13th

Dir: Ava DuVernay

2016

*****

Ava DuVernay’s documentary focusing on the 13th Amendment is a long time coming. The content is well known to many but not known to nearly enough people. The connection between the ‘War on Drugs’ the mass incarceration in America and the deep rooted racism in it’s society are clear from the outside looking in but now, when more and more people are taking an interest in politics, it is good to have this document that backs up everything it states and offers a balanced viewpoint on the matter. DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated in practices since the end of the American Civil War through such actions as criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weigh more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration of people of color in the United States. The film begins with an audio clip of former President Barack Obama stating that the US has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners. This film features several prominent activists, academics, politicians from "both sides of the aisle," and public figures, such as Angela Davis, Bryan Stevenson, Van Jones, Newt Gingrich, Cory Booker, Henry Louis Gates Jr., as well as many others. It explores the economic history of slavery and post-Civil War racist legislation and practices that replaced it as "systems of racial control" and forced labor from the years after the abolition of slavery to the present, providing proof for all of it as the film continues. Southern states criminalized minor offenses, arresting freedmen and forcing them to work when they could not pay fines; institutionalizing this approach as convict leasing (which created an incentive to criminalize more behavior). They disenfranchised most blacks across the South at the turn of the 20th century, excluding them from the political system (including juries), at the same time that lynching of blacks by white mobs reached a peak in these decades. In addition to such violence, Jim Crow legislation was passed by Democrats to legalize segregation and suppress minorities, forcing them into second-class status. Following the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s that restored civil rights, the film notes the Republican Party's appeal to southern white conservatives, including the claim to be the party to fight the war on crime and war on drugs, which began to include mandatory, lengthy sentencing. A new wave of minority suppression began, reaching African Americans and others in the northern, mid-western and western cities where many had migrated in earlier decades. After their presidential candidates lost to Republicans, Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton joined the war on drugs. He would later publicly apologise for his mistake but I personally don’t buy it. As a result, from the early 1970s to the present, the rate of incarceration and the number of people in prisons has climbed dramatically in the United States, although the rate of crime has continued to decline since the late 20th century. As late as the 2016 presidential election, certain politicians worked to generate fear of crime, claiming high rates in New York City, for instance, which was not true. The documentary says crime is lower overall than it has been in decades, but Republican candidates are said to have raised it to create fear. Private prison contractors had entered the market to satisfy demand as arrests and sentences increased, forming an independent group with its own economic incentives to criminalize minor activities and lengthen sentences in order to keep prisons full. Politicians and businessmen in rural areas encouraged construction of prisons to supply local jobs, and they also have had incentives to keep prisons full. Decades later, studies have shown that private prisons are no more efficient and are often more abusive than those run by the federal or state governments. The federal Bureau of Prisons announced in 2016 its intention to stop contracting with private providers for prison services. The over-incarceration of adults has severely damaged generations of black and minority families and their children. The film explores the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (known as ALEC), which is backed by corporations, that has provided Republican state and federal legislators with draft legislation to support the prison-industrial complex. Only after some of the relationships were revealed did corporations like Wal-Mart and others receive criticism and drop out of the organization. Many businesses continue to make huge profits from prisons, including Securus, which provides telephone services at high rates and Aramark which provides food services that are substandard. The film explores the demonization of minority poor through these decades to serve political ends, contributing to unrealistic fears of minorities by whites and to persistent problems of police brutality against minority communities. In the 21st century, the regularity of fatal police shootings of unarmed minorities in apparently minor confrontations has been demonstrated by videos taken by bystanders and by the increasing use of cams in police cars or worn by officers; DuVernay ends the film with a graphic procession of recent videos of fatal shootings of blacks by police, what Manohla Dargis describes as, after the previous discussion, having the effect of "a piercing, keening cry”. The last statement by one of the interviewees rings true, when he talks about people asking others how they could just sit by and let atrocities happen during their life time. He remarks that people say that if they were around at the time of suffering, apartheid or segregation they would do something but the truth of the matter is that such things are happening now and most people aren’t doing a damn thing. It’s important for such films to show what is happening right now and how they came about. With a relatively young history, it is shocking that so many American’s aren’t aware of such things. It was Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men that opened my eyes to much of the content of the film but film will always reach more people and DuVernay’s documentary is easy to follow and covers everything, providing everything you need to know through fact over opinion. The world needs to wake up and get educated, this is one of few valuable sources of information available to most, making it one of the most important documentaries in decades.