Human City: A one-year walk alongside my neighbors

I’ve heard it said that integrating your past is better than being stuck in it and also better than denying it. For me, integrating the past is a part of recognizing the bad, the good, learning from mistakes and celebrating healing. But for me, I see it as also very complex because the nature of looking in a mirror is also very complex. 

So I’m drawn toward looking back, not because it is always comfortable or pleasant but because I think it can be a way of understanding who we are and where we’ve been. It can be a wrestling match, something we learn from, or something we ignore, but always unavoidable. It is a fabric that informs us, the way we think, and the stories we tell ourselves. It’s an exercise in humanity when I know so much of what is happening in the world threatens our humanity to be woefully out of shape.

Being a local documentary filmmaker is my dream job, and I get to do it here in Beaver County, Pa. That means that most weeks you can find me interviewing someone, on-scene somewhere in the community listening to residents and hearing their thoughts, or in deep conversations with editor Dani Brown on how to tell stories with dignity in our area. I create videos sometimes for The Bridge, sometimes for other organizations I am fortunate enough to work with and every long once in a while for my own creative expression. It’s an amazing job. 

And in spending time with people, I get to scratch the surface just enough to know there is a deep well of stories that make up our area of Western Pennsylvania. 

This past year, 2025, was another year where this couldn’t be more true, and sitting here in my office on Franklin Ave in Aliquippa writing this, I can recall the faces of people I sat across from. I think of the pain, the loss, the hard work, the wisdom and the hope that filled the eyes and voices of a group of people that believe in something deeply: community.

In the early part of 2025, I found myself editing the project “Black Aliquippa” alongside friend and member of The Genesis Collective, Andrenna Williams. A passion project of Andrenna’s, she hoped to record and share the memories of long-term Black residents after she was unable to record her father’s stories when her father passed away suddenly. We wondered together what it would be like if the true stories of hardship and resilience were accessible for future generations. 

There were days when the RiverWise Storytelling Team drove across the state line into East Palestine, Ohio, to sit with residents still feeling the effects of a train derailment that resulted in a chemical disaster almost three years ago now. The ominous cloud that lingered overhead brought uncertainty and questions that still linger today. They worry about their health, rail safety, the chemicals we allow to be carried through our towns and what it means to endure disaster and fight for justice as a community. 

I think of watching the deep grief pouring out of the community after Aliquippa High School student Kendric Curtis was shot and killed by a federal agent. Kendric Curtis was walking down some steps in his community when an unmarked police car surprised him from behind and shortly after fired shots at Kendric, killing him. Many questions about that incident remain, but shortly after that, another tragedy. A young creator and advocate in Aliquippa, Gevod Tyson was also killed in an unrelated act of violence. Gevod had helped start Stop the Violence in Aliquippa in recent years, and was quickly becoming a community leader who could gather voices and affect change.

The latter half of the year was spent with the Aliquippa Food Co-op, a team of residents and people who love Aliquippa that are set on the residents in the town owning their own grocery store. I filmed them as they sat in different locations in their town, asking questions with deep roots. Instead of big companies coming in and leaving Aliquippa, what if the community owned something no one could take away? And what if they came together to choose what they wanted in a way that included everyone?

Late 2025 also was filled with faces reflecting on the year 2020. We started an ongoing project called “Hindsight is 2020” where we invited residents to look back on a year filled with uncertainty and change and asked them to reflect on their experiences. We focused on a local Black Lives Matter march in our area and the unity and work that persists today, due greatly to the late Shon Owens’ efforts, who left an incalculable mark on the area.

And then Dani and I sat with residents and asked them what hope, dignity and community wholeness looked like in the face of polarized views and national tragedy. 

But there are other stories that we worked on that sadly have not seen the light of day. So I’m choosing to share snippets of them here. 

When Smith’s Personal Care Home closed in February 2025, I was able to briefly talk to two residents who expressed grief when their home was suddenly taken away from them. Though living conditions had not been great, the residents who had found a sense of familiarity were being sent to different care homes in different locations upsetting their community in Beaver Falls as well as the community with each other. I started documenting it as a potential larger story of the continued loss of care homes across the community in recent years.

And when ICE conducted raids in Ambridge, I witnessed community members gather together and rise up to voice their concerns and protest in support of Hispanic neighbors who have made this area their home in recent years. A population that is bringing beauty, culture, revitalizing homes and a reminder of the heritage of immigrants that formed this area not too long ago.

And further out, I hear stories that are waiting to be scratched. I hope for more and more storytellers to emerge, like Gevod, or Seth Whitted of Beaver Falls and his Impactfluence program. I hope I can help develop The Genesis Collective’s Media Institute to train people how to tell their own stories more and more so an ecosystem of storytellers can thrive and live in Beaver County. 

This will be eight years for me since I purchased a camera with the intent of trying to understand how to share local stories through documentary film. It’s changed my life. 

And also in those eight years of doing this, I’ve begun to get a sense of how an interview may go.

Every day I go to interview someone, I gather my equipment. I make sure I have charged my batteries. I take two to three trips to my car. I push aside the mess of baby toys, coffee mugs, old Goodwill donations and make space for the equipment. 

These are the things that happen every time I go to interview someone. 

But something else happens too. I sit across from a neighbor. I encounter the profound. I see people standing at the foot of a mountain trying to move it. I glimpse systemic injustices but also the beauty and possibility of community strength and wholeness. I witness complex experiences, sometimes very good, sometimes very bad and sometimes a grief so deep it plunges into the depths of the earth. There’s nothing magical about it and everything magical about it all at the same time. 

You sit.
You listen. 
That’s it. 

That’s sharing a story. And just like that, we’re reminded to slow down, sit across from a neighbor and see humanity which somehow in turn helps restore parts of ourselves we may have lost on the way.

I’m so grateful to call Beaver County my home. It’s a place that has experienced so much loss, but in the midst of that has had vibrant residents rise up, integrate their true stories and move forward in compassion through the decades. It’s the possibility of being rich in one of the most valuable resources: empathy.

And 2026, we’re here now. I don’t know what you’ll bring to our area, but may it be full of the ability to hear stories that integrate our past, exercise our humanity and step forward together in dignity. 

Christopher Padgett is the storytelling and creative editor for The Bridge, Director of Storytelling for RiverWise, a community documentary filmmaker and an award-winning photojournalist with a BFA in film and video. Learn more about Chris by watching his Meet the Team video on YouTube here.