Here’s a new Trailer for The Interrupters, a new Documentary Directed and shot by Steve James, best known for “Hoop Dreams,” “The Interrupters” takes a look at a gutsy, activist component of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention. “The Interrupters” gets its name from a specific set of organizers who perform conflict mediation as part of CeaseFire, an initiative of the Chicago Project. The focus of CeaseFire is street violence, which organizers try to stem through outreach workers and so-called violence interrupters who literally put themselves in harm’s way.

If law-and-order conservatives seek to address crime with stiffer sentences and ever more prison cells, which cosmetically reduce crime statistics at the cost of long-term social devastation, liberals often insist that nothing can be done about crime unless something else — unemployment or inequality of education or the fractured African-American family — gets fixed first. CeaseFire essentially takes the position that violence is both a cause and a symptom of social dysfunction, and that every time Matthews or Williams or Bocanegra gets in somebody’s face and stops a shooting, it’s another step toward a more normal society. (Via The DaliyBeast.com)