1 00:00:11,344 --> 00:00:13,388 [Barack Obama] So let's look at the statistics. 2 00:00:13,471 --> 00:00:17,560 The United States is home to 5% of the world's population... 3 00:00:19,352 --> 00:00:22,022 but 25% of the world's prisoners. 4 00:00:24,567 --> 00:00:26,193 Think about that. 5 00:00:28,529 --> 00:00:31,198 [Van Jones] A little country with 5% of the world's population 6 00:00:31,281 --> 00:00:34,785 having 25% of the world's prisoners? 7 00:00:34,868 --> 00:00:35,953 One out of four? 8 00:00:36,036 --> 00:00:40,040 One out of four human beings with their hands on bars, shackled, 9 00:00:40,123 --> 00:00:43,919 in the world are locked up here, in the land of the free. 10 00:00:46,338 --> 00:00:49,299 We had a prison population of 300,000 in 1972. 11 00:00:49,382 --> 00:00:53,178 Today, we have a prison population of 2.3 million. 12 00:00:53,261 --> 00:00:56,724 The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. 13 00:00:59,226 --> 00:01:02,145 So, you see, now suddenly they're in an awakening that, 14 00:01:02,229 --> 00:01:05,608 "Oh, perhaps we need to downsize our prison system. 15 00:01:05,691 --> 00:01:09,486 It's gotten too expensive. It's gotten out of hand." 16 00:01:09,570 --> 00:01:15,158 Um, but the very folks who often express so much concern, 17 00:01:15,242 --> 00:01:19,329 uh, about the cost and the expanse of the system 18 00:01:19,412 --> 00:01:23,250 are often very unwilling to talk in any serious way 19 00:01:23,333 --> 00:01:25,878 about remedying the harm that has been done. 20 00:01:28,546 --> 00:01:32,009 History is not just stuff that happens by accident. 21 00:01:32,092 --> 00:01:36,596 We are the products of the history that our ancestors chose, if we're white. 22 00:01:36,680 --> 00:01:39,516 If we are black, we are products of the history that our ancestors 23 00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:41,310 most likely did not choose. 24 00:01:41,393 --> 00:01:45,063 Yet here we all are together, the products of that set of choices. 25 00:01:45,147 --> 00:01:48,776 And we have to understand that in order to escape from it. 26 00:01:54,031 --> 00:01:56,366 The 13th Amendment to the Constitution 27 00:01:56,449 --> 00:02:00,871 makes it unconstitutional for someone to be held as a slave. 28 00:02:00,954 --> 00:02:03,248 In other words, it grants freedom... 29 00:02:06,168 --> 00:02:08,629 to all Americans. 30 00:02:09,546 --> 00:02:13,967 There are exceptions, including criminals. 31 00:02:15,510 --> 00:02:19,097 [Khalil G. Muhammad] There's a clause, a loophole. 32 00:02:19,681 --> 00:02:21,892 [Kevin Gannon] If you have that in the structure, 33 00:02:21,975 --> 00:02:24,561 in this constitutional language, 34 00:02:24,645 --> 00:02:26,897 then it's there to be used as a tool 35 00:02:26,980 --> 00:02:29,608 for whichever purposes one wants to use it. 36 00:02:50,045 --> 00:02:52,422 [Cobb] One of the things to bear in mind is that 37 00:02:52,505 --> 00:02:55,342 when we think about slavery, it was an economic system. 38 00:02:55,425 --> 00:02:59,722 And the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War 39 00:02:59,805 --> 00:03:04,101 left the Southern economy in tatters. Uh, and so this presented a big question. 40 00:03:04,184 --> 00:03:07,104 There are four million people who were formerly property, 41 00:03:07,187 --> 00:03:10,023 and they were formerly kind of the integral part 42 00:03:10,107 --> 00:03:12,943 of the economic production system in the South. 43 00:03:13,026 --> 00:03:14,527 And now those people are free. 44 00:03:18,365 --> 00:03:20,909 And so what do you do with these people? 45 00:03:24,162 --> 00:03:26,164 How do you rebuild your economy? 46 00:03:28,166 --> 00:03:32,755 The 13th Amendment loophole was immediately exploited. 47 00:03:32,838 --> 00:03:37,259 After the Civil War, African Americans were arrested en masse. 48 00:03:37,342 --> 00:03:40,553 It was our nation's first prison boom. 49 00:03:43,431 --> 00:03:46,309 [Gannon] You were basically a slave again. The 13th Amendment says that 50 00:03:46,393 --> 00:03:48,228 "Except for criminals, everybody else is free." 51 00:03:48,311 --> 00:03:52,232 Well, now if you're criminalized, that doesn't apply to you. 52 00:03:52,315 --> 00:03:55,235 [Michelle Alexander] They were arrested for extremely minor crimes, 53 00:03:55,318 --> 00:03:58,321 like loitering or vagrancy. 54 00:04:00,365 --> 00:04:03,493 And they had to provide labor 55 00:04:03,576 --> 00:04:07,205 to rebuild the economy of the South after the Civil War. 56 00:04:13,461 --> 00:04:16,757 [Cobb] What you got after that was a rapid transition 57 00:04:16,840 --> 00:04:19,384 to a kind of mythology of black criminality. 58 00:04:21,094 --> 00:04:24,431 Go back and, you know, read the rhetoric that people used then. 59 00:04:25,390 --> 00:04:27,893 They would say that the Negro was out of control, 60 00:04:27,976 --> 00:04:30,395 that there's a threat of violence to white women. 61 00:04:32,230 --> 00:04:34,941 So the same sort of image that we had of Uncle Remus 62 00:04:35,025 --> 00:04:37,652 and these genial, kind of, black figures 63 00:04:37,735 --> 00:04:44,159 was replaced by this rapacious, uh, menacing, Negro male evil 64 00:04:44,242 --> 00:04:45,869 that had to be banished. 65 00:04:52,167 --> 00:04:53,836 [Gannon] Birth of a Nation was 66 00:04:53,919 --> 00:04:57,130 just a profoundly important cultural event. 67 00:04:58,631 --> 00:05:00,550 [Muhammad] It's the first major blockbuster film, 68 00:05:00,633 --> 00:05:04,805 hailed for both its artistic achievement and for its political commentary. 69 00:05:04,888 --> 00:05:07,557 And when it was released, it had this rapturous response. 70 00:05:07,641 --> 00:05:11,102 You know, there were lines everywhere that it was being shown. 71 00:05:12,229 --> 00:05:15,148 Birth of a Nation confirmed the story 72 00:05:15,232 --> 00:05:19,777 that many whites wanted to tell about the Civil War and its aftermath. 73 00:05:21,196 --> 00:05:25,200 To erase defeat and to take out of it sort of a martyrdom. 74 00:05:27,410 --> 00:05:31,081 Woodrow Wilson, the sitting president, had a private screening 75 00:05:31,164 --> 00:05:34,292 of it in the White House. He calls it, "History written with lightning." 76 00:05:34,376 --> 00:05:36,544 And every image you see of a black person 77 00:05:36,628 --> 00:05:39,547 is a demeaned, animal-like image. 78 00:05:40,465 --> 00:05:42,259 Cannibalistic, animalistic. 79 00:05:43,551 --> 00:05:46,679 The image of the African American male. 80 00:05:48,181 --> 00:05:51,768 [Cobb] There's a famous scene where a woman throws herself off a cliff 81 00:05:51,851 --> 00:05:55,688 rather than be raped by a black male criminal. 82 00:05:56,231 --> 00:05:59,609 In the film, you see black people being a threat to white women. 83 00:05:59,692 --> 00:06:04,907 All the myths of black men as rapists was ultimately stemmed by the reality 84 00:06:04,990 --> 00:06:08,076 that the white political elite and the business establishment 85 00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:09,369 needed black bodies working. 86 00:06:19,212 --> 00:06:21,965 [Cobb] What we overlook about Birth of a Nation 87 00:06:22,049 --> 00:06:25,427 is that it was also a tremendously accurate prediction 88 00:06:25,510 --> 00:06:28,346 of the way in which race would operate in the United States. 89 00:06:40,943 --> 00:06:44,571 [Cobb] Birth of a Nation was almost directly responsible 90 00:06:44,654 --> 00:06:46,198 for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. 91 00:06:47,907 --> 00:06:53,288 It had received this romantic, glowing, heroic portrait. 92 00:06:54,998 --> 00:06:58,376 The Klan never had the ritual of burning the cross. 93 00:06:58,460 --> 00:07:00,628 That was something that D.W. Griffith came up with 94 00:07:00,712 --> 00:07:03,006 because he thought that it was a great cinematic image. 95 00:07:04,799 --> 00:07:07,761 So it was literally an instance of life imitating art. 96 00:07:09,762 --> 00:07:11,431 The ripples emanate far out 97 00:07:11,514 --> 00:07:14,434 from just the simple fact that it's a movie 98 00:07:14,517 --> 00:07:16,937 in the early motion picture age. 99 00:07:18,646 --> 00:07:21,649 [Cobb] With the tremendous burst of popularity 100 00:07:21,733 --> 00:07:25,988 that the Ku Klux Klan had as a result of Birth of a Nation 101 00:07:26,071 --> 00:07:28,781 came another wave of terrorism. 102 00:07:42,129 --> 00:07:45,298 [Stevenson] We had lynchings between Reconstruction and World War II. 103 00:07:45,382 --> 00:07:49,052 Thousands of African Americans murdered by mobs 104 00:07:49,136 --> 00:07:52,180 under the idea that they had done something criminal. 105 00:07:52,264 --> 00:07:55,600 [reporter] At the National Democratic Convention in New York in 1924, 106 00:07:55,683 --> 00:07:59,980 it is estimated that at least 350 delegates were Klansmen. 107 00:08:00,063 --> 00:08:03,941 [Stevenson] The demographic geography of this country was shaped by that era. 108 00:08:04,026 --> 00:08:05,943 Now we have African Americans in Los Angeles, 109 00:08:06,028 --> 00:08:10,573 in Oakland, and Chicago, and Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, New York. 110 00:08:10,657 --> 00:08:14,077 And very few people appreciate that the African Americans in those communities 111 00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:18,248 did not go there as immigrants looking for new economic opportunities. 112 00:08:18,331 --> 00:08:20,667 They went there as refugees from terror. 113 00:08:20,750 --> 00:08:24,129 We didn't just land in Oakland, in LA, in Compton, 114 00:08:24,212 --> 00:08:27,590 in Harlem, in Brownsville in 2015. 115 00:08:27,674 --> 00:08:30,218 This is generational... generational trauma. 116 00:08:30,301 --> 00:08:32,804 [reporter] The letters "KKK" were carved with a penknife 117 00:08:32,887 --> 00:08:35,765 on the chest and stomach of this man in Houston, Texas, 118 00:08:35,848 --> 00:08:40,687 after he had been hanged by his knees from an oak tree and flogged with a chain. 119 00:08:42,439 --> 00:08:45,650 The Chicago Negro boy, Emmett Till, is alleged 120 00:08:45,733 --> 00:08:51,156 to have paid unwelcome attention to Roy Bryant's most attractive wife. 121 00:09:02,792 --> 00:09:05,337 [Stevenson] And then when it became unacceptable 122 00:09:05,420 --> 00:09:07,922 to engage in that kind of open terrorism, 123 00:09:08,005 --> 00:09:10,133 then it shifted to something more legal. 124 00:09:10,217 --> 00:09:12,302 Segregation. Jim Crow. 125 00:09:13,928 --> 00:09:18,100 [Alexander] Laws were passed that relegated African Americans 126 00:09:18,183 --> 00:09:21,061 to a permanent second-class status. 127 00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:30,278 These things really begin to live out the prophecy that Griffith was making 128 00:09:30,362 --> 00:09:32,239 about the way that race operates. 129 00:09:32,322 --> 00:09:35,283 And this fear of crime is central to all of this. 130 00:09:35,367 --> 00:09:37,577 Every time you saw a sign that said "white and colored," 131 00:09:37,660 --> 00:09:39,913 every time you had to deal with the indignation 132 00:09:40,497 --> 00:09:42,499 of being told you can't go through the front door. 133 00:09:42,582 --> 00:09:44,334 Every day you weren't allowed to vote, 134 00:09:44,417 --> 00:09:45,794 weren't allowed to go to school, 135 00:09:45,877 --> 00:09:48,755 you were bearing a burden that was injurious. 136 00:09:52,342 --> 00:09:54,719 [Alexander] Civil rights activists began to see the necessity 137 00:09:54,802 --> 00:09:57,180 of building not just a civil rights movement, 138 00:09:57,264 --> 00:09:58,640 but a human rights movement. 139 00:09:58,723 --> 00:10:01,601 [Martin Luther King Jr.] And I think we should start now preparing 140 00:10:01,684 --> 00:10:02,977 for the inevitable. 141 00:10:03,060 --> 00:10:04,146 [crowd] Yeah! 142 00:10:04,229 --> 00:10:07,607 [King] And let us, when that moment comes... 143 00:10:09,401 --> 00:10:12,570 go into the situations that we confront 144 00:10:12,654 --> 00:10:18,576 with a great deal of dignity, sanity and reasonableness. 145 00:10:26,251 --> 00:10:29,129 [KKK member] They want to throw white children and colored children 146 00:10:29,212 --> 00:10:32,340 into the melting pot of integration, 147 00:10:32,424 --> 00:10:35,177 through out of which will come a conglomerated, 148 00:10:35,260 --> 00:10:38,596 mulatto, mongrel class of people. 149 00:10:38,680 --> 00:10:41,308 Both races will be destroyed in such a movement. 150 00:10:41,891 --> 00:10:45,061 [reporter 1] We just got a report here on this end that the students are in. 151 00:10:45,978 --> 00:10:48,981 [reporter 2] Negroes were trying to integrate the bathing beaches. 152 00:10:49,065 --> 00:10:52,527 And the Florida Advisory Committee to the US Civil Rights Commission 153 00:10:52,610 --> 00:10:57,657 warned that the city was becoming a racial superbomb with a short fuse. 154 00:10:59,492 --> 00:11:03,246 [Alexander] Civil rights activists began to be portrayed in the media 155 00:11:03,329 --> 00:11:06,666 and among, you know, many politicians as criminals. 156 00:11:06,749 --> 00:11:09,669 People who are deliberately violating the law, 157 00:11:09,752 --> 00:11:12,297 segregation laws that existed in the South. 158 00:11:14,799 --> 00:11:17,927 [King] For years now, I have heard the word "wait." 159 00:11:18,845 --> 00:11:23,975 It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. 160 00:11:24,058 --> 00:11:28,396 This wait has almost always meant never. 161 00:11:29,939 --> 00:11:35,194 Justice too long delayed is justice denied. 162 00:11:36,153 --> 00:11:39,241 I think that one of the most brilliant tactics of the civil rights movement 163 00:11:39,324 --> 00:11:41,993 was its transformation of the notion of criminality. 164 00:11:42,702 --> 00:11:45,747 Because for the first time, being arrested was a noble thing. 165 00:11:47,624 --> 00:11:51,210 Being arrested by white people was your worst nightmare. 166 00:11:51,294 --> 00:11:54,088 Still is, uh, for many African Americans. 167 00:11:54,171 --> 00:11:55,172 So what'd they do? 168 00:11:55,257 --> 00:11:59,051 They voluntarily defined a movement around getting arrested. 169 00:11:59,135 --> 00:12:00,428 They turned it on its head. 170 00:12:04,432 --> 00:12:06,100 [Cobb] If you looked at the history 171 00:12:06,183 --> 00:12:09,103 of black people's various struggles in this country, 172 00:12:09,186 --> 00:12:13,566 the connecting theme is the attempt to be understood 173 00:12:13,650 --> 00:12:15,818 as full, complicated human beings. 174 00:12:18,446 --> 00:12:22,534 We are something other than this, uh, visceral image of criminality 175 00:12:22,617 --> 00:12:26,162 and menace and threat to which people associate with us. 176 00:12:26,245 --> 00:12:27,914 [barking] 177 00:12:29,582 --> 00:12:31,543 [protestors screaming] 178 00:12:36,047 --> 00:12:41,177 We're willing to be beaten for democracy, and you misuse democracy in the street. 179 00:12:41,260 --> 00:12:44,597 Let us lay aside irrelevant differences... 180 00:12:45,932 --> 00:12:47,559 and make our nation whole. 181 00:12:47,642 --> 00:12:49,143 [applauding] 182 00:12:51,354 --> 00:12:53,773 [Gates] The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act said, 183 00:12:53,856 --> 00:12:55,567 "Finally, we admit it. 184 00:12:55,650 --> 00:12:58,152 Though slavery ended in December 1865... 185 00:12:59,111 --> 00:13:03,115 we took away these people's rights, and now we're gonna fix it." 186 00:13:05,284 --> 00:13:06,661 [Marc Mauer] For the first time, 187 00:13:06,744 --> 00:13:10,957 you know, promise of equal justice becomes at least a possibility. 188 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:14,794 Their cause must be our cause, too. 189 00:13:14,877 --> 00:13:16,754 [Alexander] Unfortunately, at the very same time 190 00:13:16,838 --> 00:13:21,217 that the civil rights movement was gaining steam, 191 00:13:21,300 --> 00:13:24,178 crime rates were beginning to rise in this country. 192 00:13:24,261 --> 00:13:27,724 Crime was increasing in the baby boom generation 193 00:13:27,807 --> 00:13:30,685 that had emerged immediately after World War II. 194 00:13:30,768 --> 00:13:31,769 Now they were adults. 195 00:13:31,853 --> 00:13:37,734 So, just through sheer demographic change, we had an increase in the amount of crime. 196 00:13:37,817 --> 00:13:41,363 ...and became very easy for politicians then to say, 197 00:13:41,446 --> 00:13:47,910 um, that the civil rights movement itself was contributing to rising crime rates, 198 00:13:47,994 --> 00:13:51,664 and that if we were to give the Negroes their freedom, um, 199 00:13:51,748 --> 00:13:55,460 then we would be repaid, as a nation, with crime. 200 00:13:57,294 --> 00:14:00,297 [Stevenson] The prison population in the United States was largely flat 201 00:14:00,382 --> 00:14:02,091 throughout most of the 20th century. 202 00:14:02,174 --> 00:14:04,511 It didn't go up a lot. It didn't come down a lot. 203 00:14:04,594 --> 00:14:07,221 But that changed in the 1970s. 204 00:14:07,304 --> 00:14:09,682 And in the 1970s, we began an era 205 00:14:09,766 --> 00:14:13,895 which has been defined by this term, "mass incarceration." 206 00:14:13,978 --> 00:14:18,065 This is a nation of laws, and as Abraham Lincoln has said, 207 00:14:18,149 --> 00:14:21,528 "No one is above the law. No one is below the law." 208 00:14:21,611 --> 00:14:23,446 And we're going to enforce the law 209 00:14:23,530 --> 00:14:27,241 and Americans should remember that, if we're going to have law and order. 210 00:14:28,284 --> 00:14:32,414 ♪ Breaking rocks out here On the chain gang ♪ 211 00:14:32,497 --> 00:14:36,333 ♪ Breaking rocks and serving my time ♪ 212 00:14:36,418 --> 00:14:40,129 ♪ Breaking rocks out here On the chain gang ♪ 213 00:14:40,212 --> 00:14:44,717 ♪ Because I've been convicted of crime ♪ 214 00:14:44,801 --> 00:14:48,137 ♪ Hold it steady right there While I hit it ♪ 215 00:14:48,220 --> 00:14:53,393 [Richard Nixon] Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. 