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So let's look at the statistics.

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The United States is home
to 5% of the world's population...

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but 25% of the world's prisoners.

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Think about that.

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A little country with 5%
of the world's population

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having 25% of the world's prisoners?

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One out of four?

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One out of four human beings
with their hands on bars, shackled,

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in the world are locked up here,
in the land of the free.

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We had a prison population of 300,000
in 1972.

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Today, we have a prison population
of 2.3 million.

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The United States now has the highest rate
of incarceration in the world.

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So, you see, now suddenly
they're in an awakening that,

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"Oh, perhaps we need to downsize
our prison system.

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It's gotten too expensive.
It's gotten out of hand."

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Um, but the very folks
who often express so much concern,

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uh, about the cost
and the expanse of the system

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are often very unwilling
to talk in any serious way

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about remedying the harm
that has been done.

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History is not just
stuff that happens by accident.

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We are the products of the history
that our ancestors chose, if we're white.

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If we are black, we are products
of the history that our ancestors

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most likely did not choose.

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Yet here we all are together,
the products of that set of choices.

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And we have to understand that
in order to escape from it.

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The 13th Amendment to the Constitution

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makes it unconstitutional
for someone to be held as a slave.

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In other words, it grants freedom...

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to all Americans.

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There are exceptions, including criminals.

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There's a clause, a loophole.

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If you have that
in the structure,

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in this constitutional language,

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then it's there to be used as a tool

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for whichever purposes
one wants to use it.

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One of the things
to bear in mind is that

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when we think about slavery,
it was an economic system.

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And the demise of slavery
at the end of the Civil War

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left the Southern economy in tatters.
Uh, and so this presented a big question.

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There are four million people
who were formerly property,

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and they were formerly
kind of the integral part

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of the economic production system
in the South.

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And now those people are free.

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And so what do you do with these people?

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How do you rebuild your economy?

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The 13th Amendment loophole
was immediately exploited.

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After the Civil War,
African Americans were arrested en masse.

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It was our nation's first prison boom.

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You were basically a slave again.
The 13th Amendment says that

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"Except for criminals,
everybody else is free."

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Well, now if you're criminalized,
that doesn't apply to you.

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They were arrested
for extremely minor crimes,

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like loitering or vagrancy.

54
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And they had to provide labor

55
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to rebuild the economy
of the South after the Civil War.

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What you got after that
was a rapid transition

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to a kind of mythology
of black criminality.

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Go back and, you know, read the rhetoric
that people used then.

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They would say that the Negro
was out of control,

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that there's a threat of violence
to white women.

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So the same sort of image
that we had of Uncle Remus

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and these genial, kind of, black figures

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was replaced by this rapacious,
uh, menacing, Negro male evil

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that had to be banished.

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Birth of a Nation was

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just a profoundly important
cultural event.

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It's the first major blockbuster film,

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hailed for both its artistic achievement
and for its political commentary.

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And when it was released,
it had this rapturous response.

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You know, there were lines everywhere
that it was being shown.

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Birth of a Nation confirmed the story

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that many whites wanted to tell
about the Civil War and its aftermath.

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To erase defeat and to take out of it
sort of a martyrdom.

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Woodrow Wilson, the sitting president,
had a private screening

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of it in the White House. He calls it,
"History written with lightning."

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And every image you see of a black person

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is a demeaned, animal-like image.

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Cannibalistic, animalistic.

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The image of the African American male.

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There's a famous scene
where a woman throws herself off a cliff

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rather than be raped
by a black male criminal.

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In the film, you see black people
being a threat to white women.

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All the myths of black men as rapists
was ultimately stemmed by the reality

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that the white political elite
and the business establishment

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needed black bodies working.

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What we overlook
about Birth of a Nation

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is that it was also
a tremendously accurate prediction

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of the way in which race
would operate in the United States.

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Birth of a Nation
was almost directly responsible

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for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.

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It had received this romantic,
glowing, heroic portrait.

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The Klan never had the ritual
of burning the cross.

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That was something
that D.W. Griffith came up with

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because he thought
that it was a great cinematic image.

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So it was literally
an instance of life imitating art.

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The ripples emanate far out

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from just the simple fact
that it's a movie

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in the early motion picture age.

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With the tremendous
burst of popularity

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that the Ku Klux Klan
had as a result of Birth of a Nation

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came another wave of terrorism.

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We had lynchings
between Reconstruction and World War II.

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Thousands of African Americans
murdered by mobs

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under the idea
that they had done something criminal.

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At the National Democratic
Convention in New York in 1924,

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it is estimated that at least
350 delegates were Klansmen.

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The demographic geography
of this country was shaped by that era.

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Now we have African Americans
in Los Angeles,

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in Oakland, and Chicago, and Cleveland,
Detroit, Boston, New York.

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And very few people appreciate that
the African Americans in those communities

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did not go there as immigrants
looking for new economic opportunities.

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They went there as refugees from terror.

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We didn't just land in Oakland,
in LA, in Compton,

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in Harlem, in Brownsville in 2015.

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This is generational...
generational trauma.

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The letters "KKK"
were carved with a penknife

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on the chest and stomach
of this man in Houston, Texas,

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after he had been hanged by his knees
from an oak tree and flogged with a chain.

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The Chicago Negro boy,
Emmett Till, is alleged

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to have paid unwelcome attention
to Roy Bryant's most attractive wife.

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And then
when it became unacceptable

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to engage in that kind of open terrorism,

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then it shifted to something more legal.

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Segregation. Jim Crow.

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Laws were passed
that relegated African Americans

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to a permanent second-class status.

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These things really begin to live out
the prophecy that Griffith was making

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about the way that race operates.

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And this fear of crime
is central to all of this.

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Every time you saw a sign
that said "white and colored,"

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every time you had to deal
with the indignation

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of being told you can't go
through the front door.

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Every day you weren't allowed to vote,

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weren't allowed to go to school,

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you were bearing a burden
that was injurious.

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Civil rights activists
began to see the necessity

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of building not just
a civil rights movement,

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but a human rights movement.

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And I think we should start now preparing

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for the inevitable.

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Yeah!

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And let us,
when that moment comes...

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go into the situations that we confront

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with a great deal of dignity,
sanity and reasonableness.

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They want to throw
white children and colored children

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into the melting pot of integration,

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through out of which
will come a conglomerated,

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mulatto, mongrel class of people.

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Both races will be destroyed
in such a movement.

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We just got a report here
on this end that the students are in.

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Negroes were trying
to integrate the bathing beaches.

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And the Florida Advisory Committee
to the US Civil Rights Commission

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warned that the city was becoming
a racial superbomb with a short fuse.

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Civil rights activists
began to be portrayed in the media

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and among, you know,
many politicians as criminals.

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People who are deliberately
violating the law,

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segregation laws
that existed in the South.

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For years now,
I have heard the word "wait."

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It rings in the ear of every Negro
with piercing familiarity.

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This wait has almost always meant never.

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Justice too long delayed
is justice denied.

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I think that one of the most brilliant
tactics of the civil rights movement

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was its transformation
of the notion of criminality.

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Because for the first time,
being arrested was a noble thing.

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Being arrested by white people
was your worst nightmare.

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Still is, uh, for many African Americans.

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So what'd they do?

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They voluntarily defined a movement
around getting arrested.

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They turned it on its head.

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If you looked at the history

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of black people's
various struggles in this country,

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the connecting theme
is the attempt to be understood

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as full, complicated human beings.

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We are something other than
this, uh, visceral image of criminality

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and menace and threat
to which people associate with us.

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We're willing to be beaten for democracy,
and you misuse democracy in the street.

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Let us lay aside irrelevant differences...

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and make our nation whole.

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The Civil Rights Act
and the Voting Rights Act said,

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"Finally, we admit it.

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Though slavery ended in December 1865...

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we took away these people's rights,
and now we're gonna fix it."

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For the first time,

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you know, promise of equal justice
becomes at least a possibility.

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Their cause must be our cause, too.

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Unfortunately,
at the very same time

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that the civil rights movement
was gaining steam,

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crime rates were beginning to rise
in this country.

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Crime was increasing
in the baby boom generation

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that had emerged
immediately after World War II.

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Now they were adults.

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So, just through sheer demographic change,
we had an increase in the amount of crime.

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And became very easy
for politicians then to say,

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um, that the civil rights movement itself
was contributing to rising crime rates,

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and that if we were to give
the Negroes their freedom, um,

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then we would be repaid,
as a nation, with crime.

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The prison population
in the United States was largely flat

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throughout most of the 20th century.

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It didn't go up a lot.
It didn't come down a lot.

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But that changed in the 1970s.

201
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And in the 1970s, we began an era

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which has been defined by this term,
"mass incarceration."

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00:14:14,428 --> 00:14:18,515
This is a nation of laws,
and as Abraham Lincoln has said,

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"No one is above the law.
No one is below the law."

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And we're going to enforce the law

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00:14:23,980 --> 00:14:27,691
and Americans should remember that,
if we're going to have law and order.

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00:14:28,734 --> 00:14:32,864
♪ Breaking rocks out here
On the chain gang ♪

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00:14:32,947 --> 00:14:36,783
♪ Breaking rocks and serving my time ♪

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00:14:36,868 --> 00:14:40,579
♪ Breaking rocks out here
On the chain gang ♪

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00:14:40,662 --> 00:14:45,167
♪ Because I've been convicted of crime ♪

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00:14:45,251 --> 00:14:48,587
♪ Hold it steady right there
While I hit it ♪

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00:14:48,670 --> 00:14:53,843
Each moment in history
is a fleeting time, precious and unique.

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00:14:53,926 --> 00:14:56,971
But some stand out
as moments of beginning...

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00:14:57,930 --> 00:15:03,978
in which courses are set
that shape decades or centuries.

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00:15:04,061 --> 00:15:06,563
This can be such a moment.

216
00:15:08,148 --> 00:15:13,279
It's with the Nixon era,
and the law and order period

217
00:15:13,362 --> 00:15:16,866
when crime begins to stand in for race.

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00:15:16,949 --> 00:15:20,119
If there is one area
where the word "war" is appropriate,

219
00:15:20,202 --> 00:15:22,288
it is in the fight against crime.

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00:15:22,371 --> 00:15:24,790
Part of what he talked about
was a war on crime.

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00:15:24,874 --> 00:15:27,418
But that was one of those code words,

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00:15:27,501 --> 00:15:29,921
what we might call
"dog-whistle politics" now,

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which really was referring to

224
00:15:31,755 --> 00:15:35,051
the black political movements of the day,
Black Power, Black Panthers,

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the antiwar movement,

226
00:15:36,468 --> 00:15:39,013
the movements for women's
and gay liberation at that time,

227
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which Nixon felt compelled
to fight back against.

228
00:15:42,141 --> 00:15:46,353
Once the federal government,
through the FBI, moves into an area,

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this should be warning
to those who engage in these acts

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that they eventually
are going to be apprehended.

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There's this outcry
for law and order.

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00:15:56,447 --> 00:15:59,783
And Nixon becomes the person
who articulates that perfectly.

233
00:15:59,866 --> 00:16:03,704
There can be no progress
in America without respect for law.

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00:16:03,787 --> 00:16:06,748
Many people felt like, uh,
we were losing control.

235
00:16:08,417 --> 00:16:12,046
We need total war
in the United States

236
00:16:12,129 --> 00:16:15,882
against the evils, uh,
that we see in our cities.

237
00:16:17,593 --> 00:16:21,347
Federal spending
for local law enforcement will double.

238
00:16:21,430 --> 00:16:22,889
Time is running out
for the merchants

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00:16:22,974 --> 00:16:25,601
of crime and corruption
in American society.

240
00:16:26,768 --> 00:16:30,147
The wave of crime is not going to be
the wave of the future

241
00:16:30,231 --> 00:16:32,524
in the United States of America.

242
00:16:32,608 --> 00:16:35,444
We must wage
what I have called "total war"

243
00:16:35,527 --> 00:16:38,990
against public enemy number one
in the United States,

244
00:16:39,073 --> 00:16:40,407
the problem of dangerous drugs.

245
00:16:40,491 --> 00:16:42,076
"A war on drugs."

246
00:16:42,159 --> 00:16:46,622
And that utterance gave birth to this era,

247
00:16:46,705 --> 00:16:50,167
where we decided to deal
with drug addiction and drug dependency

248
00:16:50,251 --> 00:16:52,878
as a crime issue
rather than a health issue.

249
00:16:52,962 --> 00:16:55,131
Hundreds of thousands of people

250
00:16:55,214 --> 00:16:57,883
were sent to jails and prisons
for simple possession of marijuana,

251
00:16:57,967 --> 00:16:59,760
for low-level offenses.

252
00:17:01,428 --> 00:17:07,184
America's public enemy number one
in the United States is drug abuse.

253
00:17:08,144 --> 00:17:10,229
In order to fight and defeat this enemy,

254
00:17:10,312 --> 00:17:14,775
it is necessary to wage
a new, all-out offensive.

255
00:17:16,110 --> 00:17:19,738
This call for law and order
becomes integral to something that

256
00:17:19,821 --> 00:17:22,824
comes to be known
as the Southern strategy.

257
00:17:22,908 --> 00:17:27,204
Nixon begins to recruit Southern whites,
formerly staunch Democrats,

258
00:17:27,288 --> 00:17:29,665
into the Republican fold.

259
00:17:29,748 --> 00:17:31,750
Persuading poor
and working-class whites

260
00:17:31,833 --> 00:17:35,087
to join the Republican Party in droves...

261
00:17:35,171 --> 00:17:39,175
By speaking to,
in subtle and non-racist terms...

262
00:17:39,258 --> 00:17:41,593
a thinly veiled racial appeal...

263
00:17:41,677 --> 00:17:42,969
talking about crime,

264
00:17:43,054 --> 00:17:47,183
by talking about law and order
or the chaos of our urban cities

265
00:17:47,266 --> 00:17:48,934
unleashed by the civil rights movement.

266
00:17:49,018 --> 00:17:51,728
We have launched
an all-out offensive against crime,

267
00:17:51,812 --> 00:17:54,731
against narcotics,
against permissiveness in our country.

268
00:17:54,815 --> 00:17:57,484
The rhetoric of
"get tough" and "law and order,"

269
00:17:57,568 --> 00:18:02,614
um, was part and parcel of the backlash
of the civil rights movement.

270
00:18:03,782 --> 00:18:06,577
A Nixon administration official
admitted the war on drugs

271
00:18:06,660 --> 00:18:08,829
was all about
throwing black people in jail.

272
00:18:08,912 --> 00:18:09,913
He said, quote,

273
00:18:54,250 --> 00:18:57,336
♪ The end of the Reagan era
I'm like 11 or 12 or ♪

274
00:18:57,419 --> 00:19:00,089
♪ Old enough to understand
The shit'll change forever ♪

275
00:19:00,172 --> 00:19:02,758
♪ They declared the war on drugs
Like a war on terror ♪

276
00:19:02,841 --> 00:19:05,844
♪ But what it really did was
Let the police terrorize whoever ♪

277
00:19:05,927 --> 00:19:08,680
♪ But mostly black boys
But they would call us niggers ♪

278
00:19:08,764 --> 00:19:11,767
♪ And lay us on our belly
While they fingers on they triggers ♪

279
00:19:13,519 --> 00:19:16,147
Raise your right hand and repeat after me.

280
00:19:16,230 --> 00:19:18,857
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

281
00:19:18,940 --> 00:19:21,277
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

282
00:19:21,360 --> 00:19:23,987
that I will faithfully
execute the Office...

283
00:19:24,070 --> 00:19:29,326
The election of Ronald Reagan was, uh,
in many ways, transformative,

284
00:19:29,410 --> 00:19:31,287
in a negative sense.

285
00:19:31,370 --> 00:19:34,873
President Richard Nixon
was the first to coin the term

286
00:19:34,956 --> 00:19:36,292
"a war on drugs,"

287
00:19:36,375 --> 00:19:41,172
but President Ronald Reagan turned
that rhetorical war into a literal one.

288
00:19:41,255 --> 00:19:43,924
It's back to school time
for America's children.

289
00:19:44,007 --> 00:19:47,553
And while drug and alcohol abuse
cuts across all generations,

290
00:19:47,636 --> 00:19:49,971
it's especially damaging
to the young people

291
00:19:50,055 --> 00:19:51,765
on whom our future depends.

292
00:19:51,848 --> 00:19:56,853
The modern war on drugs was declared
by Ronald Reagan in 1982.

293
00:19:56,937 --> 00:19:59,565
As we mobilize for this national crusade,

294
00:19:59,648 --> 00:20:03,026
I'm mindful that drugs
are a constant temptation for millions.

295
00:20:03,110 --> 00:20:05,320
Popular opinion polls of the day

296
00:20:05,404 --> 00:20:08,365
show that it wasn't an issue
for most people in the United States.

297
00:20:08,449 --> 00:20:10,284
But Reagan was determined

298
00:20:10,367 --> 00:20:13,078
to put this onto the agenda
to define it as a problem.

299
00:20:13,162 --> 00:20:16,248
A war against drugs
is a war of individual battles.

300
00:20:16,332 --> 00:20:20,043
Reagan used his wife, for example,
in this "Just Say No" campaign.

301
00:20:20,126 --> 00:20:24,881
She has helped so many of our young people
to say no to drugs.

302
00:20:24,965 --> 00:20:27,384
Nancy, much credit belongs to you.

303
00:20:27,468 --> 00:20:28,760
This is your brain.

304
00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:31,347
This is drugs.

305
00:20:36,893 --> 00:20:38,645
This is your brain on drugs.

306
00:20:38,729 --> 00:20:39,896
I joined it.

307
00:20:39,980 --> 00:20:42,816
And some people said,
"Well, how can you join

308
00:20:42,899 --> 00:20:46,737
a person declaring a war on drugs,
someone like Ronald Reagan?"

309
00:20:46,820 --> 00:20:51,408
I joined with Nancy Reagan
because she said, "Just say no."

310
00:20:51,492 --> 00:20:55,704
Just say no so loud
that everyone around you can hear it.

311
00:20:55,787 --> 00:20:59,165
We're talking about a general education
that we're talking about.

312
00:20:59,250 --> 00:21:01,252
We're not talking about locking up people.

313
00:21:01,335 --> 00:21:05,756
We're talking about educating people.
We're talking about prevention.

