No Peace
Albert Corado grew up in Los Angeles raised by his parents who emigrated to the United States from El Salvador. Albert spent many years working as a barista in the city until Mely’s death awakened his political drive. After becoming deeply engaged with his local activist community, Albert sets his sights on the politicians who apologized for the LAPD after his sister’s death. What better way to engage with your local politicians than to run to unseat them?
As the only police abolitionist in the race, Albert’s strategies are unconventional at best, cursing at cops from upscale Hollywood debate stages and promising to “roast marshmallows on burning precincts.” The scope of his campaign illuminates questions that get to the center of local city politics: Who is allowed political speech? What kind of speech is encouraged? Who does it serve to ignore the voices most affected by the failings of our society?
At Albert’s side and a cofounder of the People’s City Council, Ricci Sergienko, is an abolitionist that has helped re-popularize an old form of activism in LA, “birddogging.” This causes some of LA’s most powerful social leaders – like Sheriff Alejandro Villanueva and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso – to take out Facebook ads to demonize him.
A friend and supporter of Albert and the People’s City Council, William Gube, known as @FilmThePoliceLA to his tens of thousands of followers on twitter, spends nearly every night on the streets of Hollywood, listening to police scanners and rushing to nearby police stops to film. He knows nearly every cop in the Hollywood precinct by name because he has filed hundreds of complaints against every one of them.
Throughout the film, our characters rally around Albert’s political campaign, attempting to influence LA politics towards their abolitionist mission.
The campaign, unapologetic in its rhetoric and hatred for LAPD, makes big waves in the race, but ultimately fails to make it past the primary. In the reflection of this failure, Albert and our characters are forced to reevaluate tactics. Do they acquiesce to the critics’ tone-policing of their anger or double down on their hatred of the world they desperately want to change?
No Peace will attempt to tackle structural questions with the criminal justice system in the United States through deeply personal vignettes of three characters working to change it.
This project is 2 years into filming. We intend to film for approximately 1 year more to follow Albert’s evolution as a political actor, the relationships between our characters, the status of police reform following the upcoming election, and engage with expert interviews to further analyze the ideology of police abolition as well as the use of social media in the political sphere of Los Angeles.
Associated Members
Bret Hamilton, Independent Filmmaker
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