216 00:14:53,476 --> 00:14:56,521 But some stand out as moments of beginning... 217 00:14:57,480 --> 00:15:03,528 in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries. 218 00:15:03,611 --> 00:15:06,113 This can be such a moment. 219 00:15:07,698 --> 00:15:12,829 It's with the Nixon era, and the law and order period 220 00:15:12,912 --> 00:15:16,416 when crime begins to stand in for race. 221 00:15:16,499 --> 00:15:19,669 If there is one area where the word "war" is appropriate, 222 00:15:19,752 --> 00:15:21,838 it is in the fight against crime. 223 00:15:21,921 --> 00:15:24,340 Part of what he talked about was a war on crime. 224 00:15:24,424 --> 00:15:26,968 But that was one of those code words, 225 00:15:27,051 --> 00:15:29,471 what we might call "dog-whistle politics" now, 226 00:15:29,554 --> 00:15:31,222 which really was referring to 227 00:15:31,305 --> 00:15:34,601 the black political movements of the day, Black Power, Black Panthers, 228 00:15:34,684 --> 00:15:35,935 the antiwar movement, 229 00:15:36,018 --> 00:15:38,563 the movements for women's and gay liberation at that time, 230 00:15:38,646 --> 00:15:41,608 which Nixon felt compelled to fight back against. 231 00:15:41,691 --> 00:15:45,903 Once the federal government, through the FBI, moves into an area, 232 00:15:45,987 --> 00:15:48,740 this should be warning to those who engage in these acts 233 00:15:48,823 --> 00:15:52,494 that they eventually are going to be apprehended. 234 00:15:52,577 --> 00:15:55,162 [Cobb] There's this outcry for law and order. 235 00:15:55,997 --> 00:15:59,333 And Nixon becomes the person who articulates that perfectly. 236 00:15:59,416 --> 00:16:03,254 [Nixon] There can be no progress in America without respect for law. 237 00:16:03,337 --> 00:16:06,298 Many people felt like, uh, we were losing control. 238 00:16:07,967 --> 00:16:11,596 [Nixon] We need total war in the United States 239 00:16:11,679 --> 00:16:15,432 against the evils, uh, that we see in our cities. 240 00:16:17,143 --> 00:16:20,897 Federal spending for local law enforcement will double. 241 00:16:20,980 --> 00:16:22,439 Time is running out for the merchants 242 00:16:22,524 --> 00:16:25,151 of crime and corruption in American society. 243 00:16:25,234 --> 00:16:26,235 [siren wailing] 244 00:16:26,318 --> 00:16:29,697 The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future 245 00:16:29,781 --> 00:16:32,074 in the United States of America. 246 00:16:32,158 --> 00:16:34,994 We must wage what I have called "total war" 247 00:16:35,077 --> 00:16:38,540 against public enemy number one in the United States, 248 00:16:38,623 --> 00:16:39,957 the problem of dangerous drugs. 249 00:16:40,041 --> 00:16:41,626 "A war on drugs." 250 00:16:41,709 --> 00:16:46,172 And that utterance gave birth to this era, 251 00:16:46,255 --> 00:16:49,717 where we decided to deal with drug addiction and drug dependency 252 00:16:49,801 --> 00:16:52,428 as a crime issue rather than a health issue. 253 00:16:52,512 --> 00:16:54,681 Hundreds of thousands of people 254 00:16:54,764 --> 00:16:57,433 were sent to jails and prisons for simple possession of marijuana, 255 00:16:57,517 --> 00:16:59,310 for low-level offenses. 256 00:17:00,978 --> 00:17:06,734 America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. 257 00:17:07,694 --> 00:17:09,779 In order to fight and defeat this enemy, 258 00:17:09,862 --> 00:17:14,325 it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. 259 00:17:15,660 --> 00:17:19,288 This call for law and order becomes integral to something that 260 00:17:19,371 --> 00:17:22,374 comes to be known as the Southern strategy. 261 00:17:22,458 --> 00:17:26,754 Nixon begins to recruit Southern whites, formerly staunch Democrats, 262 00:17:26,838 --> 00:17:29,215 into the Republican fold. 263 00:17:29,298 --> 00:17:31,300 [Alexander] Persuading poor and working-class whites 264 00:17:31,383 --> 00:17:34,637 to join the Republican Party in droves... 265 00:17:34,721 --> 00:17:38,725 By speaking to, in subtle and non-racist terms... 266 00:17:38,808 --> 00:17:41,143 ...a thinly veiled racial appeal... 267 00:17:41,227 --> 00:17:42,519 ...talking about crime, 268 00:17:42,604 --> 00:17:46,733 by talking about law and order or the chaos of our urban cities 269 00:17:46,816 --> 00:17:48,484 unleashed by the civil rights movement. 270 00:17:48,568 --> 00:17:51,278 [Nixon] We have launched an all-out offensive against crime, 271 00:17:51,362 --> 00:17:54,281 against narcotics, against permissiveness in our country. 272 00:17:54,365 --> 00:17:57,034 [Alexander] The rhetoric of "get tough" and "law and order," 273 00:17:57,118 --> 00:18:02,164 um, was part and parcel of the backlash of the civil rights movement. 274 00:18:03,332 --> 00:18:06,127 [reporter] A Nixon administration official admitted the war on drugs 275 00:18:06,210 --> 00:18:08,379 was all about throwing black people in jail. 276 00:18:08,462 --> 00:18:09,463 He said, quote, 277 00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:56,886 ♪ The end of the Reagan era I'm like 11 or 12 or ♪ 278 00:18:56,969 --> 00:18:59,639 ♪ Old enough to understand The shit'll change forever ♪ 279 00:18:59,722 --> 00:19:02,308 ♪ They declared the war on drugs Like a war on terror ♪ 280 00:19:02,391 --> 00:19:05,394 ♪ But what it really did was Let the police terrorize whoever ♪ 281 00:19:05,477 --> 00:19:08,230 ♪ But mostly black boys But they would call us niggers ♪ 282 00:19:08,314 --> 00:19:11,317 ♪ And lay us on our belly While they fingers on they triggers ♪ 283 00:19:13,069 --> 00:19:15,697 Raise your right hand and repeat after me. 284 00:19:15,780 --> 00:19:18,407 I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear... 285 00:19:18,490 --> 00:19:20,827 I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear... 286 00:19:20,910 --> 00:19:23,537 that I will faithfully execute the Office... 287 00:19:23,620 --> 00:19:28,876 The election of Ronald Reagan was, uh, in many ways, transformative, 288 00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:30,837 in a negative sense. 289 00:19:30,920 --> 00:19:34,423 President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term 290 00:19:34,506 --> 00:19:35,842 "a war on drugs," 291 00:19:35,925 --> 00:19:40,722 but President Ronald Reagan turned that rhetorical war into a literal one. 292 00:19:40,805 --> 00:19:43,474 It's back to school time for America's children. 293 00:19:43,557 --> 00:19:47,103 And while drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, 294 00:19:47,186 --> 00:19:49,521 it's especially damaging to the young people 295 00:19:49,605 --> 00:19:51,315 on whom our future depends. 296 00:19:51,398 --> 00:19:56,403 The modern war on drugs was declared by Ronald Reagan in 1982. 297 00:19:56,487 --> 00:19:59,115 As we mobilize for this national crusade, 298 00:19:59,198 --> 00:20:02,576 I'm mindful that drugs are a constant temptation for millions. 299 00:20:02,660 --> 00:20:04,870 Popular opinion polls of the day 300 00:20:04,954 --> 00:20:07,915 show that it wasn't an issue for most people in the United States. 301 00:20:07,999 --> 00:20:09,834 But Reagan was determined 302 00:20:09,917 --> 00:20:12,628 to put this onto the agenda to define it as a problem. 303 00:20:12,712 --> 00:20:15,798 A war against drugs is a war of individual battles. 304 00:20:15,882 --> 00:20:19,593 Reagan used his wife, for example, in this "Just Say No" campaign. 305 00:20:19,676 --> 00:20:24,431 She has helped so many of our young people to say no to drugs. 306 00:20:24,515 --> 00:20:26,934 Nancy, much credit belongs to you. 307 00:20:27,018 --> 00:20:28,310 This is your brain. 308 00:20:29,270 --> 00:20:30,897 This is drugs. 309 00:20:36,443 --> 00:20:38,195 This is your brain on drugs. 310 00:20:38,279 --> 00:20:39,446 I joined it. 311 00:20:39,530 --> 00:20:42,366 And some people said, "Well, how can you join 312 00:20:42,449 --> 00:20:46,287 a person declaring a war on drugs, someone like Ronald Reagan?" 313 00:20:46,370 --> 00:20:50,958 I joined with Nancy Reagan because she said, "Just say no." 314 00:20:51,042 --> 00:20:55,254 Just say no so loud that everyone around you can hear it. 315 00:20:55,337 --> 00:20:58,715 We're talking about a general education that we're talking about. 316 00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:00,802 We're not talking about locking up people. 317 00:21:00,885 --> 00:21:05,306 We're talking about educating people. We're talking about prevention. 318 00:21:05,389 --> 00:21:07,767 There was a crisis in the US economy at that time. 319 00:21:07,850 --> 00:21:11,062 I regret to say that we're in the worst economic mess 320 00:21:11,145 --> 00:21:12,729 since the Great Depression. 321 00:21:12,814 --> 00:21:14,982 There is a frontal assault 322 00:21:15,066 --> 00:21:19,195 on institutions that are designed to assist human beings, 323 00:21:19,278 --> 00:21:23,950 on the education system, welfare, on jobs, healthcare. 324 00:21:24,033 --> 00:21:27,829 Government programs that can't be paid for out of a balanced budget 325 00:21:27,912 --> 00:21:30,331 must be paid for out of your pocket. 326 00:21:30,414 --> 00:21:33,459 [reporter] The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. 327 00:21:33,542 --> 00:21:37,171 The idea of expanding, uh, the freedom of American business 328 00:21:37,254 --> 00:21:38,589 and the entrepreneurial class... 329 00:21:38,672 --> 00:21:43,219 We will save $1.8 billion in fiscal year 1982. 330 00:21:43,302 --> 00:21:46,263 [reporter 1] Luxury stores like Neiman Marcus predicts record sales. 331 00:21:46,347 --> 00:21:49,225 [reporter 2] The number of Americans dipping under the poverty level 332 00:21:49,308 --> 00:21:51,685 has reached the highest rate in two decades. 333 00:21:52,269 --> 00:21:55,898 Yes, there has been an increase in poverty, 334 00:21:55,982 --> 00:21:59,526 but it is a lower rate of increase than it was in the preceding years, 335 00:21:59,610 --> 00:22:00,777 before we got here. 336 00:22:00,862 --> 00:22:03,823 It has begun to decline, but it is still going up. 337 00:22:03,906 --> 00:22:05,157 [Mauer] In the mid-1980s, 338 00:22:05,241 --> 00:22:08,494 we were already starting to embark on a war on drugs 339 00:22:08,577 --> 00:22:11,956 and then all of a sudden, along comes this new drug, crack cocaine. 340 00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:15,584 Steve Young reports on a new kind of cocaine called crack. 341 00:22:15,667 --> 00:22:18,504 It's dangerous. It's deadly. It will kill you. 342 00:22:18,587 --> 00:22:22,216 "The drug epidemic is as dangerous as any terrorist that we face." 343 00:22:22,299 --> 00:22:25,302 That is just some of what was said today to House and Senate committees 344 00:22:25,386 --> 00:22:27,179 holding hearings on drug abuse in America. 345 00:22:27,263 --> 00:22:30,933 [Mauer] We have this drug that could be marketed in very small doses, 346 00:22:31,017 --> 00:22:32,977 relatively inexpensively, 347 00:22:33,060 --> 00:22:35,437 this was going to just take over communities, 348 00:22:35,521 --> 00:22:38,232 and particularly African American communities. 349 00:22:38,315 --> 00:22:42,153 Crack was largely an inner-city issue and cocaine was largely a suburban issue. 350 00:22:42,236 --> 00:22:45,281 Smokable cocaine, otherwise known as crack, 351 00:22:45,364 --> 00:22:47,574 it is an uncontrolled fire. 352 00:22:47,658 --> 00:22:50,202 [Mauer] Congress, in virtually record time, 353 00:22:50,286 --> 00:22:54,039 established mandatory sentencing penalties for crack 354 00:22:54,123 --> 00:22:57,584 that were far harsher than those for powder cocaine. 355 00:22:57,668 --> 00:23:01,630 The same amount of time in prison for one ounce of crack cocaine 356 00:23:01,713 --> 00:23:03,757 that you get for 100 ounces of powder cocaine. 357 00:23:03,841 --> 00:23:06,552 [reporter] Police here are cracking down on crack dealers. 358 00:23:06,635 --> 00:23:13,559 Usually black or Hispanic, Latino, they were getting long sentences 359 00:23:13,642 --> 00:23:15,102 for possession of crack. 360 00:23:15,185 --> 00:23:16,437 You're black with crack cocaine, 361 00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,148 you goin' to prison for basically the rest of your life. 362 00:23:19,231 --> 00:23:22,609 Um, and if you're white, you're pretty much getting slapped on the wrist. 363 00:23:22,693 --> 00:23:24,194 Cocaine... 364 00:23:24,278 --> 00:23:26,030 was more sophisticated. 365 00:23:26,113 --> 00:23:27,990 It was just a powder. 366 00:23:28,074 --> 00:23:31,702 [Reagan] By next year, our spending for drug law enforcement 367 00:23:31,785 --> 00:23:34,496 will have more than tripled from its 1981 levels. 368 00:23:37,207 --> 00:23:41,587 All of a sudden, a scythe went through our black communities, 369 00:23:42,129 --> 00:23:45,967 literally cutting off men from their families, 370 00:23:46,050 --> 00:23:50,012 literally huge chunks just disappearing into our prisons, 371 00:23:50,096 --> 00:23:52,514 and for really long times. 372 00:23:52,598 --> 00:23:54,516 [Reagan] Millions of dollars will be allocated 373 00:23:55,351 --> 00:23:57,353 for prison and jail facilities. 374 00:23:57,436 --> 00:23:59,521 [Cobb] These sorts of disparities under Reagan 375 00:23:59,605 --> 00:24:03,859 quickly exploded into the era of mass incarceration. 376 00:24:03,942 --> 00:24:06,445 What Reagan ultimately does is... 377 00:24:06,528 --> 00:24:10,992 takes the problem of economic inequality, 378 00:24:11,075 --> 00:24:16,205 of hypersegregation in America's cities, and the problem of drug abuse, 379 00:24:16,288 --> 00:24:21,210 and criminalizes all of that in the form of the war on drugs. 380 00:24:21,293 --> 00:24:24,213 We absolutely should have treated crack and cocaine, 381 00:24:24,296 --> 00:24:26,215 uh, as exactly the same thing. 382 00:24:26,298 --> 00:24:30,552 I think it was an enormous burden on the black community, 383 00:24:30,636 --> 00:24:33,889 but it also fundamentally violated a sense of core fairness. 384 00:24:33,972 --> 00:24:37,393 When crack cocaine hit in the early '80s, 385 00:24:37,476 --> 00:24:40,562 there were a lot of mayors who felt very strongly that this is a real threat 386 00:24:40,646 --> 00:24:41,981 and they wanted to crack down. 387 00:24:42,064 --> 00:24:45,234 And Rangel was one of the guys pushing for stronger sentencing. 388 00:24:45,317 --> 00:24:48,445 It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, 389 00:24:48,529 --> 00:24:51,240 but it sure didn't work out as being effective. 390 00:24:51,323 --> 00:24:54,535 Then, years later, there was an effort to rewrite history, 391 00:24:54,618 --> 00:25:00,374 that it was a racial disparity put in by mean white people. 392 00:25:00,958 --> 00:25:02,501 Um, it's not where it came from. 393 00:25:02,584 --> 00:25:06,172 In many ways, the so-called war on drugs 394 00:25:06,255 --> 00:25:09,091 was a war on communities of color, 395 00:25:09,175 --> 00:25:14,596 a war on black communities, a war on Latino communities. 396 00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:18,600 And you see a rhetorical war that was, you know, 397 00:25:18,684 --> 00:25:22,271 announced as part of a political strategy by Richard Nixon 398 00:25:22,354 --> 00:25:26,233 and which morphed into a literal war by Ronald Reagan, 399 00:25:26,317 --> 00:25:32,073 um, turning into something that began to feel nearly genocidal 400 00:25:32,156 --> 00:25:34,700 in many poor communities of color. 401 00:25:34,783 --> 00:25:37,203 -[applauding] -[Mauer] So Nixon's Southern strategy 402 00:25:37,286 --> 00:25:40,289 was implemented right after the civil rights movement. 403 00:25:40,372 --> 00:25:41,707 He played on fear of crime, 404 00:25:41,790 --> 00:25:44,751 and law and order to win the election easily. 405 00:25:46,337 --> 00:25:48,630 Reagan promised tax cuts to the rich, 406 00:25:48,714 --> 00:25:51,300 and to throw all the crack users in jail, 407 00:25:51,383 --> 00:25:53,969 both of which devastated communities of color 408 00:25:54,053 --> 00:25:56,472 but were effective in getting the Southern vote. 409 00:25:59,100 --> 00:26:03,354 There's really no understanding of our American political culture 410 00:26:03,437 --> 00:26:05,189 without race at the center of it. 411 00:26:05,272 --> 00:26:08,901 [Mauer] And in 1981, just before Reagan assumed the presidency, 412 00:26:08,984 --> 00:26:11,487 his campaign strategist, Lee Atwater, 413 00:26:11,570 --> 00:26:15,199 was caught on tape explaining the Southern strategy. 414 00:26:15,282 --> 00:26:17,326 [Atwater] In other words, you start out... 415 00:27:02,538 --> 00:27:04,498 ♪ They claiming I'm a criminal ♪ 416 00:27:04,581 --> 00:27:07,543 ♪ But now I wonder how Some people never know ♪ 417 00:27:07,626 --> 00:27:09,711 ♪ The enemy Could be their friend, guardian ♪ 418 00:27:09,795 --> 00:27:12,047 ♪ I'm not a hooligan I rock the party and ♪ 419 00:27:12,130 --> 00:27:15,509 ♪ The minute they see me, fear me I'm the epitome ♪ 420 00:27:15,592 --> 00:27:16,593 ♪ A public enemy ♪ 421 00:27:16,677 --> 00:27:19,971 ♪ Used, abused without clues I refuse to blow a fuse ♪ 422 00:27:20,055 --> 00:27:21,348 ♪ They even had it on the news ♪ 423 00:27:21,432 --> 00:27:24,893 ♪ Don't believe the hype, don't Don't, don't, don't believe the hype ♪ 424 00:27:30,607 --> 00:27:33,694 [Stevenson] The war on drugs had become part of our popular culture, 425 00:27:33,777 --> 00:27:35,362 in television programs like Cops. 426 00:27:38,156 --> 00:27:41,702 When you cut on your local news at night, you see black men 427 00:27:41,785 --> 00:27:44,288 being paraded across the screen in handcuffs. 428 00:27:45,747 --> 00:27:48,750 Black people, black men and black people in general, 429 00:27:48,834 --> 00:27:53,755 are overrepresented in news as criminals. 430 00:27:53,839 --> 00:27:56,675 When I say overrepresented, that means they are shown as criminals 431 00:27:56,758 --> 00:27:58,302 more times than is accurate, 432 00:27:58,385 --> 00:28:02,138 that they are actually criminals, right, based on FBI statistics. 