13th Documentary Review

13^th

What is the likelihood of a black male being incarcerated in America?

1 in 3

 

History is not just stuff that happens by accident. We are the products of history that our ancestors choose, if we’re white. If we are black, we are the products of the history that our ancestors most likely did not choose. Yet here we are all together, the products of that set of choices. And we have to understand that in order to escape from it. — Kevin Gannon, 13th 

What are your thoughts on this quote? Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not? 

I agree with the point that we are the products that are ancestors didn’t choose. Also I agree with the fact that we have to understand that it is not by accident and understanding so will help us escape from it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson ushered in the War on Crime, Nixon began a figurative War on Drugs that became a literal War on Drugs in the Reagan era. 

Were you surprised to learn about the racial underpinnings of these legislative policies, and the active role of the state in criminalizing and targeting communities of color? Discuss using the quotation below.

 ‘The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. – John Ehrlichman, Nixon Administration Advisor.’

Super predator. Criminal.

Think about the power of media and the power of words.

 Discuss media and how words impact the perception and criminalization of people of color, both in the past and the present (animalistic, violent, to be feared, threat to white people, criminals, etc.). 

Give 2x modern-day examples.

PRISONERS FOR PROFIT. 

Were you aware of the Prison Industrial Complex and how corporations are profiting from incarceration? 

 What are the dangers surrounding ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council—a committee of politicians and corporations influencing laws that benefit its corporate founders and pushing forth policies to increase the number of people in prison and increase sentences)?

 What is the impact of  CCA? (Corrections Corporations of America, leader in private prisons that is required to keep prison beds filled—the leading corporation responsible for the rapid increase in criminalization) and how that impacts our communities. The film argues that there is a direct link between American slavery and the modern American prison system. What is your take on this argument?

People say all the time, ‘Well, I don’t understand how people could have tolerated slavery. How could they have made peace with that? How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that? That’s so crazy. If I was living at that time I would never have tolerated anything like that.’ And the truth is we are living in this time, and we are tolerating it.” -Bryan Stevenson

What is the power of media representations and how does this relate to cultivation theory?

N.S.

Find some examples of music, musicians and music videos serving successfully to raise awareness to political issues. Post them to your blog.

DOCUMENTARIES + BOOKS + WEBSITES

 •The House I Live In—www.TheHouseILiveIn.org 

• Broken on All Sides: Race, Mass Incarceration and New Visions for Criminal Justice—www.brokenonallsides.com 

• Rikers: An American Jail—rikersfilm.org YOUTH FOCUS:

 • TIME: The Kalief Browder Story—series on Netflix • Young Kids, Hard Time (45 min.)—www.msnbc.com

 • Children Behind Bars: American Youth Violence (46 min.)—www.msnbc.com 

• Children in Prison: Locked Up for Life (55 min.)—www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLrlajvhUaQ 

• Alone: Teens in Solitary Confinement (22 min.)—www.csgjuscecenter.org/youth/publications/alone-teens-in-solitaryconfinement WOMEN FOCUS: 

• “A Nation of Women Behind Bars” 20/20 (30 min.)—http://abc.go.com/shows/2020/listing/2015-02/27-2020-022715-a-nationof-women-behind-bars-a-dianesawyer-hidden-america-special

 • Women Behind Bars (30 min.)—www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2013/09/women-behind-bars201393010326721994.html

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness—Alexander, Michelle. 2012. 

• Just Mercy—Stevenson, Bryan. 2014 

• Are Prisons Obsolete?—Davis, Angela Y. New York: Seven Stories, 2003.

 • The Growth of Incarceration in the United States—Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration, et al. National Academic Press, 2014. 

• The Collapse of American Criminal Justice—Stuntz, William J. 2013

. • Arrested Justice Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation—Richie, Beth. 2012. 

• The Justice Imperative: How Hyper-incarceration Has Hijacked the American Dream: A Collaborative Examination of Connecticut's Criminal Justice and Corrections System—Moran, Brian E, 2014.

 • Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizing Guide—Hunter, Daniel, and Michelle Alexander, Veterans of Hope Project, 2015.

 • Monster—Myers, Walter Dean. 1999. (Juvenile Fiction novel) 

• Campaign for Youth Justice: www.campaignforyouthjustice.org

 • The Sentencing Project: www.sentencingproject.org

• Juvenile Justice Information Exchange: www.jjie.org

 • Free America (John Legend’s Org): www.letsfreeamerica.org

 • Just Leadership USA: www.justleadershipusa.org

 • Justice Fellowship:www.justicefellowship.org

• Justice Policy Institute: www.justicepolicy.org

 • Prison Policy Initiative: www.prisonpolicy.org

 • Equal Justice Initiative: www.eji.org

 • Vera Institute of Justice: www.vera.org