Leon Watkins runs a community helpline in South Central LA, where anyone in need of help is welcome. One of his most frequent visitors is local gang leader, John Wesley Hunter, otherwise known as “Joker” to the streets. After a day of hustling and almost losing his life in a shoot-out, Joker goes to the one place where he knows he can get help. All in a typical day’s work for Leon until an unlikely woman shows up insisting on aiding him in his fight for his community. This unlikely team defies social constructs by working together to actively fight oppression and gain nation-wide recognition for a hidden reality of many. Along their way they experience the deep-seeded hatred that has plagued America, great love, and tragedy as they leave behind a legacy.
At the dinner table sits a white family: the father (a police officer), a mother and their two sons—a teenager and his younger brother. The teenager has an African-American friend, J.B., whom he wants to hang out with, but his father doesn’t want him leaving the house to meet up with J.B.—and especially not at night. “I want to keep you from bad situations,” the father explains to his son—an eerie foretelling, but more important, indicative of the violence that this white man associates with all black boys, even J.B., a black boy he knows personally and considers to be “a good kid.”
L.A.'s top Latino gang leader is release from jail on a technicality, swearing to kill both the cop who put him away and the priest who testified against him.