433 00:28:03,056 --> 00:28:06,768 I mean, I'm a big believer in the power of media 434 00:28:06,852 --> 00:28:09,771 full of these clichés that basically present 435 00:28:09,855 --> 00:28:12,816 mostly black and brown folks who seem like animals in cages, 436 00:28:12,899 --> 00:28:16,069 and then someone can turn off the TV thinking... 437 00:28:16,152 --> 00:28:17,488 "It's a good thing for prisons, 438 00:28:17,571 --> 00:28:20,366 because, otherwise, those crazy people would be walking on my block." 439 00:28:20,449 --> 00:28:23,619 Creating a context where people are afraid. 440 00:28:23,702 --> 00:28:25,537 And when you make people afraid, 441 00:28:25,621 --> 00:28:28,624 you can always justify putting people in the garbage can. 442 00:28:28,707 --> 00:28:30,876 Chances are you could run into a kid 443 00:28:30,959 --> 00:28:33,629 waiting to relieve you of your purse or wallet. 444 00:28:33,712 --> 00:28:36,340 Every media outlet in the country thinks I'm less than human. 445 00:28:36,423 --> 00:28:41,177 I began to hear the word "super predator" as if that was my name. 446 00:28:41,261 --> 00:28:42,512 Super predator. 447 00:28:42,596 --> 00:28:44,973 -[reporter 1] Super predator. -"Super predators," end quote. 448 00:28:45,056 --> 00:28:48,143 That's the word they used to describe this generation, 449 00:28:48,227 --> 00:28:50,520 and it was very, very effective. 450 00:28:50,604 --> 00:28:52,356 Experts call them super predators. 451 00:28:52,439 --> 00:28:55,025 They are not just gangs of kids anymore. 452 00:28:55,108 --> 00:28:58,820 They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators. 453 00:28:58,904 --> 00:29:00,656 No conscience, no empathy. 454 00:29:00,739 --> 00:29:02,491 [reporter 2] A group of kids growing up 455 00:29:02,574 --> 00:29:05,201 essentially fatherless, godless and jobless. 456 00:29:05,285 --> 00:29:06,411 For me, what's disturbing 457 00:29:06,495 --> 00:29:08,747 is the degree to which black people bought into that. 458 00:29:08,830 --> 00:29:12,167 Animals, beasts that needed to be controlled. 459 00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,337 When those grandmothers say, "But he's a good boy. 460 00:29:16,422 --> 00:29:19,215 He never did anything," don't you believe it. 461 00:29:19,299 --> 00:29:20,842 [Deborah Small] Black communities began 462 00:29:20,926 --> 00:29:24,430 to actually support policies that criminalized their own children. 463 00:29:24,513 --> 00:29:27,223 [reporter] Last night, the eight teens accused of the attack 464 00:29:27,308 --> 00:29:30,143 were arraigned on charges of rape and attempted murder. 465 00:29:30,227 --> 00:29:34,564 [Cyril] In the Central Park jogger case, they put five innocent teens in prison, 466 00:29:34,648 --> 00:29:35,899 because the public pressure 467 00:29:35,983 --> 00:29:38,777 to lock up these quote, unquote animals was so strong. 468 00:29:38,860 --> 00:29:41,447 You better believe that I hate the people 469 00:29:41,530 --> 00:29:44,366 that took this girl and raped her brutally. 470 00:29:44,449 --> 00:29:46,827 -You better believe it. -[Cyril] Donald Trump wanted to give 471 00:29:46,910 --> 00:29:48,370 these kids the death penalty, 472 00:29:48,454 --> 00:29:51,332 and he took out a full page ad to put the pressure on. 473 00:29:52,082 --> 00:29:55,043 These children, four of them under 18, 474 00:29:55,126 --> 00:29:58,297 all went to adult prisons for six to eleven years, 475 00:29:58,380 --> 00:30:02,050 before DNA evidence proved they were all innocent. 476 00:30:02,133 --> 00:30:04,553 We make them their crime. That's how we introduced them. 477 00:30:04,636 --> 00:30:06,096 "That's a rapist. That's a murderer. 478 00:30:06,179 --> 00:30:08,223 That's a robber. That's a sex offender. 479 00:30:08,307 --> 00:30:10,559 That's a burglar. That's a gang leader." 480 00:30:10,642 --> 00:30:13,895 And through that lens, it becomes so much easier 481 00:30:13,979 --> 00:30:16,857 to accept that they're guilty and that they should go to prison. 482 00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:23,989 The objective reality is... that virtually no one who is white 483 00:30:24,656 --> 00:30:29,453 understands the challenge of being black in America. 484 00:30:29,953 --> 00:30:36,543 So you have then educated a public, deliberately, over years, over decades, 485 00:30:36,627 --> 00:30:42,132 to believe that black men in particular, and black people in general, 486 00:30:42,215 --> 00:30:43,759 are criminals. 487 00:30:43,842 --> 00:30:45,010 I want to be clear, 488 00:30:45,093 --> 00:30:47,679 because I'm not just saying that white people believe this, right? 489 00:30:47,763 --> 00:30:53,477 Black people also believe this and are terrified of our own selves. 490 00:30:54,061 --> 00:30:56,855 You want to go back to the days of military weakness, 491 00:30:56,938 --> 00:30:59,107 caring more about criminals than victims? 492 00:30:59,190 --> 00:31:02,110 We can't risk that. I'd like your vote on Tuesday. 493 00:31:02,194 --> 00:31:05,572 [man] Leadership that's on your side. Michael Dukakis for president. 494 00:31:05,656 --> 00:31:07,949 In the midst of the, uh, presidential campaign, 495 00:31:08,033 --> 00:31:12,954 an ad was released about a person by the name of Willie Horton. 496 00:31:13,038 --> 00:31:15,749 [announcer] Bush and Dukakis on crime. 497 00:31:15,832 --> 00:31:18,209 Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, 498 00:31:18,293 --> 00:31:21,797 he allowed first degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. 499 00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:23,173 One was Willie Horton. 500 00:31:23,256 --> 00:31:28,303 This became a focal point of an entire presidential campaign. 501 00:31:28,387 --> 00:31:30,514 [announcer] Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, 502 00:31:30,597 --> 00:31:33,224 stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. 503 00:31:33,308 --> 00:31:36,853 Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime. 504 00:31:36,937 --> 00:31:40,774 Dukakis had protected the program, vetoed an effort to repeal it, 505 00:31:40,857 --> 00:31:43,985 in that he favored letting murderers out on the weekend. 506 00:31:44,069 --> 00:31:46,738 [Kilgore] That Dukakis had a double-digit lead over Bush 507 00:31:46,822 --> 00:31:50,451 before the campaign focused on Willie Horton, 508 00:31:50,534 --> 00:31:54,079 and after that, Bush overtook Dukakis and won the election. 509 00:31:54,162 --> 00:31:58,083 [announcer] Which candidate for president can you count on to be tough on crime? 510 00:31:58,166 --> 00:31:59,668 George Bush. 511 00:31:59,751 --> 00:32:04,548 Bush won the election by creating fear around black men as criminal, 512 00:32:04,631 --> 00:32:07,092 without saying that's what he was doing. 513 00:32:07,175 --> 00:32:10,345 A very racially, um... 514 00:32:10,429 --> 00:32:13,765 you know, divisive moment. 515 00:32:13,849 --> 00:32:16,477 Depicting an African American criminal, I think, was deliberate 516 00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:18,311 on the part of that campaign. 517 00:32:18,394 --> 00:32:20,105 There's no one who can tell me otherwise. 518 00:32:20,188 --> 00:32:23,942 Liberals call him Willie Horton to make it sound like you're being dismissive. 519 00:32:24,443 --> 00:32:28,655 Original article was Reader's Digest. William Horton, no picture. 520 00:32:28,738 --> 00:32:30,699 The Democrats want you to know he's black. 521 00:32:31,658 --> 00:32:32,826 Thanks, Grover. 522 00:32:32,909 --> 00:32:34,369 [laughing] 523 00:32:35,161 --> 00:32:37,080 It was not his name, 524 00:32:37,163 --> 00:32:40,709 it was his image that was sensationalized. 525 00:32:40,792 --> 00:32:44,546 Liberals that announced that it was mean to pick on a murderer and a rapist 526 00:32:44,630 --> 00:32:47,799 lose all credibility on this discussion. They just lose it. 527 00:32:47,883 --> 00:32:48,967 And people go, 528 00:32:49,050 --> 00:32:51,637 "We don't want to hear anything else you have to say about crime." 529 00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,139 No matter what anybody says or what anybody does, 530 00:32:54,222 --> 00:32:59,227 they know exactly what button they were trying to hit with that ad. 531 00:32:59,311 --> 00:33:01,563 [announcer] Stabbing the man and raping his girlfriend. 532 00:33:01,647 --> 00:33:07,861 It went to a kind of primitive fear, a primitive American fear, 533 00:33:07,944 --> 00:33:13,158 because Willie Horton was metaphorically the black male rapist 534 00:33:13,241 --> 00:33:16,119 that had been a staple of the white imagination 535 00:33:16,202 --> 00:33:18,246 since the time just after slavery. 536 00:33:20,874 --> 00:33:24,252 [Muhammad] Here was a black man convicted of rape. 537 00:33:25,045 --> 00:33:28,882 "I will be the savior and protector of the white population." 538 00:33:28,965 --> 00:33:35,305 Never minding the fact that the history of interracial rape in this country, 539 00:33:35,388 --> 00:33:41,352 that that record is far more marked by white rape against black women 540 00:33:41,436 --> 00:33:43,772 than of black men against white women. 541 00:33:43,855 --> 00:33:46,608 [breathing heavily] 542 00:33:55,075 --> 00:33:56,159 Patsey. 543 00:33:57,493 --> 00:33:59,580 -[grunts] -[Patsey choking] 544 00:34:00,330 --> 00:34:05,126 [Cobb] This idea that had such great artistic utility 545 00:34:05,210 --> 00:34:07,629 in 1915 in Birth of a Nation 546 00:34:07,713 --> 00:34:10,215 still had a great deal of political utility 547 00:34:10,298 --> 00:34:11,842 almost at the end of that century. 548 00:34:11,925 --> 00:34:18,098 The way that we appeal to voters' sense of fear and anxiety in our nation 549 00:34:18,181 --> 00:34:20,350 runs through black bodies. 550 00:34:37,743 --> 00:34:39,870 ♪ Yo, lil' Kadeija pops is locked ♪ 551 00:34:39,953 --> 00:34:41,162 ♪ He wanna pop the lock ♪ 552 00:34:41,246 --> 00:34:43,331 ♪ But prison ain't nothin' But a private stock ♪ 553 00:34:43,415 --> 00:34:45,166 ♪ She be dreamin' 'Bout his date of release ♪ 554 00:34:45,250 --> 00:34:46,417 ♪ She hate the police ♪ 555 00:34:46,501 --> 00:34:48,712 ♪ But loved by her grandma Who hugs and kisses her ♪ 556 00:34:48,795 --> 00:34:51,214 ♪ Her father's a political prisoner Free Fred ♪ 557 00:34:51,297 --> 00:34:53,675 ♪ Son of a Panther That the government shot dead ♪ 558 00:34:53,759 --> 00:34:56,177 ♪ Behind enemy lines My niggas is cellmates ♪ 559 00:34:56,261 --> 00:34:58,680 ♪ Most of the youths Never escape the jail fates ♪ 560 00:34:58,764 --> 00:35:01,432 ♪ Super maximum camps Will advance they game plan ♪ 561 00:35:01,516 --> 00:35:03,852 ♪ To keep us in the hands of the man Locked up ♪ 562 00:35:03,935 --> 00:35:07,230 [announcer] A new generation of Democrats, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. 563 00:35:07,314 --> 00:35:09,441 They don't think the way the old Democratic party did. 564 00:35:09,524 --> 00:35:13,153 They've sent a strong signal to criminals by supporting the death penalty. 565 00:35:13,236 --> 00:35:18,574 Looking at the way in which Democrats were defeated in 1988, 566 00:35:18,659 --> 00:35:21,995 or they were defeated in 1984, or they were defeated in 1980, 567 00:35:22,078 --> 00:35:24,497 there comes to be a sentiment among the Democrats 568 00:35:24,580 --> 00:35:29,044 that they have to adopt a position that is much more, uh, kind of, centrist. 569 00:35:29,127 --> 00:35:30,879 It became virtually impossible 570 00:35:30,962 --> 00:35:34,549 for a politician to run and appear soft on crime. 571 00:35:34,633 --> 00:35:37,343 I was not for the bill that he was talking about 572 00:35:37,427 --> 00:35:39,554 because it was not tough enough on the criminal. 573 00:35:39,638 --> 00:35:42,432 [Stevenson] In an environment where everybody's doing the same thing, 574 00:35:42,515 --> 00:35:44,434 everybody's competing to be tough on crime, 575 00:35:44,517 --> 00:35:46,728 you quickly all end up in the same space, 576 00:35:46,812 --> 00:35:49,690 so it doesn't become a political advantage unless you do something more. 577 00:35:49,773 --> 00:35:52,025 We need more police on the street. 578 00:35:52,108 --> 00:35:54,611 There is a crime bill which would put more police on the street, 579 00:35:54,694 --> 00:35:57,447 which was killed for this session by a filibuster in the Senate, 580 00:35:57,530 --> 00:35:59,825 mostly by Republican senators. 581 00:35:59,908 --> 00:36:03,578 We'd consistently had, "Squishy, soft liberal won't protect you. 582 00:36:03,662 --> 00:36:06,873 Tough, conservative will protect you." And we won that fight every time. 583 00:36:06,957 --> 00:36:09,876 And by the late '80s, early '90s, people like Bill Clinton 584 00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,921 had begun to figure out they had to be able to match us. 585 00:36:13,004 --> 00:36:17,718 I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States. 586 00:36:17,801 --> 00:36:20,971 Bill Clinton is trying to figure out 587 00:36:21,054 --> 00:36:25,475 how he can deal with a country that's still basically Reagan's country, 588 00:36:25,558 --> 00:36:28,186 but he's trying to govern as a Democrat. 589 00:36:28,269 --> 00:36:33,108 Violent crime and the fear it provokes are crippling our society. 590 00:36:33,191 --> 00:36:37,653 Then some high-profile, very horrendous crimes take place. 591 00:36:37,738 --> 00:36:41,700 Residents pull together in the search for 12-year-old Polly Klaas. 592 00:36:41,783 --> 00:36:44,619 They are now coping with the discovery of her body over the weekend. 593 00:36:44,703 --> 00:36:50,125 [Mauer] Polly Klaas, abducted from her bedroom at home and ultimately killed, 594 00:36:50,208 --> 00:36:53,837 which led to the California "three strikes and you're out" law. 595 00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:56,089 When you commit a third violent crime, 596 00:36:56,172 --> 00:36:58,967 you will be put away and put away for good. 597 00:36:59,050 --> 00:37:01,552 Three strikes and you are out. 598 00:37:01,636 --> 00:37:03,679 A person's convicted of their third felony, 599 00:37:03,764 --> 00:37:07,475 essentially that person is mandated to prison for the rest of their lives. 600 00:37:07,558 --> 00:37:10,353 [reporter] So many third-strike defendants awaiting trial, 601 00:37:10,436 --> 00:37:12,063 the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department 602 00:37:12,147 --> 00:37:16,359 is forced to release 4,200 misdemeanor inmates every month 603 00:37:16,442 --> 00:37:19,570 to make room for incoming three-strike prisoners. 604 00:37:19,654 --> 00:37:21,823 It's in line with many other policies we've created, 605 00:37:21,907 --> 00:37:23,616 particularly mandatory minimums. 606 00:37:23,699 --> 00:37:27,453 "Mandatory sentencing." We said we were no longer going to let judges 607 00:37:27,537 --> 00:37:29,831 consider the circumstances around a crime. 608 00:37:29,915 --> 00:37:32,250 We're just going to impose a mandatory sentence. 609 00:37:32,333 --> 00:37:33,835 And that's a difficult thing for judges 610 00:37:33,919 --> 00:37:37,756 because they are trying to dispense justice on a daily basis 611 00:37:37,839 --> 00:37:39,715 and are unable to do so. 612 00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:44,262 [reporter] In many California communities, all civil trials have been canceled 613 00:37:44,345 --> 00:37:46,222 to catch up with the criminal case workload. 614 00:37:46,306 --> 00:37:49,184 [Glenn E. Martin] We've taken discretion away from judges, 615 00:37:49,267 --> 00:37:51,394 arguably the most neutral party in the court, 616 00:37:51,477 --> 00:37:53,897 and given it over to prosecutors. 617 00:37:53,980 --> 00:38:00,737 Ninety-five percent of elected prosecutors throughout the United States are white. 618 00:38:00,821 --> 00:38:04,950 Serious, violent criminals serve at least 85% of their sentence. 619 00:38:05,033 --> 00:38:07,786 [Stevenson] We passed Truth in Sentencing that kept people imprisoned 620 00:38:07,869 --> 00:38:09,204 for 85% of their sentence. 621 00:38:09,287 --> 00:38:12,665 [Martin] Truth in Sentencing. You're sentenced to an amount of time. 622 00:38:12,748 --> 00:38:14,125 The public wants to be confident 623 00:38:14,209 --> 00:38:17,087 that you're gonna do just about every bit of that time. 624 00:38:17,170 --> 00:38:19,005 We've done away with parole. 625 00:38:19,089 --> 00:38:24,177 So, in the federal system, when you get 20 years or 30 years, that's what you got. 626 00:38:24,260 --> 00:38:25,929 We had parole in this country 627 00:38:26,012 --> 00:38:29,057 as a mechanism for getting people out of jails and prisons 628 00:38:29,140 --> 00:38:31,852 when it was clear that they were no longer a threat to public safety. 629 00:38:31,935 --> 00:38:35,521 Sharanda has spent the last 16 years in prison, and she'll die there, 630 00:38:35,605 --> 00:38:37,899 because she was sentenced to life without parole. 631 00:38:37,983 --> 00:38:39,985 Her only crime? Transporting cocaine. 632 00:38:40,068 --> 00:38:42,904 And when I say "only crime," I mean only crime. 633 00:38:42,988 --> 00:38:44,739 She had no other arrests. None. 634 00:38:44,823 --> 00:38:50,703 The judge was required... required to send Sharanda away for life. 635 00:38:50,787 --> 00:38:53,832 [Clinton] Longer sentences, three strikes and you're out, 636 00:38:54,332 --> 00:38:58,419 almost 60 new capital punishment offenses... 637 00:38:58,503 --> 00:39:00,588 [Mauer] And then comes the Congress 638 00:39:00,671 --> 00:39:06,344 with a proposal for a $30 billion federal crime bill of 1994 639 00:39:06,427 --> 00:39:10,515 that was heavily loaded towards law enforcement incarceration. 640 00:39:10,598 --> 00:39:13,935 I propose a 21st century crime bill 641 00:39:14,018 --> 00:39:16,354 to deploy the latest technologies and tactics 642 00:39:16,437 --> 00:39:19,190 to make our communities even safer. 643 00:39:19,274 --> 00:39:21,276 That omnibus crime bill was responsible 644 00:39:21,359 --> 00:39:24,779 for a massive expansion of the prison system. 