Traficant’s story is our story
On the side
Candidates forum: The Community Mobilization Coalition will sponsor a candidates forum at 6:30 p.m. April 6 at New Bethel Baptist Church, 1507 Hillman St. in Youngstown.
Candidates running in each of the city’s seven wards are invited to attend. Also, information about the new ward boundaries and polling locations will be provided at the event.
Paycheck Fairness Act: U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, has reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would help close the wage gap between men and women working the same jobs. On average, he said, women make 78 cents for every $1 made by a man.
The proposal would close loopholes that have kept the Equal Pay Act, signed into law in 1963, from achieving its goal of equal pay by requiring employers to show that pay disparities are truly related to job performance, not gender, Ryan said.
Despite the tremendous struggles of the Mahoning Valley after the shutdown of the steel mills in the late 1970s, there are a lot of people who get nostalgic about that era.
And for those who weren’t around this area during the 1980s and 1990s [disclaimer: I moved here in 1995 so I would be among them], there’s a curiosity, particularly about the political corruption and the influence of organized crime.
The Valley’s story is made for Hollywood. It reads like a 1930s Warner Brothers ripped-from-the-headlines gritty crime film starring Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney.
While the story has yet to be made into a feature film, Eric Murphy has done an excellent job making it a documentary with James A. Traficant Jr., naturally, as the star.
“Traficant: The Congressman of Crimetown” is not only a documentary about the former politician, but about the Youngstown area during “Jimbo’s” heyday.
The film was shown three times at the Cleveland International Film Festival — premiering last Saturday in Akron and then Sunday and Monday at the Tower City Cinema in Cleveland, the event’s main location.
The Akron debut was supposed to be at a 150-seat venue, but because of demand was moved to a 400-seat theater.
It also drew larger-than-expected crowds when it played in Cleveland.
While there were a number of people from the Valley in attendance, there were plenty from other areas, including those who knew nothing about Traficant, who died in September, or the Youngstown area during that time.
Murphy — the film’s director, producer, writer and editor — is from Warren, and grew up in a household where Traficant was a frequent topic of conversation.
Murphy let others do the talking in his documentary, and there are many fascinating stories to tell of that era and of Traficant.
I was somewhat surprised how much time Edward A. Cox, a former 7th District Court of Appeals judge, was given. While Cox was a big part of the Traficant story, a little background on him would have better served the audience.
Murphy only refers to Cox as a retired appeals court judge.
He is “retired” because he lost a 2000 re-election bid after it was disclosed he accepted money from two attorneys who represented clients in his courtroom. That included Richard Goldberg, convicted of eight counts of fraud related to stealing $4.5 million from clients.
Cox’s law license was suspended in 2002 by the Ohio Supreme Court for violating the state’s code of conduct for judges. If disclosed in the documentary, it would have added even more color.
Murphy used clips of local TV news reports and Vindicator articles to tell the story. [A minor point: Mona Alexander was mislabeled as a reporter for WFMJ — where she is now its news director — when she was working for WKBN.]
Murphy used “dark humor” to get some points across. Some of it was funny on its surface, and we can look back on mob killings and political corruption from decades ago and laugh. But we’re still talking about events that severely damaged and forever tainted the region.
Overall, the film provides information and insight in an entertaining way to those years in the Valley and how Traficant was able to rise to political power and eventually be taken down by his own corrupt actions.
Hopefully, the documentary will get into many other film festivals and be viewed by a wider audience. While it’s not the area’s proudest time, it’s an important part of the Valley’s history and a compelling documentary.