In the summer of 1973, I photographed Stanley “Tookie” Williams, founder of the West Side Crips, the notorious Los Angeles gang, along with five original members: Buddah, Monkey Man, Danifu, Batman, and Shaft. They all wanted their pictures taken and posed—“fronting off,” they called it—in leather jackets and starched Levis with thick suspenders. The Crips’ mission, as described by Williams, was to protect South Central residents from immediate threats—particularly racism, police brutality, and violence from other gangs. Williams became known for challenging other gang leaders to one-on-one street fights. By the early 1980s, the number of Crip “sets” in Los Angeles County had more than doubled, to 109, since 1978. The crack cocaine epidemic pushed them into at least 41 states, and the Crips, along with rival Bloods, became widely referenced in music, film, and media as symbols of gang culture and urban violence—fixtures in American popular culture for more than 50 years.
This past October at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles, I was part of a diverse crowd—gang members, police officers, victims of violence, Hollywood celebrities—attending the premiere of Nothing to See Here: Watts, a documentary created by members of the Watts community, including rival Bloods and Crips, former gang officers, students, and families who’ve lost children to violence. In the process of documenting their daily lives over three years, these residents contributed to a reduction in homicides by 90 percent, according to the producers. Correlation is not causation, but ignoring that shift would be its own kind of denial. Shot almost entirely on iPhones, Nothing to See Here is not just a gritty portrait of urban violence, although it is that too. The documentary is a working blueprint for how people can reclaim both their narrative and their safety.
The project began in December 2021, when Michael Soenen, a software executive volunteering with the Healthy Room Project (a nonprofit focused on improving youth housing), joined a police ride-along and watched a man die on the street from a shooting. That single violent death—which never reached local news—made Soenen understand the invisibility of daily traumas in Watts to the wider Los Angeles community. His reaction was to start documenting: Of the roughly 200 people he approached, about 20 agreed, turning their phones toward family rituals, fraught street corners, jokes, grief, and the constant calculus of survival that never fits into 40 seconds on the six o’clock news. In an age saturated with surveillance, this was a different experiment: self-documentation as self-respect.
Plenty of outsiders have pointed cameras at Watts; what makes this project different is that first-time producer Soenen gave up creative control. After reviewing footage, he realized the story could not ethically belong to him. The people on-screen would receive filmmaker credits and retain ownership of the narrative.
It took months for members of rival gangs, law enforcement, and families affected by the violence to sit together and shape a 90-minute film. In those edit rooms, people who might otherwise meet only in an incident report were arguing over cuts, interrogating one another’s footage, and deciding what the world should see. It wasn’t just art; it was shared power.
During filming, the production team tracked roughly 100 homicides across Watts. In the months after key screenings facilitated by gang leaders and other stakeholders, the community saw a stretch with zero homicides. Almost 5,000 people at the Peacock Theater premiere saw what happens when those most affected by violence are trusted to tell their own stories. Beyond the finished film, the collaborative production process—dialogue and shared authorship—helped build peace across divides.
Today, the film will screen in Atlanta during the King Center’s Beloved Community Global Summit—on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. The symbolism is almost too on the nose: a vision of a “beloved community” updated for the smartphone era, where reconciliation begins not with a policy memo but with a camera. Proceeds from the film will support the Nothing to See Here Foundation, which funds more than 40 local nonprofits focused on violence prevention, youth, and neighborhood revitalization. The goal is to bring similar documentary production to Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and beyond without compromising its core principle: Communities must direct their own stories if they hope to transform them.•
Despite the Crips’ notoriety, there are very few photographs of the early members, and none of them presenting themselves as they wanted to be seen. Terry McDonell recently donated a set of the images to the Autry Museum of Western Art.
Terry McDonell has published widely as a journalist, top-edited a number of magazines, and was elected to the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame in 2012. He is president emeritus of the Paris Review Foundation and most recently cofounded Literary Hub.