645 00:39:24,863 --> 00:39:29,450 And beyond that, it provided all kinds of money and perverse incentives 646 00:39:29,534 --> 00:39:31,953 for law enforcement to do a lot of the things 647 00:39:32,037 --> 00:39:34,164 that we nowadays consider to be abusive. 648 00:39:34,247 --> 00:39:39,044 It will be used to build prisons to keep 100,000 violent criminals off the street. 649 00:39:39,127 --> 00:39:42,713 [Stevenson] Not only does he increase funding to states to build prisons 650 00:39:42,797 --> 00:39:46,301 to lock up as many people involved in drug crimes, 651 00:39:46,384 --> 00:39:49,804 but also to put 100,000 police officers on the street. 652 00:39:49,888 --> 00:39:55,726 Crime has been a hot political issue used too often to divide us. 653 00:39:55,810 --> 00:39:58,438 What President Clinton did in 1994 654 00:39:58,521 --> 00:40:02,317 is actually far more harmful than his predecessors 655 00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,111 because he actually built that infrastructure that we see today, 656 00:40:05,195 --> 00:40:10,951 the militarization all the way down to small, rural police departments 657 00:40:11,034 --> 00:40:13,078 that have SWAT teams. 658 00:40:13,161 --> 00:40:15,163 [Cobb] And again we see this kind of notching up 659 00:40:15,246 --> 00:40:18,416 of the number of people who were being arrested at every level 660 00:40:18,499 --> 00:40:22,712 and this kind of exploding prison population. 661 00:40:24,672 --> 00:40:26,882 [Cory Booker] We are a nation that professes freedom, 662 00:40:26,967 --> 00:40:31,137 yet we have this mass incarceration, this hyperincarceration, 663 00:40:31,221 --> 00:40:35,016 uh, that is trawling into it, grinding into it, 664 00:40:35,100 --> 00:40:37,102 our most vulnerable citizenry, 665 00:40:37,185 --> 00:40:40,271 and is overwhelmingly biased towards people of color. 666 00:40:51,992 --> 00:40:54,077 [Clinton] But I want to say a few words about it. 667 00:40:56,955 --> 00:41:00,124 Because I signed a bill that made the problem worse. 668 00:41:00,625 --> 00:41:02,418 And I want to admit it. 669 00:41:02,502 --> 00:41:06,922 His 1994 crime bill, something that he now admits was a mistake... 670 00:41:07,007 --> 00:41:08,799 There were longer sentences. 671 00:41:10,843 --> 00:41:15,140 And most of these people are in prison under state law, 672 00:41:15,223 --> 00:41:18,226 but the federal law set a trend. 673 00:41:20,353 --> 00:41:22,647 And that was overdone. We were wrong about that. 674 00:41:22,730 --> 00:41:27,902 Well, I think it's important that President Clinton, um, acknowledges 675 00:41:27,986 --> 00:41:34,700 that things didn't turn out exactly as he and all of us would've wished. 676 00:41:34,784 --> 00:41:38,579 I'm happy that he realizes the error of his ways. 677 00:41:38,663 --> 00:41:41,791 I think he knew back then that it wasn't good policy, I'll be honest. 678 00:41:41,874 --> 00:41:46,004 Back then, there was an outcry over the rising crime rate. 679 00:41:46,087 --> 00:41:50,091 And people from all communities were asking that action be taken. 680 00:41:50,175 --> 00:41:54,095 Now, my husband said at the NAACP last summer 681 00:41:54,179 --> 00:41:57,932 that it solved some problems, but it created other problems, 682 00:41:58,016 --> 00:41:59,100 and I agree. 683 00:41:59,184 --> 00:42:02,353 I'm glad to see that he is apologetic, 684 00:42:02,437 --> 00:42:06,024 but I think he has to take responsibility and accountability for that, 685 00:42:06,107 --> 00:42:07,317 and so does Hillary, 686 00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,445 because she supported it, then and up until recently. 687 00:42:10,528 --> 00:42:14,990 [reporter] Bill Clinton faced off against a group of Black Lives Matter protestors 688 00:42:15,075 --> 00:42:17,577 protesting a 1994 crime bill 689 00:42:17,660 --> 00:42:21,247 that they say led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people. 690 00:42:21,330 --> 00:42:24,083 I don't know how you would characterize 691 00:42:24,167 --> 00:42:28,963 the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack 692 00:42:29,047 --> 00:42:34,260 and sent 'em out onto the street to murder other African American children. 693 00:42:34,344 --> 00:42:37,888 Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. 694 00:42:37,972 --> 00:42:39,599 -She didn't! -[crowd cheering] 695 00:42:39,682 --> 00:42:44,437 You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. 696 00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:45,855 Tell the truth. 697 00:42:46,356 --> 00:42:48,858 We can't ignore the reality of force here. 698 00:42:48,941 --> 00:42:52,112 The policies that Bill Clinton put forward, 699 00:42:52,195 --> 00:42:54,739 you know, mandatory minimums, three strikes... 700 00:42:54,822 --> 00:42:57,242 Those were a use of political force. 701 00:42:57,325 --> 00:42:59,160 They forced millions of people, 702 00:42:59,244 --> 00:43:02,413 who would not otherwise be in prison today, into prison. 703 00:43:02,497 --> 00:43:04,374 They forced families to be broken. 704 00:43:04,457 --> 00:43:06,834 They forced children to live without their parents. 705 00:43:06,917 --> 00:43:07,960 That's what happened. 706 00:43:15,301 --> 00:43:16,385 [Jones] Why? 707 00:43:18,429 --> 00:43:21,766 We shouldn't ask, "Why is Bill Clinton so strong?" 708 00:43:21,849 --> 00:43:24,394 We should ask, "Why is the black community so weak 709 00:43:24,477 --> 00:43:26,521 in our inability to defend ourselves?" 710 00:43:26,604 --> 00:43:31,192 Let's not forget how many martyrs we put in the ground in the '60s and '70s. 711 00:43:31,276 --> 00:43:35,863 Let's not forget how many of our leaders had to leave the country or are in prison. 712 00:43:35,946 --> 00:43:40,034 You stripped out a whole generation of leadership. 713 00:43:40,118 --> 00:43:42,828 You ran them out the country, you put them in prison, 714 00:43:42,912 --> 00:43:45,540 you put them in... in cemeteries. 715 00:43:45,623 --> 00:43:48,083 And then you unleash this blitzkrieg, 716 00:43:48,168 --> 00:43:50,753 and we don't have the ability to defend ourselves. 717 00:43:50,836 --> 00:43:56,884 You can tell the story of white leadership in America 718 00:43:56,967 --> 00:43:59,011 and never mention the FBI one time. 719 00:43:59,095 --> 00:44:03,057 You can't tell the story of black leadership, not one, 720 00:44:03,433 --> 00:44:06,561 without having to deal with the full weight 721 00:44:06,644 --> 00:44:09,689 of the criminal justice system weaponizing its black dissent. 722 00:44:09,772 --> 00:44:13,484 I'm tired of living every day under the threat of death. 723 00:44:13,568 --> 00:44:15,570 I have no martyr complex. 724 00:44:15,653 --> 00:44:19,407 I want to live as long as anybody in this building tonight. 725 00:44:19,490 --> 00:44:23,953 [Jones] Dr. King, people forget, was not this beloved figure 726 00:44:24,036 --> 00:44:25,996 that everybody wants to put on a pedestal. 727 00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:29,417 Uh, he was considered one of the most dangerous people in America 728 00:44:29,500 --> 00:44:32,462 by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. 729 00:44:34,172 --> 00:44:36,632 Don't tell me that Dr. King has no relevance 730 00:44:36,716 --> 00:44:38,009 to young brothers in the street. 731 00:44:38,092 --> 00:44:40,720 They dealing with little cops. He was dealing with the top cop. 732 00:44:40,803 --> 00:44:43,764 [Malcolm X] We were brought here against our will. 733 00:44:43,848 --> 00:44:46,934 We were not brought here to be made citizens. 734 00:44:47,017 --> 00:44:52,482 We were not brought here to enjoy the, uh, constitutional gifts 735 00:44:52,565 --> 00:44:54,567 that they speak so beautifully about. 736 00:44:54,650 --> 00:44:58,738 [Jones] Malcolm's whole entourage was infiltrated with police. 737 00:44:58,821 --> 00:45:00,573 He may have had as many police 738 00:45:00,656 --> 00:45:03,493 as he had regular folk in his entourage, under cover. 739 00:45:03,576 --> 00:45:05,245 So afraid of black dissent. 740 00:45:05,328 --> 00:45:08,289 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover today asserted that the Black Panthers 741 00:45:08,373 --> 00:45:10,750 represent the greatest internal threat to the nation. 742 00:45:11,292 --> 00:45:12,793 [Gates] J. Edgar Hoover said 743 00:45:12,877 --> 00:45:17,047 these Panthers represent the greatest threat 744 00:45:17,131 --> 00:45:19,467 to American democracy at the time. 745 00:45:20,885 --> 00:45:23,846 The Panthers never were that big. 746 00:45:23,929 --> 00:45:26,766 I mean, no one in their right mind could ever believe 747 00:45:26,849 --> 00:45:29,560 that the Black Panthers were gonna bring down 748 00:45:29,644 --> 00:45:33,648 the greatest military force in the history of the world. 749 00:45:33,731 --> 00:45:35,983 The whole movement was criminalized 750 00:45:36,066 --> 00:45:39,236 and destroyed systematically by the government. 751 00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:41,989 People haven't thought about what it means to lose a Fred Hampton, 752 00:45:42,072 --> 00:45:45,576 who somehow was able to pull together blacks and whites 753 00:45:45,660 --> 00:45:48,120 and Puerto Ricans and Native Americans 754 00:45:48,203 --> 00:45:50,831 to fight for justice at 21. 755 00:45:50,915 --> 00:45:53,501 We're going to say it after this and after I'm locked up 756 00:45:53,584 --> 00:45:55,085 and after everybody's locked up, 757 00:45:55,169 --> 00:45:58,798 that you can jail revolutionaries, but you can't jail a revolution. 758 00:45:58,881 --> 00:46:00,341 He had to go. 759 00:46:00,425 --> 00:46:05,596 The head of the Black Panthers in Illinois was killed today by police in Chicago. 760 00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:08,641 [reporter] Illinois Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and another Panther leader 761 00:46:08,724 --> 00:46:11,101 from Peoria, Illinois, were killed. 762 00:46:11,185 --> 00:46:13,980 This is where our chairman had his brains blown out 763 00:46:14,063 --> 00:46:17,900 as he lay in his bed sleeping at 4:30 in the morning. 764 00:46:17,983 --> 00:46:21,571 [Jones] They literally went and shot his whole house up, 765 00:46:21,654 --> 00:46:24,532 with his pregnant wife next to him in the bed. 766 00:46:25,408 --> 00:46:29,870 So afraid of a leader that could unite people. 767 00:46:29,954 --> 00:46:31,872 We know the history of folks 768 00:46:31,956 --> 00:46:34,834 who've done this kind of standing up to these systems, 769 00:46:34,917 --> 00:46:37,545 and we know how the system has murdered them, assassinated them, 770 00:46:37,628 --> 00:46:42,007 exiled them, excluded them, or found ways to discredit them. 771 00:46:43,551 --> 00:46:46,554 Assata Shakur was one of the great leaders of the Black Liberation Army. 772 00:46:46,637 --> 00:46:50,641 That, um, order given by J. Edgar Hoover 773 00:46:50,725 --> 00:46:56,856 was essentially to destroy any black, progressive... 774 00:46:58,190 --> 00:47:00,568 Third World movement in this country. 775 00:47:00,651 --> 00:47:02,069 [Jones] They put her in prison, 776 00:47:02,152 --> 00:47:05,280 and her allies said, "We're not gonna leave her in prison." 777 00:47:05,364 --> 00:47:07,742 Her white allies said, "We're not gonna leave her in prison." 778 00:47:07,825 --> 00:47:10,703 And pulled her out of prison and got her to Cuba. She's in Cuba right now. 779 00:47:10,786 --> 00:47:13,748 [Shakur] And within the next five years, 780 00:47:13,831 --> 00:47:19,462 something like, uh, 300 prisons are in the planning stages. 781 00:47:19,545 --> 00:47:20,921 This government has the intentions 782 00:47:21,005 --> 00:47:24,008 of throwing more and more people in prison. 783 00:47:24,091 --> 00:47:25,092 [inaudible] 784 00:47:25,175 --> 00:47:27,970 [Davis] Criminalization of Assata Shakur, 785 00:47:28,053 --> 00:47:33,976 the use of the media to represent her as a dangerous criminal. 786 00:47:34,059 --> 00:47:36,604 And of course, in my own case, 787 00:47:36,687 --> 00:47:42,109 where I was represented by the FBI as being armed and dangerous. 788 00:47:42,192 --> 00:47:44,945 The FBI has put black militant Angela Davis 789 00:47:45,029 --> 00:47:47,448 on its list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. 790 00:47:47,532 --> 00:47:51,452 [Jones] Then with Angela Davis, the power of the black intellect... 791 00:47:51,535 --> 00:47:53,454 [Davis] One thing that we have to talk about, 792 00:47:53,538 --> 00:47:56,707 coming to grips with, is this whole question of crime. 793 00:47:56,791 --> 00:48:00,210 What does it mean to be a criminal in this society? 794 00:48:00,294 --> 00:48:01,671 That had to be broken up. 795 00:48:01,754 --> 00:48:05,466 [Davis] And in my case, Ronald Reagan was the governor of California, 796 00:48:05,550 --> 00:48:07,802 Richard Nixon was the president of the US. 797 00:48:07,885 --> 00:48:12,473 The whole apparatus of the state was set up against me, 798 00:48:12,557 --> 00:48:16,644 and they really meant to send me to the death chamber 799 00:48:16,727 --> 00:48:18,395 in order to make a point. 800 00:48:18,479 --> 00:48:21,649 The actions of the FBI in apprehending Angela Davis, 801 00:48:21,732 --> 00:48:25,319 a rather remarkable, uh, story again... 802 00:48:25,402 --> 00:48:28,072 [Jones] The system tried to put the sister on trial, 803 00:48:28,155 --> 00:48:30,908 and the sister said, "No, we puttin' you on trial." 804 00:48:30,991 --> 00:48:32,409 [indistinct chatter] 805 00:48:34,244 --> 00:48:36,664 Comes in, the big Afro, she didn't go press her hair. 806 00:48:36,747 --> 00:48:38,541 She was facing major time. 807 00:48:38,624 --> 00:48:41,085 You know, most people, they'd have got a nice little press. 808 00:48:41,168 --> 00:48:44,004 You know? They'd have been in there with little white gloves on, 809 00:48:44,088 --> 00:48:45,923 praying to Jesus. She came in like this. 810 00:48:46,841 --> 00:48:51,261 And she devastated the prosecution and walked out of there free. 811 00:48:51,345 --> 00:48:52,555 [crowd applauds] 812 00:48:53,973 --> 00:48:56,058 [man] But the question is how do you get there? 813 00:48:56,141 --> 00:48:58,769 Do you get there by confrontation, violence? 814 00:48:58,853 --> 00:49:00,563 Oh, was that the question you were asking? 815 00:49:00,646 --> 00:49:01,814 [man] Yeah. 816 00:49:01,897 --> 00:49:04,149 So, I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. 817 00:49:04,233 --> 00:49:05,442 Uh... 818 00:49:06,151 --> 00:49:11,031 Uh, after the four young girls who were... who lived very... 819 00:49:11,115 --> 00:49:14,118 who lived... One of them lived next door to me. 820 00:49:14,201 --> 00:49:17,287 I was very good friends with the sister of another one. 821 00:49:17,371 --> 00:49:19,373 My sister was good friends with all three of them. 822 00:49:19,456 --> 00:49:22,126 My mother taught one of them in her class. And they went down. 823 00:49:22,209 --> 00:49:26,672 And what did they find? They found limbs and heads just strewn all over the place. 824 00:49:27,172 --> 00:49:29,884 I remember, from the time I was very small, 825 00:49:29,967 --> 00:49:33,763 I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street. 826 00:49:33,846 --> 00:49:35,305 Our house shaking. 827 00:49:35,389 --> 00:49:39,894 I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times 828 00:49:39,977 --> 00:49:46,108 because of the fact that at any moment we might expect to be attacked. 829 00:49:46,191 --> 00:49:50,404 I mean, that's why, when someone asks me about violence, uh... 830 00:49:51,446 --> 00:49:53,991 I just, uh... I just find it incredible. 831 00:49:54,074 --> 00:49:57,411 Because what it means is that the person who's asking that question 832 00:49:57,494 --> 00:50:01,165 has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, 833 00:50:01,248 --> 00:50:03,543 what black people have experienced in this country 834 00:50:03,626 --> 00:50:08,130 since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa. 835 00:50:09,048 --> 00:50:11,717 [Jones] And when you strip out a whole generation of leadership, 836 00:50:11,801 --> 00:50:14,804 running folk out the country, killing folk, framing folk, 837 00:50:14,887 --> 00:50:18,098 you will be vulnerable to Bill Clinton or anybody else. 838 00:50:18,182 --> 00:50:20,142 They'll do to you what they will. 839 00:50:38,077 --> 00:50:42,623 ♪ There's a man going 'round ♪ 840 00:50:42,707 --> 00:50:47,377 ♪ Taking names ♪ 841 00:50:48,378 --> 00:50:53,634 ♪ He has taken my father's name ♪ 842 00:50:53,718 --> 00:51:00,182 ♪ And it's left my heart in pain ♪ 843 00:51:01,183 --> 00:51:05,646 ♪ There's a man going 'round ♪ 844 00:51:05,730 --> 00:51:09,483 ♪ Taking names ♪ 845 00:51:09,566 --> 00:51:13,112 ♪ Going 'round ♪ 846 00:51:13,988 --> 00:51:18,283 ♪ Going 'round ♪ 847 00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:24,874 [reporter] An armed neighborhood watch leader 848 00:51:24,957 --> 00:51:28,252 saw Martin walking inside a gated subdivision near Orlando. 849 00:51:28,335 --> 00:51:30,838 He thought the 17-year-old looked suspicious. 850 00:51:31,463 --> 00:51:34,299 [George Zimmerman] He's got his hand in his waistband. 851 00:51:36,426 --> 00:51:37,970 And he's a black male. 852 00:51:40,264 --> 00:51:42,516 [sighs] These assholes, they always get away. 853 00:51:43,684 --> 00:51:46,186 -[dispatcher 1] Are you following him? -Yep. 854 00:51:46,270 --> 00:51:49,064 -[dispatcher 1] We don't need you to. -[indistinct screaming] 855 00:51:49,773 --> 00:51:51,817 [dispatcher 2] Do you think he's yelling "help"? 856 00:51:52,151 --> 00:51:53,861 -[woman] Yes. -All right, what is your... 857 00:51:53,944 --> 00:51:55,112 [gunshot] 858 00:51:56,155 --> 00:51:57,906 [reporter] A deadly shooting in Sanford. 