The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished slavery in this country. This abolition had to be an amendment because the protection of slavery as an institution had been incorporated into the Constitution at its inception.
13th, directed by Ava Duvernay (who also directed 2014's Selma), centers on a loophole built into the amendment which has been used to justify legal human bondage ever since its ratification in 1865. The amendment reads: " Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The film illustrates how that highlighted section has allowed convicted criminals to be effectively enslaved to this very day. One of the many things the documentary points out is the fact that no distinction whatsoever is made between horrendous crimes and petty misdemeanors. 13th explores the varied interrelated institutions at play including: racism; the relationship between the government and the private for-profit prison industry, which depends on criminal convictions for its survival; the "War on Drugs"; and the powerful, yet secretive coalition between U.S. politicians and Corporate America - ALEC.
ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is a forty-year-old organization comprised of conservative, mostly Republican, lawmakers and corporation heads that has been responsible for drafting legislation aimed at furthering right-wing, corporate agendas for decades. This is roughly the way it works: Group members (both political and private sector) propose bills, which the legislators introduce to their respective legislative bodies, without ever divulging the true origin of said bills. During the 1980s, ALEC opposed U.S. efforts to end apartheid in then-segregated South Africa. Past members include: former Speaker of the House John Boehner; Ohio governor John Kasich; and North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. While ALEC was effectively outed in 2011 by The Nation and later The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek and "The Daily Show", 13th points out that it continues to thrive and remains largely unknown to the American public. After it was dragged out of the shadows, many of ALEC's corporate members cut their ties for fear of fallout from the association, including: Wal-Mart; Google; Facebook; Coca-Cola; Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Wendy's; McDonald's; Amazon; Apple; GE; Procter & Gamble; Ebay; Yahoo!; Microsoft; BP; T-Mobile; and CCA.
CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), the largest owner and manager of private prisons in the country, profits from crime bills it promoted as a member of ALEC before rescinding its membership. The aforementioned crime bills, including the federal three-strikes Law, mandatory minimums, and stop-and-frisk policies insured a steady influx of inmates, largely African-American and Hispanic, into their institutions. The film also points out that ALEC introduced the controversial stand-your-ground law, which allowed the then-29-year-old George Zimmerman to legally pursue and kill unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Pfizer, AT&T, ExxonMobil and State Farm Insurance are still active ALEC members.
Duvernay interviews dozens of people on all sides of the issues covered here, including: politicians, including Charles Rangel and Newt Gingrich; professors; social activists, including Angela Davis; former inmates; and social pundits, both conservative and liberal. Video footage (filmed years prior to their canditorial declarations) of the two current presidential front-runners, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, is presented in which each one gives an argument for incarcerating African-American men. Trump is featured in a clip decrying the Central Park 5 -- a group of African-American teenagers who were coerced by NYPD detectives into confessing to raping and violently assaulting a white female jogger, Trisha Meili, in New York's Central Park. He took out full-page ads in New York's four major newspapers advocating capital punishment for the teens. The young men were ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence after having served between six to 13 years in prison. Clinton gives her now-infamous speech labeling African-American teens as "super-predators". It's a wonder that so much ground is covered in the doc's scant 100-minute running time.
One of the most surprising moments of the film is Republican power-broker and Trump-supporter Gingrich declaring that white Americans have no idea what it's like to be African-American.
13th was filmed in secret and on September 30, 2016, became the first documentary to open the New York Film Festival. 13th's subject matter is not common knowledge - but it should be. See it immediately. If you have a Netflix account you can do just that.
- Ran Britt
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