♪♪ Darius Clark Monroe, voice-over: In 2019, I moved my life to Dallas to document a city through the often overlooked front line workers who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of the enduring promise-- a government of, by, and for the people.

♪ The sheriff who stays grounded in her faith.

The community organizer who guides others closer to their full potential.

The judge who helps people stay out of the justice system.

The coroner who offers deep insight into life as he diagnoses the dead.

♪ This is a 5-week portrait of a city and the people who devote themselves to the unfinished work.

♪ Announcer: "Dallas 2019," only on PBS.

♪ [Indistinct chatter] [People screaming] [Roller coaster clattering] Voice: Hello, folks.

This is Big Tex.

Welcome to the 2019 State Fair.

Different voice: Be prepared to exit to the left.

Exit now.

Prepare to exit to the left.

Exit now.

Different voice: The show is about to begin.

Man: Are you ready?

♪ I want somebody to scream.

♪ [Wind blowing, metal clattering] Man: We may be facing a pretty steep price tag for recovery here, so I just don't want anybody to be in a false sense of security.

We are opening the multi-agency recovery facility, and that's gonna be at the Church of Latter day Saints, so things moving along.

I think we're in a 6-week time period to be fully cleaned up.

Let me ask this.

The hurricane--or the tornado damaged-- what fire station was that, 19--what?

Man: 41.

Broadnax: 41?

Woman: 41.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a total rebuild, right?

OK. And that's-- this is 1.2, but the other--I'm hearing $9 million.

That's our typical footprint?

Woman: Correct.

Man: Yeah.

It's approximate 8-- cost 8 to 10, depending on what-- how many bays you have, what kind of service that station provides.

OK. Something last night that came up-- I don't know if you saw-- but there was a vigil that was being held for the shooting in Greenville, and then there was a drive-by shooting that came--that, you know, I guess somebody came by to shoot at the people in the vigil.

Luckily, nobody was hurt, and we did catch 4 of the 5 suspects.

-We did?

-We did.

-OK. -But one news agency van was hit pretty heavily, and so I know that'll be something that's talked about a lot today.

Woman: I just wanted to update you, too, on the Equity Indicators... -Yes.

-launch this afternoon.

-I'm so excited.

-Yeah.

You know that the mayor is no longer able to attend.

He has a conflict, so Mr. Thomas will be jumping in.

Broadnax: All right.

Anybody got anything else?

♪ Broadnax, voice-over: I wouldn't know what I'd do if I wasn't a city manager quite honestly.

If you asked me, I'd be "I don't know.

I like to be in the background because I think that's where you can get the work done.

♪ I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, my first few years in military housing, then kind of like the Jeffersons moved on up and moved into the projects-- heh heh--and then moved on up again to another project.

[Applause] How many of y'all's first day today?

All right.

Good, good.

Well, welcome.

How many of y'all signed up for these jobs because you love the City of Dallas?

More hands got to go up for that.

Hold on.

[Laughter] Seriously?

I don't have to tell you anything about the history of Dallas and this North-South divide.

Dallas is about 385 square miles.

Big city.

Huge.

Too big actually.

The total value of all of the land and wealth is $140 billion.

How much do you think that resides in the Southern Sector?

Broadnax, voice-over: My dad and mom, we bought our first home when I was 6.

Paid all of $25,000 for it.

When my dad died, he owed $27,000 on that house.

The mortgage rate was 24% from our local and friendly credit union.

So 25 billion out of 140 billion is south of I-30.

That doesn't seem right, does it?

It doesn't seem possible.

Well, you could see it when you look on the ground and you see what's missing.

Broadnax, voice-over: The predatory nature of what happened to my father is probably why I sit here today.

♪ Where all the community people at?

Where all our people from Highland Hills?

Oh.

Where our people from Highland Hills.

OK, I'm fixing to do a switcheroo.

If you're from Highland Hills, go sit to some-- go sit next to somebody you don't know.

Man: They already doing it.

Y'all already--y'all already-- who you sitting next to?

OK, you sitting with your son, but I need somebody-- if you're from Highland Hills, I need for you to go sit with somebody who might be with somebody from Trammell Crow or from the City of Dallas or a state representative.

I don't want you just sitting with your people.

I want you to sit to somebody that you don't have exposure to every day.

Woman: Uh-oh.