859 00:51:57,990 --> 00:52:00,701 Police have the gun, they've got the shooter, 860 00:52:00,785 --> 00:52:02,452 but they have not arrested him. 861 00:52:03,329 --> 00:52:05,080 [Stevenson] Zimmerman, armed with a gun, 862 00:52:05,164 --> 00:52:08,000 followed this quote, unquote suspicious kid 863 00:52:08,083 --> 00:52:10,294 after the dispatcher told him not to. 864 00:52:11,420 --> 00:52:13,505 They ended up on the ground in a fight, 865 00:52:13,588 --> 00:52:16,759 and George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin. 866 00:52:19,053 --> 00:52:21,263 The police could not arrest Zimmerman 867 00:52:21,346 --> 00:52:24,266 because of this Florida law called Stand Your Ground, 868 00:52:24,350 --> 00:52:27,019 which says that you can kill someone if you feel threatened. 869 00:52:27,436 --> 00:52:29,021 Even though it was Zimmerman 870 00:52:29,104 --> 00:52:32,357 who had pursued Martin throughout the neighborhood with a gun. 871 00:52:32,441 --> 00:52:38,030 Mr. Zimmerman felt that he, in self-defense, needed to, uh... 872 00:52:38,113 --> 00:52:39,489 to fire his weapon. 873 00:52:39,573 --> 00:52:41,784 [Stevenson] Not only was he not arrested, 874 00:52:41,867 --> 00:52:45,037 but in court, Zimmerman actually pleaded self-defense 875 00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:47,873 and got off under the Stand Your Ground law. 876 00:52:47,957 --> 00:52:51,126 [woman] We, the jury, find George Zimmerman not guilty. 877 00:52:52,086 --> 00:52:54,421 [man] That Stand Your Ground law that was passed in Florida 878 00:52:54,504 --> 00:52:57,257 played a huge role in the Trayvon Martin tragedy 879 00:52:57,341 --> 00:53:00,677 and this really ignited the movement that we see today. 880 00:53:02,471 --> 00:53:04,390 [reporter] In the wake of Trayvon Martin's death, 881 00:53:04,473 --> 00:53:07,184 Florida's Stand Your Ground law came into the spotlight. 882 00:53:07,267 --> 00:53:11,146 How did this law not only get in place in Florida, but around the country? 883 00:53:11,230 --> 00:53:13,774 And all the fingers kept pointing back to ALEC. 884 00:53:16,861 --> 00:53:19,696 ALEC sounds like the name of a high school lacrosse player 885 00:53:19,780 --> 00:53:21,949 who just got baked and wrecked his dad's Saab. 886 00:53:22,032 --> 00:53:26,036 But incredibly, it's actually even worse. 887 00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:30,374 -ALEC is a political lobbying group. -[all] ALEC is a political lobbying group. 888 00:53:30,457 --> 00:53:32,960 -They write laws... -They write laws... 889 00:53:33,043 --> 00:53:36,463 -and give them to Republicans. -and give them to Republicans. 890 00:53:36,546 --> 00:53:38,632 -Stand Your Ground... -Stand Your Ground... 891 00:53:38,716 --> 00:53:41,343 -was written by ALEC. -was written by ALEC. 892 00:53:42,052 --> 00:53:43,846 [Graves] ALEC is this private club, 893 00:53:43,929 --> 00:53:47,516 and its members are politicians and corporations. 894 00:53:47,599 --> 00:53:48,934 But the real question is, 895 00:53:49,018 --> 00:53:53,063 should politicians and corporations be in the same private club? 896 00:53:53,147 --> 00:53:55,107 Under the umbrella of ALEC 897 00:53:55,190 --> 00:53:59,653 corporate members, uh, get to propose laws to their political counterparts, 898 00:53:59,736 --> 00:54:01,571 most of whom are Republicans. 899 00:54:02,406 --> 00:54:05,910 So, through ALEC, corporations have a huge say in our lawmaking. 900 00:54:05,993 --> 00:54:07,661 And at ALEC task force meetings, 901 00:54:07,744 --> 00:54:11,706 corporate lobbyists secretly vote as equals with lawmakers 902 00:54:11,791 --> 00:54:14,001 on bills that those lawmakers then introduce 903 00:54:14,084 --> 00:54:16,503 to become laws in our states. 904 00:54:16,586 --> 00:54:18,047 ALEC is everywhere. 905 00:54:18,130 --> 00:54:21,091 Roughly one in four state legislators are members. 906 00:54:21,175 --> 00:54:24,053 And I'm proud to stand with ALEC today. 907 00:54:24,136 --> 00:54:28,015 And it's not hard to see why. ALEC makes their jobs troublingly easy. 908 00:54:28,098 --> 00:54:30,434 Here's their model Electricity Freedom bill, 909 00:54:30,517 --> 00:54:33,353 which at one point says, "Be it therefore enacted, 910 00:54:33,437 --> 00:54:38,358 that the State of (insert state) repeals the renewable energy mandate." 911 00:54:38,442 --> 00:54:42,696 So, as long as you can remember and spell the name of your state, 912 00:54:42,779 --> 00:54:44,698 you can introduce legislation. 913 00:54:44,781 --> 00:54:46,992 We've also seen ALEC bills introduced 914 00:54:47,075 --> 00:54:50,537 where a lawmaker forgot to take the ALEC letterhead off the bill. 915 00:54:50,787 --> 00:54:52,957 Without remembering to take off the ALEC letterhead 916 00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:57,502 to try to distance the real role of ALEC and ALEC corporations from those bills. 917 00:54:57,586 --> 00:54:58,879 I'm just curious. Does it have... 918 00:54:58,962 --> 00:55:01,840 Does the legislation have some connection to ALEC? 919 00:55:01,924 --> 00:55:06,220 Representative Atkins, I'm not sure why we're pursuing this course of questioning. 920 00:55:06,303 --> 00:55:08,722 This bill is my bill. It's not ALEC's bill. 921 00:55:08,805 --> 00:55:12,517 The reason I ask is because earlier you passed out a handout 922 00:55:12,601 --> 00:55:16,438 that says "Gottwalt" at the top, and it says "Health Care Compact," 923 00:55:16,521 --> 00:55:19,399 and there's a logo right in the middle of that page. 924 00:55:19,483 --> 00:55:21,902 And I went to the ALEC website, 925 00:55:21,986 --> 00:55:27,449 and there's exactly the same font, the same size and the same logo. 926 00:55:27,532 --> 00:55:29,493 I mean, literally, it's verbatim. 927 00:55:29,576 --> 00:55:30,828 [Graves] It's shocking to know 928 00:55:30,911 --> 00:55:33,914 that ALEC has been around for more than four decades now. 929 00:55:34,581 --> 00:55:37,877 And it's even more startling to see how it began. 930 00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:40,212 [Reagan] ALEC has forged a unique partnership 931 00:55:40,295 --> 00:55:44,674 between state legislators and leaders from the corporate and business community. 932 00:55:44,758 --> 00:55:47,761 [Graves] Corporations have influenced laws for decades, through ALEC. 933 00:55:47,845 --> 00:55:50,138 They want everybody to vote. 934 00:55:50,680 --> 00:55:52,682 I don't want everybody to vote. 935 00:55:52,766 --> 00:55:56,353 As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up 936 00:55:56,436 --> 00:55:58,188 as the voting populace goes down. 937 00:55:59,148 --> 00:56:02,276 [Graves] Nearly every ALEC bill benefits one of its corporate funders. 938 00:56:04,694 --> 00:56:08,115 And the corporation Wal-Mart was a long-standing member of ALEC 939 00:56:08,198 --> 00:56:11,911 at the time that it adopted the so-called Stand Your Ground law. 940 00:56:11,994 --> 00:56:16,540 It's a law that created an atmosphere where gun sales boomed. 941 00:56:16,623 --> 00:56:19,960 Wal-Mart is the biggest seller of long guns in the US, 942 00:56:20,044 --> 00:56:23,130 has been the largest retailer of bullets in the world. 943 00:56:24,464 --> 00:56:26,633 So it's reasonable to think that Wal-Mart benefited 944 00:56:26,716 --> 00:56:29,136 from these Stand Your Ground laws that ALEC pushed 945 00:56:29,219 --> 00:56:33,265 that initially prevented the arrest of the killer of Trayvon Martin, uh, 946 00:56:33,348 --> 00:56:36,726 and was designed to prevent the arrest, prosecution and conviction 947 00:56:36,810 --> 00:56:39,980 of the killer of Trayvon Martin, including through changing the jury instructions 948 00:56:40,064 --> 00:56:41,690 to require that a jury be told 949 00:56:41,773 --> 00:56:44,443 that someone like George Zimmerman has a right to stand his ground, 950 00:56:44,526 --> 00:56:47,529 but not that someone like Trayvon Martin has a right to stand his ground 951 00:56:47,612 --> 00:56:51,491 against someone like George Zimmerman with a gun assailing him. 952 00:56:57,081 --> 00:57:00,917 After the outcry over Stand Your Ground and the Trayvon Martin tragedy... 953 00:57:01,001 --> 00:57:04,421 Wal-Mart stepped out of ALEC. It left ALEC, abandoned ALEC. 954 00:57:04,504 --> 00:57:06,965 But the Wal-Mart family continues to fund ALEC. 955 00:57:07,049 --> 00:57:10,219 Other corporations followed suit and stepped away from ALEC, 956 00:57:10,302 --> 00:57:13,597 but many corporations are still members, including... 957 00:57:13,680 --> 00:57:16,141 Koch Industries, State Farm Insurance, 958 00:57:16,225 --> 00:57:19,269 PhRMA, which is the lobbying group for the pharmaceutical industry. 959 00:57:19,353 --> 00:57:21,855 ALEC has been supported by the tobacco industry 960 00:57:21,939 --> 00:57:23,773 as well as AT&T and Verizon. 961 00:57:23,857 --> 00:57:25,692 And for nearly two decades, 962 00:57:25,776 --> 00:57:28,195 one corporation was Corrections Corporation of America. 963 00:57:28,778 --> 00:57:31,531 [announcer] Every day, we serve our communities. 964 00:57:31,615 --> 00:57:33,325 From small towns to large cities, 965 00:57:33,408 --> 00:57:36,495 at more than 60 locations across our country. 966 00:57:36,578 --> 00:57:39,248 As the nation's fifth largest correctional system, 967 00:57:39,331 --> 00:57:43,793 we build, own and manage secure correctional facilities. 968 00:57:43,877 --> 00:57:46,380 [Graves] CCA was the first private prison corporation in the US. 969 00:57:46,463 --> 00:57:49,341 It started as a small company, in Tennessee, in 1983. 970 00:57:50,425 --> 00:57:52,636 These folks started making contracts with states. 971 00:57:52,719 --> 00:57:54,554 And they had to protect their investments, 972 00:57:54,638 --> 00:57:58,225 so the states were required to keep these prisons filled 973 00:57:58,308 --> 00:57:59,809 even if nobody was committing a crime. 974 00:58:00,394 --> 00:58:03,981 And in the late '80s and early '90s, this became a growth industry 975 00:58:04,064 --> 00:58:07,317 unlike very few growth industries in America's history. 976 00:58:07,401 --> 00:58:12,197 Uh, it was absolutely a model guaranteed to succeed. 977 00:58:13,698 --> 00:58:18,745 [Graves] And one of the ways we see that is through the role of CCA within ALEC 978 00:58:18,828 --> 00:58:20,705 to advance a series of bills. 979 00:58:20,789 --> 00:58:22,791 All the legislation you could think of 980 00:58:22,874 --> 00:58:26,628 that we fight so hard against, "three strikes, you're out..." 981 00:58:26,711 --> 00:58:28,963 Three strikes and you are out. 982 00:58:29,048 --> 00:58:30,715 ...mandatory minimum sentencing laws... 983 00:58:30,799 --> 00:58:33,302 ...serve at least 85% of their sentence. 984 00:58:33,385 --> 00:58:35,554 ...were the ones they were putting out there 985 00:58:35,637 --> 00:58:39,599 like on a premiere pre-fixed dinner menu, 986 00:58:39,683 --> 00:58:44,229 a steady influx of bodies to generate the profit 987 00:58:44,313 --> 00:58:46,481 that would go to the shareholders. 988 00:58:47,691 --> 00:58:51,236 [Stevenson] Through ALEC, CCA became the leader in private prisons. 989 00:58:51,945 --> 00:58:56,658 It's a multibillion-dollar business today that gets rich off punishment. 990 00:58:56,741 --> 00:58:59,661 [announcer] We are America's leader in partnership corrections. 991 00:58:59,744 --> 00:59:01,080 We are CCA. 992 00:59:01,163 --> 00:59:02,622 [Graves] And so, through ALEC, 993 00:59:02,706 --> 00:59:06,293 CCA had a hand in shaping crime policy across the country, 994 00:59:06,376 --> 00:59:11,173 including, not just prison privatization, but the rapid increase in criminalization. 995 00:59:11,757 --> 00:59:15,927 I think this accusation, you know, quite frankly, is just false. 996 00:59:16,010 --> 00:59:21,641 That somehow ALEC was in favor of imprisoning a bunch of people, uh, 997 00:59:21,725 --> 00:59:23,435 because of private prisons... 998 00:59:23,518 --> 00:59:28,148 I think that's just, unfortunately, one of these tactics they do on ALEC. 999 00:59:28,232 --> 00:59:32,152 ALEC pushed forward a number of policies to increase the number of people in prison 1000 00:59:32,236 --> 00:59:35,114 and to increase the sentences of people who are in prison. 1001 00:59:35,197 --> 00:59:39,326 I'm trying to think how you address it. It's hard to address something that's like 1002 00:59:39,409 --> 00:59:41,286 almost like folklore at this point. 1003 00:59:41,370 --> 00:59:44,414 They are not doing anything to really clean up that past 1004 00:59:44,498 --> 00:59:47,167 or to address the real consequences for real people 1005 00:59:47,251 --> 00:59:48,918 of the extreme policies they've pushed. 1006 00:59:49,002 --> 00:59:51,004 In fact, it doesn't talk about its past history. 1007 00:59:51,088 --> 00:59:55,008 I mean, it's hard for me to even understand, uh, 1008 00:59:55,092 --> 00:59:57,469 what they're even talking about. A lot of it. 1009 00:59:57,552 --> 01:00:00,805 CCA directly benefited, directly profited from its investment 1010 01:00:00,889 --> 01:00:03,057 in ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. 1011 01:00:03,142 --> 01:00:06,520 And the American people, in many ways, were harmed by these policies 1012 01:00:06,603 --> 01:00:10,023 due to the mass incarceration of people, particularly people of color. 1013 01:00:10,107 --> 01:00:15,529 Look, right now our position is that we want less people in prison. 1014 01:00:15,612 --> 01:00:18,823 I don't think that helps the private prison industry, quite frankly. 1015 01:00:18,907 --> 01:00:20,367 I think myself and the lawmakers, 1016 01:00:20,450 --> 01:00:23,828 we're just always looking for better, innovative ways to run government. 1017 01:00:23,912 --> 01:00:24,955 I think that's one thing 1018 01:00:25,038 --> 01:00:27,833 as conservatives, who believe in the free market and limited government, 1019 01:00:27,916 --> 01:00:28,834 we pride ourselves on. 1020 01:00:28,917 --> 01:00:31,211 We're supposed to be the party of innovation. 1021 01:00:32,045 --> 01:00:36,425 [Graves] Another bill that ALEC innovated was SB 1070. 1022 01:00:36,508 --> 01:00:39,303 CCA was on the ALEC task force that pushed that law 1023 01:00:39,386 --> 01:00:41,763 that gave police the right to stop anyone 1024 01:00:41,846 --> 01:00:43,807 they thought looked like an immigrant. 1025 01:00:45,642 --> 01:00:47,977 This law filled immigration detention facilities, 1026 01:00:48,061 --> 01:00:51,148 and it directly benefited an ALEC member, CCA. 1027 01:00:53,107 --> 01:00:56,695 CCA could potentially reap huge financial benefits from SB 1070, 1028 01:00:56,778 --> 01:01:01,241 since 1070 was designed to lock up a lot more people in Arizona 1029 01:01:01,325 --> 01:01:03,577 on federal immigration charges. Cha-ching! 1030 01:01:03,660 --> 01:01:07,206 [reporter 1] An influx of undocumented immigrants, many of them children... 1031 01:01:07,289 --> 01:01:11,460 [reporter 2] In Arizona, Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, 1032 01:01:11,543 --> 01:01:14,713 holds the federal contract to house detained immigrants. 1033 01:01:14,796 --> 01:01:18,883 It's worth more than $11 million every month. 1034 01:01:20,594 --> 01:01:23,388 Our, uh, immigration facilities are a disgrace. 1035 01:01:23,472 --> 01:01:28,059 There are families kept there, uh, in horrible conditions. 1036 01:01:29,018 --> 01:01:32,231 They're called "detention facilities," but they're really prisons for immigrants. 1037 01:01:32,314 --> 01:01:34,900 Calling them "detention facility" doesn't make them not a prison. 1038 01:01:34,983 --> 01:01:36,943 They're a prison. They just have a different name. 1039 01:01:37,026 --> 01:01:42,073 We're having what some people are saying is a creation of a "crimmigration" system. 1040 01:01:42,156 --> 01:01:45,702 That there's the merger of our immigration enforcement 1041 01:01:45,785 --> 01:01:47,954 and our law enforcement system. 1042 01:01:48,037 --> 01:01:51,500 And so, that's some of the same things that were used in the war on drugs, 1043 01:01:51,583 --> 01:01:53,793 are now migrating to other populations. 1044 01:01:53,877 --> 01:01:58,673 You heard it, uh, with Donald Trump, not about blacks but with Mexicans. 1045 01:01:58,757 --> 01:02:01,468 You know, "Oh, well, they're rapists, murderers. 1046 01:02:01,551 --> 01:02:04,137 Oh, and by the way, some of 'em may be good people." 1047 01:02:04,221 --> 01:02:05,514 [scoffs] 1048 01:02:05,597 --> 01:02:08,225 Oh, boy. You know, where do you start on something like that? 1049 01:02:09,601 --> 01:02:13,897 [Graves] In late 2010, CCA left ALEC after a big NPR story came out 1050 01:02:13,980 --> 01:02:17,108 accusing ALEC of pushing SB 1070. 1051 01:02:17,442 --> 01:02:20,153 ALEC doesn't do anything on immigration. 1052 01:02:20,237 --> 01:02:24,324 No. No which way. Not to the right, not to the left. Nothing. 1053 01:02:24,408 --> 01:02:27,160 [laughs] So, I don't really have anything for you on that one. Sorry. 1054 01:02:27,244 --> 01:02:30,497 ALEC has recently made what I would describe as a PR move 1055 01:02:30,580 --> 01:02:32,624 to say that it's gonna be right on crime. 1056 01:02:32,707 --> 01:02:36,044 That it's gonna be on the right side of criminal justice policy and reform. 1057 01:02:36,127 --> 01:02:41,466 That move comes in the wake of its loss of a massive number of corporations. 1058 01:02:42,842 --> 01:02:47,681 What ultimately happened is our board looked at the issues that ALEC worked on 1059 01:02:47,764 --> 01:02:50,183 and decided that we don't do social issues, 1060 01:02:50,267 --> 01:02:52,352 we're focused on economic issues. 1061 01:02:52,436 --> 01:02:57,691 We jettisoned basically almost all of our legislation that was pre-2007. 1062 01:02:57,774 --> 01:03:00,694 So we basically... Fresh slate going forward. 1063 01:03:00,777 --> 01:03:02,570 A fresh start going forward. 1064 01:03:03,154 --> 01:03:05,490 [Gina Clayton] This industry knows that it's dying... 1065 01:03:06,616 --> 01:03:10,620 and is actually preparing for the next thing. 1066 01:03:10,704 --> 01:03:14,416 And the animating factors that have led to such a system like bail. 1067 01:03:14,499 --> 01:03:19,379 We're always gonna see new permutations of a cancer. Right? 