The very first series or movie to really make me think and change my perception of the world was the movie About Time. When I first got to watch About Time I was in Suzhou, China around August of 2017. I was 16 around that time and it was movie night on a cold wintery night. I asked my friend if we could watch a movie on his laptop and asked whether he has any good movie recommendations to watch. His name was Hugo, and he was thinking about what movie would be great to watch and he told me, why don’t we watch this movie called About Time. I was confused as to what the movie was about, but he told me to just watch the movie and you’ll know. Before watching I didn’t really think much about time and just spent it mostly having fun and wasting it -- like just sitting on my bed with my phone all day while I could be doing much more productive and meaningful things.  I followed his instructions and kept my mouth shut until the movie ended. Little did I know that the movie would change the way I think about how time is a very precious and valuable thing and what time means to other people.

​         About 3 weeks ago I watched a documentary series on the famous rapper, Meek Mill, and his journey through our legal system. This man was in and out of jail starting as a teenager. This documentary, Free Meek, taught me about our criminal justice system in ways that were mind blowing and the documentary included some statistics that were mind-boggling. His documentary series changed my view of both our criminal justice system and even the judicial system. 

        This documentary took me back to when I was 16 and a junior in high school. I had a run in with an officer outside my friend’s house. I was parked outside waiting for him to come out so we could go eat. As I’m waiting a Los Angeles County Sheriff officer pulls up next to me asking what I was doing in this neighborhood and on this street at this time -- which was around 11pm. I told him I was waiting for my friend so we could go eat. He proceeded to ask me if I was selling or purchasing marijuana. I replied, “I don’t smoke dude.” This really upset the officer and that’s where it all started.

By: Reynard Hodges
        ​I have to assume that MS Donuts, a short yellow building in a small Echo Park plaza where Glendale and Alvarado fork, is open during the daytime. But on any given night, seven days a week, if I step around to the right of its locked parking lot entrance doors and peek through a small side window between the hours of midnight and 4 am, I’ll see the shop’s sole baker hard at work. I like to take a minute to watch him, maybe pulling and stretching the raw dough into its familiar shape, or delicately and precisely flipping each donut floating in hot oil with long tapered wooden sticks. Eventually I will rap several times on the thin glass pane, and he will slip on a pair of flour bleached sandals, slide the window open and greet me with an enormous smile.
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         “Hello! Hello, my friend,” he says, with a thick Khmer accent. “How are you tonight? Coming from work?”

         He laughs as he speaks, and I have long thought of him as an unusually good natured person. But through many late night talks—I’ve been going weekly for six years—I’ve learned that he still laughs when he isn’t happy. He will laugh as he tells me how tired he is, as he explains that he works seven days of the week, as he tells me that he only can get a few days off during the entire year.