By Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member
In the present climate of struggle against policy brutality and institutionalised racism, a film that should be compulsory viewing for all labour activists is 13th. It is a Netflix documentary and it describes the experience of the great majority of Black Americans.
It begins with a speech by Barrack Obama, highlighting the fact that the US has only 5% of the world’s population but has 25% of all the world’s prisoners. Let’s think about that”, he says. Six and half percent of the US are black males, but they represent over 40% of the prison system. One in three black males have entered the prison system at one time or another. Today, around 2.3 million people are currently serving a prison sentence in the US.
Imprisoned for trivial offences
The programme begins with the end of slavery. The title of the programme is 13th because this refers to the amendment of the US constitution that prohibits slavery. However, it came with exemptions, specifically, those that who were felons serving a prison sentence. The freeing of 4 million slaves left the American south in a deep economic depression. Slavery was effectively retained by criminalizing the black Americans.
Many were imprisoned for trivial offences, like vagrancy and loitering. A reign of terror was unleashed, with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the Lynching of black people was commonplace.
A contributor to the documentary points out that the concentration of black Americans in the inner cities in both north the and west of the US was not just due to the migration of those seeking a better life; it was refugees fleeing the terrorism in former southern slave states.
In 1915, one of first films ever made, called the Birth of a Nation, depicted a black man as innately aggressive and a sexual predator, a common myth prevalent in those times. This era, described as the period of ‘Jim Crow’, gave way to segregation and the denial of all civil rights that were afforded to most white people in the former slaveholding states.
Rise of the Civil Rights movement
With the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 50s and 60s, reforms were granted, but at the cost of a number of important leaders of this struggle being murdered by the state or those acting on behalf of the state. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers are just some of those who were murdered. Reaction resurfaced in the guise of restoring ‘law and order’.
Crime had been generally static for most of the 20th century. Largely as a result of the increased population from the post-war baby boom, crime rates increased slightly at around the same time as the Civil Rights movement emerged. This was the cue for Nixon to mount a campaign in the 1968 presidential elections on a Law and Order ticket. The programme showed the brutality meted out by the Police and by racist gangs during this era. The number of prisoners in the US then stood at around 350,000.
The ‘war on crime’ included a doubling of spending on law enforcement. This included the so-called war on drugs. Rather than treating drug addiction as a health issue, it was a means of incarcerating more people, particularly young black men. By the time Reagan was elected in 1980, the number of people in jail was already over 500,000. His election was to prove transformative in the negative sense. He slashed social programs, which resulted in a growth in drug abuse. Crack cocaine use became rife amongst the poorest. The powdered stuff was used in more affluent areas as well. A contributor pointed out that prison sentences were far harsher in relation to crack than it was for those who snorted cocaine. Reagan tripled the budget for law enforcement and the number of prisoners went up to over a million.
Bush also stood up for ‘law and order’
One commentator in the programme suggested that the reason Bush senior won the Presidential election in 1990 was because of one individual case. A guy by the name of Horton had been granted release at weekends. Dukakis, the more ‘liberal’ Democratic Party candidate, supported this release scheme and Bush used it as a pretext for standing up for law and order.
The conclusion drawn by the likes of Clinton, Democratic candidate in the 1994 presidential election, was to outdo the Republican Bush on law and order, by calling for the ending of parole and what was also called the ‘three strikes and out’ rule. He also increased the size and number of prisons. Later on, Clinton did admit that his was wrong, but by the time Obama was elected, the number in jails was soaring and had risen to 2 million.
The programme showed a much younger Donald Trump demanding the death penalty for a number of black teenagers convicted of rape and murder. As it turned out, their convictions were later overturned with DNA evidence. The programme also showed an older Trump encouraging his supporters to attack a group of mainly black protesters at a Republican Rally. He lamented on how things were done in the ‘old’ days.
Business connections to the judicial system
What is also very interesting in this documentary is its exposure of the links between business and the legal system and it shows how the legal system is corrupt to its core. Due to the number of people charged with offences, few cases actually come to trial. Plea bargaining is the usual practice, which means that people are encouraged to plead guilty for lesser charges that carry lighter sentences, with the clear threat that pleading not guilty would mean a conviction on a trumped-up more serious charge. One young black man ended up in prison on remand for three years and was found innocent of the charges. Traumatised by the experience, he committed suicide. A political lobbyist group called ALEC, at one time, financed by many major corporations, was often responsible for law-making and profiting from the prison system.
The programme highlighted the case of a white man who chased a black teenager and shot him. The guy was charged with murder in the state of Florida which has a law called ‘Stand Your Ground’, meaning that this murder could be interpreted as ‘justifiable’ homicide, so he was set free. The Stand Your Ground law was introduced after intensive lobbying by ALEC. One of ALEC’s sponsors was WalMart, whose sales of rifles rocketed as a result of this law. Big business has profited enormously from the privatisation of much of the prison service. This includes using the prisoners as a means of providing enforced, cheap labour.
Nearly a third have lost the right to vote
The criminalizing of large numbers of black Americans has resulted in the loss of many basic rights and 30% have lost the right to vote. Being a felon often bars you from getting a job and other requirements for civilised existence, like welfare benefits and social housing. It is little wonder that the murder of George Floyd has resulted in widespread protests and riots. The greater surprise is that the uprising after his murder didn’t come sooner. As a contributor points out, the riots in the 60s were as a response to police brutality, but the lessons of that period have not been made, nor any significant changes made.
This superb film is available on Netflix, or you can find it on YouTube.
June 8, 2020