1068 01:03:19,463 --> 01:03:20,589 And that's what this is. 1069 01:03:20,672 --> 01:03:23,550 And over the last couple years, since 2008, 1070 01:03:23,633 --> 01:03:27,637 we've been involved really in a wholesale reform effort, 1071 01:03:27,721 --> 01:03:32,559 where 31 states have now adopted positive changes on sentencing, 1072 01:03:32,642 --> 01:03:34,728 on parole and probation reforms. 1073 01:03:34,811 --> 01:03:38,565 ALEC has a concerted effort to privatize almost every aspect of government, 1074 01:03:38,648 --> 01:03:40,775 but we had no idea that they were also aiming 1075 01:03:40,859 --> 01:03:43,361 to try to privatize probation and parole. 1076 01:03:43,653 --> 01:03:47,073 ALEC is no longer concerned about CCA and CCA's interest. 1077 01:03:47,156 --> 01:03:49,618 CCA no longer has a seat at the table with ALEC, 1078 01:03:49,701 --> 01:03:52,746 so it doesn't have a financial interest in advancing policies 1079 01:03:52,829 --> 01:03:55,164 that increase the profits of CCA. 1080 01:03:55,248 --> 01:03:57,709 But the American Bail Coalition is still part of ALEC. 1081 01:03:57,792 --> 01:04:00,504 Today, our state penitentiaries 1082 01:04:00,587 --> 01:04:05,008 are filled to the brim and overflowing with inmates. 1083 01:04:05,091 --> 01:04:07,886 [Martin] When I think of systems of oppression, 1084 01:04:07,969 --> 01:04:11,973 uh, historically, in this country and elsewhere, they're durable. 1085 01:04:12,056 --> 01:04:15,309 And they tend to reinvent themselves, and they do it right under your nose. 1086 01:04:15,394 --> 01:04:18,062 One of the things they want to do is GPS monitoring. 1087 01:04:18,146 --> 01:04:21,358 Having a home confinement system for juveniles, I think, is a great thing 1088 01:04:21,441 --> 01:04:24,318 'cause it forces the parents to take responsibility and step up. 1089 01:04:24,403 --> 01:04:27,822 Prisons would be more embedded in our homes. 1090 01:04:27,906 --> 01:04:30,241 Some of them would be monitored on GPS and things like that. 1091 01:04:30,324 --> 01:04:34,621 So folks won't be locked up in a cage, in a cell, inside of an institution, 1092 01:04:34,704 --> 01:04:37,832 but they will have ankle bracelets on. They'll have wrist bracelets on. 1093 01:04:37,916 --> 01:04:40,960 Would that help to solve the prison overcrowding problem? 1094 01:04:41,044 --> 01:04:42,211 Absolutely. 1095 01:04:42,295 --> 01:04:46,425 And what I worry about is that we fall asleep at the wheel and wake up, 1096 01:04:46,508 --> 01:04:49,302 and realize that we may not have people in prisons 1097 01:04:49,386 --> 01:04:51,304 in rural communities all over America, 1098 01:04:51,388 --> 01:04:54,182 but that we're incarcerating people right in their communities. 1099 01:04:54,265 --> 01:04:57,852 That is what I see, what a lot of the focus is on, 1100 01:04:57,936 --> 01:04:59,270 is taking people from prison, 1101 01:04:59,353 --> 01:05:01,690 putting them in community corrections parole and probation, 1102 01:05:01,773 --> 01:05:04,275 and really investing in those programs. 1103 01:05:04,358 --> 01:05:05,819 How much progress is it really, 1104 01:05:05,902 --> 01:05:10,657 if communities of color are still under perpetual surveillance and control, 1105 01:05:10,740 --> 01:05:15,662 but now there's a private company making money off the GPS monitor, 1106 01:05:15,745 --> 01:05:18,623 rather than the person being locked in a literal cage? 1107 01:05:18,707 --> 01:05:21,751 If we can help you... 1108 01:05:23,253 --> 01:05:26,464 save crime victims in your legislative district... 1109 01:05:28,007 --> 01:05:29,926 you don't mind me making a dollar. 1110 01:05:31,219 --> 01:05:34,973 [Graves] And so, ALEC continues to be a body that, 1111 01:05:35,056 --> 01:05:37,183 while it may have some really strong rhetoric 1112 01:05:37,266 --> 01:05:41,145 on why it supports crime reform now, suddenly, 1113 01:05:41,229 --> 01:05:42,772 uh, sort of out of the blue, 1114 01:05:42,856 --> 01:05:45,442 it actually has real financial interests. 1115 01:05:45,525 --> 01:05:47,193 Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. 1116 01:05:47,276 --> 01:05:48,695 [crowd applauds] 1117 01:05:48,778 --> 01:05:53,032 If you're in the prison business, uh, you don't want reform. 1118 01:05:53,116 --> 01:05:54,451 You may say you do, but you don't. 1119 01:05:54,534 --> 01:05:57,871 And there are a bunch of people out there desperately trying to make sure 1120 01:05:57,954 --> 01:06:00,874 that that prison population does not drop one person, 1121 01:06:00,957 --> 01:06:03,835 because their economic model needs that. 1122 01:06:03,918 --> 01:06:09,591 Prison industrial complex refers to the system of mass incarceration 1123 01:06:09,674 --> 01:06:12,426 and companies that profit from mass incarceration. 1124 01:06:12,511 --> 01:06:14,763 That includes both operators of private prisons, 1125 01:06:14,846 --> 01:06:20,184 which get a lot of attention, as well as a vast sea of vendors. 1126 01:06:20,268 --> 01:06:24,397 From SECURUS Technologies, that supplies telephone services, 1127 01:06:24,481 --> 01:06:27,817 that made $114 million in profits last year... 1128 01:06:27,901 --> 01:06:32,280 Those calls to family and friends are costing a pretty penny in state prisons. 1129 01:06:32,363 --> 01:06:36,242 They inflate the price that they charge the inmate and the inmate's family. 1130 01:06:36,325 --> 01:06:39,037 [Kilgore] For example, in Maryland, if you earn minimum wage, 1131 01:06:39,120 --> 01:06:42,791 you'd have to work an hour and a half to afford a ten minute phone call. 1132 01:06:46,169 --> 01:06:50,339 There's also Aramark, one of the big food service providers. 1133 01:06:50,924 --> 01:06:53,009 In more than one state, they have been accused 1134 01:06:53,092 --> 01:06:55,887 of having maggots in the food that they've served. 1135 01:06:59,015 --> 01:07:03,394 Corizon Healthcare provides healthcare services in 28 different states. 1136 01:07:03,477 --> 01:07:05,855 Multimillion-dollar contracts for this service. 1137 01:07:05,939 --> 01:07:11,235 Huge incentives given to contractors for very long contracts, 1138 01:07:11,319 --> 01:07:13,822 so it's actually a disincentive to provide the service, 1139 01:07:13,905 --> 01:07:15,657 because you're going to be paid anyway. 1140 01:07:22,455 --> 01:07:24,332 One of the reasons it's so difficult 1141 01:07:24,415 --> 01:07:27,710 to talk about mass incarceration in this country, and to question it, 1142 01:07:27,794 --> 01:07:31,548 is because it has become so heavily monetized. 1143 01:07:31,631 --> 01:07:33,675 A little company called UNICOR, 1144 01:07:33,758 --> 01:07:36,678 that does $900 million in business annually. 1145 01:07:36,761 --> 01:07:38,471 How do they do it? 1146 01:07:38,555 --> 01:07:40,264 Volume. 1147 01:07:40,348 --> 01:07:42,433 -Also, prison labor. -[audience laughs] 1148 01:07:42,517 --> 01:07:45,270 [announcer] Partnerships between correctional industries 1149 01:07:45,353 --> 01:07:46,521 and private business 1150 01:07:46,605 --> 01:07:50,567 are a rapidly growing segment of a multibillion dollar industry in America. 1151 01:07:50,650 --> 01:07:53,653 [Shaka Senghor] We talk about sweatshops and we, 1152 01:07:53,737 --> 01:07:58,992 you know, we beat our fists at people overseas for exploiting poor, free labor, 1153 01:07:59,075 --> 01:08:01,786 but we don't look that it's happening right here at home every day. 1154 01:08:01,870 --> 01:08:03,537 You have corporations 1155 01:08:03,622 --> 01:08:06,540 who are now invested in this free labor. 1156 01:08:06,625 --> 01:08:08,710 It's all over. 1157 01:08:08,793 --> 01:08:14,090 It's from sports, uniform, hats, Microsoft, Boeing. 1158 01:08:14,173 --> 01:08:16,134 Federal inmates are making the guidance systems 1159 01:08:16,217 --> 01:08:17,426 for the Patriot missile system. 1160 01:08:17,510 --> 01:08:19,763 JCPenney jeans are made in Tennessee. 1161 01:08:19,846 --> 01:08:21,723 Victoria's Secret. 1162 01:08:22,223 --> 01:08:24,601 Anderson flooring wood products are made in Georgia. 1163 01:08:24,684 --> 01:08:26,770 It's always been Idaho potatoes. 1164 01:08:26,853 --> 01:08:31,733 They're planted, grown, harvested, packed and shipped by inmates. 1165 01:08:31,816 --> 01:08:35,361 [man] Victoria's Secret and JCPenney switched suppliers 1166 01:08:35,445 --> 01:08:37,822 once their ties came to light. 1167 01:08:38,114 --> 01:08:42,076 Simply put, corporations are operating in prisons 1168 01:08:42,160 --> 01:08:44,037 and profiting from punishment. 1169 01:08:45,664 --> 01:08:49,250 Prison industries have gotten so big 1170 01:08:49,333 --> 01:08:52,295 that it's very difficult now to try and do away with them. 1171 01:08:52,378 --> 01:08:53,546 Too much money out there, 1172 01:08:53,630 --> 01:08:57,341 too many lawmakers that support it because they're being lobbied. 1173 01:08:57,425 --> 01:09:00,261 So, the public's got to stand up and take it back. 1174 01:09:00,344 --> 01:09:01,763 It'll never get done if they don't. 1175 01:09:02,513 --> 01:09:05,016 ♪ And I can see it's all about cash ♪ 1176 01:09:05,099 --> 01:09:07,894 ♪ And they got the nerve To hunt down my ass ♪ 1177 01:09:07,977 --> 01:09:09,688 ♪ And treat me like a criminal ♪ 1178 01:09:09,771 --> 01:09:12,440 ♪ Yeah, it is what it is And that's how it go ♪ 1179 01:09:12,523 --> 01:09:14,984 ♪ Get treated like a criminal If crime is all you know ♪ 1180 01:09:15,068 --> 01:09:17,654 ♪ Get greeted like a nigga If a nigga's all you show ♪ 1181 01:09:17,737 --> 01:09:20,073 ♪ A public enemy That's in the eye of the scope ♪ 1182 01:09:22,241 --> 01:09:23,701 [reporter] The night of his arrest, 1183 01:09:23,785 --> 01:09:27,038 Kalief Browder was walking home from a party with his friends in the Bronx, 1184 01:09:27,121 --> 01:09:28,748 when he was stopped by police. 1185 01:09:30,792 --> 01:09:36,089 Kalief was, um, charged with a crime, a really petty crime, 1186 01:09:36,172 --> 01:09:38,299 that it turns out he didn't commit. 1187 01:09:38,382 --> 01:09:40,677 Then they said, "We're gonna take you to the precinct, 1188 01:09:40,760 --> 01:09:42,512 and most likely, we'll let you go home." 1189 01:09:42,595 --> 01:09:45,181 But then, I never went home. 1190 01:09:45,264 --> 01:09:49,185 -They told you that you could post bail. -Yes, that's correct. 1191 01:09:49,268 --> 01:09:50,644 -$10,000. -Yes. 1192 01:09:50,729 --> 01:09:53,272 -And, of course... -I couldn't make that. 1193 01:09:53,356 --> 01:09:54,941 -Hmm. -My family couldn't pay it. 1194 01:09:55,024 --> 01:09:58,361 There are thousands of people in jails right this moment 1195 01:09:58,444 --> 01:10:00,780 that are sitting there for no other reason 1196 01:10:00,864 --> 01:10:03,282 than because they're too poor to get out! 1197 01:10:03,366 --> 01:10:05,576 We have a criminal justice system that treats you better 1198 01:10:05,659 --> 01:10:08,371 if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. 1199 01:10:08,454 --> 01:10:10,957 Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. 1200 01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:12,500 I think what most Americans think of, 1201 01:10:12,583 --> 01:10:16,004 'cause they've watched so many courtroom dramas and things like that, 1202 01:10:16,087 --> 01:10:19,132 they think that the criminal justice system is about judges and juries. 1203 01:10:19,215 --> 01:10:21,384 Well, that's really stopped being the case. 1204 01:10:21,467 --> 01:10:26,973 This system simply cannot exist if everyone decides to go to trial. 1205 01:10:27,056 --> 01:10:28,682 If everybody insisted on a trial, 1206 01:10:28,767 --> 01:10:30,226 the whole system would shut down. 1207 01:10:30,309 --> 01:10:32,603 What typically happens is the prosecutor says, 1208 01:10:32,686 --> 01:10:35,481 "You know, you can make a deal and we'll give you three years, 1209 01:10:35,564 --> 01:10:38,026 or you can go to trial and we'll get you 30. 1210 01:10:38,109 --> 01:10:40,069 So, you want to take that chance, feel free." 1211 01:10:40,611 --> 01:10:42,655 Nobody in the hood goes to trial. 1212 01:10:42,739 --> 01:10:46,075 [Rangel] 97% of those people who were locked up 1213 01:10:46,159 --> 01:10:47,368 have plea bargain. 1214 01:10:48,536 --> 01:10:53,750 And that is one of the worst violations of human rights 1215 01:10:53,833 --> 01:10:56,127 that you can imagine in the United States. 1216 01:10:56,210 --> 01:10:58,379 We have, in this country, people pleading guilty 1217 01:10:58,462 --> 01:10:59,881 to crimes they didn't commit, 1218 01:10:59,964 --> 01:11:03,843 just because the thought of going to jail for what the mandatory minimums are 1219 01:11:03,927 --> 01:11:05,219 is so excruciating. 1220 01:11:05,762 --> 01:11:08,681 [reporter] Kalief Browder decided, "I'm not gonna take the plea." 1221 01:11:08,765 --> 01:11:12,601 So, you had to choose between being in prison for up to 15 years 1222 01:11:12,685 --> 01:11:15,729 and going home right then by admitting you did a crime you didn't do. 1223 01:11:15,814 --> 01:11:17,023 I felt like I was done wrong. 1224 01:11:17,106 --> 01:11:20,485 I felt like something needed to be done. I felt like something needs to be said. 1225 01:11:20,568 --> 01:11:24,030 If I just cop out and say that I did it, nothing's gonna be done about it. 1226 01:11:24,113 --> 01:11:26,074 I didn't do it. No justice is served. 1227 01:11:26,157 --> 01:11:31,037 [Stevenson] What you're not taught is that if you exercise that right to a trial, 1228 01:11:31,120 --> 01:11:34,290 and you are convicted, we will punish you more. 1229 01:11:34,373 --> 01:11:36,625 The courts basically punished him 1230 01:11:36,709 --> 01:11:40,254 for having the audacity to not take a plea deal 1231 01:11:40,338 --> 01:11:41,881 and to want to take it to trial. 1232 01:11:41,964 --> 01:11:43,257 In that time, those three years 1233 01:11:43,341 --> 01:11:46,385 that he was sitting there and not being charged for anything, 1234 01:11:46,469 --> 01:11:50,139 that's when, um, the mental health issue started to deteriorate 1235 01:11:50,223 --> 01:11:52,100 and he started to get into fights. 1236 01:11:55,061 --> 01:11:57,230 [Browder] After a while, I kept hearing the same thing 1237 01:11:57,313 --> 01:11:58,898 from the whole three years, 1238 01:11:58,982 --> 01:12:02,443 and I just learned to cope with just being in there, 1239 01:12:02,526 --> 01:12:05,196 and that was rough. I already knew... 1240 01:12:05,947 --> 01:12:08,074 After a while, I just gave up hope. 1241 01:12:15,498 --> 01:12:19,418 Three years on Rikers Island, two of that in solitary confinement, 1242 01:12:19,502 --> 01:12:21,254 and he was a child, a baby. 1243 01:12:21,337 --> 01:12:23,422 You miss everything. Everything about being home. 1244 01:12:23,506 --> 01:12:27,385 The fresh air, your family, certain events. You want to be home. 1245 01:12:27,468 --> 01:12:29,929 When they give you an offer to go home right then and there, 1246 01:12:30,013 --> 01:12:32,640 it's like, "I want to go home," but then you know you didn't do it, 1247 01:12:32,723 --> 01:12:34,058 so you don't wanna plea, 1248 01:12:34,142 --> 01:12:36,352 take the plea and say that you do it, it's not right. 1249 01:12:42,275 --> 01:12:45,611 I was scared all day because I didn't know where it would come from. 1250 01:12:45,694 --> 01:12:48,156 I don't know where any harm would come. 1251 01:12:48,239 --> 01:12:50,199 [man] Kalief suffered through so many beatings, 1252 01:12:50,283 --> 01:12:53,327 both by the people he was locked up with and the guards, 1253 01:12:53,411 --> 01:12:56,664 he ended up attempting suicide on several occasions. 1254 01:12:58,207 --> 01:13:01,335 After almost three years in jail, waiting his trial, 1255 01:13:01,419 --> 01:13:04,172 they dropped all the charges, and he was set free. 1256 01:13:07,341 --> 01:13:10,094 [Senghor] He spent two years in an environment that 1257 01:13:10,178 --> 01:13:13,014 people have argued is designed to break you within 30 days. 1258 01:13:13,556 --> 01:13:16,684 I mean, I can't really tell you what's next, but... 1259 01:13:18,561 --> 01:13:20,271 This happens every day. 1260 01:13:21,605 --> 01:13:23,774 [man] Two years after his release from jail, 1261 01:13:23,857 --> 01:13:27,820 Kalief Browder hanged himself at his home in the Bronx. 1262 01:13:33,284 --> 01:13:35,369 He was 22 years old. 1263 01:13:50,093 --> 01:13:54,180 If I would've just pled guilty, then my story would've never been heard. 1264 01:13:54,263 --> 01:13:56,515 Nobody would've took the time to listen to me. 1265 01:13:56,599 --> 01:13:59,352 I'd have been just another criminal. 1266 01:14:01,770 --> 01:14:04,857 Prison industrial complex, the system, the industry, 1267 01:14:04,941 --> 01:14:08,027 it is a beast. 1268 01:14:08,111 --> 01:14:11,948 It eats black and Latino people 1269 01:14:12,031 --> 01:14:14,533 for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 1270 01:14:16,785 --> 01:14:19,538 [Stevenson] We didn't even think about who gets the jobs 1271 01:14:19,622 --> 01:14:21,332 of spending time with these folks. 1272 01:14:22,583 --> 01:14:24,961 Otherwise, we'd want social workers and teachers. 1273 01:14:25,044 --> 01:14:28,714 We'd want people with understanding of human behavior. 1274 01:14:30,841 --> 01:14:32,385 And we do the opposite. 1275 01:14:32,468 --> 01:14:33,886 [barking] 1276 01:14:36,805 --> 01:14:38,724 [indistinct shouting] 1277 01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:43,104 [Dolores Canales] You become numb. 1278 01:14:43,187 --> 01:14:46,149 I think that's what jail does to humans. 1279 01:14:46,232 --> 01:14:49,568 That immediate dehumanization and sensory deprivation 1280 01:14:49,652 --> 01:14:52,780 that nobody can really understand unless they live through it. 1281 01:14:55,491 --> 01:14:59,620 So the last 14 years, my son has not had any human contact, 1282 01:14:59,703 --> 01:15:03,041 other than to be handcuffed by an officer. 1283 01:15:03,124 --> 01:15:05,334 Uh, he doesn't even have a window in his cell, 1284 01:15:05,418 --> 01:15:07,836 and that's one thing that really disturbs me. 1285 01:15:07,920 --> 01:15:09,047 It troubles me. 1286 01:15:11,340 --> 01:15:12,633 I just couldn't believe it. 1287 01:15:12,716 --> 01:15:14,593 I couldn't believe 1288 01:15:14,677 --> 01:15:18,764 that we would even have such an architectural design in our country. 