So where's Miss--where's State Representative Toni Rose at?

Raise your hand up, Miss Rose.

Raise your hand up.

All right.

I need somebody from Highland Hills to come sit next to Miss Rose.

We fixing to chop this up.

This is not gonna be your normal, everyday thing.

We need some poor people conversation going on.

Woman: Uh-oh.

Woman two: Every day.

Every day Woman: You got the big dog on you, Toni.

That's right.

So I--so I need some-- I need somebody that's gonna be talking about what's going on in the community, and I need somebody right here with Mr.--with Mr. Benny from West Dallas so he won't be feeling alone.

Can I get a state official?

Can I get some high muckety-muck come sit with him?

[Laughter] OK.

So where we're getting ready to go right now is Lane Plating, a chrome plating facility that operated for 90 years, but it was shut down in 2015 due to numerous environmental violations such as illegal discharge of pollutants.

[Distorted] What I have right here is [Normal] the water from the creek, and in this water is cyanide, cadmium, mercury, and it's not the water... [Distorted] it's the mud that's poisonous... [Normal] and it's right behind the Barack Obama Boys School, and there's a baseball field that leads right back to that school, so this is highly toxic in this community.

♪ Woman, voice-over: My house flooded in 2007.

♪ I was at home, getting ready to go to bed, and my neighbor called me.

He asked, "What about the horses?

I said, "What about the horses?"

So I looked out, and my whole house was-- it looked like I was in the middle of a lake.

The water was up to the windows.

The next day, I was there, and I was wondering what I was gonna do.

Red Cross came.

So, you know, I got interested in that because they come out and help me.

I want to go out and help other people.

♪ It's tiresome.

Call me late through the nighttime, 1:00 or 2:00, but you give temporary housing to people when we come out.

♪ People tell me all the time "When do you rest?

When do you rest?"

I don't really rest, you know, but now I'm kind of beginning to feel it.

♪ I just like to keep my hands busy.

Well, that was $1.50.

We don't want to spend too much money, but what about the pens?

Since those pens at TRE and the minimum to order is 500.

Yeah, but they already got pens already down there.

That's what I was telling you.

I have the retractable badge holders in.

I have the mood pencils up here, the neon pencils up here.

We don't have the fitted tablecloth yet because she said that has to be custom.

♪ Jackson, voice-over: I retired early because my dad was diagnosed with cancer.

♪ It seemed like it was getting better, and then I started working for DART.

♪ Two months later, we lost him.

[Ratchet clicking] Afterwards, my mom died.

♪ If I hadn't really kept myself busy, probably would have lost my mind.

♪ Man: Yeah, and it blew over on this side.

Jackson: Wow.

Remember, the operator basically had to climb out of the front windshield because the windshield-- you see the side of it?

I just saw it on the news.

You can see some of the scratch marks up there from the wind, where the wind blew it after it was on the ground, and then it sh-- -The top of it.

-Yeah, yeah.

It just tore it up.

Luckily, the operator was not injured, and none of the passengers were on it, so they didn't--no one was injured.

♪ Jackson, voice-over: My brother, this is hard for him.

♪ A lot of his problem was when he was helping take care of my dad.

♪ You know, when you're an alcoholic and when you go through some things, you kind of backslide?

He was a recovering alcoholic, but then when my dad got really, really sick, he kind of backslid.

That's the reason why he's incarcerated because his DWIs.

Got 15 years.

♪ It's just heartbreaking to see.

♪ I was mad at him, I really was.

When he got locked up, I quit talking to him.

♪ When he got sentenced, I think I waited 3 months, and he kept calling me, and I finally talked to him, and he called and was telling me he was in another world, and he apologized, and... ♪ My mom's birthday is tomorrow, so he called me yesterday.

He said, "Well, you know, Mama's birthday is Wednesday."

I said, "Yeah, I know."

♪ It's still hard because she wasn't sick.

She just had a massive heart attack.

When they found her, she still had her clothes on.

She was in her bathroom, kind of leaning over to the door.

She had called me that Sunday because I used to go see her on that Sunday.

She said, "You're coming down here?"

I said, "Yeah, I was."

She said, "Don't.

You don't have to because I'm going back to church."

I said, "OK," and she was just so jolly that day.

♪ I just--I didn't have closure... ♪ and I think that's what's bothered me a lot, why I stayed so busy because I didn't have that time myself to grieve.