314
00:21:05,839 --> 00:21:08,217
There was a crisis
in the US economy at that time.

315
00:21:08,300 --> 00:21:11,512
I regret to say
that we're in the worst economic mess

316
00:21:11,595 --> 00:21:13,179
since the Great Depression.

317
00:21:13,264 --> 00:21:15,432
There is a frontal assault

318
00:21:15,516 --> 00:21:19,645
on institutions that are designed
to assist human beings,

319
00:21:19,728 --> 00:21:24,400
on the education system, welfare,
on jobs, healthcare.

320
00:21:24,483 --> 00:21:28,279
Government programs that can't be paid for
out of a balanced budget

321
00:21:28,362 --> 00:21:30,781
must be paid for out of your pocket.

322
00:21:30,864 --> 00:21:33,909
The rich are getting richer
and the poor are getting poorer.

323
00:21:33,992 --> 00:21:37,621
The idea of expanding, uh,
the freedom of American business

324
00:21:37,704 --> 00:21:39,039
and the entrepreneurial class...

325
00:21:39,122 --> 00:21:43,669
We will save $1.8 billion
in fiscal year 1982.

326
00:21:43,752 --> 00:21:46,713
Luxury stores like
Neiman Marcus predicts record sales.

327
00:21:46,797 --> 00:21:49,675
The number of Americans
dipping under the poverty level

328
00:21:49,758 --> 00:21:52,135
has reached the highest rate
in two decades.

329
00:21:52,719 --> 00:21:56,348
Yes, there has been
an increase in poverty,

330
00:21:56,432 --> 00:21:59,976
but it is a lower rate of increase
than it was in the preceding years,

331
00:22:00,060 --> 00:22:01,227
before we got here.

332
00:22:01,312 --> 00:22:04,273
It has begun to decline,
but it is still going up.

333
00:22:04,356 --> 00:22:05,607
In the mid-1980s,

334
00:22:05,691 --> 00:22:08,944
we were already starting to embark
on a war on drugs

335
00:22:09,027 --> 00:22:12,406
and then all of a sudden,
along comes this new drug, crack cocaine.

336
00:22:12,489 --> 00:22:16,034
Steve Young reports
on a new kind of cocaine called crack.

337
00:22:16,117 --> 00:22:18,954
It's dangerous. It's deadly.
It will kill you.

338
00:22:19,037 --> 00:22:22,666
"The drug epidemic is as dangerous
as any terrorist that we face."

339
00:22:22,749 --> 00:22:25,752
That is just some of what was said today
to House and Senate committees

340
00:22:25,836 --> 00:22:27,629
holding hearings on drug abuse in America.

341
00:22:27,713 --> 00:22:31,383
We have this drug that
could be marketed in very small doses,

342
00:22:31,467 --> 00:22:33,427
relatively inexpensively,

343
00:22:33,510 --> 00:22:35,887
this was going to just
take over communities,

344
00:22:35,971 --> 00:22:38,682
and particularly
African American communities.

345
00:22:38,765 --> 00:22:42,603
Crack was largely an inner-city issue
and cocaine was largely a suburban issue.

346
00:22:42,686 --> 00:22:45,731
Smokable cocaine,
otherwise known as crack,

347
00:22:45,814 --> 00:22:48,024
it is an uncontrolled fire.

348
00:22:48,108 --> 00:22:50,652
Congress,
in virtually record time,

349
00:22:50,736 --> 00:22:54,489
established
mandatory sentencing penalties for crack

350
00:22:54,573 --> 00:22:58,034
that were far harsher than those
for powder cocaine.

351
00:22:58,118 --> 00:23:02,080
The same amount of time in prison
for one ounce of crack cocaine

352
00:23:02,163 --> 00:23:04,207
that you get for 100 ounces
of powder cocaine.

353
00:23:04,291 --> 00:23:07,002
Police here are cracking down
on crack dealers.

354
00:23:07,085 --> 00:23:14,009
Usually black or Hispanic, Latino,
they were getting long sentences

355
00:23:14,092 --> 00:23:15,552
for possession of crack.

356
00:23:15,635 --> 00:23:16,915
You're black with crack cocaine,

357
00:23:16,970 --> 00:23:19,598
you goin' to prison
for basically the rest of your life.

358
00:23:19,681 --> 00:23:23,059
Um, and if you're white, you're
pretty much getting slapped on the wrist.

359
00:23:23,143 --> 00:23:24,644
Cocaine...

360
00:23:24,728 --> 00:23:26,480
was more sophisticated.

361
00:23:26,563 --> 00:23:28,440
It was just a powder.

362
00:23:28,524 --> 00:23:32,152
By next year,
our spending for drug law enforcement

363
00:23:32,235 --> 00:23:34,946
will have more than tripled
from its 1981 levels.

364
00:23:37,657 --> 00:23:42,037
All of a sudden, a scythe
went through our black communities,

365
00:23:42,579 --> 00:23:46,417
literally cutting off men
from their families,

366
00:23:46,500 --> 00:23:50,462
literally huge chunks
just disappearing into our prisons,

367
00:23:50,546 --> 00:23:52,964
and for really long times.

368
00:23:53,048 --> 00:23:54,966
Millions of dollars
will be allocated

369
00:23:55,801 --> 00:23:57,803
for prison and jail facilities.

370
00:23:57,886 --> 00:23:59,971
These sorts of disparities
under Reagan

371
00:24:00,055 --> 00:24:04,309
quickly exploded
into the era of mass incarceration.

372
00:24:04,392 --> 00:24:06,895
What Reagan ultimately does is...

373
00:24:06,978 --> 00:24:11,442
takes the problem of economic inequality,

374
00:24:11,525 --> 00:24:16,655
of hypersegregation in America's cities,
and the problem of drug abuse,

375
00:24:16,738 --> 00:24:21,660
and criminalizes all of that
in the form of the war on drugs.

376
00:24:21,743 --> 00:24:24,663
We absolutely should have treated
crack and cocaine,

377
00:24:24,746 --> 00:24:26,665
uh, as exactly the same thing.

378
00:24:26,748 --> 00:24:31,002
I think it was an enormous burden
on the black community,

379
00:24:31,086 --> 00:24:34,339
but it also fundamentally violated
a sense of core fairness.

380
00:24:34,422 --> 00:24:37,843
When crack cocaine hit
in the early '80s,

381
00:24:37,926 --> 00:24:41,012
there were a lot of mayors who felt
very strongly that this is a real threat

382
00:24:41,096 --> 00:24:42,431
and they wanted to crack down.

383
00:24:42,514 --> 00:24:45,684
And Rangel was one of the guys
pushing for stronger sentencing.

384
00:24:45,767 --> 00:24:48,895
It may have seemed
like a good idea at the time,

385
00:24:48,979 --> 00:24:51,690
but it sure didn't work out
as being effective.

386
00:24:51,773 --> 00:24:54,985
Then, years later,
there was an effort to rewrite history,

387
00:24:55,068 --> 00:25:00,824
that it was a racial disparity
put in by mean white people.

388
00:25:01,408 --> 00:25:02,951
Um, it's not where it came from.

389
00:25:03,034 --> 00:25:06,622
In many ways,
the so-called war on drugs

390
00:25:06,705 --> 00:25:09,541
was a war on communities of color,

391
00:25:09,625 --> 00:25:15,046
a war on black communities,
a war on Latino communities.

392
00:25:15,130 --> 00:25:19,050
And you see a rhetorical war that was,
you know,

393
00:25:19,134 --> 00:25:22,721
announced as part of a political strategy
by Richard Nixon

394
00:25:22,804 --> 00:25:26,683
and which morphed into a literal war
by Ronald Reagan,

395
00:25:26,767 --> 00:25:32,523
um, turning into something
that began to feel nearly genocidal

396
00:25:32,606 --> 00:25:35,150
in many poor communities of color.

397
00:25:35,233 --> 00:25:37,653
So Nixon's Southern strategy

398
00:25:37,736 --> 00:25:40,739
was implemented right after
the civil rights movement.

399
00:25:40,822 --> 00:25:42,157
He played on fear of crime,

400
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:45,201
and law and order
to win the election easily.

401
00:25:46,787 --> 00:25:49,080
Reagan promised tax cuts to the rich,

402
00:25:49,164 --> 00:25:51,750
and to throw all the crack users in jail,

403
00:25:51,833 --> 00:25:54,419
both of which devastated
communities of color

404
00:25:54,503 --> 00:25:56,922
but were effective
in getting the Southern vote.

405
00:25:59,550 --> 00:26:03,804
There's really no understanding
of our American political culture

406
00:26:03,887 --> 00:26:05,639
without race at the center of it.

407
00:26:05,722 --> 00:26:09,351
And in 1981,
just before Reagan assumed the presidency,

408
00:26:09,434 --> 00:26:11,937
his campaign strategist, Lee Atwater,

409
00:26:12,020 --> 00:26:15,649
was caught on tape
explaining the Southern strategy.

410
00:26:15,732 --> 00:26:17,776
In other words, you start out...

411
00:27:02,988 --> 00:27:04,948
♪ They claiming I'm a criminal ♪

412
00:27:05,031 --> 00:27:07,993
♪ But now I wonder how
Some people never know ♪

413
00:27:08,076 --> 00:27:10,161
♪ The enemy
Could be their friend, guardian ♪

414
00:27:10,245 --> 00:27:12,497
♪ I'm not a hooligan
I rock the party and ♪

415
00:27:12,580 --> 00:27:15,959
♪ The minute they see me, fear me
I'm the epitome ♪

416
00:27:16,042 --> 00:27:17,043
♪ A public enemy ♪

417
00:27:17,127 --> 00:27:20,421
♪ Used, abused without clues
I refuse to blow a fuse ♪

418
00:27:20,505 --> 00:27:21,798
♪ They even had it on the news ♪

419
00:27:21,882 --> 00:27:25,343
♪ Don't believe the hype, don't
Don't, don't, don't believe the hype ♪

420
00:27:31,057 --> 00:27:34,144
The war on drugs had become
part of our popular culture,

421
00:27:34,227 --> 00:27:35,812
in television programs like Cops.

422
00:27:38,606 --> 00:27:42,152
When you cut on your local news at night,
you see black men

423
00:27:42,235 --> 00:27:44,738
being paraded across the screen
in handcuffs.

424
00:27:46,197 --> 00:27:49,200
Black people, black men
and black people in general,

425
00:27:49,284 --> 00:27:54,205
are overrepresented in news as criminals.

426
00:27:54,289 --> 00:27:57,125
When I say overrepresented,
that means they are shown as criminals

427
00:27:57,208 --> 00:27:58,752
more times than is accurate,

428
00:27:58,835 --> 00:28:02,588
that they are actually criminals, right,
based on FBI statistics.

429
00:28:03,506 --> 00:28:07,218
I mean, I'm a big believer
in the power of media

430
00:28:07,302 --> 00:28:10,221
full of these clichés
that basically present

431
00:28:10,305 --> 00:28:13,266
mostly black and brown folks
who seem like animals in cages,

432
00:28:13,349 --> 00:28:16,519
and then someone
can turn off the TV thinking...

433
00:28:16,602 --> 00:28:17,938
"It's a good thing for prisons,

434
00:28:18,021 --> 00:28:20,816
because, otherwise, those crazy people
would be walking on my block."

435
00:28:20,899 --> 00:28:24,069
Creating a context
where people are afraid.

436
00:28:24,152 --> 00:28:25,987
And when you make people afraid,

437
00:28:26,071 --> 00:28:29,074
you can always justify
putting people in the garbage can.

438
00:28:29,157 --> 00:28:31,326
Chances are you could run into a kid

439
00:28:31,409 --> 00:28:34,079
waiting to relieve you
of your purse or wallet.

440
00:28:34,162 --> 00:28:36,790
Every media outlet in the country
thinks I'm less than human.

441
00:28:36,873 --> 00:28:41,627
I began to hear the word "super predator"
as if that was my name.

442
00:28:41,711 --> 00:28:42,962
Super predator.

443
00:28:43,046 --> 00:28:45,423
- Super predator.
- "Super predators," end quote.

444
00:28:45,506 --> 00:28:48,593
That's the word they used
to describe this generation,

445
00:28:48,677 --> 00:28:50,970
and it was very, very effective.

446
00:28:51,054 --> 00:28:52,806
Experts call them super predators.

447
00:28:52,889 --> 00:28:55,475
They are not just gangs of kids anymore.

448
00:28:55,558 --> 00:28:59,270
They are often the kinds of kids
that are called super predators.

449
00:28:59,354 --> 00:29:01,106
No conscience, no empathy.

450
00:29:01,189 --> 00:29:02,941
A group of kids growing up

451
00:29:03,024 --> 00:29:05,651
essentially fatherless,
godless and jobless.

452
00:29:05,735 --> 00:29:06,861
For me, what's disturbing

453
00:29:06,945 --> 00:29:09,197
is the degree to which black people
bought into that.

454
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:12,617
Animals, beasts that needed
to be controlled.

455
00:29:13,410 --> 00:29:15,787
When those grandmothers say,
"But he's a good boy.

456
00:29:16,872 --> 00:29:19,665
He never did anything,"
don't you believe it.

457
00:29:19,749 --> 00:29:21,292
Black communities began

458
00:29:21,376 --> 00:29:24,880
to actually support policies
that criminalized their own children.

459
00:29:24,963 --> 00:29:27,673
Last night, the eight teens
accused of the attack

460
00:29:27,758 --> 00:29:30,593
were arraigned on charges of rape
and attempted murder.

461
00:29:30,677 --> 00:29:35,014
In the Central Park jogger case,
they put five innocent teens in prison,

462
00:29:35,098 --> 00:29:36,349
because the public pressure

463
00:29:36,433 --> 00:29:39,227
to lock up these quote, unquote animals
was so strong.

464
00:29:39,310 --> 00:29:41,897
You better believe
that I hate the people

465
00:29:41,980 --> 00:29:44,816
that took this girl
and raped her brutally.

466
00:29:44,899 --> 00:29:47,277
- You better believe it.
- Donald Trump wanted to give

467
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:48,820
these kids the death penalty,

468
00:29:48,904 --> 00:29:51,782
and he took out a full page ad
to put the pressure on.

469
00:29:52,532 --> 00:29:55,493
These children, four of them under 18,

470
00:29:55,576 --> 00:29:58,747
all went to adult prisons
for six to eleven years,

471
00:29:58,830 --> 00:30:02,500
before DNA evidence proved
they were all innocent.

472
00:30:02,583 --> 00:30:05,003
We make them their crime.
That's how we introduced them.

473
00:30:05,086 --> 00:30:06,546
"That's a rapist. That's a murderer.

474
00:30:06,629 --> 00:30:08,673
That's a robber.
That's a sex offender.

475
00:30:08,757 --> 00:30:11,009
That's a burglar.
That's a gang leader."

476
00:30:11,092 --> 00:30:14,345
And through that lens,
it becomes so much easier

477
00:30:14,429 --> 00:30:17,307
to accept that they're guilty
and that they should go to prison.

478
00:30:18,850 --> 00:30:24,439
The objective reality is...
that virtually no one who is white

479
00:30:25,106 --> 00:30:29,903
understands the challenge
of being black in America.

480
00:30:30,403 --> 00:30:36,993
So you have then educated a public,
deliberately, over years, over decades,

481
00:30:37,077 --> 00:30:42,582
to believe that black men in particular,
and black people in general,

482
00:30:42,665 --> 00:30:44,209
are criminals.

483
00:30:44,292 --> 00:30:45,460
I want to be clear,

484
00:30:45,543 --> 00:30:48,143
because I'm not just saying
that white people believe this, right?

485
00:30:48,213 --> 00:30:53,927
Black people also believe this
and are terrified of our own selves.

486
00:30:54,511 --> 00:30:57,305
You want to go back to the days
of military weakness,

487
00:30:57,388 --> 00:30:59,557
caring more about criminals than victims?

488
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,560
We can't risk that.
I'd like your vote on Tuesday.

489
00:31:02,644 --> 00:31:06,022
Leadership that's on your side.
Michael Dukakis for president.

490
00:31:06,106 --> 00:31:08,399
In the midst of the, uh,
presidential campaign,

491
00:31:08,483 --> 00:31:13,404
an ad was released about a person
by the name of Willie Horton.

492
00:31:13,488 --> 00:31:16,199
Bush and Dukakis on crime.

493
00:31:16,282 --> 00:31:18,659
Dukakis not only
opposes the death penalty,

494
00:31:18,743 --> 00:31:22,247
he allowed first degree murderers
to have weekend passes from prison.

495
00:31:22,330 --> 00:31:23,623
One was Willie Horton.

496
00:31:23,706 --> 00:31:28,753
This became a focal point
of an entire presidential campaign.

497
00:31:28,837 --> 00:31:30,964
Horton fled,
kidnapped a young couple,

498
00:31:31,047 --> 00:31:33,674
stabbing the man
and repeatedly raping his girlfriend.

499
00:31:33,758 --> 00:31:37,303
Weekend prison passes.
Dukakis on crime.

500
00:31:37,387 --> 00:31:41,224
Dukakis had protected the program,
vetoed an effort to repeal it,

501
00:31:41,307 --> 00:31:44,435
in that he favored letting murderers
out on the weekend.

502
00:31:44,519 --> 00:31:47,188
That Dukakis
had a double-digit lead over Bush

503
00:31:47,272 --> 00:31:50,901
before the campaign
focused on Willie Horton,

504
00:31:50,984 --> 00:31:54,529
and after that, Bush overtook Dukakis
and won the election.

505
00:31:54,612 --> 00:31:58,533
Which candidate for president
can you count on to be tough on crime?

506
00:31:58,616 --> 00:32:00,118
George Bush.

507
00:32:00,201 --> 00:32:04,998
Bush won the election by creating fear
around black men as criminal,

508
00:32:05,081 --> 00:32:07,542
without saying that's what he was doing.

509
00:32:07,625 --> 00:32:10,795
A very racially, um...

510
00:32:10,879 --> 00:32:14,215
you know, divisive moment.

511
00:32:14,299 --> 00:32:16,927
Depicting an African American criminal,
I think, was deliberate

512
00:32:17,010 --> 00:32:18,761
on the part of that campaign.

513
00:32:18,844 --> 00:32:20,555
There's no one who can tell me otherwise.

514
00:32:20,638 --> 00:32:24,392
Liberals call him Willie Horton to make it
sound like you're being dismissive.

