressure, had a stroke and died.
She later married a man by the last name of Carr. In 1996, Carr’s father died of a massive heart attack. Her son, Emery, died that same year. He was robbed and murdered.
Carr, whose second husband, Ben, died in 2019 of a heart attack, said she shut down after that.
“It was the start of a horrible nightmare,” she said.
On July 17, 2014, the day Eric Garner was killed, Carr was operating a train from Coney Island to Astoria. Her phone kept ringing. When she returned to Coney Island, her husband was in the dispatcher’s office.
When she got downstairs, she was told what happened.
“I just had a fit,” she said. “I tried to kick the window shield out. I tried to get out of the car. I thought if I could get out of the car, I could run to Staten Island faster than the car could take me.”
When she got there, Carr said she “didn’t know how or why Eric was killed.”
To this day, she has never watched the video in its entirety.
“I was angry and bitter at how they had taken his life,” she said. “I was in a dark place. I didn’t want to get up.”
At Garner’s funeral in Brooklyn, July 23, 2014, protestors chanted, “I can’t breathe.”
At one of the rallies, Garner’s daughter, Erica Garner, who had become an activist, told the crowd, “Police officers failed us New Yorkers because they let an innocent man die. Beg for his life. Fight for his last breath.”
The drama and trauma of her father being killed took its toll on Erica Garner, who, at 27, died on Dec. 30, 2017, of a heart attack that caused extensive brain damage.
“When Erica Garner died, I was injured by it,” Bailey said. People said she died due to the effects of racism. “I called Ms. Carr six months later to ask if she would do the film.”
In the film, Carr expresses her disdain for all of the officers involved in the death of her son.
“They all were directly involved,” she said. “I want them all to stand accountable.”
Officer Daniel Panteleo, who held Garner in a chokehold, was never formally charged with a crime, even though the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Garner’s death a homicide.
Panteleo was fired by the New York Police Department in August 2019, following a disciplinary hearing in May. It took five years for Garner and Carr to get justice.
Bailey said he learned something about himself after completing the emotional film.
“I learned about my resilience,” he said. “We struggled in this film in a lot of ways. My team struggled. We realized we had to find a way to continue this story. We dealt with the deaths of loved ones, and we had a health crisis.
“Something was compelling about it. It was going to have its own life. It could change the world or the individual path of some people.”
Carr agreed to participate in the film because she wants the world to know what happens when the stories are no longer on the front page and the cameras are gone.
“No one should look at these incidents as news stories,” said Carr, who belongs to Mothers of the Movement, an activism group created by women whose Black children have been killed by police. “The news stories go away. We have to live with this. This is our everyday life.
“It’s like they keep murdering my son over and over again. Black women are dying from the trauma of police violence. As long as they have a mother, they have a voice.”
Carr, who has become a fierce advocate and activist, has become tireless in her efforts because she wants to keep her son’s name alive.
“Enough is enough,” she said.
Darlene Donloe is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers who covers South Los Angeles. She can be reached at ddonloe@gmail.com.