♪ The best thing that really kind of get me through, she's with my daddy.

They did everything together, and that's what she wanted because when my dad died, she used to go to the cemetery all the time, every day, and I used to tell her "Mama quit going down "to the cemetery all the time.

It's not that healthy."

And she'll say, "I wish I could just dig him up."

So, you know, a year and 5 months later, everybody'd say that she was with her Johnny now.

♪ Man: there's where it started to suck the window out.

You can see right there.

Man two: Yeah.

Right here.

Split here and down here.

Split all the way across.

Across there and then the very obvious busted windows.

That cracked.

That cracked.

Good crack there.

That's a big one.

We just holed up right there.

We shut all the doors and just sat right there.

Not a fun experience.

[Blinds rattle] We got lucky.

[Blinds rattle] We got really lucky.

Orrell, voice-over: When you have a catastrophic storm and you show up on the scene and you look around, it never fails.

You'll see at least one person doing something that completely just doesn't make sense.

It's amazing work boarding up your windows.

For instance, after this one, the next morning, we showed up out here to start cutting limbs off the house.

One of the residents was in his front yard with a rake just raking up sticks and acorns.

Meanwhile, there's half a house missing down the street, and there's limbs on the house.

There's all this massive damage.

Was just out there just with a rake just kind of-- It's like the shock factor.

It's just like it's so overwhelming they don't know where to start.

Orrell: So it's common in a severe storm the immediate damage is not the only damage.

Orrell, voice-over: A lot of times is, you know, after the storm's over, people are like, "Oh, well, it's not too bad.

"We got some damage on the outside, but it's fine in here," and then you go through and you look at it at first, and it's like, "OK, well not really seeing anything, "not really seeing anything.

It looks pretty good."

Give it a couple of days.

Walk through it again.

"Oh, there's some cracks above these doors "at the corners.

"There's a wet spot right there.

There's a detached light right there."

"Oh.

Didn't notice these things."

Wait another 3 or 4 days.

Walk through it again.

Every single one of those things is worse, and now you find more things.

It takes a while for everything to settle back into place, and as it settles, you'll find more and more damage developing.

Man: We had 3 large pecan trees in a row, all bigger than that one back there, one at the corner of the pool and then one in the very back by the shed.

All gone.

That one fell and took out the transformer.

The wind was going like this.

It just snapped all the branches off about that high.

And all of it was in the pool... -Yeah.

-and everything else?

And then the fence is laying on the neighbor's carport.

The only thing holding it up anymore.

[Hammering, power tools whirring] ♪ Orrell, voice-over: If you don't like tornadoes and hailstorms, where are you gonna go?

Gonna move out to California?

That's nice.

Do you like earthquakes?

You know, where are you gonna go?

There's something everywhere.

Heh!

You can go anywhere in this world, there's something that you can't control.

♪ I was born in southeast Arkansas and raised just outside of town called Monticello.

Where I'm from is not a very large place, so, you know, it's a small-town dynamic, and I couldn't wait to leave because there was nothing to do there.

Ha ha ha!

I graduated a year early and then took off for the military.

Having lived in a world that was so chaotic and tumultuous, you come back to something that seems like a huge problem, and you just look at it and it's like, "OK." Like, I had some business issues that came up a while back, and I had people that would tell me, "Man, I don't know how you're so calm about all this."

You know, it's like, "Well, worse things "could be happening.

"Nobody's shooting at me.

"Nobody's trying to blow me up, So what's the big deal?"

Woman: You can actually see the trend.

You see how it looks down on this end.

Once we get farther, you can see how this community of West Dallas is being gentrified.

All this used to be public housing, but they tore it down.

Woman: Right.

And so as we go down Singleton, you can look to the left.

Yes, that's my left.

This is the left.

All this used to be public housing to-- that little creek over there, it used to flood this whole public housing back in the eighties.

I used to live here.

Green, distorted: West Dallas used to have a high, high rate of infant mortality.

[Normal] Their babies a lot of times didn't make it to, like, two years old.

Derrough, distotred: And this community... [Normal] doesn't have a grocery store.

Green, distorted: Why is it such a land grab?

Derrough, distorted: It floods here.

[Normal] All this floods when it rains.

Green, distorted: You can see gentrification slowly moving in... [Normal] and in a minute, it's gonna slowly be moving people out.