1289 01:15:18,847 --> 01:15:21,725 I never realized that there was prison cells built like that. 1290 01:15:21,809 --> 01:15:26,480 Human beings are not born to be locked up and encaged. 1291 01:15:26,564 --> 01:15:30,068 [Canales] Most people wouldn't keep their pets in the kind of conditions 1292 01:15:30,151 --> 01:15:31,652 that we keep people in. 1293 01:15:31,735 --> 01:15:35,114 Prisons and jails have become warehouses, in the sense that, um, 1294 01:15:35,198 --> 01:15:37,200 where we've moved as a society is that 1295 01:15:37,283 --> 01:15:41,245 it's not enough to just deprive you of your liberty. 1296 01:15:41,329 --> 01:15:43,872 Um, but we want to punish you, too. 1297 01:15:43,956 --> 01:15:47,210 Most of the society, um, 1298 01:15:47,293 --> 01:15:50,879 don't understand what it means to be behind those big gates 1299 01:15:50,963 --> 01:15:52,256 and those barb wires. 1300 01:15:55,884 --> 01:15:59,138 [Keene] Once somebody is arrested and convicted, they're gone. 1301 01:15:59,221 --> 01:16:01,307 Nobody particularly cares about them. 1302 01:16:02,225 --> 01:16:05,436 In many ways, the prison systems are sort of in the dark. 1303 01:16:05,519 --> 01:16:08,981 So it makes it a lot easier, you know, cognitively and emotionally. 1304 01:16:09,065 --> 01:16:11,442 It makes it a lot easier to say, "Send people there." 1305 01:16:13,069 --> 01:16:15,863 [Keene] If you look at the whole problem, you say, "What are we doing?" 1306 01:16:15,946 --> 01:16:19,158 We have too many laws locking too many people up for too many things, 1307 01:16:19,242 --> 01:16:22,953 giving them sentences that are too harsh, putting them in prison, 1308 01:16:23,037 --> 01:16:24,246 and while they're in prison, 1309 01:16:24,330 --> 01:16:26,832 doing very little, if anything, to rehabilitate them 1310 01:16:26,915 --> 01:16:29,502 so that they can reenter civil society when they get out. 1311 01:16:29,585 --> 01:16:32,004 And then when they get out, we shun them. 1312 01:16:32,088 --> 01:16:35,508 Over 40,000 collateral consequences 1313 01:16:35,591 --> 01:16:38,219 for people that come through our criminal justice system. 1314 01:16:38,302 --> 01:16:40,721 It's that question, "Have you been convicted of a felony?" 1315 01:16:40,804 --> 01:16:42,890 that appears on the job application. 1316 01:16:42,973 --> 01:16:45,643 In some cases, it can affect your access to student loans. 1317 01:16:45,726 --> 01:16:48,729 They can't get many business licenses, food stamps if they're hungry. 1318 01:16:48,812 --> 01:16:50,856 ...private rentals in regards to housing. 1319 01:16:50,939 --> 01:16:54,110 It's that question that appears on life insurance. 1320 01:16:54,193 --> 01:16:58,156 The scarlet letter follows you for the rest of your life in this country. 1321 01:16:59,240 --> 01:17:00,658 [Stevenson] In March of 2015, 1322 01:17:00,741 --> 01:17:03,619 we had tens of thousands of people come to Selma 1323 01:17:03,702 --> 01:17:05,163 to celebrate the 50th anniversary 1324 01:17:05,246 --> 01:17:07,415 of the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. 1325 01:17:07,498 --> 01:17:09,583 And very few of those people realized 1326 01:17:09,667 --> 01:17:13,254 that nearly 30% of the black male population of Alabama today 1327 01:17:13,337 --> 01:17:17,508 has permanently lost the right to vote as a result of a criminal conviction. 1328 01:17:19,260 --> 01:17:22,138 If you do something wrong, you should pay it back, 1329 01:17:22,221 --> 01:17:23,847 and then move forward with your life. 1330 01:17:23,931 --> 01:17:27,310 But yet, in America, there's absolutely zero closure. 1331 01:17:27,393 --> 01:17:32,731 We actually tell American citizens, when they pay back their debt to society, 1332 01:17:32,815 --> 01:17:35,526 their citizenship will still be denied from them. 1333 01:17:35,609 --> 01:17:39,863 So many aspects of the old Jim Crow are suddenly legal again 1334 01:17:39,947 --> 01:17:42,908 once you've been branded a felon. 1335 01:17:42,991 --> 01:17:47,580 And so it seems that in America, we haven't so much ended racial caste, 1336 01:17:47,663 --> 01:17:49,540 but simply redesigned it. 1337 01:17:50,499 --> 01:17:52,125 ♪ You act like the change ♪ 1338 01:17:52,210 --> 01:17:54,002 ♪ Tryna put me in chains ♪ 1339 01:17:54,086 --> 01:17:55,754 ♪ Don't act like you saving us ♪ 1340 01:17:55,838 --> 01:17:57,256 ♪ It's still the same ♪ 1341 01:17:57,340 --> 01:18:01,260 ♪ Man don't act like I made it up You blaming us ♪ 1342 01:18:01,344 --> 01:18:04,680 ♪ Let's keep it one hundred You gave the name to us ♪ 1343 01:18:04,763 --> 01:18:08,267 ♪ We still in chains We still in chains ♪ 1344 01:18:08,351 --> 01:18:09,977 ♪ You put the shame on us ♪ 1345 01:18:10,060 --> 01:18:11,437 We are now in an era 1346 01:18:11,520 --> 01:18:14,607 where Democrats and Republicans alike have decided 1347 01:18:14,690 --> 01:18:20,571 that it's not in their interest anymore to maintain the prison system as it is. 1348 01:18:20,654 --> 01:18:21,739 Now, all of a sudden, 1349 01:18:21,822 --> 01:18:24,408 Hillary Clinton is meeting with Black Lives Matter activists, 1350 01:18:24,492 --> 01:18:25,493 and talking about it. 1351 01:18:25,576 --> 01:18:31,957 It's time to change our approach and end the era of mass incarceration. 1352 01:18:32,040 --> 01:18:33,834 She's made a major address on it. 1353 01:18:33,917 --> 01:18:39,047 We will reform our criminal justice system from end to end 1354 01:18:39,131 --> 01:18:45,388 and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. 1355 01:18:45,471 --> 01:18:48,807 President Obama going to prison, you know, as the first sitting President 1356 01:18:48,891 --> 01:18:50,100 to ever visit a prison. 1357 01:18:50,183 --> 01:18:52,853 We've got an opportunity to make a difference at a time when 1358 01:18:52,936 --> 01:18:55,773 overall violent crime rates have been dropping 1359 01:18:55,856 --> 01:18:57,816 at the same time as incarcerations last year 1360 01:18:57,900 --> 01:18:59,943 dropped for the first time in 40 years. 1361 01:19:00,027 --> 01:19:04,240 And conservatives, who were always seen or understood within the narrative 1362 01:19:04,323 --> 01:19:07,743 as being the tough-on-crime ones, um, 1363 01:19:07,826 --> 01:19:10,746 have now embraced justice reform. 1364 01:19:10,829 --> 01:19:13,081 It's very, uh, man bites dog. 1365 01:19:13,165 --> 01:19:18,170 You see, Texas used to spend billions locking people up for minor offenses. 1366 01:19:18,754 --> 01:19:21,840 We shifted our focus to diversionary programs, 1367 01:19:21,924 --> 01:19:23,676 like community supervision. 1368 01:19:23,759 --> 01:19:25,010 We got to ask ourselves, 1369 01:19:25,093 --> 01:19:29,056 "Do we feel comfortable with people taking the lead of a conversation, 1370 01:19:29,139 --> 01:19:31,517 in a moment where it feels right politically?" 1371 01:19:31,600 --> 01:19:38,106 Historically, when one looks at efforts to create reforms, 1372 01:19:38,190 --> 01:19:43,446 they inevitably lead to more repression. 1373 01:19:43,529 --> 01:19:45,531 So, if we leave it up to them, what they're gonna do 1374 01:19:45,614 --> 01:19:47,283 is they're gonna tinker with the system. 1375 01:19:47,366 --> 01:19:49,535 They're not gonna do the change that we need to see 1376 01:19:49,618 --> 01:19:51,537 as a country to get us out of this mess. 1377 01:19:51,620 --> 01:19:53,789 And they're certainly not gonna go backwards 1378 01:19:53,872 --> 01:19:55,458 and fix the mess that they have made, 1379 01:19:55,541 --> 01:19:57,501 because they're not ready to make that admission. 1380 01:19:57,585 --> 01:20:01,464 But as a country, I don't think we've ever been ready to make the admission 1381 01:20:01,547 --> 01:20:04,592 that we have steamrolled through entire communities 1382 01:20:04,675 --> 01:20:06,469 and multiple generations 1383 01:20:06,552 --> 01:20:09,054 when you think about things like slavery and Jim Crow, 1384 01:20:09,138 --> 01:20:13,225 and all the other systems of oppression that have led us to where we are today. 1385 01:20:14,518 --> 01:20:16,729 So much fun! I love it, I love it! 1386 01:20:16,812 --> 01:20:19,064 -We havin' a good time? -[crowd cheering] 1387 01:20:19,147 --> 01:20:20,983 USA! USA! 1388 01:20:21,066 --> 01:20:25,153 [crowd chanting] USA! USA! USA! USA! 1389 01:20:25,237 --> 01:20:27,531 USA! USA! USA! USA! 1390 01:20:27,615 --> 01:20:30,534 Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! [spits] 1391 01:20:30,617 --> 01:20:33,495 [woman] Don't you dare do that! Don't you dare do that! 1392 01:20:33,579 --> 01:20:36,248 [Trump] Knock the crap out of 'em, would you? Seriously! 1393 01:20:36,332 --> 01:20:38,959 Get him out. Get him out of here! 1394 01:20:43,797 --> 01:20:46,091 In the good old days, this doesn't happen, 1395 01:20:46,174 --> 01:20:49,302 because they used to treat them very, very rough. 1396 01:20:49,387 --> 01:20:51,597 And when they protested once, 1397 01:20:51,680 --> 01:20:53,807 you know, they would not do it again so easily. 1398 01:20:53,891 --> 01:20:57,353 I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you. 1399 01:20:57,436 --> 01:20:59,062 [clamoring] 1400 01:21:02,024 --> 01:21:03,484 [Trump] I love the old days. 1401 01:21:03,567 --> 01:21:07,029 You know what they used to do to guys like that in a place like this? 1402 01:21:08,113 --> 01:21:10,991 They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. 1403 01:21:11,074 --> 01:21:13,118 [crowd cheering] 1404 01:21:13,201 --> 01:21:14,495 Yeah, it's true. 1405 01:21:14,578 --> 01:21:15,954 Knock the hell out of that mouth. 1406 01:21:16,038 --> 01:21:18,540 The next time we see him, we might have to kill him. 1407 01:21:19,542 --> 01:21:21,710 [Trump] In the good old days, 1408 01:21:21,794 --> 01:21:24,963 they'd rip him out of that seat so fast... 1409 01:21:28,509 --> 01:21:30,678 -Shut up. Shut the hell up. -[woman 1] No, fuck no. 1410 01:21:30,761 --> 01:21:32,095 No, I will not shut the hell up. 1411 01:21:32,179 --> 01:21:33,472 [man 1] Why are you even here? 1412 01:21:34,139 --> 01:21:35,724 [man 2] Get the fuck out of here, man. 1413 01:21:36,100 --> 01:21:37,393 Get out of here. 1414 01:21:39,186 --> 01:21:41,772 -[woman 2] Be respectful! -[man 3] I care about my son's future! 1415 01:21:41,855 --> 01:21:43,190 [indistinct yelling] 1416 01:21:44,608 --> 01:21:46,109 [Trump] In the good old days... 1417 01:21:47,152 --> 01:21:50,989 law enforcement acted a lot quicker than this. 1418 01:21:51,073 --> 01:21:52,616 [crowd cheering] 1419 01:21:52,700 --> 01:21:53,742 A lot quicker. 1420 01:21:54,910 --> 01:21:56,620 [Nixon] And we are going to enforce the law, 1421 01:21:56,704 --> 01:21:59,832 and Americans should remember that, if we're going to have law and order. 1422 01:21:59,915 --> 01:22:01,124 [crowd cheering] 1423 01:22:01,208 --> 01:22:06,922 I am... the law and order candidate. 1424 01:22:07,005 --> 01:22:08,674 [crowd cheering] 1425 01:22:09,842 --> 01:22:13,762 We thought... I mean, they called the end of slavery "jubilee." 1426 01:22:13,846 --> 01:22:15,597 We thought we were done then. 1427 01:22:15,806 --> 01:22:19,142 And then you had 100 years of Jim Crow, terror and lynching. 1428 01:22:20,352 --> 01:22:24,022 Dr. King, these guys come on the scene, Ella Jo Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, 1429 01:22:24,106 --> 01:22:26,191 we get the bills passed to vote, 1430 01:22:26,274 --> 01:22:28,026 and then they break out the handcuffs. 1431 01:22:28,110 --> 01:22:31,363 Label you felon, you can't vote or get a job. 1432 01:22:31,447 --> 01:22:35,534 So, we don't know what the next iteration of this will be, 1433 01:22:35,617 --> 01:22:38,036 but it will be. It will be. 1434 01:22:38,120 --> 01:22:39,788 And we will have to be vigilant. 1435 01:22:39,872 --> 01:22:42,290 ♪ I'mma prison cell Six by nine ♪ 1436 01:22:42,374 --> 01:22:45,586 ♪ Livin' hell, stone wall Metal bars for the gods in jail ♪ 1437 01:22:45,669 --> 01:22:48,380 ♪ My nickname, the can The slammer, the big house ♪ 1438 01:22:48,464 --> 01:22:51,299 ♪ I'm the place many fear 'Cause there's no way out ♪ 1439 01:23:03,646 --> 01:23:08,734 [Stevenson] The Bureau of Justice reported That one in three young, black males 1440 01:23:08,817 --> 01:23:11,361 is expected to go to jail or prison during his lifetime, 1441 01:23:11,444 --> 01:23:14,364 which is an unbelievably shocking statistic. 1442 01:23:22,289 --> 01:23:26,251 [reporter] Black men account for roughly 6.5% of the US population. 1443 01:23:26,334 --> 01:23:30,213 They make up 40.2% of the prison population. 1444 01:23:34,259 --> 01:23:37,763 We now have more African Americans under criminal supervision 1445 01:23:37,846 --> 01:23:39,890 than all the slaves back in the 1850s. 1446 01:23:39,973 --> 01:23:42,810 The prison industrial complex, uh... 1447 01:23:42,893 --> 01:23:47,480 relies historically on the inheritances of slavery. 1448 01:23:50,192 --> 01:23:51,860 [Senghor] The 13th Amendment says, 1449 01:23:51,944 --> 01:23:55,739 "No involuntary servitude except for those who have been duly convicted of a crime." 1450 01:23:55,823 --> 01:23:59,702 So once you've been convicted of a crime, you are in essence a slave of the state. 1451 01:24:01,203 --> 01:24:03,831 The stroke of a pen is not self-enforcing. 1452 01:24:03,914 --> 01:24:07,000 And so, while the 13th Amendment is hailed as this great milestone for freedom, 1453 01:24:07,084 --> 01:24:10,879 and abolitionists celebrate, and this is the end of a lifelong quest, 1454 01:24:10,963 --> 01:24:12,673 the reality is much more problematic. 1455 01:24:12,756 --> 01:24:16,051 Well, once that clause is inserted in there, it becomes a tool. 1456 01:24:16,134 --> 01:24:18,220 It's there. It's embedded in the structure. 1457 01:24:18,303 --> 01:24:22,808 And for those who seek to use this criminality clause as a tool, 1458 01:24:22,891 --> 01:24:25,602 it can become a pretty powerful one, because it's privileged. 1459 01:24:25,686 --> 01:24:28,355 It's in the constitution, it's the supreme law of the land. 1460 01:24:30,899 --> 01:24:33,110 Throughout American history, 1461 01:24:33,193 --> 01:24:35,988 African Americans have repeatedly been controlled 1462 01:24:36,071 --> 01:24:39,908 through systems of racial and social control that appear to die, 1463 01:24:39,992 --> 01:24:42,327 but then are reborn in new form, 1464 01:24:42,410 --> 01:24:44,997 tailored to the needs and constraints of the time. 1465 01:24:45,080 --> 01:24:46,999 You know, after the collapse of slavery, 1466 01:24:47,082 --> 01:24:50,252 a new system was born, convict leasing, 1467 01:24:50,335 --> 01:24:53,631 which was a new form of slavery. 1468 01:24:54,882 --> 01:24:59,261 And once convict leasing faded away, a new system was born, 1469 01:24:59,344 --> 01:25:00,804 a Jim Crow system, 1470 01:25:00,888 --> 01:25:06,268 that relegated African Americans to a permanent second-class status. 1471 01:25:07,686 --> 01:25:08,812 And here we are, 1472 01:25:08,896 --> 01:25:12,399 decades after the collapse of the old Jim Crow, 1473 01:25:12,482 --> 01:25:15,694 and a new system has been born again in America. 1474 01:25:15,778 --> 01:25:19,197 A system of mass incarceration that, once again, 1475 01:25:19,281 --> 01:25:21,825 strips millions of poor people, 1476 01:25:21,909 --> 01:25:24,161 overwhelmingly poor people of color, 1477 01:25:24,244 --> 01:25:27,915 of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement. 1478 01:25:27,998 --> 01:25:30,417 And so instead of talking about it, 1479 01:25:30,500 --> 01:25:32,085 we just tried to move on. 1480 01:25:32,169 --> 01:25:34,963 After the Civil Rights Act was passed and after the civil rights laws, 1481 01:25:35,047 --> 01:25:36,423 we tried to play it off. 1482 01:25:36,506 --> 01:25:37,716 Because we didn't deal with it, 1483 01:25:37,800 --> 01:25:40,385 that narrative of racial difference continued. 1484 01:25:40,468 --> 01:25:44,181 And it turned into this presumption of dangerousness and guilt 1485 01:25:44,264 --> 01:25:47,267 that follows every black and brown person wherever they are. 1486 01:25:47,350 --> 01:25:49,561 -[siren wailing] -[gun firing] 1487 01:25:51,063 --> 01:25:53,899 [officer 1 on radio] You need to get out of the street immediately. 1488 01:25:53,982 --> 01:25:55,358 [officer 2] Get out of the way! 1489 01:25:55,442 --> 01:25:58,111 -[gunshot] -[protestors shouting] 1490 01:25:58,195 --> 01:25:59,988 [officer 3] This is St. Louis County Police. 1491 01:26:00,072 --> 01:26:01,448 Stay off the roadway. 1492 01:26:01,949 --> 01:26:05,243 [Melina Abdullah] Ferguson was not simply about Mike Brown. 1493 01:26:05,327 --> 01:26:11,166 It was also this pattern of mass criminalization and mass incarceration. 1494 01:26:12,167 --> 01:26:14,544 -[officer] Back off. Back off. -[protesters shouting] 1495 01:26:15,170 --> 01:26:18,674 There was an average of three warrants per household in Ferguson. 1496 01:26:19,800 --> 01:26:22,678 And so people rose up because they understood 1497 01:26:22,761 --> 01:26:27,515 that they were also enemies of the state, seen as enemies of the state. 1498 01:26:29,517 --> 01:26:34,272 The communities in which black people live really become occupied territories, 1499 01:26:34,356 --> 01:26:40,112 and black people have become seen as, um, enemy combatants, right, 1500 01:26:40,195 --> 01:26:42,072 who don't have any rights, 1501 01:26:42,155 --> 01:26:45,658 and who can be stopped and frisked 1502 01:26:45,743 --> 01:26:48,996 and, you know, arrested and detained and questioned 1503 01:26:49,079 --> 01:26:50,706 and killed with impunity. 1504 01:26:52,040 --> 01:26:54,209 -[protestors shouting] -[gun firing] 1505 01:26:57,004 --> 01:26:59,089 [Cobb] If we were to look at 1506 01:26:59,172 --> 01:27:03,676 the larger-scale riots that we know of in, you know, our recent history, 1507 01:27:03,761 --> 01:27:05,303 from Rodney King, 1508 01:27:05,387 --> 01:27:07,765 to the Detroit riot in 1967, 1509 01:27:07,848 --> 01:27:09,766 the Newark riot in 1967, 1510 01:27:09,850 --> 01:27:13,437 Harlem riot in 1964, Watts in 1965. 