Screening of: 13th

The words of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were supposed to guarantee that slavery and involuntary servitude effectively were outlawed. With the exception of punishment for a crime where the “party shall have been convicted.” That’s the loophole. And as detailed in Ava DuVernay’s “The 13th”, the injustice system in America has not changed all that much since the earliest days of slavery.

The statistics DuVernay puts onscreen say it all: African-Americans make up 6.5% of the U.S. population but a whopping 40% of the prison population — in a country with the highest level of incarceration in the world; up more than tenfold since 1970 and existing mostly to put away black and Latino men. It all comes down to money. That was the driving force in the beginning, when slavery effectively was ended, but the South had to figure out a way to balance the economics when suddenly short about 4 million slaves. Using the loophole in the 13th Amendment, Southerners started putting blacks in prisons for petty reasons and used them as a workforce without calling them “slaves.” Today the practice is very much alive, overcrowding our prisons and filling them with minorities, the most vulnerable and underprivileged among us.

Sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Ctee as part of our Conscientious Projector series.

Wheelchair accessible.