515
00:32:24,893 --> 00:32:29,105
Original article was Reader's Digest.
William Horton, no picture.

516
00:32:29,188 --> 00:32:31,149
The Democrats want you to know
he's black.

517
00:32:32,108 --> 00:32:33,276
Thanks, Grover.

518
00:32:35,611 --> 00:32:37,530
It was not his name,

519
00:32:37,613 --> 00:32:41,159
it was his image
that was sensationalized.

520
00:32:41,242 --> 00:32:44,996
Liberals that announced that it was mean
to pick on a murderer and a rapist

521
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:48,249
lose all credibility on this discussion.
They just lose it.

522
00:32:48,333 --> 00:32:49,417
And people go,

523
00:32:49,500 --> 00:32:52,100
"We don't want to hear anything else
you have to say about crime."

524
00:32:52,170 --> 00:32:54,589
No matter what anybody says
or what anybody does,

525
00:32:54,672 --> 00:32:59,677
they know exactly what button
they were trying to hit with that ad.

526
00:32:59,761 --> 00:33:02,013
Stabbing the man
and raping his girlfriend.

527
00:33:02,097 --> 00:33:08,311
It went to a kind of primitive fear,
a primitive American fear,

528
00:33:08,394 --> 00:33:13,608
because Willie Horton
was metaphorically the black male rapist

529
00:33:13,691 --> 00:33:16,569
that had been a staple
of the white imagination

530
00:33:16,652 --> 00:33:18,696
since the time just after slavery.

531
00:33:21,324 --> 00:33:24,702
Here was a black man
convicted of rape.

532
00:33:25,495 --> 00:33:29,332
"I will be the savior and protector
of the white population."

533
00:33:29,415 --> 00:33:35,755
Never minding the fact that the history
of interracial rape in this country,

534
00:33:35,838 --> 00:33:41,802
that that record is far more marked
by white rape against black women

535
00:33:41,886 --> 00:33:44,222
than of black men against white women.

536
00:33:55,525 --> 00:33:56,609
Patsey.

537
00:34:00,780 --> 00:34:05,576
This idea
that had such great artistic utility

538
00:34:05,660 --> 00:34:08,079
in 1915 in Birth of a Nation

539
00:34:08,163 --> 00:34:10,665
still had a great deal
of political utility

540
00:34:10,748 --> 00:34:12,292
almost at the end of that century.

541
00:34:12,375 --> 00:34:18,548
The way that we appeal to voters'
sense of fear and anxiety in our nation

542
00:34:18,631 --> 00:34:20,800
runs through black bodies.

543
00:34:38,193 --> 00:34:40,320
♪ Yo, lil' Kadeija pops is locked ♪

544
00:34:40,403 --> 00:34:41,612
♪ He wanna pop the lock ♪

545
00:34:41,696 --> 00:34:43,781
♪ But prison ain't nothin'
But a private stock ♪

546
00:34:43,865 --> 00:34:45,625
♪ She be dreamin'
'Bout his date of release ♪

547
00:34:45,700 --> 00:34:46,867
♪ She hate the police ♪

548
00:34:46,951 --> 00:34:49,162
♪ But loved by her grandma
Who hugs and kisses her ♪

549
00:34:49,245 --> 00:34:51,664
♪ Her father's a political prisoner
Free Fred ♪

550
00:34:51,747 --> 00:34:54,125
♪ Son of a Panther
That the government shot dead ♪

551
00:34:54,209 --> 00:34:56,627
♪ Behind enemy lines
My niggas is cellmates ♪

552
00:34:56,711 --> 00:34:59,130
♪ Most of the youths
Never escape the jail fates ♪

553
00:34:59,214 --> 00:35:01,882
♪ Super maximum camps
Will advance they game plan ♪

554
00:35:01,966 --> 00:35:04,302
♪ To keep us in the hands of the man
Locked up ♪

555
00:35:04,385 --> 00:35:07,680
A new generation
of Democrats, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

556
00:35:07,764 --> 00:35:09,891
They don't think the way
the old Democratic party did.

557
00:35:09,974 --> 00:35:13,603
They've sent a strong signal to criminals
by supporting the death penalty.

558
00:35:13,686 --> 00:35:19,024
Looking at the way in which
Democrats were defeated in 1988,

559
00:35:19,109 --> 00:35:22,445
or they were defeated in 1984,
or they were defeated in 1980,

560
00:35:22,528 --> 00:35:24,947
there comes to be a sentiment
among the Democrats

561
00:35:25,030 --> 00:35:29,494
that they have to adopt a position
that is much more, uh, kind of, centrist.

562
00:35:29,577 --> 00:35:31,329
It became virtually impossible

563
00:35:31,412 --> 00:35:34,999
for a politician to run
and appear soft on crime.

564
00:35:35,083 --> 00:35:37,793
I was not for the bill
that he was talking about

565
00:35:37,877 --> 00:35:40,004
because it was not tough enough
on the criminal.

566
00:35:40,088 --> 00:35:42,882
In an environment
where everybody's doing the same thing,

567
00:35:42,965 --> 00:35:44,884
everybody's competing
to be tough on crime,

568
00:35:44,967 --> 00:35:47,178
you quickly all end up in the same space,

569
00:35:47,262 --> 00:35:50,140
so it doesn't become a political advantage
unless you do something more.

570
00:35:50,223 --> 00:35:52,475
We need more police on the street.

571
00:35:52,558 --> 00:35:55,078
There is a crime bill which would
put more police on the street,

572
00:35:55,144 --> 00:35:57,897
which was killed for this session
by a filibuster in the Senate,

573
00:35:57,980 --> 00:36:00,275
mostly by Republican senators.

574
00:36:00,358 --> 00:36:04,028
We'd consistently had,
"Squishy, soft liberal won't protect you.

575
00:36:04,112 --> 00:36:07,323
Tough, conservative will protect you."
And we won that fight every time.

576
00:36:07,407 --> 00:36:10,326
And by the late '80s, early '90s,
people like Bill Clinton

577
00:36:10,410 --> 00:36:13,371
had begun to figure out
they had to be able to match us.

578
00:36:13,454 --> 00:36:18,168
I will faithfully execute the Office
of President of the United States.

579
00:36:18,251 --> 00:36:21,421
Bill Clinton is trying to figure out

580
00:36:21,504 --> 00:36:25,925
how he can deal with a country
that's still basically Reagan's country,

581
00:36:26,008 --> 00:36:28,636
but he's trying to govern as a Democrat.

582
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:33,558
Violent crime and the fear it provokes
are crippling our society.

583
00:36:33,641 --> 00:36:38,103
Then some high-profile,
very horrendous crimes take place.

584
00:36:38,188 --> 00:36:42,150
Residents pull together
in the search for 12-year-old Polly Klaas.

585
00:36:42,233 --> 00:36:45,069
They are now coping with the discovery
of her body over the weekend.

586
00:36:45,153 --> 00:36:50,575
Polly Klaas, abducted from
her bedroom at home and ultimately killed,

587
00:36:50,658 --> 00:36:54,287
which led to the California
"three strikes and you're out" law.

588
00:36:54,370 --> 00:36:56,539
When you commit a third violent crime,

589
00:36:56,622 --> 00:36:59,417
you will be put away
and put away for good.

590
00:36:59,500 --> 00:37:02,002
Three strikes and you are out.

591
00:37:02,086 --> 00:37:04,129
A person's convicted
of their third felony,

592
00:37:04,214 --> 00:37:07,925
essentially that person is mandated
to prison for the rest of their lives.

593
00:37:08,008 --> 00:37:10,803
So many third-strike defendants
awaiting trial,

594
00:37:10,886 --> 00:37:12,513
the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department

595
00:37:12,597 --> 00:37:16,809
is forced to release 4,200
misdemeanor inmates every month

596
00:37:16,892 --> 00:37:20,020
to make room for incoming
three-strike prisoners.

597
00:37:20,104 --> 00:37:22,273
It's in line with many other policies
we've created,

598
00:37:22,357 --> 00:37:24,066
particularly mandatory minimums.

599
00:37:24,149 --> 00:37:27,903
"Mandatory sentencing." We said
we were no longer going to let judges

600
00:37:27,987 --> 00:37:30,281
consider the circumstances around a crime.

601
00:37:30,365 --> 00:37:32,700
We're just going to impose
a mandatory sentence.

602
00:37:32,783 --> 00:37:34,343
And that's a difficult thing for judges

603
00:37:34,369 --> 00:37:38,206
because they are trying
to dispense justice on a daily basis

604
00:37:38,289 --> 00:37:40,165
and are unable to do so.

605
00:37:40,250 --> 00:37:44,712
In many California communities,
all civil trials have been canceled

606
00:37:44,795 --> 00:37:46,672
to catch up
with the criminal case workload.

607
00:37:46,756 --> 00:37:49,634
We've taken discretion
away from judges,

608
00:37:49,717 --> 00:37:51,844
arguably the most neutral party
in the court,

609
00:37:51,927 --> 00:37:54,347
and given it over to prosecutors.

610
00:37:54,430 --> 00:38:01,187
Ninety-five percent of elected prosecutors
throughout the United States are white.

611
00:38:01,271 --> 00:38:05,400
Serious, violent criminals
serve at least 85% of their sentence.

612
00:38:05,483 --> 00:38:08,236
We passed Truth in Sentencing
that kept people imprisoned

613
00:38:08,319 --> 00:38:09,654
for 85% of their sentence.

614
00:38:09,737 --> 00:38:13,115
Truth in Sentencing.
You're sentenced to an amount of time.

615
00:38:13,198 --> 00:38:14,575
The public wants to be confident

616
00:38:14,659 --> 00:38:17,537
that you're gonna do
just about every bit of that time.

617
00:38:17,620 --> 00:38:19,455
We've done away with parole.

618
00:38:19,539 --> 00:38:24,627
So, in the federal system, when you get
20 years or 30 years, that's what you got.

619
00:38:24,710 --> 00:38:26,379
We had parole in this country

620
00:38:26,462 --> 00:38:29,507
as a mechanism for getting people
out of jails and prisons

621
00:38:29,590 --> 00:38:32,310
when it was clear that they were
no longer a threat to public safety.

622
00:38:32,385 --> 00:38:35,971
Sharanda has spent the last 16 years
in prison, and she'll die there,

623
00:38:36,055 --> 00:38:38,349
because she was sentenced
to life without parole.

624
00:38:38,433 --> 00:38:40,435
Her only crime?
Transporting cocaine.

625
00:38:40,518 --> 00:38:43,354
And when I say "only crime,"
I mean only crime.

626
00:38:43,438 --> 00:38:45,189
She had no other arrests. None.

627
00:38:45,273 --> 00:38:51,153
The judge was required...
required to send Sharanda away for life.

628
00:38:51,237 --> 00:38:54,282
Longer sentences,
three strikes and you're out,

629
00:38:54,782 --> 00:38:58,869
almost 60
new capital punishment offenses...

630
00:38:58,953 --> 00:39:01,038
And then comes the Congress

631
00:39:01,121 --> 00:39:06,794
with a proposal for a $30 billion
federal crime bill of 1994

632
00:39:06,877 --> 00:39:10,965
that was heavily loaded towards
law enforcement incarceration.

633
00:39:11,048 --> 00:39:14,385
I propose a 21st century crime bill

634
00:39:14,468 --> 00:39:16,804
to deploy
the latest technologies and tactics

635
00:39:16,887 --> 00:39:19,640
to make our communities even safer.

636
00:39:19,724 --> 00:39:21,726
That omnibus crime bill was responsible

637
00:39:21,809 --> 00:39:25,229
for a massive expansion
of the prison system.

638
00:39:25,313 --> 00:39:29,900
And beyond that, it provided all kinds
of money and perverse incentives

639
00:39:29,984 --> 00:39:32,403
for law enforcement
to do a lot of the things

640
00:39:32,487 --> 00:39:34,614
that we nowadays consider to be abusive.

641
00:39:34,697 --> 00:39:39,494
It will be used to build prisons to keep
100,000 violent criminals off the street.

642
00:39:39,577 --> 00:39:43,163
Not only does he increase
funding to states to build prisons

643
00:39:43,247 --> 00:39:46,751
to lock up as many people
involved in drug crimes,

644
00:39:46,834 --> 00:39:50,254
but also to put
100,000 police officers on the street.

645
00:39:50,338 --> 00:39:56,176
Crime has been a hot political issue
used too often to divide us.

646
00:39:56,260 --> 00:39:58,888
What President Clinton did in 1994

647
00:39:58,971 --> 00:40:02,767
is actually far more harmful
than his predecessors

648
00:40:02,850 --> 00:40:05,561
because he actually built
that infrastructure that we see today,

649
00:40:05,645 --> 00:40:11,401
the militarization all the way down
to small, rural police departments

650
00:40:11,484 --> 00:40:13,528
that have SWAT teams.

651
00:40:13,611 --> 00:40:15,613
And again we see
this kind of notching up

652
00:40:15,696 --> 00:40:18,866
of the number of people who were
being arrested at every level

653
00:40:18,949 --> 00:40:23,162
and this kind
of exploding prison population.

654
00:40:25,122 --> 00:40:27,332
We are a nation
that professes freedom,

655
00:40:27,417 --> 00:40:31,587
yet we have this mass incarceration,
this hyperincarceration,

656
00:40:31,671 --> 00:40:35,466
uh, that is trawling into it,
grinding into it,

657
00:40:35,550 --> 00:40:37,552
our most vulnerable citizenry,

658
00:40:37,635 --> 00:40:40,721
and is overwhelmingly biased
towards people of color.

659
00:40:52,442 --> 00:40:54,527
But I want to say
a few words about it.

660
00:40:57,405 --> 00:41:00,574
Because I signed a bill
that made the problem worse.

661
00:41:01,075 --> 00:41:02,868
And I want to admit it.

662
00:41:02,952 --> 00:41:07,372
His 1994 crime bill, something
that he now admits was a mistake...

663
00:41:07,457 --> 00:41:09,249
There were longer sentences.

664
00:41:11,293 --> 00:41:15,590
And most of these people
are in prison under state law,

665
00:41:15,673 --> 00:41:18,676
but the federal law set a trend.

666
00:41:20,803 --> 00:41:23,097
And that was overdone.
We were wrong about that.

667
00:41:23,180 --> 00:41:28,352
Well, I think it's important
that President Clinton, um, acknowledges

668
00:41:28,436 --> 00:41:35,150
that things didn't turn out exactly
as he and all of us would've wished.

669
00:41:35,234 --> 00:41:39,029
I'm happy that he realizes
the error of his ways.

670
00:41:39,113 --> 00:41:42,241
I think he knew back then that
it wasn't good policy, I'll be honest.

671
00:41:42,324 --> 00:41:46,454
Back then, there was an outcry
over the rising crime rate.

672
00:41:46,537 --> 00:41:50,541
And people from all communities
were asking that action be taken.

673
00:41:50,625 --> 00:41:54,545
Now, my husband said
at the NAACP last summer

674
00:41:54,629 --> 00:41:58,382
that it solved some problems,
but it created other problems,

675
00:41:58,466 --> 00:41:59,550
and I agree.

676
00:41:59,634 --> 00:42:02,803
I'm glad to see that he is apologetic,

677
00:42:02,887 --> 00:42:06,474
but I think he has to take responsibility
and accountability for that,

678
00:42:06,557 --> 00:42:07,767
and so does Hillary,

679
00:42:07,850 --> 00:42:10,895
because she supported it,
then and up until recently.

680
00:42:10,978 --> 00:42:15,440
Bill Clinton faced off against
a group of Black Lives Matter protestors

681
00:42:15,525 --> 00:42:18,027
protesting a 1994 crime bill

682
00:42:18,110 --> 00:42:21,697
that they say led to a surge
in the imprisonment of black people.

683
00:42:21,780 --> 00:42:24,533
I don't know how you would characterize

684
00:42:24,617 --> 00:42:29,413
the gang leaders who got
13-year-old kids hopped up on crack

685
00:42:29,497 --> 00:42:34,710
and sent 'em out onto the street
to murder other African American children.

686
00:42:34,794 --> 00:42:38,338
Maybe you thought they were good citizens.
She didn't.

687
00:42:38,422 --> 00:42:40,049
She didn't!

688
00:42:40,132 --> 00:42:44,887
You are defending the people
who kill the lives you say matter.

689
00:42:44,970 --> 00:42:46,305
Tell the truth.

690
00:42:46,806 --> 00:42:49,308
We can't ignore the reality of force here.

691
00:42:49,391 --> 00:42:52,562
The policies
that Bill Clinton put forward,

692
00:42:52,645 --> 00:42:55,189
you know, mandatory minimums,
three strikes...

693
00:42:55,272 --> 00:42:57,692
Those were a use of political force.

694
00:42:57,775 --> 00:42:59,610
They forced millions of people,

695
00:42:59,694 --> 00:43:02,863
who would not otherwise
be in prison today, into prison.

696
00:43:02,947 --> 00:43:04,824
They forced families to be broken.

697
00:43:04,907 --> 00:43:07,284
They forced children
to live without their parents.

698
00:43:07,367 --> 00:43:08,410
That's what happened.

699
00:43:15,751 --> 00:43:16,835
Why?

700
00:43:18,879 --> 00:43:22,216
We shouldn't ask,
"Why is Bill Clinton so strong?"

701
00:43:22,299 --> 00:43:24,844
We should ask,
"Why is the black community so weak

702
00:43:24,927 --> 00:43:26,971
in our inability to defend ourselves?"

703
00:43:27,054 --> 00:43:31,642
Let's not forget how many martyrs
we put in the ground in the '60s and '70s.

704
00:43:31,726 --> 00:43:36,313
Let's not forget how many of our leaders
had to leave the country or are in prison.

705
00:43:36,396 --> 00:43:40,484
You stripped out
a whole generation of leadership.

706
00:43:40,568 --> 00:43:43,278
You ran them out the country,
you put them in prison,

707
00:43:43,362 --> 00:43:45,990
you put them in... in cemeteries.

708
00:43:46,073 --> 00:43:48,533
And then you unleash this blitzkrieg,

709
00:43:48,618 --> 00:43:51,203
and we don't have the ability
to defend ourselves.

710
00:43:51,286 --> 00:43:57,334
You can tell the story
of white leadership in America

711
00:43:57,417 --> 00:43:59,461
and never mention the FBI one time.