1511 01:27:13,520 --> 01:27:16,940 Every single one of those riots was a result of police brutality. 1512 01:27:17,024 --> 01:27:18,025 That is the common thread. 1513 01:27:18,108 --> 01:27:21,737 -Fight back! Fight back! -Fist up! Fist up! 1514 01:27:21,820 --> 01:27:25,907 [Gannon] It would be a mistake to say, as many do in the current context, 1515 01:27:25,991 --> 01:27:28,827 that if you're against the police, then you're against law and order. 1516 01:27:28,910 --> 01:27:32,247 These are hardworking civil servants putting their lives on the line every day. 1517 01:27:32,330 --> 01:27:33,331 And that's true. 1518 01:27:33,415 --> 01:27:37,669 People who join the police do so, you know, to do these sorts of things. 1519 01:27:38,670 --> 01:27:44,092 But if you dismiss black complaints of mistreatment by police 1520 01:27:44,176 --> 01:27:46,344 as being completely rooted in our modern context, 1521 01:27:46,428 --> 01:27:48,055 then you're missing the point completely. 1522 01:27:48,138 --> 01:27:50,348 There has never been a period in our history 1523 01:27:50,432 --> 01:27:56,229 where the law and order branch of the state has not operated against 1524 01:27:56,313 --> 01:27:59,817 the freedoms, the liberties, the options, the choices 1525 01:27:59,900 --> 01:28:02,903 that have been available for the black community, generally speaking. 1526 01:28:02,986 --> 01:28:07,825 And to ignore that racial heritage, to ignore that historical context, 1527 01:28:07,908 --> 01:28:09,868 means that you can't have an informed debate 1528 01:28:09,952 --> 01:28:13,288 about the current state of blacks and police relationship today, 1529 01:28:13,371 --> 01:28:15,248 'cause this didn't just appear out of nothing. 1530 01:28:15,332 --> 01:28:18,376 This is the product of a centuries-long historical process. 1531 01:28:18,460 --> 01:28:22,047 And to not reckon with that is to shut off solutions. 1532 01:28:22,130 --> 01:28:25,675 We may have lost the sheets of the Ku Klux Klan, 1533 01:28:25,758 --> 01:28:28,887 but, clearly, when you see black kids being shot down... 1534 01:28:29,471 --> 01:28:32,808 then, obviously, we didn't cut out this cancer. 1535 01:28:34,852 --> 01:28:36,228 For many of us, you know, 1536 01:28:36,311 --> 01:28:39,147 [stammers] whose families lived through this, 1537 01:28:39,231 --> 01:28:41,691 who are extensions of this kind of oppression, 1538 01:28:41,774 --> 01:28:44,652 we don't need to see pictures to understand what's going on. 1539 01:28:44,736 --> 01:28:47,865 It's really to kind of, like, speak to the masses 1540 01:28:47,948 --> 01:28:50,325 who have been ignoring this for the majority of their life. 1541 01:28:50,408 --> 01:28:53,411 But I also think there's trouble of just showing, 1542 01:28:53,495 --> 01:28:56,414 you know, black bodies as dead bodies, too. 1543 01:28:56,498 --> 01:28:59,751 Too much of anything becomes unhealthy, unuseful. 1544 01:29:00,961 --> 01:29:05,298 I think they need to be seen, if the family is okay with it. 1545 01:29:05,841 --> 01:29:09,761 It wasn't until things were made visual in the civil rights movement, 1546 01:29:09,845 --> 01:29:12,555 that we really saw, uh, 1547 01:29:12,639 --> 01:29:16,518 folks come out and being shocked into movement. 1548 01:29:16,601 --> 01:29:19,646 You have to shock people into paying attention. 1549 01:29:19,729 --> 01:29:23,566 But there's a kind of historical trajectory that we can trace here, um, 1550 01:29:23,650 --> 01:29:25,818 through media and technology. 1551 01:29:25,903 --> 01:29:29,156 We went back to, um, the slavery era, 1552 01:29:29,239 --> 01:29:32,450 when people were writing autobiographies or slave narratives. 1553 01:29:34,202 --> 01:29:35,828 Later in the 19th century, 1554 01:29:35,913 --> 01:29:37,455 when people began to use photographs 1555 01:29:37,539 --> 01:29:39,374 and they showed images. 1556 01:29:40,500 --> 01:29:43,420 There's a famous image of slave Gordon and his back, 1557 01:29:43,503 --> 01:29:46,839 and you can see just this kind of lattice of scar tissue 1558 01:29:46,924 --> 01:29:50,552 that is evidence of the whippings that he received. 1559 01:29:50,635 --> 01:29:54,681 Or the images of lynchings, which white people produced. 1560 01:29:56,599 --> 01:29:59,477 [Abdullah] The murder of Emmett Till was really thought of as being 1561 01:29:59,561 --> 01:30:02,898 one of the primary catalysts for the civil rights movement. 1562 01:30:04,024 --> 01:30:06,109 The willingness of his mother 1563 01:30:06,193 --> 01:30:09,612 to have an open-casket funeral. 1564 01:30:12,365 --> 01:30:15,994 Hundreds and hundreds of black folks filed past 1565 01:30:16,078 --> 01:30:18,205 and see this young boy 1566 01:30:18,288 --> 01:30:21,458 who had been killed by white supremacists in the South. 1567 01:30:23,376 --> 01:30:26,964 To publish those photographs in black publications 1568 01:30:27,047 --> 01:30:31,801 so the entire black world, like our Facebook or our Twitter now, right? 1569 01:30:31,884 --> 01:30:35,722 So that the whole black world could see what had happened. 1570 01:30:35,805 --> 01:30:39,934 In the 1950s, Dr. King and the civil rights movement 1571 01:30:40,018 --> 01:30:41,269 used television in this way. 1572 01:30:41,353 --> 01:30:43,480 "Look, this is what segregation looks like. 1573 01:30:43,563 --> 01:30:47,484 These are dogs attacking children. These are people being fire hosed." 1574 01:30:49,402 --> 01:30:54,241 Searching for the medium of technology, that will confirm your experience 1575 01:30:54,324 --> 01:30:57,119 such that your basic humanity can be recognized. 1576 01:30:57,202 --> 01:31:00,330 The difference now is somebody can hold up one of these, 1577 01:31:00,413 --> 01:31:01,748 get what's going on. 1578 01:31:01,831 --> 01:31:06,336 They can put it on YouTube, and the whole world has to deal with it. 1579 01:31:06,419 --> 01:31:07,629 That's what's new. 1580 01:31:07,712 --> 01:31:10,007 It's not the protest. It's not the brutality. 1581 01:31:10,090 --> 01:31:12,509 It's the fact that we can force a conversation about it. 1582 01:31:12,592 --> 01:31:16,596 We have been consistently been murdered as a result of police aggression. 1583 01:31:16,679 --> 01:31:20,600 They generally would excuse it by calling us criminals. 1584 01:31:21,268 --> 01:31:23,270 When they was killing Oscar Grant... 1585 01:31:23,353 --> 01:31:25,605 -[gunshot] -[crowd exclaiming] 1586 01:31:30,443 --> 01:31:32,279 When they got to Eric Garner... 1587 01:31:32,862 --> 01:31:34,531 [Garner] I can't breathe. 1588 01:31:34,614 --> 01:31:35,865 I can't breathe. 1589 01:31:35,948 --> 01:31:38,618 I can't breathe. I can't breathe. 1590 01:31:38,701 --> 01:31:40,078 I can't breathe. 1591 01:31:40,162 --> 01:31:42,539 I can't breathe. I can't breathe. 1592 01:31:42,622 --> 01:31:44,582 [Turner] Everyone pointed out that he was saying, 1593 01:31:44,666 --> 01:31:46,418 "I can't breathe. I can't breathe." 1594 01:31:46,501 --> 01:31:48,211 But the sentences before that were, 1595 01:31:48,295 --> 01:31:50,505 "Why are you always stopping me? 1596 01:31:50,588 --> 01:31:55,468 Why is it, day in and day out, week in and week out, you're stopping me?" 1597 01:31:55,552 --> 01:31:58,930 And that, I think, is hugely important. 1598 01:31:59,013 --> 01:32:02,975 When we think about the children who were killed at the hands of the state, 1599 01:32:03,060 --> 01:32:06,313 I think about Tamir Rice at 12 years old, 1600 01:32:06,396 --> 01:32:09,941 and the way that he was killed, you know, it hits my heart. 1601 01:32:10,900 --> 01:32:14,154 [officer] Go ahead and take your seat belt off. Stop. Stop! 1602 01:32:14,237 --> 01:32:15,488 [gunshot] 1603 01:32:22,995 --> 01:32:24,164 [man] You good? 1604 01:32:24,247 --> 01:32:25,998 [rapid beeping] 1605 01:32:26,958 --> 01:32:28,876 [man 1 shouting indistinctly] 1606 01:32:30,128 --> 01:32:32,672 -[officer 1] Roll on your stomach. Now! -[woman] Stop fighting! 1607 01:32:33,923 --> 01:32:35,133 [gunshot] 1608 01:32:35,217 --> 01:32:38,345 -[officer 1] I'm sorry. I'm sorry. -[Harris exclaims] Oh, shit. 1609 01:32:38,428 --> 01:32:41,306 He shot me, man. I was shot. 1610 01:32:41,389 --> 01:32:43,016 [officer 2] He didn't do shit. You didn't. 1611 01:32:43,099 --> 01:32:45,685 -[Harris groans] I'm losing breath. -[officer 2] Fuck your breath. 1612 01:32:45,768 --> 01:32:47,437 [woman] Stay with me. 1613 01:32:47,520 --> 01:32:50,773 We got pulled over for a busted taillight in the back. 1614 01:33:17,342 --> 01:33:18,968 [Alexander] Police violence, 1615 01:33:19,051 --> 01:33:21,888 that isn't the problem in and of itself. 1616 01:33:21,971 --> 01:33:26,017 It's reflection of a much larger, brutal system 1617 01:33:26,100 --> 01:33:29,604 of racial and social control known as mass incarceration, 1618 01:33:29,687 --> 01:33:33,608 which authorizes this kind of police violence. 1619 01:33:33,691 --> 01:33:36,653 That's why, for me, the brilliance of Black Lives Matter... 1620 01:33:36,736 --> 01:33:41,574 They have a distributed leadership model. You can't find their address. 1621 01:33:41,658 --> 01:33:44,661 I mean, Black Lives Matter is not a stoppable phenomenon, 1622 01:33:44,744 --> 01:33:46,454 by a bullet or anything else. 1623 01:33:46,538 --> 01:33:48,415 And so, there's hope there because of that. 1624 01:33:49,081 --> 01:33:51,543 Having people truly understand 1625 01:33:51,626 --> 01:33:54,379 that when black lives matter, 1626 01:33:55,046 --> 01:33:57,006 everybody's life matters, 1627 01:33:57,089 --> 01:34:02,011 including every single person that enters this criminal justice system 1628 01:34:02,094 --> 01:34:04,096 and this prison industrial complex. 1629 01:34:04,181 --> 01:34:07,058 It's not just even about only black lives, right? 1630 01:34:07,141 --> 01:34:11,646 It's about changing the way this country understands human dignity. 1631 01:34:24,951 --> 01:34:28,580 [Cobb] That's what, really, this Black Lives Matter moment is about. 1632 01:34:28,663 --> 01:34:33,125 This question of whose life do we recognize as valuable? 1633 01:34:45,513 --> 01:34:48,558 [Jones] The opposite of criminalization is humanization. 1634 01:34:48,641 --> 01:34:51,477 That's the one thing I hope that people will understand. 1635 01:34:53,020 --> 01:34:56,608 It's about rehumanizing us, as a people, 1636 01:34:56,691 --> 01:34:59,652 and us, right, as a people, all of us. 1637 01:35:08,245 --> 01:35:11,414 The system of mass incarceration has grown, 1638 01:35:11,498 --> 01:35:14,417 and sprawled and developed an appetite 1639 01:35:14,501 --> 01:35:19,088 that is gobbling up people in communities of all colors. 1640 01:35:19,171 --> 01:35:20,757 But if it hadn't been for the fact 1641 01:35:20,840 --> 01:35:25,553 that it began with a group of people defined by race, 1642 01:35:25,637 --> 01:35:28,848 that we as a nation have learned not to care about, 1643 01:35:28,931 --> 01:35:33,603 we wouldn't be talking about two million people behind bars today. 1644 01:35:33,686 --> 01:35:34,729 People say all the time, 1645 01:35:34,812 --> 01:35:37,148 "I don't understand how people could've tolerated slavery. 1646 01:35:37,231 --> 01:35:39,359 How could they have made peace with that? 1647 01:35:39,442 --> 01:35:43,280 How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that? 1648 01:35:43,363 --> 01:35:47,074 How did people make sense of the segregation, 1649 01:35:47,158 --> 01:35:50,286 this white and colored-only drinking... That's so crazy. 1650 01:35:50,370 --> 01:35:54,374 If I was living at that time, I would have never tolerated anything like that." 1651 01:35:54,457 --> 01:35:57,752 And the truth is, we are living at this time, and we are tolerating it. 1652 01:36:04,258 --> 01:36:06,678 ♪ Southern leaves Southern trees we hung from ♪ 1653 01:36:06,761 --> 01:36:09,347 ♪ Barren souls Heroic songs unsung ♪ 1654 01:36:09,431 --> 01:36:11,766 ♪ Forgive them, Father They know this knot is undone ♪ 1655 01:36:11,849 --> 01:36:14,268 ♪ Tied with the rope That my grandmother dyed ♪ 1656 01:36:14,352 --> 01:36:17,021 ♪ Pride of the pilgrims Affect lives of millions ♪ 1657 01:36:17,104 --> 01:36:19,607 ♪ Since slave day Separatin' fathers from children ♪ 1658 01:36:19,691 --> 01:36:22,902 ♪ Institution ain't just a building But a method ♪ 1659 01:36:22,985 --> 01:36:24,779 ♪ Of having black and brown bodies Fill them ♪ 1660 01:36:24,862 --> 01:36:27,407 ♪ We ain't seen As human beings with feelings ♪ 1661 01:36:27,490 --> 01:36:29,909 ♪ Will the US ever be us, Lord willing? ♪ 1662 01:36:29,992 --> 01:36:32,454 ♪ For now we know the new Jim Crow ♪ 1663 01:36:32,537 --> 01:36:35,122 ♪ The stop search and arrest our souls ♪ 1664 01:36:35,206 --> 01:36:38,710 ♪ Police and policies Patrol philosophies of control ♪ 1665 01:36:38,793 --> 01:36:40,462 ♪ A cruel hand taking hold ♪ 1666 01:36:40,545 --> 01:36:43,047 ♪ We let go to free them So we can free us ♪ 1667 01:36:43,130 --> 01:36:45,717 ♪ America's moment to come to Jesus ♪ 1668 01:36:45,800 --> 01:36:48,177 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Freedom ♪ 1669 01:36:48,260 --> 01:36:50,763 ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1670 01:36:50,847 --> 01:36:53,350 ♪ Hold on ♪ 1671 01:36:53,433 --> 01:36:56,018 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1672 01:36:56,102 --> 01:36:58,563 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Freedom ♪ 1673 01:36:58,646 --> 01:37:01,190 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1674 01:37:01,273 --> 01:37:03,818 ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1675 01:37:03,901 --> 01:37:06,613 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1676 01:37:06,696 --> 01:37:09,115 ♪ The cage bird sings For freedom in the ring ♪ 1677 01:37:09,198 --> 01:37:11,743 ♪ Black bodies bein' lost In the American Dream ♪ 1678 01:37:11,826 --> 01:37:14,286 ♪ Blood of black being a pastoral scene ♪ 1679 01:37:14,371 --> 01:37:16,998 ♪ Slavery's still alive Check Amendment 13 ♪ 1680 01:37:17,081 --> 01:37:19,584 ♪ Now whips and chains are subliminal ♪ 1681 01:37:19,667 --> 01:37:22,211 ♪ Instead of nigga They use the word criminal ♪ 1682 01:37:22,294 --> 01:37:24,839 ♪ Sweet land of liberty Incarcerated country ♪ 1683 01:37:24,922 --> 01:37:27,341 ♪ Shot me with your Reagan And now you wanna Trump me ♪ 1684 01:37:27,425 --> 01:37:29,927 ♪ Prison is a business America's the company ♪ 1685 01:37:30,011 --> 01:37:32,597 ♪ Investing in injustice, fear And long suffering ♪ 1686 01:37:32,680 --> 01:37:35,182 ♪ We're staring in the face Of hate again ♪ 1687 01:37:35,266 --> 01:37:37,727 ♪ The same hate they say Will make America great again ♪ 1688 01:37:37,810 --> 01:37:40,354 ♪ No consolation prize For the dehumanized ♪ 1689 01:37:40,438 --> 01:37:42,982 ♪ For America to rise Is a matter of black lives ♪ 1690 01:37:43,065 --> 01:37:45,610 ♪ And we gonna free them So we can free us ♪ 1691 01:37:45,693 --> 01:37:48,279 ♪ America's moment to come to Jesus ♪ 1692 01:37:48,362 --> 01:37:50,865 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Freedom ♪ 1693 01:37:50,948 --> 01:37:53,493 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ 1694 01:37:53,576 --> 01:37:56,078 ♪ Hold on ♪ 1695 01:37:56,162 --> 01:37:58,665 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1696 01:37:58,748 --> 01:38:01,333 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Freedom ♪ 1697 01:38:01,418 --> 01:38:03,836 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1698 01:38:03,920 --> 01:38:06,423 ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1699 01:38:06,506 --> 01:38:09,133 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1700 01:38:09,216 --> 01:38:11,761 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1701 01:38:11,844 --> 01:38:14,388 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom ♪ 1702 01:38:14,472 --> 01:38:16,974 ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1703 01:38:17,058 --> 01:38:19,602 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1704 01:38:19,686 --> 01:38:22,188 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Freedom ♪ 1705 01:38:22,271 --> 01:38:24,649 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1706 01:38:24,732 --> 01:38:27,401 ♪ Hold on ♪ 1707 01:38:27,485 --> 01:38:29,987 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1708 01:38:30,071 --> 01:38:32,657 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1709 01:38:32,740 --> 01:38:35,242 ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1710 01:38:35,326 --> 01:38:37,829 ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1711 01:38:37,912 --> 01:38:40,540 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1712 01:38:40,623 --> 01:38:43,042 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1713 01:38:43,125 --> 01:38:45,587 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1714 01:38:45,670 --> 01:38:48,172 ♪ Hold on ♪ 1715 01:38:48,255 --> 01:38:50,925 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1716 01:38:51,008 --> 01:38:53,344 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1717 01:38:53,427 --> 01:38:56,055 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1718 01:38:56,138 --> 01:38:58,558 ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1719 01:38:58,641 --> 01:39:01,143 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1720 01:39:01,227 --> 01:39:03,730 ♪ Freedom ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1721 01:39:03,813 --> 01:39:06,398 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1722 01:39:06,483 --> 01:39:09,151 ♪ Hold on ♪ 1723 01:39:09,235 --> 01:39:11,738 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1724 01:39:11,821 --> 01:39:14,281 ♪ Freedom ♪ 1725 01:39:14,365 --> 01:39:16,951 ♪ Freedom come ♪ ♪ Freedom come ♪ 1726 01:39:17,034 --> 01:39:19,537 ♪ Hold on ♪ ♪ Hold on ♪ 1727 01:39:19,621 --> 01:39:25,251 ♪ Won't be long ♪ ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1728 01:39:29,046 --> 01:39:31,549 ♪ Won't be long ♪ 1729 01:39:31,633 --> 01:39:38,180 ♪ Oh, freedom ♪ 1730 01:39:39,390 --> 01:39:41,518 ♪ Won't be long ♪