Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics — with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens. Welcome to Political Breakdown 29 January,2018Marisa Lagos Explore: News, … Continue reading Welcome to Political Breakdown →

A police chief in Antioch leads a team to investigate citizen complaints. But some say the complaints mostly target newer black residents. Across town, a lawyer is determined to bring down the Antioch Police Department, accusing them of ethnic cleansing. In between, neighbors are fighting neighbors over who can call this place home.

With the country’s No. 1 high school football recruit - Najee Harris - Principal Louie Rocha and the Antioch High School football team haven’t had it this good since 1978. It was a nearly all-white team then. It’s not that way anymore. And there have been racial tensions since the city started to change. Now, Rocha has a chance to change that. But only if he can bring the older generation back to cheer for a team that doesn’t look like them … on and off the field.

When African-Americans priced out of Bay Area cities like San Francisco, Fremont and Oakland move to suburban Antioch looking for better schools, more affordable homes and safer streets, they find a mixed blessing. When church is a refuge, it means either commuting on Sunday morning back to the cities they left behind, or creating new church in Antioch. This is the story of a migration to a new home, and three men’s search for sanctuary once they arrive.

A small group of Muslim families were meeting out of garages before they purchased an old dentist office for their new mosque. After the Islamic Center of the East Bay was torched in 2007, the group must decide whether to rebuild in Antioch or leave the city.

Iris Archuleta is the daughter of a Black Panther who grew up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. She and her husband were part of the first wave of upper middle class African-Americans who moved to Antioch 20 years ago. This is the story of an unlikely alliance between Iris and the Antioch police. Both reject the single narrative here of “poor blacks” and the “inner city” moving out to Antioch. For them, Antioch is actually doing things right, if only their work wasn’t getting lost in a larger negative narrative about the town.

More African Americans are now living in suburbs than anywhere else. And some of the country’s most recent controversial police shootings of unarmed black men took place in the suburbs outside St. Louis, St. Paul and Orlando. In suburban Antioch, police chief Allan Cantando is trying to bridge divides with the new community. To do that, he meets with a class of college students and asks them to role play as cops. Meanwhile, a budding group of community activists who say they’ve faced police brutality are learning how to organize. The challenges of policing and protesting in suburbia, in this episode of American Suburb.

Antioch residents are finding it hard to ignore the increasing number of destitute people living on the streets. Last year, the number of people living unsheltered grew by 30 percent in the far eastern Contra Costa suburbs– the rest of the county saw declines. In this chapter Devin joins a group of drifters who’ve set up camp in an abandoned field on the edge of town. They’re honing their survival techniques and dodging authorities… trying to create their own version of suburban life.

It can be hard to get back on your feet when you’re starting from scratch — even when opportunity falls in your lap. We meet Kevin Kunze, who was living on the streets until Doug Stewart decided to do something unusual: He took Kevin home with him to live with the Stewart family. It’s a test for the family, but an even harder one for Kevin.