712
00:43:59,545 --> 00:44:03,507
You can't tell the story
of black leadership, not one,

713
00:44:03,883 --> 00:44:07,011
without having to deal
with the full weight

714
00:44:07,094 --> 00:44:10,139
of the criminal justice system
weaponizing its black dissent.

715
00:44:10,222 --> 00:44:13,934
I'm tired of living every day
under the threat of death.

716
00:44:14,018 --> 00:44:16,020
I have no martyr complex.

717
00:44:16,103 --> 00:44:19,857
I want to live as long
as anybody in this building tonight.

718
00:44:19,940 --> 00:44:24,403
Dr. King, people forget,
was not this beloved figure

719
00:44:24,486 --> 00:44:26,446
that everybody wants to put on a pedestal.

720
00:44:26,530 --> 00:44:29,867
Uh, he was considered one
of the most dangerous people in America

721
00:44:29,950 --> 00:44:32,912
by the head
of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

722
00:44:34,622 --> 00:44:37,082
Don't tell me
that Dr. King has no relevance

723
00:44:37,166 --> 00:44:38,459
to young brothers in the street.

724
00:44:38,542 --> 00:44:41,170
They dealing with little cops.
He was dealing with the top cop.

725
00:44:41,253 --> 00:44:44,214
We were brought here
against our will.

726
00:44:44,298 --> 00:44:47,384
We were not brought here
to be made citizens.

727
00:44:47,467 --> 00:44:52,932
We were not brought here
to enjoy the, uh, constitutional gifts

728
00:44:53,015 --> 00:44:55,017
that they speak so beautifully about.

729
00:44:55,100 --> 00:44:59,188
Malcolm's whole entourage
was infiltrated with police.

730
00:44:59,271 --> 00:45:01,023
He may have had as many police

731
00:45:01,106 --> 00:45:03,943
as he had regular folk
in his entourage, under cover.

732
00:45:04,026 --> 00:45:05,695
So afraid of black dissent.

733
00:45:05,778 --> 00:45:08,739
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
today asserted that the Black Panthers

734
00:45:08,823 --> 00:45:11,200
represent the greatest internal threat
to the nation.

735
00:45:11,742 --> 00:45:13,243
J. Edgar Hoover said

736
00:45:13,327 --> 00:45:17,497
these Panthers represent
the greatest threat

737
00:45:17,581 --> 00:45:19,917
to American democracy at the time.

738
00:45:21,335 --> 00:45:24,296
The Panthers never were that big.

739
00:45:24,379 --> 00:45:27,216
I mean, no one in their right mind
could ever believe

740
00:45:27,299 --> 00:45:30,010
that the Black Panthers
were gonna bring down

741
00:45:30,094 --> 00:45:34,098
the greatest military force
in the history of the world.

742
00:45:34,181 --> 00:45:36,433
The whole movement was criminalized

743
00:45:36,516 --> 00:45:39,686
and destroyed systematically
by the government.

744
00:45:39,770 --> 00:45:42,439
People haven't thought about
what it means to lose a Fred Hampton,

745
00:45:42,522 --> 00:45:46,026
who somehow was able to pull together
blacks and whites

746
00:45:46,110 --> 00:45:48,570
and Puerto Ricans and Native Americans

747
00:45:48,653 --> 00:45:51,281
to fight for justice at 21.

748
00:45:51,365 --> 00:45:53,951
We're going to say it after this
and after I'm locked up

749
00:45:54,034 --> 00:45:55,535
and after everybody's locked up,

750
00:45:55,619 --> 00:45:59,248
that you can jail revolutionaries,
but you can't jail a revolution.

751
00:45:59,331 --> 00:46:00,791
He had to go.

752
00:46:00,875 --> 00:46:06,046
The head of the Black Panthers in Illinois
was killed today by police in Chicago.

753
00:46:06,130 --> 00:46:09,091
Illinois Panther Chairman
Fred Hampton and another Panther leader

754
00:46:09,174 --> 00:46:11,551
from Peoria, Illinois, were killed.

755
00:46:11,635 --> 00:46:14,430
This is where our chairman
had his brains blown out

756
00:46:14,513 --> 00:46:18,350
as he lay in his bed
sleeping at 4:30 in the morning.

757
00:46:18,433 --> 00:46:22,021
They literally went
and shot his whole house up,

758
00:46:22,104 --> 00:46:24,982
with his pregnant wife
next to him in the bed.

759
00:46:25,858 --> 00:46:30,320
So afraid of a leader
that could unite people.

760
00:46:30,404 --> 00:46:32,322
We know the history of folks

761
00:46:32,406 --> 00:46:35,284
who've done this kind of standing up
to these systems,

762
00:46:35,367 --> 00:46:37,995
and we know how the system has
murdered them, assassinated them,

763
00:46:38,078 --> 00:46:42,457
exiled them, excluded them,
or found ways to discredit them.

764
00:46:44,001 --> 00:46:47,004
Assata Shakur was one of the great leaders
of the Black Liberation Army.

765
00:46:47,087 --> 00:46:51,091
That, um, order given by J. Edgar Hoover

766
00:46:51,175 --> 00:46:57,306
was essentially
to destroy any black, progressive...

767
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:01,018
Third World movement in this country.

768
00:47:01,101 --> 00:47:02,519
They put her in prison,

769
00:47:02,602 --> 00:47:05,730
and her allies said,
"We're not gonna leave her in prison."

770
00:47:05,814 --> 00:47:08,214
Her white allies said,
"We're not gonna leave her in prison."

771
00:47:08,275 --> 00:47:11,195
And pulled her out of prison and got her
to Cuba. She's in Cuba right now.

772
00:47:11,236 --> 00:47:14,198
And within the next five years,

773
00:47:14,281 --> 00:47:19,912
something like, uh, 300 prisons
are in the planning stages.

774
00:47:19,995 --> 00:47:21,371
This government has the intentions

775
00:47:21,455 --> 00:47:24,458
of throwing more and more people
in prison.

776
00:47:25,625 --> 00:47:28,420
Criminalization of Assata Shakur,

777
00:47:28,503 --> 00:47:34,426
the use of the media to represent her
as a dangerous criminal.

778
00:47:34,509 --> 00:47:37,054
And of course, in my own case,

779
00:47:37,137 --> 00:47:42,559
where I was represented by the FBI
as being armed and dangerous.

780
00:47:42,642 --> 00:47:45,395
The FBI has put
black militant Angela Davis

781
00:47:45,479 --> 00:47:47,898
on its list
of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

782
00:47:47,982 --> 00:47:51,902
Then with Angela Davis,
the power of the black intellect...

783
00:47:51,985 --> 00:47:53,904
One thing
that we have to talk about,

784
00:47:53,988 --> 00:47:57,157
coming to grips with,
is this whole question of crime.

785
00:47:57,241 --> 00:48:00,660
What does it mean
to be a criminal in this society?

786
00:48:00,744 --> 00:48:02,121
That had to be broken up.

787
00:48:02,204 --> 00:48:05,916
And in my case, Ronald Reagan
was the governor of California,

788
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:08,252
Richard Nixon was
the president of the US.

789
00:48:08,335 --> 00:48:12,923
The whole apparatus of the state
was set up against me,

790
00:48:13,007 --> 00:48:17,094
and they really meant to send me
to the death chamber

791
00:48:17,177 --> 00:48:18,845
in order to make a point.

792
00:48:18,929 --> 00:48:22,099
The actions of the FBI
in apprehending Angela Davis,

793
00:48:22,182 --> 00:48:25,769
a rather remarkable, uh, story again...

794
00:48:25,852 --> 00:48:28,522
The system tried
to put the sister on trial,

795
00:48:28,605 --> 00:48:31,358
and the sister said,
"No, we puttin' you on trial."

796
00:48:34,694 --> 00:48:37,114
Comes in, the big Afro,
she didn't go press her hair.

797
00:48:37,197 --> 00:48:38,991
She was facing major time.

798
00:48:39,074 --> 00:48:41,535
You know, most people,
they'd have got a nice little press.

799
00:48:41,618 --> 00:48:44,454
You know? They'd have been
in there with little white gloves on,

800
00:48:44,538 --> 00:48:46,373
praying to Jesus.
She came in like this.

801
00:48:47,291 --> 00:48:51,711
And she devastated the prosecution
and walked out of there free.

802
00:48:54,423 --> 00:48:56,508
But the question is
how do you get there?

803
00:48:56,591 --> 00:48:59,219
Do you get there
by confrontation, violence?

804
00:48:59,303 --> 00:49:01,013
Oh, was that the question you were asking?

805
00:49:01,096 --> 00:49:02,264
Yeah.

806
00:49:02,347 --> 00:49:04,599
So, I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama.

807
00:49:04,683 --> 00:49:05,892
Uh...

808
00:49:06,601 --> 00:49:11,481
Uh, after the four young girls who were...
who lived very...

809
00:49:11,565 --> 00:49:14,568
who lived...
One of them lived next door to me.

810
00:49:14,651 --> 00:49:17,737
I was very good friends
with the sister of another one.

811
00:49:17,821 --> 00:49:19,823
My sister was good friends
with all three of them.

812
00:49:19,906 --> 00:49:22,576
My mother taught one of them in her class.
And they went down.

813
00:49:22,659 --> 00:49:27,122
And what did they find? They found limbs
and heads just strewn all over the place.

814
00:49:27,622 --> 00:49:30,334
I remember,
from the time I was very small,

815
00:49:30,417 --> 00:49:34,213
I remember the sounds of bombs
exploding across the street.

816
00:49:34,296 --> 00:49:35,755
Our house shaking.

817
00:49:35,839 --> 00:49:40,344
I remember my father having to have guns
at his disposal at all times

818
00:49:40,427 --> 00:49:46,558
because of the fact that at any moment
we might expect to be attacked.

819
00:49:46,641 --> 00:49:50,854
I mean, that's why,
when someone asks me about violence, uh...

820
00:49:51,896 --> 00:49:54,441
I just, uh...
I just find it incredible.

821
00:49:54,524 --> 00:49:57,861
Because what it means is that
the person who's asking that question

822
00:49:57,944 --> 00:50:01,615
has absolutely no idea
what black people have gone through,

823
00:50:01,698 --> 00:50:03,993
what black people have experienced
in this country

824
00:50:04,076 --> 00:50:08,580
since the time the first black person
was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.

825
00:50:09,498 --> 00:50:12,167
And when you strip out
a whole generation of leadership,

826
00:50:12,251 --> 00:50:15,254
running folk out the country,
killing folk, framing folk,

827
00:50:15,337 --> 00:50:18,548
you will be vulnerable
to Bill Clinton or anybody else.

828
00:50:18,632 --> 00:50:20,592
They'll do to you what they will.

829
00:50:38,527 --> 00:50:43,073
♪ There's a man going 'round ♪

830
00:50:43,157 --> 00:50:47,827
♪ Taking names ♪

831
00:50:48,828 --> 00:50:54,084
♪ He has taken my father's name ♪

832
00:50:54,168 --> 00:51:00,632
♪ And it's left my heart in pain ♪

833
00:51:01,633 --> 00:51:06,096
♪ There's a man going 'round ♪

834
00:51:06,180 --> 00:51:09,933
♪ Taking names ♪

835
00:51:10,016 --> 00:51:13,562
♪ Going 'round ♪

836
00:51:14,438 --> 00:51:18,733
♪ Going 'round ♪

837
00:51:23,530 --> 00:51:25,324
An armed
neighborhood watch leader

838
00:51:25,407 --> 00:51:28,702
saw Martin walking inside
a gated subdivision near Orlando.

839
00:51:28,785 --> 00:51:31,288
He thought the 17-year-old
looked suspicious.

840
00:51:31,913 --> 00:51:34,749
He's got his hand in his waistband.

841
00:51:36,876 --> 00:51:38,420
And he's a black male.

842
00:51:40,714 --> 00:51:42,966
These assholes,
they always get away.

843
00:51:44,134 --> 00:51:46,636
- Are you following him?
- Yep.

844
00:51:46,720 --> 00:51:49,514
We don't need you to.

845
00:51:50,223 --> 00:51:52,267
Do you think he's yelling "help"?

846
00:51:52,601 --> 00:51:54,311
- Yes.
- All right, what is your...

847
00:51:56,605 --> 00:51:58,356
A deadly shooting in Sanford.

848
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:01,151
Police have the gun,
they've got the shooter,

849
00:52:01,235 --> 00:52:02,902
but they have not arrested him.

850
00:52:03,779 --> 00:52:05,530
Zimmerman, armed with a gun,

851
00:52:05,614 --> 00:52:08,450
followed this
quote, unquote suspicious kid

852
00:52:08,533 --> 00:52:10,744
after the dispatcher told him not to.

853
00:52:11,870 --> 00:52:13,955
They ended up on the ground in a fight,

854
00:52:14,038 --> 00:52:17,209
and George Zimmerman
shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

855
00:52:19,503 --> 00:52:21,713
The police could not arrest Zimmerman

856
00:52:21,796 --> 00:52:24,716
because of this Florida law called
Stand Your Ground,

857
00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:27,469
which says that you can kill someone
if you feel threatened.

858
00:52:27,886 --> 00:52:29,471
Even though it was Zimmerman

859
00:52:29,554 --> 00:52:32,807
who had pursued Martin
throughout the neighborhood with a gun.

860
00:52:32,891 --> 00:52:38,480
Mr. Zimmerman felt that he,
in self-defense, needed to, uh...

861
00:52:38,563 --> 00:52:39,939
to fire his weapon.

862
00:52:40,023 --> 00:52:42,234
Not only was he not arrested,

863
00:52:42,317 --> 00:52:45,487
but in court,
Zimmerman actually pleaded self-defense

864
00:52:45,570 --> 00:52:48,323
and got off
under the Stand Your Ground law.

865
00:52:48,407 --> 00:52:51,576
We, the jury,
find George Zimmerman not guilty.

866
00:52:52,536 --> 00:52:54,871
That Stand Your Ground law
that was passed in Florida

867
00:52:54,954 --> 00:52:57,707
played a huge role
in the Trayvon Martin tragedy

868
00:52:57,791 --> 00:53:01,127
and this really ignited the movement
that we see today.

869
00:53:02,921 --> 00:53:04,840
In the wake
of Trayvon Martin's death,

870
00:53:04,923 --> 00:53:07,634
Florida's Stand Your Ground law
came into the spotlight.

871
00:53:07,717 --> 00:53:11,596
How did this law not only get in place
in Florida, but around the country?

872
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:14,224
And all the fingers kept pointing
back to ALEC.

873
00:53:17,311 --> 00:53:20,146
ALEC sounds like the name
of a high school lacrosse player

874
00:53:20,230 --> 00:53:22,399
who just got baked
and wrecked his dad's Saab.

875
00:53:22,482 --> 00:53:26,486
But incredibly, it's actually even worse.

876
00:53:26,570 --> 00:53:30,824
- ALEC is a political lobbying group.
- ALEC is a political lobbying group.

877
00:53:30,907 --> 00:53:33,410
- They write laws...
- They write laws...

878
00:53:33,493 --> 00:53:36,913
- and give them to Republicans.
- And give them to Republicans.

879
00:53:36,996 --> 00:53:39,082
- Stand Your Ground...
- Stand Your Ground...

880
00:53:39,166 --> 00:53:41,793
- was written by ALEC.
- Was written by ALEC.

881
00:53:42,502 --> 00:53:44,296
ALEC is this private club,

882
00:53:44,379 --> 00:53:47,966
and its members are
politicians and corporations.

883
00:53:48,049 --> 00:53:49,384
But the real question is,

884
00:53:49,468 --> 00:53:53,513
should politicians and corporations
be in the same private club?

885
00:53:53,597 --> 00:53:55,557
Under the umbrella of ALEC

886
00:53:55,640 --> 00:54:00,103
corporate members, uh, get to propose laws
to their political counterparts,

887
00:54:00,186 --> 00:54:02,021
most of whom are Republicans.

888
00:54:02,856 --> 00:54:06,360
So, through ALEC, corporations have
a huge say in our lawmaking.

889
00:54:06,443 --> 00:54:08,111
And at ALEC task force meetings,

890
00:54:08,194 --> 00:54:12,156
corporate lobbyists
secretly vote as equals with lawmakers

891
00:54:12,241 --> 00:54:14,451
on bills that those lawmakers
then introduce

892
00:54:14,534 --> 00:54:16,953
to become laws in our states.

893
00:54:17,036 --> 00:54:18,497
ALEC is everywhere.

894
00:54:18,580 --> 00:54:21,541
Roughly one in four state legislators
are members.

895
00:54:21,625 --> 00:54:24,503
And I'm proud to stand with ALEC today.

896
00:54:24,586 --> 00:54:28,465
And it's not hard to see why.
ALEC makes their jobs troublingly easy.

897
00:54:28,548 --> 00:54:30,884
Here's their model
Electricity Freedom bill,

898
00:54:30,967 --> 00:54:33,803
which at one point says,
"Be it therefore enacted,

899
00:54:33,887 --> 00:54:38,808
that the State of repeals
the renewable energy mandate."

900
00:54:38,892 --> 00:54:43,146
So, as long as you can remember
and spell the name of your state,

901
00:54:43,229 --> 00:54:45,148
you can introduce legislation.

902
00:54:45,231 --> 00:54:47,442
We've also seen ALEC bills introduced

903
00:54:47,525 --> 00:54:50,987
where a lawmaker forgot
to take the ALEC letterhead off the bill.

904
00:54:51,237 --> 00:54:53,407
Without remembering to take off
the ALEC letterhead

905
00:54:53,490 --> 00:54:57,952
to try to distance the real role of ALEC
and ALEC corporations from those bills.

906
00:54:58,036 --> 00:54:59,356
I'm just curious. Does it have...

907
00:54:59,412 --> 00:55:02,290
Does the legislation have
some connection to ALEC?

908
00:55:02,374 --> 00:55:06,670
Representative Atkins, I'm not sure why
we're pursuing this course of questioning.

909
00:55:06,753 --> 00:55:09,172
This bill is my bill.
It's not ALEC's bill.

910
00:55:09,255 --> 00:55:12,967
The reason I ask is because
earlier you passed out a handout

911
00:55:13,051 --> 00:55:16,888
that says "Gottwalt" at the top,
and it says "Health Care Compact,"

912
00:55:16,971 --> 00:55:19,849
and there's a logo
right in the middle of that page.