Derrough: 1872, Joppa is where the freed slaves came.

You see piles of rocks, you see piles of dirt, you see piles of recycled asphalt.

Like just say if you come to the light and the light is red, you got your air on.

It's coming into your car, but when you inhale, where it go?

To your lungs.

Green: The two properties next to Five Mile Creek that were covered by grass and trees in 2017 are now covered by a 40-foot pile of used shingles by Blue Star Recycling.

Miss Marsha Jackson has a 40 foot-mountain of used shingles in her backyard.

Jackson: 60 Green: It's 60 now?

Her horses have died.

Her grandchildren have been very sick.

She has suffered from some very serious lung ailments.

The neighbors next door the same thing.

The company declared bankruptcy, so they're kind of like parasites.

They go into a community, they pollute it.

They do what they want to do, and then they get out.

Deep voice, echoing: Get out.

Reporter: This massive mound of ground shingles at Blue Star Recycling has been growing behind Marsha Jackson's home since January last year.

Neighbors say they've been complaining to city code inspectors and state environmental agencies for months.

They've been experiencing air pollution, noise, odors, and health issues like coughing up dark matter to asthma.

Reporter two: The city officially labeled it a health hazard, and then two months ago, they ordered Blue Star Recycling to get rid of it.

Last week, inspectors found the work hasn't been done.

How embarrassing has this been for you?

Heh.

That's a great question.

It has been pretty embarrassing.

Reporter Blue Star Recycling's co-founder Carl Orrell showed up to the hearing without an attorney.

He claims the business is broke and could ultimately take more than a year to clear the shingle piles.

Ideally, I want it to happen as soon as possible for everyone involved.

Reporter: For now, Blue Star has managed to get itself a little more time and avoid jail as city leaders and the court determine what to do next.

Woman: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Please be seated.

I apologize for the delay.

With new information, I was trying to adapt.

We are here this afternoon in DC-- DC-18-18651, City of Dallas versus Blue Star Recycling LLC, et al.

Attorney: The same 3 distinct piles of material remain on the properties-- unprocessed shingles, once processed shingle materials, and finished material.

Defendant Blue Star Recycling reports that there is no material removal currently ongoing, and none is planned for the immediate future.

Carl Orrell, who is the former CEO of Blue Star Recycling LLC, indicated to us that he was not intending to appear for this.

Slaughter: Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Jackson: I do.

-Please be seated.

-Thank you.

You may proceed, counsel.

Attorney: Thank you, your honor.

Miss Jackson, would you please state and spell your name for the record?

Marsha Jackson, M-a-r-s-h-a J-a-c-k-s-o-n.

Thank you, Ms. Jackson, and where do you live?

[Muted] Is that here in Dallas?

Dallas, Texas, 75241.

And is your home located next to the properties on which Blue Star Recycling has been operating?

It is.

And how long have you lived in that home?

I've been there 24 years.

Ahem.

How long has Blue Star been there to your knowledge?

January 2018.

And mostly we called you here today to talk about your health.

Is it true that your health has deteriorated since Blue Star has been on that property?

It has.

That's true.

As long as the ground up asphalt is still there, I can only be outside for maybe 5 or 10 minutes, and then I can actually feel that my voice is deteriorating from there.

Within the whole week or something, sometime I might not even be able to speak, you know, now but no, it has--ahem.

Do you have family that lives with you -at the house?

-I do.

And who lives with you there?

I have an 11-year-old granddaughter, and then my 30-year-old daughter lives there with me.

OK. And how has your family been affected by the presence of the material there?

My granddaughter has taken more of her albuterol because her asthma.

Now they don't go outside and play.

She doesn't since she can't ride the bicycle because of the asphalt also bother her breathing.

Ahem.

♪ Is there anything else you'd like to tell the court?

No.

That's it.

I have no further questions, Your Honor.

Counsel, do you have any questions for this witness?

Attorney two: No questions, Your Honor.

I will find Blue Star Recycling LLC in contempt of court for failure to comply with this court's temporary injunction.

I will order it to pay a coercive-- what we call a coercive contempt fine of $500 a day per violation, and there were multiple violations listed.

Counsel, I will-- we'll speak in, um-- we can speak after the hearing's over.

The order needs to be fine tuned some.

It doesn't have per violation.

