Sixth Grader Responds to ‘From Selma to Stonewall’ Screening
Caldwell: It is important to give younger students the opportunity to respond to political & justice issues
As a self-described foot soldier in the civil rights movement Asbury Park resident Gil Caldwell, now in his early 80s, is not slowing down from the cause.
The retired pastor [shown at left of Martin Luther King in photo at right] has marched on Washington, fought for voting 
rights in the heat of the Mississippi summer, and walked from Selma to Montgomery. His advocacy has led to arrests, including 1981’s protest of a supermarket’s discriminatory hiring, in 1985 after condemning apartheid outside South Africa’s Washington, D.C., embassy, and in 2000 while protesting the United Methodist Church’s policy that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.
This year, From Selma to Stonewall: Are We There Yet?, the 56-minute documentary produced with author and gay rights activist Marilyn Bennet was released.
Written by Caldwell and directed by Bennet, the film explores the similarities, differences, and conflicts between the civil rights and the gay rights movements via visits to landmarks important to both movements, including Selma and the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the site historically known as the trigger to the LGBT liberation movement.
On Tuesday, Caldwell and Bennet [shown below] traveled to an NYC school for a screening of the film and participated in a Q&A that prompted sixth grader Elise Dzialo to write the following review:
“The fantastic documentary From Selma To Stonewall highlights the diversity in our world and in both the LGBTQ+ and the African American communities,” the Bank Street School student said. “With different intersections between both of the diverse communities, many people can find a common ground in both communities. The documentary follows the two directors and their civil rights journey. From African Americans gaining their right to vote to same-sex marriage being legalized, this documentary covers much of the groundbreaking history of the two movements. Overall, I give this a 5 out of 5-star rating, for including two oppressed groups of people and their civil right stories into one amazing documentary. While watching the documentary I learned that within the African American community there is prejudice against the members who are LGBTQ+ in the African American community. As a young person in this day and age, it means a lot to me that people are able to have a conversation about these issues, because back when my parents were children many people would be bullied and discriminated against if they were to have a conversation about these issues. Watching this film changed the way I thought about the relationship between the two communities and how they relate to each other.”
Caldwell said he continues to participate in such forums because it is important to give younger students the opportunity to respond to political and justice issues before they get to high school.
“I enjoy sharing my involvement beyond Asbury Park with Asbury Park because I feel that I am a representative of this great little city where the ‘sand meets the sea,” Caldwell [shown at far right in photo at right] said Friday. “We have learned much about the nation and ourselves during the 2016 presidential election. Our future will be shaped by those who are young today.
“This review of our film by a 6th-grader at Bank Street could have been written by a 6th-grader in Asbury Park. Young people see, hear and respond in ways different from we who are. We must begin to see, as never before, the intersectionality of justice issues. Young people in Asbury Park could help us do that.”
The K-8 West 112th Street school’s Director of Diversity and Equity said in a written statement: “…It is clear that the aim of the film is to challenge us all to become active in responses to injustice and to work towards understanding.”
The school’s Dean of Children’s Programs Jed Lippard said, “I was especially struck by the call to act in solidarity and in service of others even when we don’t serve to gain ourselves.”
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