913
00:55:19,933 --> 00:55:22,352
And I went to the ALEC website,

914
00:55:22,436 --> 00:55:27,899
and there's exactly the same font,
the same size and the same logo.

915
00:55:27,982 --> 00:55:29,943
I mean, literally, it's verbatim.

916
00:55:30,026 --> 00:55:31,278
It's shocking to know

917
00:55:31,361 --> 00:55:34,364
that ALEC has been around
for more than four decades now.

918
00:55:35,031 --> 00:55:38,327
And it's even more startling
to see how it began.

919
00:55:38,410 --> 00:55:40,662
ALEC has forged
a unique partnership

920
00:55:40,745 --> 00:55:45,124
between state legislators and leaders
from the corporate and business community.

921
00:55:45,208 --> 00:55:48,211
Corporations have influenced
laws for decades, through ALEC.

922
00:55:48,295 --> 00:55:50,588
They want everybody to vote.

923
00:55:51,130 --> 00:55:53,132
I don't want everybody to vote.

924
00:55:53,216 --> 00:55:56,803
As a matter of fact, our leverage
in the elections quite candidly goes up

925
00:55:56,886 --> 00:55:58,638
as the voting populace goes down.

926
00:55:59,598 --> 00:56:02,726
Nearly every ALEC bill
benefits one of its corporate funders.

927
00:56:05,144 --> 00:56:08,565
And the corporation Wal-Mart
was a long-standing member of ALEC

928
00:56:08,648 --> 00:56:12,361
at the time that it adopted
the so-called Stand Your Ground law.

929
00:56:12,444 --> 00:56:16,990
It's a law that created
an atmosphere where gun sales boomed.

930
00:56:17,073 --> 00:56:20,410
Wal-Mart is the biggest seller
of long guns in the US,

931
00:56:20,494 --> 00:56:23,580
has been the largest retailer
of bullets in the world.

932
00:56:24,914 --> 00:56:27,083
So it's reasonable to think
that Wal-Mart benefited

933
00:56:27,166 --> 00:56:29,586
from these Stand Your Ground laws
that ALEC pushed

934
00:56:29,669 --> 00:56:33,715
that initially prevented the arrest
of the killer of Trayvon Martin, uh,

935
00:56:33,798 --> 00:56:37,176
and was designed to prevent the arrest,
prosecution and conviction

936
00:56:37,260 --> 00:56:40,460
of the killer of Trayvon Martin, including
through changing the jury instructions

937
00:56:40,514 --> 00:56:42,140
to require that a jury be told

938
00:56:42,223 --> 00:56:44,893
that someone like George Zimmerman
has a right to stand his ground,

939
00:56:44,976 --> 00:56:47,979
but not that someone like Trayvon Martin
has a right to stand his ground

940
00:56:48,062 --> 00:56:51,941
against someone like George Zimmerman
with a gun assailing him.

941
00:56:57,531 --> 00:57:01,367
After the outcry over Stand Your Ground
and the Trayvon Martin tragedy...

942
00:57:01,451 --> 00:57:04,871
Wal-Mart stepped out of ALEC.
It left ALEC, abandoned ALEC.

943
00:57:04,954 --> 00:57:07,415
But the Wal-Mart family
continues to fund ALEC.

944
00:57:07,499 --> 00:57:10,669
Other corporations
followed suit and stepped away from ALEC,

945
00:57:10,752 --> 00:57:14,047
but many corporations
are still members, including...

946
00:57:14,130 --> 00:57:16,591
Koch Industries,
State Farm Insurance,

947
00:57:16,675 --> 00:57:19,719
PhRMA, which is the lobbying group
for the pharmaceutical industry.

948
00:57:19,803 --> 00:57:22,305
ALEC has been supported
by the tobacco industry

949
00:57:22,389 --> 00:57:24,223
as well as AT&T and Verizon.

950
00:57:24,307 --> 00:57:26,142
And for nearly two decades,

951
00:57:26,226 --> 00:57:28,645
one corporation was
Corrections Corporation of America.

952
00:57:29,228 --> 00:57:31,981
Every day,
we serve our communities.

953
00:57:32,065 --> 00:57:33,775
From small towns to large cities,

954
00:57:33,858 --> 00:57:36,945
at more than 60 locations
across our country.

955
00:57:37,028 --> 00:57:39,698
As the nation's fifth largest
correctional system,

956
00:57:39,781 --> 00:57:44,243
we build, own and manage
secure correctional facilities.

957
00:57:44,327 --> 00:57:46,830
CCA was the first
private prison corporation in the US.

958
00:57:46,913 --> 00:57:49,791
It started as a small company,
in Tennessee, in 1983.

959
00:57:50,875 --> 00:57:53,086
These folks started
making contracts with states.

960
00:57:53,169 --> 00:57:55,004
And they had to protect their investments,

961
00:57:55,088 --> 00:57:58,675
so the states were required
to keep these prisons filled

962
00:57:58,758 --> 00:58:00,278
even if nobody was committing a crime.

963
00:58:00,844 --> 00:58:04,431
And in the late '80s and early '90s,
this became a growth industry

964
00:58:04,514 --> 00:58:07,767
unlike very few growth industries
in America's history.

965
00:58:07,851 --> 00:58:12,647
Uh, it was absolutely
a model guaranteed to succeed.

966
00:58:14,148 --> 00:58:19,195
And one of the ways we see that
is through the role of CCA within ALEC

967
00:58:19,278 --> 00:58:21,155
to advance a series of bills.

968
00:58:21,239 --> 00:58:23,241
All the legislation you could think of

969
00:58:23,324 --> 00:58:27,078
that we fight so hard against,
"three strikes, you're out..."

970
00:58:27,161 --> 00:58:29,413
Three strikes and you are out.

971
00:58:29,498 --> 00:58:31,165
Mandatory minimum sentencing laws...

972
00:58:31,249 --> 00:58:33,752
serve at least 85% of their sentence.

973
00:58:33,835 --> 00:58:36,004
Were the ones
they were putting out there

974
00:58:36,087 --> 00:58:40,049
like on a premiere
pre-fixed dinner menu,

975
00:58:40,133 --> 00:58:44,679
a steady influx of bodies
to generate the profit

976
00:58:44,763 --> 00:58:46,931
that would go to the shareholders.

977
00:58:48,141 --> 00:58:51,686
Through ALEC,
CCA became the leader in private prisons.

978
00:58:52,395 --> 00:58:57,108
It's a multibillion-dollar business today
that gets rich off punishment.

979
00:58:57,191 --> 00:59:00,111
We are America's leader
in partnership corrections.

980
00:59:00,194 --> 00:59:01,530
We are CCA.

981
00:59:01,613 --> 00:59:03,072
And so, through ALEC,

982
00:59:03,156 --> 00:59:06,743
CCA had a hand in shaping crime policy
across the country,

983
00:59:06,826 --> 00:59:11,623
including, not just prison privatization,
but the rapid increase in criminalization.

984
00:59:12,207 --> 00:59:16,377
I think this accusation, you know,
quite frankly, is just false.

985
00:59:16,460 --> 00:59:22,091
That somehow ALEC was in favor
of imprisoning a bunch of people, uh,

986
00:59:22,175 --> 00:59:23,885
because of private prisons...

987
00:59:23,968 --> 00:59:28,598
I think that's just, unfortunately,
one of these tactics they do on ALEC.

988
00:59:28,682 --> 00:59:32,602
ALEC pushed forward a number of policies
to increase the number of people in prison

989
00:59:32,686 --> 00:59:35,564
and to increase the sentences
of people who are in prison.

990
00:59:35,647 --> 00:59:39,776
I'm trying to think how you address it.
It's hard to address something that's like

991
00:59:39,859 --> 00:59:41,736
almost like folklore at this point.

992
00:59:41,820 --> 00:59:44,864
They are not doing anything
to really clean up that past

993
00:59:44,948 --> 00:59:47,617
or to address the real consequences
for real people

994
00:59:47,701 --> 00:59:49,368
of the extreme policies they've pushed.

995
00:59:49,452 --> 00:59:51,454
In fact, it doesn't talk about
its past history.

996
00:59:51,538 --> 00:59:55,458
I mean, it's hard for me
to even understand, uh,

997
00:59:55,542 --> 00:59:57,919
what they're even talking about.
A lot of it.

998
00:59:58,002 --> 01:00:01,255
CCA directly benefited,
directly profited from its investment

999
01:00:01,339 --> 01:00:03,507
in ALEC,
the American Legislative Exchange Council.

1000
01:00:03,592 --> 01:00:06,970
And the American people, in many ways,
were harmed by these policies

1001
01:00:07,053 --> 01:00:10,473
due to the mass incarceration
of people, particularly people of color.

1002
01:00:10,557 --> 01:00:15,979
Look, right now our position
is that we want less people in prison.

1003
01:00:16,062 --> 01:00:19,273
I don't think that helps the private
prison industry, quite frankly.

1004
01:00:19,357 --> 01:00:20,817
I think myself and the lawmakers,

1005
01:00:20,900 --> 01:00:24,278
we're just always looking for better,
innovative ways to run government.

1006
01:00:24,362 --> 01:00:25,405
I think that's one thing

1007
01:00:25,488 --> 01:00:28,328
as conservatives, who believe in
the free market and limited government,

1008
01:00:28,366 --> 01:00:29,284
we pride ourselves on.

1009
01:00:29,367 --> 01:00:31,661
We're supposed to be
the party of innovation.

1010
01:00:32,495 --> 01:00:36,875
Another bill
that ALEC innovated was SB 1070.

1011
01:00:36,958 --> 01:00:39,753
CCA was on the ALEC task force
that pushed that law

1012
01:00:39,836 --> 01:00:42,213
that gave police
the right to stop anyone

1013
01:00:42,296 --> 01:00:44,257
they thought looked like an immigrant.

1014
01:00:46,092 --> 01:00:48,427
This law filled
immigration detention facilities,

1015
01:00:48,511 --> 01:00:51,598
and it directly benefited
an ALEC member, CCA.

1016
01:00:53,557 --> 01:00:57,145
CCA could potentially reap
huge financial benefits from SB 1070,

1017
01:00:57,228 --> 01:01:01,691
since 1070 was designed to lock up
a lot more people in Arizona

1018
01:01:01,775 --> 01:01:04,027
on federal immigration charges.
Cha-ching!

1019
01:01:04,110 --> 01:01:07,656
An influx of undocumented
immigrants, many of them children...

1020
01:01:07,739 --> 01:01:11,910
In Arizona, Corrections
Corporation of America, or CCA,

1021
01:01:11,993 --> 01:01:15,163
holds the federal contract
to house detained immigrants.

1022
01:01:15,246 --> 01:01:19,333
It's worth more than $11 million
every month.

1023
01:01:21,044 --> 01:01:23,838
Our, uh, immigration facilities
are a disgrace.

1024
01:01:23,922 --> 01:01:28,509
There are families kept there,
uh, in horrible conditions.

1025
01:01:29,468 --> 01:01:32,681
They're called "detention facilities,"
but they're really prisons for immigrants.

1026
01:01:32,764 --> 01:01:35,350
Calling them "detention facility"
doesn't make them not a prison.

1027
01:01:35,433 --> 01:01:37,393
They're a prison.
They just have a different name.

1028
01:01:37,476 --> 01:01:42,523
We're having what some people are saying
is a creation of a "crimmigration" system.

1029
01:01:42,606 --> 01:01:46,152
That there's the merger
of our immigration enforcement

1030
01:01:46,235 --> 01:01:48,404
and our law enforcement system.

1031
01:01:48,487 --> 01:01:51,950
And so, that's some of the same things
that were used in the war on drugs,

1032
01:01:52,033 --> 01:01:54,243
are now migrating to other populations.

1033
01:01:54,327 --> 01:01:59,123
You heard it, uh, with Donald Trump,
not about blacks but with Mexicans.

1034
01:01:59,207 --> 01:02:01,918
You know,
"Oh, well, they're rapists, murderers.

1035
01:02:02,001 --> 01:02:04,587
Oh, and by the way,
some of 'em may be good people."

1036
01:02:06,047 --> 01:02:08,675
Oh, boy. You know, where do you start
on something like that?

1037
01:02:10,051 --> 01:02:14,347
In late 2010, CCA left ALEC
after a big NPR story came out

1038
01:02:14,430 --> 01:02:17,558
accusing ALEC of pushing SB 1070.

1039
01:02:17,892 --> 01:02:20,603
ALEC doesn't do anything on immigration.

1040
01:02:20,687 --> 01:02:24,774
No. No which way. Not to the right,
not to the left. Nothing.

1041
01:02:24,858 --> 01:02:27,610
So, I don't really have anything
for you on that one. Sorry.

1042
01:02:27,694 --> 01:02:30,947
ALEC has recently made
what I would describe as a PR move

1043
01:02:31,030 --> 01:02:33,074
to say that it's gonna be right on crime.

1044
01:02:33,157 --> 01:02:36,494
That it's gonna be on the right side
of criminal justice policy and reform.

1045
01:02:36,577 --> 01:02:41,916
That move comes in the wake of its loss
of a massive number of corporations.

1046
01:02:43,292 --> 01:02:48,131
What ultimately happened is our board
looked at the issues that ALEC worked on

1047
01:02:48,214 --> 01:02:50,633
and decided
that we don't do social issues,

1048
01:02:50,717 --> 01:02:52,802
we're focused on economic issues.

1049
01:02:52,886 --> 01:02:58,141
We jettisoned basically almost
all of our legislation that was pre-2007.

1050
01:02:58,224 --> 01:03:01,144
So we basically...
Fresh slate going forward.

1051
01:03:01,227 --> 01:03:03,020
A fresh start going forward.

1052
01:03:03,604 --> 01:03:05,940
This industry knows that it's dying...

1053
01:03:07,066 --> 01:03:11,070
and is actually preparing
for the next thing.

1054
01:03:11,154 --> 01:03:14,866
And the animating factors that have
led to such a system like bail.

1055
01:03:14,949 --> 01:03:19,829
We're always gonna see
new permutations of a cancer. Right?

1056
01:03:19,913 --> 01:03:21,039
And that's what this is.

1057
01:03:21,122 --> 01:03:24,000
And over the last couple years,
since 2008,

1058
01:03:24,083 --> 01:03:28,087
we've been involved really
in a wholesale reform effort,

1059
01:03:28,171 --> 01:03:33,009
where 31 states have now adopted
positive changes on sentencing,

1060
01:03:33,092 --> 01:03:35,178
on parole and probation reforms.

1061
01:03:35,261 --> 01:03:39,015
ALEC has a concerted effort to privatize
almost every aspect of government,

1062
01:03:39,098 --> 01:03:41,225
but we had no idea
that they were also aiming

1063
01:03:41,309 --> 01:03:43,811
to try to privatize probation and parole.

1064
01:03:44,103 --> 01:03:47,523
ALEC is no longer concerned
about CCA and CCA's interest.

1065
01:03:47,606 --> 01:03:50,068
CCA no longer has
a seat at the table with ALEC,

1066
01:03:50,151 --> 01:03:53,196
so it doesn't have a financial interest
in advancing policies

1067
01:03:53,279 --> 01:03:55,614
that increase the profits of CCA.

1068
01:03:55,698 --> 01:03:58,159
But the American Bail Coalition
is still part of ALEC.

1069
01:03:58,242 --> 01:04:00,954
Today, our state penitentiaries

1070
01:04:01,037 --> 01:04:05,458
are filled to the brim
and overflowing with inmates.

1071
01:04:05,541 --> 01:04:08,336
When I think
of systems of oppression,

1072
01:04:08,419 --> 01:04:12,423
uh, historically, in this country
and elsewhere, they're durable.

1073
01:04:12,506 --> 01:04:15,759
And they tend to reinvent themselves,
and they do it right under your nose.

1074
01:04:15,844 --> 01:04:18,512
One of the things they want to do
is GPS monitoring.

1075
01:04:18,596 --> 01:04:21,808
Having a home confinement system
for juveniles, I think, is a great thing

1076
01:04:21,891 --> 01:04:24,768
'cause it forces the parents
to take responsibility and step up.

1077
01:04:24,853 --> 01:04:28,272
Prisons would be
more embedded in our homes.

1078
01:04:28,356 --> 01:04:30,716
Some of them would be monitored
on GPS and things like that.

1079
01:04:30,774 --> 01:04:35,071
So folks won't be locked up in a cage,
in a cell, inside of an institution,

1080
01:04:35,154 --> 01:04:38,282
but they will have ankle bracelets on.
They'll have wrist bracelets on.

1081
01:04:38,366 --> 01:04:41,410
Would that help to solve
the prison overcrowding problem?

1082
01:04:41,494 --> 01:04:42,661
Absolutely.

1083
01:04:42,745 --> 01:04:46,875
And what I worry about is that
we fall asleep at the wheel and wake up,

1084
01:04:46,958 --> 01:04:49,752
and realize that we may not
have people in prisons

1085
01:04:49,836 --> 01:04:51,754
in rural communities all over America,

1086
01:04:51,838 --> 01:04:54,632
but that we're incarcerating people
right in their communities.

1087
01:04:54,715 --> 01:04:58,302
That is what I see,
what a lot of the focus is on,

1088
01:04:58,386 --> 01:04:59,720
is taking people from prison,

1089
01:04:59,803 --> 01:05:02,140
putting them in community corrections
parole and probation,

1090
01:05:02,223 --> 01:05:04,725
and really investing in those programs.

1091
01:05:04,808 --> 01:05:06,269
How much progress is it really,

1092
01:05:06,352 --> 01:05:11,107
if communities of color are still under
perpetual surveillance and control,

1093
01:05:11,190 --> 01:05:16,112
but now there's a private company
making money off the GPS monitor,

1094
01:05:16,195 --> 01:05:19,073
rather than the person
being locked in a literal cage?

1095
01:05:19,157 --> 01:05:22,201
If we can help you...

1096
01:05:23,703 --> 01:05:26,914
save crime victims
in your legislative district...

1097
01:05:28,457 --> 01:05:30,376
you don't mind me making a dollar.

1098
01:05:31,669 --> 01:05:35,423
And so, ALEC continues
to be a body that,

1099
01:05:35,506 --> 01:05:37,633
while it may have some
really strong rhetoric

1100
01:05:37,716 --> 01:05:41,595
on why it supports
crime reform now, suddenly,

1101
01:05:41,679 --> 01:05:43,222
uh, sort of out of the blue,

1102
01:05:43,306 --> 01:05:45,892
it actually has real financial interests.