Woman: Same rules of propriety, decorum, and good conduct applicable to members of the city council.

Any speaker making personal, impertinent, profane, or slanderous remarks or who becomes boisterous while addressing the city council shall be removed from the room.

Individuals will be given 3 minutes to speak.

You'll notice the time at the podium.

When your time is up, please stop.

Address your comments to Mayor Johnson only.

Also, if you have any handouts, you can go ahead and hand it to the officer to my left and your right as it will affect your speaking time.

I want to ask you, Mr. Mayor, to please intervene with your task force or whatever you have at your disposal because it is a grave injustice when the greatest city in the U.S., Dallas, Texas, has this kind of black mark on it because of a few bad apples within the police department.

My daughter has now been indicted by the grand jury and is going to court on January 7 to face assault of an officer while she's handcuffed, and, Mr. Mayor, we need to do something because when we live in a great city like Dallas and declining advancements becomes a fight for justice, something is wrong.

I want to thank the Dallas Police officers who came to a call that I made for my son, who was in the military.

He suffers from PTSD.

Got out of the military and--on honorable discharge, and he was having a mental breakdown.

I thank them for not killing him.

I thought that police officers was gonna help me.

9 came out to my home.

I'm in the district of Casey Thomas on the Grand Prairie side of Dallas County.

They arrested my son and charged my son with assault.

He was charged with assault instead of them helping me-- because he didn't commit a crime.

I just needed for them to help me get him in the car.

Man: I came here to speak about this item because one of the things I wanted to do was to make sure that when you vote on it you just don't see the $610,000.

You see the $10 million that you have spent for police officers' misconduct since 2015, and what we do not need on our taxpayer dollars is for you to continue to pad the pockets of the law firms like they always do, but I ask that you do the right things by approving this measure and moving forward.

Thank you.

Woman: Thank you.

We'll now--we'll now move to your consent agenda.

Your consent agenda consisted of agenda items 2 through 91.

Woman two: And we anticipate that the majority of the properties that will come through as community land trust properties will be vacant.

They'll just be taxed-- there will be tax revenue that comes in.

Woman 3: Just on the structure?

On the structure?

The land will be taxed also.

It's just taxed on the value of the leasehold, which will be a very, very low value.

Broadnax, voice-over: The issue is people being priced out of their home, and I think this program is a preservation technique to allow for and ensure, again, that those individuals don't somehow at some point 10 years from now get priced out of their homes.

Man: So what prices them out of their home?

-I think both-- -Their high taxes?

So why not just create exemptions?

This is just complex to me.

♪ I think it's a layup quite honestly as it relates to what we're doing here today.

A dunk would be success, and-- OK. Can I ask one other question?

Yes, sir.

I appreciate you're advocating for it, and, I mean clearly I'm in the minority in here on this.

Councilman, if the house is not affordable, they will never own a house.

To place your property in a land trust, that's a decision that the property owner makes.

Their heirs don't get to make that decision, and so I think they will do that willfully as-- And when those heirs call me, I'll tell to call TC.

Broadnax: Exactly.

Mayor Johnson: OK.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Johnson: Were you--were you finished with your--OK. [Indistinct chatter] Take a picture, and then we're gonna-- ♪ Broadnax, voice-over: This work I do and the stress and strain of it, I try to work through it myself.

Woman: We're calling them pods, but it doesn't have to be a pod.

So pod to me means either like a granny pod, or it means a container home.

Broadnax: Mm-hmm.

We have found some online that are about 39,000, where the city would put up 50,000.

The resident would go through an application process, but they would also get to interview the faith community that they would live at.

We've talked about how would we unwind it.

Let's say the faith community said, "You know, I don't think we want to keep doing this," or the resident issue became too complex.

How would we exit that person and replace them with somebody different?

We just sort of laid out a framework for it.

Who is the we?

So we want to make sure that we foster upward mobility and break the generational cycle of poverty.

We also want to support families' choices in locating in certain neighborhoods and finding some type of housing, and so we have come up with our own methodology to account for the severe level of poverty and, again, the concentration of vouchers in a neighborhood.

Man: As we looked at our last year's numbers, we have probably had about a 30% success rate.

We'll have hundreds of thousands on our waiting list.

Broadnax, voice-over: I've learned to be steady because I think people need that kind of leadership.

