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How this Nashville community is turning pain into resilience

Meet the activists and entrepreneurs transforming the neighborhood with the highest incarceration rate in the US in Fiverr’s short documentary Out North.

by Vox Creative
Updated

When all the cards are stacked against you, do you fold, or do you change the game? For the residents of North Nashville, the traumas of mass incarceration and gentrification are galvanizing a generation of entrepreneurs and activists.

In Out North, a new short documentary produced by the global freelance marketplace Fiverr, we meet some of the passionate locals working to bring change to their community. North Nashville (specifically the zip code 37208) has the highest incarceration rate in the US — 14 percent, or one in every three young men, according to a 2018 Brookings Institution study — and yet the neighborhood refuses to be defined by its hardships.

A group of children, teenagers, and young adults sit under a sign for Gideon’s Army
Gideon’s Army founder Rasheedat Fetuga gathers with fellow members of the community in the organization’s North Nashville HQ.
Courtesy of Fiverr
A mural of a woman’s face surrounded by white wings alongside the text: We don’t need law and order when we have truth and balance.
Street art honoring Fetuga on a North Nashville building.
Courtesy of Fiverr
A highway cuts through the neighborhood of North Nashville.
Top left: Gideon’s Army founder Rasheedat Fetuga gathers with fellow members of the community in their North Nashville HQ. Top right: Street art honoring Fetuga on a North Nashville building, a community in transition. Bottom: The construction of the I-40 freeway in the 1960s tore up the community and decimated local businesses.
Courtesy of Fiverr

Among the community’s success stories is Slim & Husky’s, a pizza chain started in 2015 by a trio of local entrepreneurs. Today, the company has seven locations around the country and acts as a vital community center, providing jobs and empowering North Nashville youth. The founders were a key inspiration for the film, appearing first in Fiverr’s “It Starts Here” campaign, shot in Nashville in July 2020.

In the documentary, they’re joined by local activists including Rasheedat Fetuga and Jamel Campbell-Gooch, the founder and chief operating officer of Gideon’s Army, a grassroots organization working to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and help children and teens overcome violence. One of the nonprofit’s most successful initiatives has been introducing “violence interrupters” — members of the community who intervene in conflict situations with the aim of de-escalating and providing support to those involved.

Despite the tragedy that Fetuga has witnessed in her neighborhood, she’s hopeful about its future — in part because, as she says, “it didn’t always used to be this way.”

“Our story is North Nashville, but there is a North Nashville in every city.”

Up until the late 1960s, North Nashville’s Jefferson Street was a thriving hub of Black business, live music, and culture. The district was (quite literally) torn apart, however, with the construction of the I-40 highway, which displaced hundreds of homeowners and decimated many local businesses. “The construction of the interstate was a trauma. It created a trauma that the community couldn’t recover from,” says Dr. Learotha Williams, a professor of African American and Public History at Tennessee State University and the coordinator of the North Nashville Heritage Project.

A man with dreadlocks and a printed shirt puts his arm around a smiling young boy.
Courtesy of Fiverr
A man in a Gideon’s Army T-shirt holds a piece of paper in front of cases of water bottles and other supplies.
Courtesy of Fiverr
A young boy raises his first while walking in front of smiling men from the neighborhood.
Top: Mic True, a Violence Interrupter for Gideon’s Army, embraces a boy from the local “Dodge City” projects. Bottom left: Gideon’s Army COO Jamel Campbell-Gooch hands out supplies at a Thanksgiving food drive. Bottom right: Violence interrupters are teaching the residents of 37208 a new paradigm for de-escalating conflict and providing support beyond traditional policing.
Courtesy of Fiverr

Still today, decades later, the neighborhood’s residents are rebuilding. And while outsiders might look at the statistics and see the obstacles ahead, the people we meet in Out North are focused on the opportunities.

Directed by Eric Ryan Anderson with Gabrielle Woodland, the documentary casts a light on a group of individuals who are building their dreams and striving for change in their community — a story playing out every day in countless ways around the globe. As Fetuga says, “Our story is North Nashville, but there is a North Nashville in every city”

Watch Fiverr’s short documentary Out North and donate to Gideon’s Army here.