1103
01:05:45,975 --> 01:05:47,643
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

1104
01:05:49,228 --> 01:05:53,482
If you're in the prison business,
uh, you don't want reform.

1105
01:05:53,566 --> 01:05:54,926
You may say you do, but you don't.

1106
01:05:54,984 --> 01:05:58,321
And there are a bunch of people out there
desperately trying to make sure

1107
01:05:58,404 --> 01:06:01,324
that that prison population
does not drop one person,

1108
01:06:01,407 --> 01:06:04,285
because their economic model needs that.

1109
01:06:04,368 --> 01:06:10,041
Prison industrial complex refers
to the system of mass incarceration

1110
01:06:10,124 --> 01:06:12,876
and companies that profit
from mass incarceration.

1111
01:06:12,961 --> 01:06:15,213
That includes
both operators of private prisons,

1112
01:06:15,296 --> 01:06:20,634
which get a lot of attention,
as well as a vast sea of vendors.

1113
01:06:20,718 --> 01:06:24,847
From SECURUS Technologies,
that supplies telephone services,

1114
01:06:24,931 --> 01:06:28,267
that made $114 million
in profits last year...

1115
01:06:28,351 --> 01:06:32,730
Those calls to family and friends are
costing a pretty penny in state prisons.

1116
01:06:32,813 --> 01:06:36,692
They inflate the price that they charge
the inmate and the inmate's family.

1117
01:06:36,775 --> 01:06:39,487
For example, in Maryland,
if you earn minimum wage,

1118
01:06:39,570 --> 01:06:43,241
you'd have to work an hour and a half
to afford a ten minute phone call.

1119
01:06:46,619 --> 01:06:50,789
There's also Aramark,
one of the big food service providers.

1120
01:06:51,374 --> 01:06:53,459
In more than one state,
they have been accused

1121
01:06:53,542 --> 01:06:56,337
of having maggots in the food
that they've served.

1122
01:06:59,465 --> 01:07:03,844
Corizon Healthcare provides healthcare
services in 28 different states.

1123
01:07:03,927 --> 01:07:06,305
Multimillion-dollar contracts
for this service.

1124
01:07:06,389 --> 01:07:11,685
Huge incentives given to contractors
for very long contracts,

1125
01:07:11,769 --> 01:07:14,272
so it's actually a disincentive
to provide the service,

1126
01:07:14,355 --> 01:07:16,107
because you're going to be paid anyway.

1127
01:07:22,905 --> 01:07:24,782
One of the reasons it's so difficult

1128
01:07:24,865 --> 01:07:28,160
to talk about mass incarceration
in this country, and to question it,

1129
01:07:28,244 --> 01:07:31,998
is because it has become
so heavily monetized.

1130
01:07:32,081 --> 01:07:34,125
A little company called UNICOR,

1131
01:07:34,208 --> 01:07:37,128
that does $900 million
in business annually.

1132
01:07:37,211 --> 01:07:38,921
How do they do it?

1133
01:07:39,005 --> 01:07:40,714
Volume.

1134
01:07:40,798 --> 01:07:42,883
Also, prison labor.

1135
01:07:42,967 --> 01:07:45,720
Partnerships between
correctional industries

1136
01:07:45,803 --> 01:07:46,971
and private business

1137
01:07:47,055 --> 01:07:51,017
are a rapidly growing segment of
a multibillion dollar industry in America.

1138
01:07:51,100 --> 01:07:54,103
We talk about sweatshops and we,

1139
01:07:54,187 --> 01:07:59,442
you know, we beat our fists at people
overseas for exploiting poor, free labor,

1140
01:07:59,525 --> 01:08:02,236
but we don't look that it's happening
right here at home every day.

1141
01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:03,987
You have corporations

1142
01:08:04,072 --> 01:08:06,990
who are now invested
in this free labor.

1143
01:08:07,075 --> 01:08:09,160
It's all over.

1144
01:08:09,243 --> 01:08:14,540
It's from sports, uniform,
hats, Microsoft, Boeing.

1145
01:08:14,623 --> 01:08:16,584
Federal inmates are making
the guidance systems

1146
01:08:16,667 --> 01:08:17,907
for the Patriot missile system.

1147
01:08:17,960 --> 01:08:20,213
JCPenney jeans are made in Tennessee.

1148
01:08:20,296 --> 01:08:22,173
Victoria's Secret.

1149
01:08:22,673 --> 01:08:25,051
Anderson flooring wood products
are made in Georgia.

1150
01:08:25,134 --> 01:08:27,220
It's always been Idaho potatoes.

1151
01:08:27,303 --> 01:08:32,183
They're planted, grown, harvested,
packed and shipped by inmates.

1152
01:08:32,266 --> 01:08:35,811
Victoria's Secret and JCPenney
switched suppliers

1153
01:08:35,895 --> 01:08:38,272
once their ties came to light.

1154
01:08:38,564 --> 01:08:42,526
Simply put,
corporations are operating in prisons

1155
01:08:42,610 --> 01:08:44,487
and profiting from punishment.

1156
01:08:46,114 --> 01:08:49,700
Prison industries have gotten so big

1157
01:08:49,783 --> 01:08:52,745
that it's very difficult now
to try and do away with them.

1158
01:08:52,828 --> 01:08:53,996
Too much money out there,

1159
01:08:54,080 --> 01:08:57,791
too many lawmakers that support it
because they're being lobbied.

1160
01:08:57,875 --> 01:09:00,711
So, the public's got to stand up
and take it back.

1161
01:09:00,794 --> 01:09:02,213
It'll never get done if they don't.

1162
01:09:02,963 --> 01:09:05,466
♪ And I can see it's all about cash ♪

1163
01:09:05,549 --> 01:09:08,344
♪ And they got the nerve
To hunt down my ass ♪

1164
01:09:08,427 --> 01:09:10,138
♪ And treat me like a criminal ♪

1165
01:09:10,221 --> 01:09:12,890
♪ Yeah, it is what it is
And that's how it go ♪

1166
01:09:12,973 --> 01:09:15,434
♪ Get treated like a criminal
If crime is all you know ♪

1167
01:09:15,518 --> 01:09:18,104
♪ Get greeted like a nigga
If a nigga's all you show ♪

1168
01:09:18,187 --> 01:09:20,523
♪ A public enemy
That's in the eye of the scope ♪

1169
01:09:22,691 --> 01:09:24,151
The night of his arrest,

1170
01:09:24,235 --> 01:09:27,488
Kalief Browder was walking home from
a party with his friends in the Bronx,

1171
01:09:27,571 --> 01:09:29,198
when he was stopped by police.

1172
01:09:31,242 --> 01:09:36,539
Kalief was, um, charged with a crime,
a really petty crime,

1173
01:09:36,622 --> 01:09:38,749
that it turns out he didn't commit.

1174
01:09:38,832 --> 01:09:41,127
Then they said,
"We're gonna take you to the precinct,

1175
01:09:41,210 --> 01:09:42,962
and most likely,
we'll let you go home."

1176
01:09:43,045 --> 01:09:45,631
But then, I never went home.

1177
01:09:45,714 --> 01:09:49,635
- They told you that you could post bail.
- Yes, that's correct.

1178
01:09:49,718 --> 01:09:51,094
- $10,000.
- Yes.

1179
01:09:51,179 --> 01:09:53,722
- And, of course...
- I couldn't make that.

1180
01:09:53,806 --> 01:09:55,391
- Hmm.
- My family couldn't pay it.

1181
01:09:55,474 --> 01:09:58,811
There are thousands of people
in jails right this moment

1182
01:09:58,894 --> 01:10:01,230
that are sitting there for no other reason

1183
01:10:01,314 --> 01:10:03,732
than because they're too poor to get out!

1184
01:10:03,816 --> 01:10:06,026
We have a criminal justice system
that treats you better

1185
01:10:06,109 --> 01:10:08,821
if you're rich and guilty
than if you're poor and innocent.

1186
01:10:08,904 --> 01:10:11,407
Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.

1187
01:10:11,490 --> 01:10:12,970
I think what most Americans think of,

1188
01:10:13,033 --> 01:10:16,454
'cause they've watched so many
courtroom dramas and things like that,

1189
01:10:16,537 --> 01:10:19,582
they think that the criminal justice
system is about judges and juries.

1190
01:10:19,665 --> 01:10:21,834
Well, that's really
stopped being the case.

1191
01:10:21,917 --> 01:10:27,423
This system simply cannot exist
if everyone decides to go to trial.

1192
01:10:27,506 --> 01:10:29,132
If everybody insisted on a trial,

1193
01:10:29,217 --> 01:10:30,676
the whole system would shut down.

1194
01:10:30,759 --> 01:10:33,053
What typically happens
is the prosecutor says,

1195
01:10:33,136 --> 01:10:35,931
"You know, you can make a deal
and we'll give you three years,

1196
01:10:36,014 --> 01:10:38,476
or you can go to trial
and we'll get you 30.

1197
01:10:38,559 --> 01:10:40,519
So, you want to take that chance,
feel free."

1198
01:10:41,061 --> 01:10:43,105
Nobody in the hood goes to trial.

1199
01:10:43,189 --> 01:10:46,525
97% of those people
who were locked up

1200
01:10:46,609 --> 01:10:47,818
have plea bargain.

1201
01:10:48,986 --> 01:10:54,200
And that is one of the worst violations
of human rights

1202
01:10:54,283 --> 01:10:56,577
that you can imagine in the United States.

1203
01:10:56,660 --> 01:10:58,829
We have, in this country,
people pleading guilty

1204
01:10:58,912 --> 01:11:00,331
to crimes they didn't commit,

1205
01:11:00,414 --> 01:11:04,293
just because the thought of going to jail
for what the mandatory minimums are

1206
01:11:04,377 --> 01:11:05,669
is so excruciating.

1207
01:11:06,212 --> 01:11:09,131
Kalief Browder decided,
"I'm not gonna take the plea."

1208
01:11:09,215 --> 01:11:13,051
So, you had to choose between
being in prison for up to 15 years

1209
01:11:13,135 --> 01:11:16,179
and going home right then by admitting
you did a crime you didn't do.

1210
01:11:16,264 --> 01:11:17,473
I felt like I was done wrong.

1211
01:11:17,556 --> 01:11:20,935
I felt like something needed to be done.
I felt like something needs to be said.

1212
01:11:21,018 --> 01:11:24,480
If I just cop out and say that I did it,
nothing's gonna be done about it.

1213
01:11:24,563 --> 01:11:26,524
I didn't do it.
No justice is served.

1214
01:11:26,607 --> 01:11:31,487
What you're not taught is that
if you exercise that right to a trial,

1215
01:11:31,570 --> 01:11:34,740
and you are convicted,
we will punish you more.

1216
01:11:34,823 --> 01:11:37,075
The courts basically punished him

1217
01:11:37,159 --> 01:11:40,704
for having the audacity
to not take a plea deal

1218
01:11:40,788 --> 01:11:42,331
and to want to take it to trial.

1219
01:11:42,414 --> 01:11:43,707
In that time, those three years

1220
01:11:43,791 --> 01:11:46,835
that he was sitting there
and not being charged for anything,

1221
01:11:46,919 --> 01:11:50,589
that's when, um, the mental health issue
started to deteriorate

1222
01:11:50,673 --> 01:11:52,550
and he started to get into fights.

1223
01:11:55,511 --> 01:11:57,680
After a while,
I kept hearing the same thing

1224
01:11:57,763 --> 01:11:59,348
from the whole three years,

1225
01:11:59,432 --> 01:12:02,893
and I just learned to cope
with just being in there,

1226
01:12:02,976 --> 01:12:05,646
and that was rough.
I already knew...

1227
01:12:06,397 --> 01:12:08,524
After a while, I just gave up hope.

1228
01:12:15,948 --> 01:12:19,868
Three years on Rikers Island,
two of that in solitary confinement,

1229
01:12:19,952 --> 01:12:21,704
and he was a child, a baby.

1230
01:12:21,787 --> 01:12:23,872
You miss everything.
Everything about being home.

1231
01:12:23,956 --> 01:12:27,835
The fresh air, your family,
certain events. You want to be home.

1232
01:12:27,918 --> 01:12:30,379
When they give you an offer
to go home right then and there,

1233
01:12:30,463 --> 01:12:33,103
it's like, "I want to go home,"
but then you know you didn't do it,

1234
01:12:33,173 --> 01:12:34,508
so you don't wanna plea,

1235
01:12:34,592 --> 01:12:36,802
take the plea and say that you do it,
it's not right.

1236
01:12:42,725 --> 01:12:46,061
I was scared all day because I didn't know
where it would come from.

1237
01:12:46,144 --> 01:12:48,606
I don't know where any harm would come.

1238
01:12:48,689 --> 01:12:50,649
Kalief suffered through
so many beatings,

1239
01:12:50,733 --> 01:12:53,777
both by the people he was locked up with
and the guards,

1240
01:12:53,861 --> 01:12:57,114
he ended up attempting suicide
on several occasions.

1241
01:12:58,657 --> 01:13:01,785
After almost three years in jail,
waiting his trial,

1242
01:13:01,869 --> 01:13:04,622
they dropped all the charges,
and he was set free.

1243
01:13:07,791 --> 01:13:10,544
He spent two years
in an environment that

1244
01:13:10,628 --> 01:13:13,464
people have argued
is designed to break you within 30 days.

1245
01:13:14,006 --> 01:13:17,134
I mean, I can't really tell you
what's next, but...

1246
01:13:19,011 --> 01:13:20,721
This happens every day.

1247
01:13:22,055 --> 01:13:24,224
Two years after
his release from jail,

1248
01:13:24,307 --> 01:13:28,270
Kalief Browder hanged himself
at his home in the Bronx.

1249
01:13:33,734 --> 01:13:35,819
He was 22 years old.

1250
01:13:50,543 --> 01:13:54,630
If I would've just pled guilty,
then my story would've never been heard.

1251
01:13:54,713 --> 01:13:56,965
Nobody would've took the time
to listen to me.

1252
01:13:57,049 --> 01:13:59,802
I'd have been just another criminal.

1253
01:14:02,220 --> 01:14:05,307
Prison industrial complex,
the system, the industry,

1254
01:14:05,391 --> 01:14:08,477
it is a beast.

1255
01:14:08,561 --> 01:14:12,398
It eats black and Latino people

1256
01:14:12,481 --> 01:14:14,983
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

1257
01:14:17,235 --> 01:14:19,988
We didn't even think about
who gets the jobs

1258
01:14:20,072 --> 01:14:21,782
of spending time with these folks.

1259
01:14:23,033 --> 01:14:25,411
Otherwise, we'd want
social workers and teachers.

1260
01:14:25,494 --> 01:14:29,164
We'd want people
with understanding of human behavior.

1261
01:14:31,291 --> 01:14:32,835
And we do the opposite.

1262
01:14:42,010 --> 01:14:43,554
You become numb.

1263
01:14:43,637 --> 01:14:46,599
I think that's what jail does to humans.

1264
01:14:46,682 --> 01:14:50,018
That immediate dehumanization
and sensory deprivation

1265
01:14:50,102 --> 01:14:53,230
that nobody can really understand
unless they live through it.

1266
01:14:55,941 --> 01:15:00,070
So the last 14 years,
my son has not had any human contact,

1267
01:15:00,153 --> 01:15:03,491
other than to be handcuffed by an officer.

1268
01:15:03,574 --> 01:15:05,784
Uh, he doesn't even have
a window in his cell,

1269
01:15:05,868 --> 01:15:08,286
and that's one thing
that really disturbs me.

1270
01:15:08,370 --> 01:15:09,497
It troubles me.

1271
01:15:11,790 --> 01:15:13,083
I just couldn't believe it.

1272
01:15:13,166 --> 01:15:15,043
I couldn't believe

1273
01:15:15,127 --> 01:15:19,214
that we would even have such
an architectural design in our country.

1274
01:15:19,297 --> 01:15:22,175
I never realized that there was
prison cells built like that.

1275
01:15:22,259 --> 01:15:26,930
Human beings are not born
to be locked up and encaged.

1276
01:15:27,014 --> 01:15:30,518
Most people wouldn't keep
their pets in the kind of conditions

1277
01:15:30,601 --> 01:15:32,102
that we keep people in.

1278
01:15:32,185 --> 01:15:35,564
Prisons and jails have become warehouses,
in the sense that, um,

1279
01:15:35,648 --> 01:15:37,650
where we've moved as a society is that

1280
01:15:37,733 --> 01:15:41,695
it's not enough
to just deprive you of your liberty.

1281
01:15:41,779 --> 01:15:44,322
Um, but we want to punish you, too.

1282
01:15:44,406 --> 01:15:47,660
Most of the society, um,

1283
01:15:47,743 --> 01:15:51,329
don't understand what it means
to be behind those big gates

1284
01:15:51,413 --> 01:15:52,706
and those barb wires.

1285
01:15:56,334 --> 01:15:59,588
Once somebody is arrested
and convicted, they're gone.

1286
01:15:59,671 --> 01:16:01,757
Nobody particularly cares about them.

1287
01:16:02,675 --> 01:16:05,886
In many ways, the prison systems
are sort of in the dark.

1288
01:16:05,969 --> 01:16:09,431
So it makes it a lot easier,
you know, cognitively and emotionally.

1289
01:16:09,515 --> 01:16:11,892
It makes it a lot easier to say,
"Send people there."

1290
01:16:13,519 --> 01:16:16,313
If you look at the whole problem,
you say, "What are we doing?"

1291
01:16:16,396 --> 01:16:19,608
We have too many laws locking
too many people up for too many things,

1292
01:16:19,692 --> 01:16:23,403
giving them sentences that are too harsh,
putting them in prison,

1293
01:16:23,487 --> 01:16:24,696
and while they're in prison,

1294
01:16:24,780 --> 01:16:27,282
doing very little, if anything,
to rehabilitate them

1295
01:16:27,365 --> 01:16:29,952
so that they can reenter civil society
when they get out.

1296
01:16:30,035 --> 01:16:32,454
And then when they get out, we shun them.

1297
01:16:32,538 --> 01:16:35,958
Over 40,000 collateral consequences

1298
01:16:36,041 --> 01:16:38,669
for people that come through
our criminal justice system.

1299
01:16:38,752 --> 01:16:41,171
It's that question,
"Have you been convicted of a felony?"