They've been doing group feedings in the streets, which isn't good for us in terms of trash, in terms of hygiene, um, and number 3, they've been doing things like blessing bags, right, where they give out things, but a lot of times, they'll have a gift card in there, and it actually is creating crime, homeless-on-homeless crime where people are -jumping them to get that.

-Mm-hmm.

Broadnax, voice-over: I believe that I've been doing this kind of work just organically because of who I am and what I look like.

This is just normal for me.

Man: The family may want to move, but the reality of the circumstances for that particular family may be "I can't afford moving expenses, I can't afford security deposits, and so our board of commissioners approved a $3 million allocation, and if the city's amenable to this approach, we would ask that the city join us in a dollar-for-dollar match.

Broadnax, voice-over: At the end of the day, I think I'm pretty good at what I do.

when they get tired of me and all of me and who I am, should any place I go not want me anymore, OK.

They just weren't ready to deal with the types of issues that city managers are challenged to deal with.

And so if they don't have first and last and all that, they just don't get a place?

Man: That's right.

Oh.

That's not-- Woman: This is why we want to really change the system.

Presenter: We still got a lot of work to do.

Broadnax, voice-over: Some people don't need a study and folk to talk about the inequities and show the disparity.

They live it.

Presenter: There was some positive movement, and it went up by... Broadnax, voice-over: They're like, "Well, OK, thank you "for acknowledging my life for the last 10 years, but that's what I've been telling you."

Woman: What do we take away from this?

When we look at these indicators, time and time and time again, people of color in Dallas-- guess what it is-- do not have the same access to opportunity.

How many people are super surprised by these results?

Huge change... Broadnax, voice-over: The timeliness of the machine here is so slow.

Presenter: So that's how to read this report.

Again, there's so much... Broadnax, voice-over: And that is where I spend most of my time wringing my hands.

♪ The frustrating part for me is I can help 100 people, 200 people in a year with a program that works... ♪ but that's 200 people.

There are 30,000 people behind them.

♪ ♪ We need to be doing more and getting more accomplished and talking less.

♪ People need to see that things are different.

♪ I feel like I'm a protector for and a fighter for voiceless and folk who can't stand up to the powers that is a city organization, and I'm their inside man.

♪ Green: We need to talk about the RSR lead smelter site.

From the 1930s to 1984, a company called RSR Corporation operated a notorious lead car battery smelter in West Dallas, a section of the city that became one of the few areas where black people could live.

The EPA Superfund site covers... [Distorted] 13.6 square miles.

[Normal] We were forced in school to go swimming and to learn--to learn how to swim, and when you leave that building right here, which was Edison, we-- before we get home, we vomited.

We didn't know what was wrong.

We go to school the next day.

They sent us to Parkland.

It was kids dying!

Woman: The power is not being used to change this for those that have the power.

Why?

Different woman: It's not being used here because they're not voting.

The benefits and burdens of society are not equally distributed, so when you go to North Dallas, it's not because they vote that they don't have toxic waste.

It's because they're white.

It's a lack of power.

But you don't get the people to represent you and represent your cause.

Our communities do not have the money-- In order to get it, we have to have people that look like us, that care like us.

Right.

Other people give them money, right?

-Right.

-So then they are beholden to people who are not us!

They never gonna care about us as long... [Distorted] as we ain't vote!

[Wheels grinding] ♪ Green: And all this right here is our water lands.

We have to preserve the Earth, y'all.

This part of the wetlands.

You have, like, ibises and wood storks and all that type of thing, and so we're trying to preserve this, but it is hard when we got lead smelting, we got concrete batch plants.

We got stuff that's killing our forest, and this is the Great Trinity Forest, and how do the Earth breathe?

It breathes through trees.

[Birds chirping] ♪ And as you can see over here, this was Fair Park and all this.

When African-Americans tried to come into this community back in the 1940s and the 1950s, they would blow the houses up.

The white people would blow the houses up, and then when African-Americans would buy the houses, they would get terrorized to the point where they would get paid less once the city came in or these realtors came in and said-- they're like, if you bought the house for 20,000, after you've been terrorized and people trying to blow up your house, you're going to sell it for 5,000.

So I'm giving you a point of reference so you'll understand why South Dallas is the way that it is.

[Steam whistle blowing] [Machinery chugging] ♪ ♪ [Sizzling] Orrell, voice-over: Growing up, I always said I was gonna be a doctor.

