Our core story follows three students from August 2004 to June 2005. From the state-mandated LEAP test to Mardi Gras marching bands. From birthdays to basketball practice. From family functions to random shootings to school riots. We see New Orleans and the New Orleans public schools in their entirety. We hear our protagonist’s hopes and dreams and aspirations as we pan the “mean streets” that surround them. The visuals are enough to make us feel uneasy . . . to make us fear the fate that awaits them. “What happens to us all when a dream is deferred?” Yet there is also a feeling of hope, the hope of the young, as infectious as it is potentially heart-breaking. We hope for Mario, Jonathan and Joshua . . . and, in doing so, we hope for ourselves. As the film unfolds, we are confronted with the various problems that contribute to the current state of affairs in the school system. Race, violence, poverty, dysfunctional families, politics — and we begin to form the question: How did we get this way? How did we allow this to happen to our families, our schools, our cities, our very society? How did we allow ourselves to leave so many children behind? At first blush, the answer is a historical one, for New Orleans is a city steeped in history. A history of racism and class and corruption; a history of slave trade and king cotton and Baton Rouge kleptocracies. A history where “who you know” has always been more important than merit. Certainly there is enough in our history to give us our answer. But this is the easy way out, and as we delve deeper we find that our answers lie with in our culture. It lies within the political/social environment in which we live. In this film we confront problems that gnaw, not just at the core of New Orleans, but at the core of America.