1300
01:16:41,254 --> 01:16:43,340
that appears on the job application.

1301
01:16:43,423 --> 01:16:46,093
In some cases, it can affect
your access to student loans.

1302
01:16:46,176 --> 01:16:49,179
They can't get many business licenses,
food stamps if they're hungry.

1303
01:16:49,262 --> 01:16:51,306
Private rentals in regards to housing.

1304
01:16:51,389 --> 01:16:54,560
It's that question
that appears on life insurance.

1305
01:16:54,643 --> 01:16:58,606
The scarlet letter follows you
for the rest of your life in this country.

1306
01:16:59,690 --> 01:17:01,108
In March of 2015,

1307
01:17:01,191 --> 01:17:04,069
we had tens of thousands of people
come to Selma

1308
01:17:04,152 --> 01:17:05,613
to celebrate the 50th anniversary

1309
01:17:05,696 --> 01:17:07,865
of the crossing
of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

1310
01:17:07,948 --> 01:17:10,033
And very few of those people realized

1311
01:17:10,117 --> 01:17:13,704
that nearly 30% of the black male
population of Alabama today

1312
01:17:13,787 --> 01:17:17,958
has permanently lost the right to vote
as a result of a criminal conviction.

1313
01:17:19,710 --> 01:17:22,588
If you do something wrong,
you should pay it back,

1314
01:17:22,671 --> 01:17:24,297
and then move forward with your life.

1315
01:17:24,381 --> 01:17:27,760
But yet, in America,
there's absolutely zero closure.

1316
01:17:27,843 --> 01:17:33,181
We actually tell American citizens,
when they pay back their debt to society,

1317
01:17:33,265 --> 01:17:35,976
their citizenship
will still be denied from them.

1318
01:17:36,059 --> 01:17:40,313
So many aspects of the old Jim Crow
are suddenly legal again

1319
01:17:40,397 --> 01:17:43,358
once you've been branded a felon.

1320
01:17:43,441 --> 01:17:48,030
And so it seems that in America,
we haven't so much ended racial caste,

1321
01:17:48,113 --> 01:17:49,990
but simply redesigned it.

1322
01:17:50,949 --> 01:17:52,575
♪ You act like the change ♪

1323
01:17:52,660 --> 01:17:54,452
♪ Tryna put me in chains ♪

1324
01:17:54,536 --> 01:17:56,204
♪ Don't act like you saving us ♪

1325
01:17:56,288 --> 01:17:57,706
♪ It's still the same ♪

1326
01:17:57,790 --> 01:18:01,710
♪ Man don't act like I made it up
You blaming us ♪

1327
01:18:01,794 --> 01:18:05,130
♪ Let's keep it one hundred
You gave the name to us ♪

1328
01:18:05,213 --> 01:18:08,717
♪ We still in chains
We still in chains ♪

1329
01:18:08,801 --> 01:18:10,427
♪ You put the shame on us ♪

1330
01:18:10,510 --> 01:18:11,887
We are now in an era

1331
01:18:11,970 --> 01:18:15,057
where Democrats and Republicans alike
have decided

1332
01:18:15,140 --> 01:18:21,021
that it's not in their interest anymore
to maintain the prison system as it is.

1333
01:18:21,104 --> 01:18:22,189
Now, all of a sudden,

1334
01:18:22,272 --> 01:18:24,858
Hillary Clinton is meeting
with Black Lives Matter activists,

1335
01:18:24,942 --> 01:18:25,943
and talking about it.

1336
01:18:26,026 --> 01:18:32,407
It's time to change our approach
and end the era of mass incarceration.

1337
01:18:32,490 --> 01:18:34,284
She's made a major address on it.

1338
01:18:34,367 --> 01:18:39,497
We will reform our criminal justice system
from end to end

1339
01:18:39,581 --> 01:18:45,838
and rebuild trust between law enforcement
and the communities they serve.

1340
01:18:45,921 --> 01:18:49,257
President Obama going to prison, you know,
as the first sitting President

1341
01:18:49,341 --> 01:18:50,550
to ever visit a prison.

1342
01:18:50,633 --> 01:18:53,303
We've got an opportunity to make
a difference at a time when

1343
01:18:53,386 --> 01:18:56,223
overall violent crime rates
have been dropping

1344
01:18:56,306 --> 01:18:58,266
at the same time
as incarcerations last year

1345
01:18:58,350 --> 01:19:00,393
dropped for the first time in 40 years.

1346
01:19:00,477 --> 01:19:04,690
And conservatives, who were always seen
or understood within the narrative

1347
01:19:04,773 --> 01:19:08,193
as being the tough-on-crime ones, um,

1348
01:19:08,276 --> 01:19:11,196
have now embraced justice reform.

1349
01:19:11,279 --> 01:19:13,531
It's very, uh, man bites dog.

1350
01:19:13,615 --> 01:19:18,620
You see, Texas used to spend billions
locking people up for minor offenses.

1351
01:19:19,204 --> 01:19:22,290
We shifted our focus
to diversionary programs,

1352
01:19:22,374 --> 01:19:24,126
like community supervision.

1353
01:19:24,209 --> 01:19:25,460
We got to ask ourselves,

1354
01:19:25,543 --> 01:19:29,506
"Do we feel comfortable with people
taking the lead of a conversation,

1355
01:19:29,589 --> 01:19:31,967
in a moment
where it feels right politically?"

1356
01:19:32,050 --> 01:19:38,556
Historically, when one
looks at efforts to create reforms,

1357
01:19:38,640 --> 01:19:43,896
they inevitably lead to more repression.

1358
01:19:43,979 --> 01:19:46,019
So, if we leave it up to them,
what they're gonna do

1359
01:19:46,064 --> 01:19:47,733
is they're gonna tinker with the system.

1360
01:19:47,816 --> 01:19:49,985
They're not gonna do the change
that we need to see

1361
01:19:50,068 --> 01:19:51,987
as a country to get us out of this mess.

1362
01:19:52,070 --> 01:19:54,239
And they're certainly not
gonna go backwards

1363
01:19:54,322 --> 01:19:55,908
and fix the mess that they have made,

1364
01:19:55,991 --> 01:19:57,951
because they're not ready
to make that admission.

1365
01:19:58,035 --> 01:20:01,914
But as a country, I don't think we've
ever been ready to make the admission

1366
01:20:01,997 --> 01:20:05,042
that we have steamrolled
through entire communities

1367
01:20:05,125 --> 01:20:06,919
and multiple generations

1368
01:20:07,002 --> 01:20:09,504
when you think about things like
slavery and Jim Crow,

1369
01:20:09,588 --> 01:20:13,675
and all the other systems of oppression
that have led us to where we are today.

1370
01:20:14,968 --> 01:20:17,179
So much fun! I love it, I love it!

1371
01:20:17,262 --> 01:20:19,514
We havin' a good time?

1372
01:20:19,597 --> 01:20:21,433
USA! USA!

1373
01:20:21,516 --> 01:20:25,603
USA! USA! USA! USA!

1374
01:20:25,687 --> 01:20:27,981
USA! USA! USA! USA!

1375
01:20:28,065 --> 01:20:30,984
- Fuck you! Fuck you!
- Fuck you! Fuck you!

1376
01:20:31,067 --> 01:20:33,945
Don't you dare do that!
Don't you dare do that!

1377
01:20:34,029 --> 01:20:36,698
Knock the crap out of 'em,
would you? Seriously!

1378
01:20:36,782 --> 01:20:39,409
Get him out.
Get him out of here!

1379
01:20:44,247 --> 01:20:46,541
In the good old days,
this doesn't happen,

1380
01:20:46,624 --> 01:20:49,752
because they used to treat them
very, very rough.

1381
01:20:49,837 --> 01:20:52,047
And when they protested once,

1382
01:20:52,130 --> 01:20:54,257
you know,
they would not do it again so easily.

1383
01:20:54,341 --> 01:20:57,803
I'd like to punch him
in the face, I'll tell you.

1384
01:21:02,474 --> 01:21:03,934
I love the old days.

1385
01:21:04,017 --> 01:21:07,479
You know what they used to do
to guys like that in a place like this?

1386
01:21:08,563 --> 01:21:11,441
They'd be carried out
on a stretcher, folks.

1387
01:21:13,651 --> 01:21:14,945
Yeah, it's true.

1388
01:21:15,028 --> 01:21:16,404
Knock the hell out of that mouth.

1389
01:21:16,488 --> 01:21:18,990
The next time we see him,
we might have to kill him.

1390
01:21:19,992 --> 01:21:22,160
In the good old days,

1391
01:21:22,244 --> 01:21:25,413
they'd rip him out of that seat so fast...

1392
01:21:28,959 --> 01:21:31,128
- Shut up. Shut the hell up.
- No, fuck no.

1393
01:21:31,211 --> 01:21:32,545
No, I will not shut the hell up.

1394
01:21:32,629 --> 01:21:33,922
Why are you even here?

1395
01:21:34,589 --> 01:21:36,174
Get the fuck out of here, man.

1396
01:21:36,550 --> 01:21:37,843
Get out of here.

1397
01:21:39,636 --> 01:21:42,222
- Be respectful!
- I care about my son's future!

1398
01:21:45,058 --> 01:21:46,559
In the good old days...

1399
01:21:47,602 --> 01:21:51,439
law enforcement
acted a lot quicker than this.

1400
01:21:53,150 --> 01:21:54,192
A lot quicker.

1401
01:21:55,360 --> 01:21:57,070
And we are going
to enforce the law,

1402
01:21:57,154 --> 01:22:00,282
and Americans should remember that,
if we're going to have law and order.

1403
01:22:01,658 --> 01:22:07,372
I am...
the law and order candidate.

1404
01:22:10,292 --> 01:22:14,212
We thought... I mean,
they called the end of slavery "jubilee."

1405
01:22:14,296 --> 01:22:16,047
We thought we were done then.

1406
01:22:16,256 --> 01:22:19,592
And then you had 100 years
of Jim Crow, terror and lynching.

1407
01:22:20,802 --> 01:22:24,472
Dr. King, these guys come on the scene,
Ella Jo Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer,

1408
01:22:24,556 --> 01:22:26,641
we get the bills passed to vote,

1409
01:22:26,724 --> 01:22:28,476
and then they break out the handcuffs.

1410
01:22:28,560 --> 01:22:31,813
Label you felon,
you can't vote or get a job.

1411
01:22:31,897 --> 01:22:35,984
So, we don't know
what the next iteration of this will be,

1412
01:22:36,067 --> 01:22:38,486
but it will be. It will be.

1413
01:22:38,570 --> 01:22:40,238
And we will have to be vigilant.

1414
01:22:40,322 --> 01:22:42,740
♪ I'mma prison cell
Six by nine ♪

1415
01:22:42,824 --> 01:22:46,036
♪ Livin' hell, stone wall
Metal bars for the gods in jail ♪

1416
01:22:46,119 --> 01:22:48,830
♪ My nickname, the can
The slammer, the big house ♪

1417
01:22:48,914 --> 01:22:51,749
♪ I'm the place many fear
'Cause there's no way out ♪

1418
01:23:04,096 --> 01:23:09,184
The Bureau of Justice reported
That one in three young, black males

1419
01:23:09,267 --> 01:23:11,811
is expected to go to jail or prison
during his lifetime,

1420
01:23:11,894 --> 01:23:14,814
which is
an unbelievably shocking statistic.

1421
01:23:22,739 --> 01:23:26,701
Black men account
for roughly 6.5% of the US population.

1422
01:23:26,784 --> 01:23:30,663
They make up 40.2%
of the prison population.

1423
01:23:34,709 --> 01:23:38,213
We now have more African Americans
under criminal supervision

1424
01:23:38,296 --> 01:23:40,340
than all the slaves back in the 1850s.

1425
01:23:40,423 --> 01:23:43,260
The prison industrial complex, uh...

1426
01:23:43,343 --> 01:23:47,930
relies historically
on the inheritances of slavery.

1427
01:23:50,642 --> 01:23:52,310
The 13th Amendment says,

1428
01:23:52,394 --> 01:23:56,189
"No involuntary servitude except for those
who have been duly convicted of a crime."

1429
01:23:56,273 --> 01:24:00,152
So once you've been convicted of a crime,
you are in essence a slave of the state.

1430
01:24:01,653 --> 01:24:04,281
The stroke of a pen is not self-enforcing.

1431
01:24:04,364 --> 01:24:07,484
And so, while the 13th Amendment is hailed
as this great milestone for freedom,

1432
01:24:07,534 --> 01:24:11,329
and abolitionists celebrate,
and this is the end of a lifelong quest,

1433
01:24:11,413 --> 01:24:13,123
the reality is much more problematic.

1434
01:24:13,206 --> 01:24:16,501
Well, once that clause is inserted
in there, it becomes a tool.

1435
01:24:16,584 --> 01:24:18,670
It's there.
It's embedded in the structure.

1436
01:24:18,753 --> 01:24:23,258
And for those who seek to use
this criminality clause as a tool,

1437
01:24:23,341 --> 01:24:26,052
it can become a pretty powerful one,
because it's privileged.

1438
01:24:26,136 --> 01:24:28,805
It's in the constitution,
it's the supreme law of the land.

1439
01:24:31,349 --> 01:24:33,560
Throughout American history,

1440
01:24:33,643 --> 01:24:36,438
African Americans
have repeatedly been controlled

1441
01:24:36,521 --> 01:24:40,358
through systems of racial
and social control that appear to die,

1442
01:24:40,442 --> 01:24:42,777
but then are reborn in new form,

1443
01:24:42,860 --> 01:24:45,447
tailored to the needs and constraints
of the time.

1444
01:24:45,530 --> 01:24:47,449
You know, after the collapse of slavery,

1445
01:24:47,532 --> 01:24:50,702
a new system was born,
convict leasing,

1446
01:24:50,785 --> 01:24:54,081
which was a new form of slavery.

1447
01:24:55,332 --> 01:24:59,711
And once convict leasing faded away,
a new system was born,

1448
01:24:59,794 --> 01:25:01,254
a Jim Crow system,

1449
01:25:01,338 --> 01:25:06,718
that relegated African Americans
to a permanent second-class status.

1450
01:25:08,136 --> 01:25:09,262
And here we are,

1451
01:25:09,346 --> 01:25:12,849
decades after the collapse
of the old Jim Crow,

1452
01:25:12,932 --> 01:25:16,144
and a new system
has been born again in America.

1453
01:25:16,228 --> 01:25:19,647
A system of mass incarceration
that, once again,

1454
01:25:19,731 --> 01:25:22,275
strips millions of poor people,

1455
01:25:22,359 --> 01:25:24,611
overwhelmingly poor people of color,

1456
01:25:24,694 --> 01:25:28,365
of the very rights supposedly won
in the civil rights movement.

1457
01:25:28,448 --> 01:25:30,867
And so instead of talking about it,

1458
01:25:30,950 --> 01:25:32,535
we just tried to move on.

1459
01:25:32,619 --> 01:25:35,413
After the Civil Rights Act was passed
and after the civil rights laws,

1460
01:25:35,497 --> 01:25:36,873
we tried to play it off.

1461
01:25:36,956 --> 01:25:38,196
Because we didn't deal with it,

1462
01:25:38,250 --> 01:25:40,835
that narrative
of racial difference continued.

1463
01:25:40,918 --> 01:25:44,631
And it turned into this presumption
of dangerousness and guilt

1464
01:25:44,714 --> 01:25:47,717
that follows every black and brown person
wherever they are.

1465
01:25:51,513 --> 01:25:54,349
You need to get out
of the street immediately.

1466
01:25:54,432 --> 01:25:55,808
Get out of the way!

1467
01:25:58,645 --> 01:26:00,438
This is St. Louis County Police.

1468
01:26:00,522 --> 01:26:01,898
Stay off the roadway.

1469
01:26:02,399 --> 01:26:05,693
Ferguson was not simply
about Mike Brown.

1470
01:26:05,777 --> 01:26:11,616
It was also this pattern of mass
criminalization and mass incarceration.

1471
01:26:12,617 --> 01:26:14,994
Back off. Back off.

1472
01:26:15,620 --> 01:26:19,124
There was an average of three warrants
per household in Ferguson.

1473
01:26:20,250 --> 01:26:23,128
And so people rose up
because they understood

1474
01:26:23,211 --> 01:26:27,965
that they were also enemies of the state,
seen as enemies of the state.

1475
01:26:29,967 --> 01:26:34,722
The communities in which black people live
really become occupied territories,

1476
01:26:34,806 --> 01:26:40,562
and black people have become seen
as, um, enemy combatants, right,

1477
01:26:40,645 --> 01:26:42,522
who don't have any rights,

1478
01:26:42,605 --> 01:26:46,108
and who can be stopped and frisked

1479
01:26:46,193 --> 01:26:49,446
and, you know, arrested
and detained and questioned

1480
01:26:49,529 --> 01:26:51,156
and killed with impunity.

1481
01:26:57,454 --> 01:26:59,539
If we were to look at

1482
01:26:59,622 --> 01:27:04,126
the larger-scale riots that we know of
in, you know, our recent history,

1483
01:27:04,211 --> 01:27:05,753
from Rodney King,

1484
01:27:05,837 --> 01:27:08,215
to the Detroit riot in 1967,

1485
01:27:08,298 --> 01:27:10,216
the Newark riot in 1967,

1486
01:27:10,300 --> 01:27:13,887
Harlem riot in 1964,
Watts in 1965.

1487
01:27:13,970 --> 01:27:17,390
Every single one of those riots
was a result of police brutality.

1488
01:27:17,474 --> 01:27:18,514
That is the common thread.

1489
01:27:18,558 --> 01:27:22,187
- Fight back! Fight back!
- Fist up! Fist up!

1490
01:27:22,270 --> 01:27:26,357
It would be a mistake to say,
as many do in the current context,

1491
01:27:26,441 --> 01:27:29,277
that if you're against the police,
then you're against law and order.

1492
01:27:29,360 --> 01:27:32,697
These are hardworking civil servants
putting their lives on the line every day.

1493
01:27:32,780 --> 01:27:33,781
And that's true.

1494
01:27:33,865 --> 01:27:38,119
People who join the police do so,
you know, to do these sorts of things.