It just--it was very interesting the concepts, and also, like, all the men in my family have heart issues.

Hey man.

We still good for 10:00 this morning?

Orrell, voice-over: When you're aware of that, that becomes something of interest.

OK. Orrell, voice-over: I was planning on going to medical school.

Orrell: Yeah, I'll be out there a little earlier than you.

Orrell, voice-over: But then I chose to go into the Marine Corps instead.

Do you know how short on material you are?

Man, on phone: No.

We'll know in a bit.

OK. Orrell, voice-over: My mother was very unhappy about my choice to join the Marine Corps.

She was very much on education, and so she was very upset when I told her that I was absolutely going to the Marine Corps.

When I joined in '98, there was nothing really going on in the world.

Then, you know, the whole 9-11 thing, it was, like, we were pretty much gone all the time, and in '05, I got shot twice in the knee, and that ended my career in the Marine Corps.

I just continued to do my counterintelligence work until 2013, and I decided that was it.

I'd had enough.

It's time to go back to the real world.

♪ It was easier to live and be happy in a chaotic environment than being in a normal life.

♪ My mind just trying to adjust to the fact that it was gonna be here permanently, and... [Sighs] there was--there were struggles, you know, just anger, a lot of drinking.

You know, I was going through treatment with the VA for physical stuff, and... ♪ things were different.

It's inevitable that there's going to be a concept of breaking parts of you down in order to bring you back together as the product that they need.

♪ You're in a different world at that point.

Death didn't even really occur to me at the time.

Every time you leave the gate, you know that there's a possibility.

♪ I mean, when I was shot in the knee, that was a very surreal experience, sitting in the bathroom trying to bandage up the bullet holes.

Just shredded my leg to make-- they cut out, like, 8.5 cubic inches of soft tissue.

I didn't realize I got shot at first.

Then I felt the gush of blood go down my leg.

♪ Looked back at my interpreter, and I say, "Here, take my rifle.

Give me the pistol.

"Anybody comes in that door that's s not dressed like us, shoot them."

So I'm sitting on the floor in this bathroom, in this house, trying to bandage this all up.

There's, like, a pool of blood, and the whole floor of the bathroom is just sticky and slick.

I remember on the helicopter ride to the hospital the guy above me was bleeding pretty bad, and he was dripping blood on me, and there's a little ring that the gurney sits on, and I was sitting there flicking that ring... flicking that ring, just trying to keep myself awake.

♪ I reached a point of comfort in death that I--I felt like, you know, I'd lived a life.

I wasn't afraid to die.

♪ I mean, death's, like, not even in my mind.

I mean, death's never in my mind.

♪ Something all of a sudden surprise happens, bad medical news, OK. Death is never the thought.

♪ [Voice whispers] I mean, it inevitably could be the final result of any situation, but nothing you can do about it if that's the case, so... ♪ Everybody has their own sacrifices.

[Voice whispers] [Indistinct chatter] Man: You know, knock-down now.

It was only 2,000 square feet, and it wasn't a very good quality, and they didn't have replacement coverage, so the insurance company's willing to write them a check.

A lot those older, smaller homes that got wiped out, they're senior citizens.

Broadnax, voice-over: Pretty much everyone that I encounter will continually tell me they're always praying for me.

Man: No way they're rebuilding.

These people are already taking the money.

Broadnax, voice-over: I do believe that there is a higher being that's looking out for me, given my path in life.

Man: Years ago, my dad had an incident where he had warned the neighbor that his tree was leaning and that the tree was diseased.

Broadnax, voice-over: My biggest worry is being around to watch my kids succeed and have families and all the things that my parents didn't get to see me do.

Man: Now for the man of the hour.

TC Broadnax began serving as Dallas City Manager on February 1, 2017.

Previously, he served as City Manager of Tacoma, Washington.

He also served as Assistant City Manager of the City of San Antonio.

Broadnax has more than 25 years of local government management experience.

He presides over an annual budget of $3.1 billion, billion with a "B."

He is also responsible for 39 city departments and nearly 13,000 employees.

He is married and has 4 children, so will you please welcome the City of Dallas Manager T.C.

Broadnax?

[Applause] Broadnax, voice-over: I think right now is a blip in time, and I don't want to get political with stuff, but my kids 8, 9 and 12 grew up with a different president and a different scene and teaching.

