Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story

Garrett Scott | 56 minutes. Subdivision Productions.

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We’ll never know exactly why U.S. Army veteran and unemployed plumber Shawn Nelson decided to drive a stolen tank through the residential streets of Clairmont, California, in 1995, tearing through parked cars as though they were paper. His grand plan to make a public statement on the steps of City Hall was derailed by an unsuccessful excursion across a freeway median (even 60- ton tanks aren’ t unstoppable, evidently) and a well-aimed policeman’s bullet.

What we do have is this incisive documentary, which portrays Nelson as the crystal meth-addicted son of a bomber manufacturer in a defense-industry town that hit hard times after the Cold War ended — and never quite bounced back. That this is a “war story,” as the provocative subtitle puts it, is made clear through the film’s brilliantly deployed footage of pilots dropping Clairmont-made bombs on Pacific targets during World War II; of Clairmont’s postwar rise as a military boomtown; and of Nelson’s half-hour rampage itself, wherein the disgruntled veteran broke into a National Guard armory to start up his own private war. Despite the central ambiguity of Nelson’s mission, Cul de Sac makes its subject’s dead end — his treacherous path from military training to the point of no return — appear disturbingly well marked.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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