1495
01:27:39,120 --> 01:27:44,542
But if you dismiss black complaints
of mistreatment by police

1496
01:27:44,626 --> 01:27:46,794
as being completely rooted
in our modern context,

1497
01:27:46,878 --> 01:27:48,518
then you're missing the point completely.

1498
01:27:48,588 --> 01:27:50,798
There has never been
a period in our history

1499
01:27:50,882 --> 01:27:56,679
where the law and order branch
of the state has not operated against

1500
01:27:56,763 --> 01:28:00,267
the freedoms, the liberties,
the options, the choices

1501
01:28:00,350 --> 01:28:03,353
that have been available for
the black community, generally speaking.

1502
01:28:03,436 --> 01:28:08,275
And to ignore that racial heritage,
to ignore that historical context,

1503
01:28:08,358 --> 01:28:10,318
means that you can't have
an informed debate

1504
01:28:10,402 --> 01:28:13,738
about the current state
of blacks and police relationship today,

1505
01:28:13,821 --> 01:28:15,698
'cause this didn't just appear
out of nothing.

1506
01:28:15,782 --> 01:28:18,826
This is the product
of a centuries-long historical process.

1507
01:28:18,910 --> 01:28:22,497
And to not reckon with that
is to shut off solutions.

1508
01:28:22,580 --> 01:28:26,125
We may have lost the sheets
of the Ku Klux Klan,

1509
01:28:26,208 --> 01:28:29,337
but, clearly, when you see
black kids being shot down...

1510
01:28:29,921 --> 01:28:33,258
then, obviously,
we didn't cut out this cancer.

1511
01:28:35,302 --> 01:28:36,678
For many of us, you know,

1512
01:28:36,761 --> 01:28:39,597
whose families
lived through this,

1513
01:28:39,681 --> 01:28:42,141
who are extensions
of this kind of oppression,

1514
01:28:42,224 --> 01:28:45,102
we don't need to see pictures
to understand what's going on.

1515
01:28:45,186 --> 01:28:48,315
It's really to kind of, like,
speak to the masses

1516
01:28:48,398 --> 01:28:50,775
who have been ignoring this
for the majority of their life.

1517
01:28:50,858 --> 01:28:53,861
But I also think there's trouble
of just showing,

1518
01:28:53,945 --> 01:28:56,864
you know,
black bodies as dead bodies, too.

1519
01:28:56,948 --> 01:29:00,201
Too much of anything
becomes unhealthy, unuseful.

1520
01:29:01,411 --> 01:29:05,748
I think they need to be seen,
if the family is okay with it.

1521
01:29:06,291 --> 01:29:10,211
It wasn't until things were made visual
in the civil rights movement,

1522
01:29:10,295 --> 01:29:13,005
that we really saw, uh,

1523
01:29:13,089 --> 01:29:16,968
folks come out
and being shocked into movement.

1524
01:29:17,051 --> 01:29:20,096
You have to shock people
into paying attention.

1525
01:29:20,179 --> 01:29:24,016
But there's a kind of historical
trajectory that we can trace here, um,

1526
01:29:24,100 --> 01:29:26,268
through media and technology.

1527
01:29:26,353 --> 01:29:29,606
We went back to, um, the slavery era,

1528
01:29:29,689 --> 01:29:32,900
when people were writing autobiographies
or slave narratives.

1529
01:29:34,652 --> 01:29:36,278
Later in the 19th century,

1530
01:29:36,363 --> 01:29:37,905
when people began to use photographs

1531
01:29:37,989 --> 01:29:39,824
and they showed images.

1532
01:29:40,950 --> 01:29:43,870
There's a famous image
of slave Gordon and his back,

1533
01:29:43,953 --> 01:29:47,289
and you can see just this
kind of lattice of scar tissue

1534
01:29:47,374 --> 01:29:51,002
that is evidence of the whippings
that he received.

1535
01:29:51,085 --> 01:29:55,131
Or the images of lynchings,
which white people produced.

1536
01:29:57,049 --> 01:29:59,927
The murder of Emmett Till
was really thought of as being

1537
01:30:00,011 --> 01:30:03,348
one of the primary catalysts
for the civil rights movement.

1538
01:30:04,474 --> 01:30:06,559
The willingness of his mother

1539
01:30:06,643 --> 01:30:10,062
to have an open-casket funeral.

1540
01:30:12,815 --> 01:30:16,444
Hundreds and hundreds
of black folks filed past

1541
01:30:16,528 --> 01:30:18,655
and see this young boy

1542
01:30:18,738 --> 01:30:21,908
who had been killed
by white supremacists in the South.

1543
01:30:23,826 --> 01:30:27,414
To publish those photographs
in black publications

1544
01:30:27,497 --> 01:30:32,251
so the entire black world, like
our Facebook or our Twitter now, right?

1545
01:30:32,334 --> 01:30:36,172
So that the whole black world
could see what had happened.

1546
01:30:36,255 --> 01:30:40,384
In the 1950s, Dr. King
and the civil rights movement

1547
01:30:40,468 --> 01:30:41,719
used television in this way.

1548
01:30:41,803 --> 01:30:43,930
"Look, this is what segregation
looks like.

1549
01:30:44,013 --> 01:30:47,934
These are dogs attacking children.
These are people being fire hosed."

1550
01:30:49,852 --> 01:30:54,691
Searching for the medium of technology,
that will confirm your experience

1551
01:30:54,774 --> 01:30:57,569
such that your basic humanity
can be recognized.

1552
01:30:57,652 --> 01:31:00,780
The difference now is
somebody can hold up one of these,

1553
01:31:00,863 --> 01:31:02,198
get what's going on.

1554
01:31:02,281 --> 01:31:06,786
They can put it on YouTube,
and the whole world has to deal with it.

1555
01:31:06,869 --> 01:31:08,079
That's what's new.

1556
01:31:08,162 --> 01:31:10,457
It's not the protest.
It's not the brutality.

1557
01:31:10,540 --> 01:31:12,959
It's the fact that we can force
a conversation about it.

1558
01:31:13,042 --> 01:31:17,046
We have been consistently been murdered
as a result of police aggression.

1559
01:31:17,129 --> 01:31:21,050
They generally would excuse it
by calling us criminals.

1560
01:31:21,718 --> 01:31:23,720
When they was killing Oscar Grant...

1561
01:31:30,893 --> 01:31:32,729
When they got to Eric Garner...

1562
01:31:33,312 --> 01:31:34,981
I can't breathe.

1563
01:31:35,064 --> 01:31:36,315
I can't breathe.

1564
01:31:36,398 --> 01:31:39,068
I can't breathe.
I can't breathe.

1565
01:31:39,151 --> 01:31:40,528
I can't breathe.

1566
01:31:40,612 --> 01:31:42,989
I can't breathe.
I can't breathe.

1567
01:31:43,072 --> 01:31:45,032
Everyone pointed out
that he was saying,

1568
01:31:45,116 --> 01:31:46,868
"I can't breathe.
I can't breathe."

1569
01:31:46,951 --> 01:31:48,661
But the sentences before that were,

1570
01:31:48,745 --> 01:31:50,955
"Why are you always stopping me?

1571
01:31:51,038 --> 01:31:55,918
Why is it, day in and day out,
week in and week out, you're stopping me?"

1572
01:31:56,002 --> 01:31:59,380
And that, I think, is hugely important.

1573
01:31:59,463 --> 01:32:03,425
When we think about the children
who were killed at the hands of the state,

1574
01:32:03,510 --> 01:32:06,763
I think about Tamir Rice at 12 years old,

1575
01:32:06,846 --> 01:32:10,391
and the way that he was killed,
you know, it hits my heart.

1576
01:32:11,350 --> 01:32:14,604
Go ahead and take
your seat belt off. Stop. Stop!

1577
01:32:23,445 --> 01:32:24,614
You good?

1578
01:32:30,578 --> 01:32:33,122
- Roll on your stomach. Now!
- Stop fighting!

1579
01:32:35,667 --> 01:32:38,795
- I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
- Oh, shit.

1580
01:32:38,878 --> 01:32:41,756
He shot me, man. I was shot.

1581
01:32:41,839 --> 01:32:43,466
He didn't do shit.
You didn't.

1582
01:32:43,549 --> 01:32:46,135
- I'm losing breath.
- Fuck your breath.

1583
01:32:46,218 --> 01:32:47,887
Stay with me.

1584
01:32:47,970 --> 01:32:51,223
We got pulled over
for a busted taillight in the back.

1585
01:33:17,792 --> 01:33:19,418
Police violence,

1586
01:33:19,501 --> 01:33:22,338
that isn't the problem
in and of itself.

1587
01:33:22,421 --> 01:33:26,467
It's reflection of a much larger,
brutal system

1588
01:33:26,550 --> 01:33:30,054
of racial and social control
known as mass incarceration,

1589
01:33:30,137 --> 01:33:34,058
which authorizes
this kind of police violence.

1590
01:33:34,141 --> 01:33:37,103
That's why, for me,
the brilliance of Black Lives Matter...

1591
01:33:37,186 --> 01:33:42,024
They have a distributed leadership model.
You can't find their address.

1592
01:33:42,108 --> 01:33:45,111
I mean, Black Lives Matter
is not a stoppable phenomenon,

1593
01:33:45,194 --> 01:33:46,904
by a bullet or anything else.

1594
01:33:46,988 --> 01:33:48,865
And so, there's hope there
because of that.

1595
01:33:49,531 --> 01:33:51,993
Having people truly understand

1596
01:33:52,076 --> 01:33:54,829
that when black lives matter,

1597
01:33:55,496 --> 01:33:57,456
everybody's life matters,

1598
01:33:57,539 --> 01:34:02,461
including every single person
that enters this criminal justice system

1599
01:34:02,544 --> 01:34:04,546
and this prison industrial complex.

1600
01:34:04,631 --> 01:34:07,508
It's not just even about
only black lives, right?

1601
01:34:07,591 --> 01:34:12,096
It's about changing the way
this country understands human dignity.

1602
01:34:25,401 --> 01:34:29,030
That's what, really,
this Black Lives Matter moment is about.

1603
01:34:29,113 --> 01:34:33,575
This question of whose life
do we recognize as valuable?

1604
01:34:45,963 --> 01:34:49,008
The opposite of criminalization
is humanization.

1605
01:34:49,091 --> 01:34:51,927
That's the one thing I hope
that people will understand.

1606
01:34:53,470 --> 01:34:57,058
It's about rehumanizing us,
as a people,

1607
01:34:57,141 --> 01:35:00,102
and us, right, as a people,
all of us.

1608
01:35:08,695 --> 01:35:11,864
The system of mass incarceration
has grown,

1609
01:35:11,948 --> 01:35:14,867
and sprawled and developed an appetite

1610
01:35:14,951 --> 01:35:19,538
that is gobbling up people
in communities of all colors.

1611
01:35:19,621 --> 01:35:21,207
But if it hadn't been for the fact

1612
01:35:21,290 --> 01:35:26,003
that it began with a group of people
defined by race,

1613
01:35:26,087 --> 01:35:29,298
that we as a nation
have learned not to care about,

1614
01:35:29,381 --> 01:35:34,053
we wouldn't be talking about
two million people behind bars today.

1615
01:35:34,136 --> 01:35:35,179
People say all the time,

1616
01:35:35,262 --> 01:35:37,598
"I don't understand how people
could've tolerated slavery.

1617
01:35:37,681 --> 01:35:39,809
How could they have made peace with that?

1618
01:35:39,892 --> 01:35:43,730
How could people have gone to a lynching
and participated in that?

1619
01:35:43,813 --> 01:35:47,524
How did people make sense
of the segregation,

1620
01:35:47,608 --> 01:35:50,736
this white and colored-only drinking...
That's so crazy.

1621
01:35:50,820 --> 01:35:54,824
If I was living at that time, I would
have never tolerated anything like that."

1622
01:35:54,907 --> 01:35:58,202
And the truth is, we are living
at this time, and we are tolerating it.

1623
01:36:04,708 --> 01:36:07,128
♪ Southern leaves
Southern trees we hung from ♪

1624
01:36:07,211 --> 01:36:09,797
♪ Barren souls
Heroic songs unsung ♪

1625
01:36:09,881 --> 01:36:12,216
♪ Forgive them, Father
They know this knot is undone ♪

1626
01:36:12,299 --> 01:36:14,718
♪ Tied with the rope
That my grandmother dyed ♪

1627
01:36:14,802 --> 01:36:17,471
♪ Pride of the pilgrims
Affect lives of millions ♪

1628
01:36:17,554 --> 01:36:20,057
♪ Since slave day
Separatin' fathers from children ♪

1629
01:36:20,141 --> 01:36:23,352
♪ Institution ain't just a building
But a method ♪

1630
01:36:23,435 --> 01:36:25,235
♪ Of having black and brown bodies
Fill them ♪

1631
01:36:25,312 --> 01:36:27,857
♪ We ain't seen
As human beings with feelings ♪

1632
01:36:27,940 --> 01:36:30,359
♪ Will the US ever be us, Lord willing? ♪

1633
01:36:30,442 --> 01:36:32,904
♪ For now we know the new Jim Crow ♪

1634
01:36:32,987 --> 01:36:35,572
♪ The stop search and arrest our souls ♪

1635
01:36:35,656 --> 01:36:39,160
♪ Police and policies
Patrol philosophies of control ♪

1636
01:36:39,243 --> 01:36:40,912
♪ A cruel hand taking hold ♪

1637
01:36:40,995 --> 01:36:43,497
♪ We let go to free them
So we can free us ♪

1638
01:36:43,580 --> 01:36:46,167
♪ America's moment to come to Jesus ♪

1639
01:36:46,250 --> 01:36:48,627
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Freedom ♪

1640
01:36:48,710 --> 01:36:51,213
♪ Freedom come ♪

1641
01:36:51,297 --> 01:36:53,800
♪ Hold on ♪

1642
01:36:53,883 --> 01:36:56,468
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1643
01:36:56,552 --> 01:36:59,013
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Freedom ♪

1644
01:36:59,096 --> 01:37:01,640
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1645
01:37:01,723 --> 01:37:04,268
♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1646
01:37:04,351 --> 01:37:07,063
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1647
01:37:07,146 --> 01:37:09,565
♪ The cage bird sings
For freedom in the ring ♪

1648
01:37:09,648 --> 01:37:12,193
♪ Black bodies bein' lost
In the American Dream ♪

1649
01:37:12,276 --> 01:37:14,736
♪ Blood of black being a pastoral scene ♪

1650
01:37:14,821 --> 01:37:17,448
♪ Slavery's still alive
Check Amendment 13 ♪

1651
01:37:17,531 --> 01:37:20,034
♪ Now whips and chains are subliminal ♪

1652
01:37:20,117 --> 01:37:22,661
♪ Instead of nigga
They use the word criminal ♪

1653
01:37:22,744 --> 01:37:25,289
♪ Sweet land of liberty
Incarcerated country ♪

1654
01:37:25,372 --> 01:37:27,791
♪ Shot me with your Reagan
And now you wanna Trump me ♪

1655
01:37:27,875 --> 01:37:30,377
♪ Prison is a business
America's the company ♪

1656
01:37:30,461 --> 01:37:33,047
♪ Investing in injustice, fear
And long suffering ♪

1657
01:37:33,130 --> 01:37:35,632
♪ We're staring in the face
Of hate again ♪

1658
01:37:35,716 --> 01:37:38,177
♪ The same hate they say
Will make America great again ♪

1659
01:37:38,260 --> 01:37:40,804
♪ No consolation prize
For the dehumanized ♪

1660
01:37:40,888 --> 01:37:43,432
♪ For America to rise
Is a matter of black lives ♪

1661
01:37:43,515 --> 01:37:46,060
♪ And we gonna free them
So we can free us ♪

1662
01:37:46,143 --> 01:37:48,729
♪ America's moment to come to Jesus ♪

1663
01:37:48,812 --> 01:37:51,315
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Freedom ♪

1664
01:37:51,398 --> 01:37:53,943
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Yeah ♪

1665
01:37:54,026 --> 01:37:56,528
♪ Hold on ♪

1666
01:37:56,612 --> 01:37:59,115
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1667
01:37:59,198 --> 01:38:01,783
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Freedom ♪

1668
01:38:01,868 --> 01:38:04,286
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1669
01:38:04,370 --> 01:38:06,873
♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1670
01:38:06,956 --> 01:38:09,583
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1671
01:38:09,666 --> 01:38:12,211
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1672
01:38:12,294 --> 01:38:14,838
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom ♪

1673
01:38:14,922 --> 01:38:17,424
♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1674
01:38:17,508 --> 01:38:20,052
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1675
01:38:20,136 --> 01:38:22,638
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Freedom ♪

1676
01:38:22,721 --> 01:38:25,099
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1677
01:38:25,182 --> 01:38:27,851
♪ Hold on ♪

1678
01:38:27,935 --> 01:38:30,437
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1679
01:38:30,521 --> 01:38:33,107
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1680
01:38:33,190 --> 01:38:35,692
♪ Freedom come ♪

1681
01:38:35,776 --> 01:38:38,279
♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1682
01:38:38,362 --> 01:38:40,990
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1683
01:38:41,073 --> 01:38:43,492
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1684
01:38:43,575 --> 01:38:46,037
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1685
01:38:46,120 --> 01:38:48,622
♪ Hold on ♪

1686
01:38:48,705 --> 01:38:51,375
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1687
01:38:51,458 --> 01:38:53,794
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1688
01:38:53,877 --> 01:38:56,505
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1689
01:38:56,588 --> 01:38:59,008
♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1690
01:38:59,091 --> 01:39:01,593
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1691
01:39:01,677 --> 01:39:04,180
♪ Freedom ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1692
01:39:04,263 --> 01:39:06,848
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1693
01:39:06,933 --> 01:39:09,601
♪ Hold on ♪

1694
01:39:09,685 --> 01:39:12,188
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1695
01:39:12,271 --> 01:39:14,731
♪ Freedom ♪

1696
01:39:14,815 --> 01:39:17,401
♪ Freedom come ♪
♪ Freedom come ♪

1697
01:39:17,484 --> 01:39:19,987
♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪

1698
01:39:20,071 --> 01:39:25,701
♪ Won't be long ♪
♪ Won't be long ♪

1699
01:39:29,496 --> 01:39:31,999
♪ Won't be long ♪

1700
01:39:32,083 --> 01:39:38,630
♪ Oh, freedom ♪

1701
01:39:39,840 --> 01:39:41,968
♪ Won't be long ♪