They can sense and see that something's different, something's not the same, and people are feeling a little anxious about life and where this country's going, and, you know, I mean, like, my younger son is just now identifying and recognizing people are treated differently based on the color of their skin, and those are some awkward conversations.

♪ Just some of the stuff that's going on in society today and my overprotective nature, I'm a little worried about them being able to manage.

♪ Jackson: Ahem.

Woman: Right in this room.

Jackson: OK. How are you feeling since we last saw you?

I'm doing a little better.

I was sick.

I was really sick.

Um, I had a real bad acute sinus infection.

Will you hang that up there for me, please, ma'am?

Ahem.

And, um, it's getting better.

-Um, any cough?

-Yes.

I was doing a lot of cough, but then a lot of it was, like, because of my acute sinus anyway.

OK. Has the cough gotten better?

It was getting better until I got sick.

-OK. -So... Um, how's your swallowing?

It's about the same, I guess.

Swallowing is the same?

OK. [Typing] And frequent throat clearing.

I noticed you doing that.

-Doing it, yes.

-Still doing that.

OK. Any sore throat?

Yeah.

Today it is, and it might be because I'm just still hoarse.

-OK. -And I was gonna tell Dr. Pandit when I had my acute sinusitis... Mm-hmm.

all this was just swoll, all of it was real swoll.

OK. Did you have facial pressure?

Yes, and then, um, my nostrils, both of them just almost closed.

OK. [Typing] How are your headaches?

They're getting a little better.

It was worse last week probably because of the sinus pressure.

OK.

So it sounds like all your symptoms were a little worse.

-Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

-OK. See those pills are sticking up in there?

So one of them she gave me for nausea.

-OK. -And that's the one I'm still taking.

I guess that's the antibiotic.

The antibiotic?

OK.

So you were placed on antibiotics?

I took that, and I had got a-- they gave me a steroid injection.

OK. And then you still have a couple more days left.

Mm-hmm.

Ahem.

Jackson, voice-over: When people tell me "I'm sorry," that's a slap in my face.

♪ That sorry is not helping me when I'm constantly going to the doctor.

I'm tired of medication.

All that medication is only just blowing me up more and more.

Ahem.

The City of Dallas, what they're doing to us... ♪ I'm--I'm hurt.

♪ Doctor: The shingles, you know, not only do you get that black soot in your lungs that's really fine.

Um, it also has, um, these what's called PAHs, so polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and those PAHs, some of them can cause problems.

They've been linked to cancer, as well as poor pulmonary performance, so clearing the source of it is gonna be important for the health of the community.

Jackson, voice-over: Where the single mountain is, that's right across the street from the landfill.

I know durn well some of those city people saw that shingle mountain growing up.

Why they didn't say nothing?

Why they didn't stop it?

The best thing you can do is prevent breathing this as much as you can, which means having an air purifier at night, sleeping with an air filter, washing your nose out, wearing a mask when you're outside, so protecting you as much as possible.

They've never started a cleanup process for that yet?

-Not one thing.

Uh-uh.

-OK. And, see, the judge has said that the asphalt, the ground-up asphalt, was too heavy to move, and that's not true.

It just seemed like it drained so much, you know, it just pooled so much in my throat.

Yeah.

You just have to continue doing it, the irrigations to clean out your nose, the steam inhaler to moisturize your vocal cords, the voice therapy to use your lung power to create voice instead of straining this from all the dryness that's over there.

Jackson, voice-over: I can't say they don't care about all the citizens, but to me, it does look like they really don't care about the Southern Sector.

I always hear people talking about racial discrimination, Black and brown community, and I'm believing that's the case.

I work in the community, trying to give back, so why would you just pick people?

What are you doing, just waiting for us to die?

Doctor: What we're looking at Is your windpipe down there, your vocal cords here, and your... Jackson, voice-over: Why would they do us like that?

You know, that's my first thing.

Why?

I've been here in Dallas since '79.

We suffer when they can go home every day, and they don't have to worry about what we're going through.

Doctor: And it looks good.

The tissues are a little swollen is what we see right there.

See?

They're a little swollen.

♪ Jackson, voice-over: It's like we don't even matter.

[Wind blowing] It's like they don't care... ♪ ♪ [Horse snorts] [Wind blowing] [Flies buzzing] [Wind blowing] ♪