The drug war is over 40 years old, but during the Crack Era of the 1980’s, it was kicked into overdrive. King’s “I have a dream” to the drug kingpin’s “I have a life sentence?” How did we get from the glorious battles of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastation of the crack plague? From the police crackdown on the marchers on the Selma bridge to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner? From the nonviolence movement of courageous civil rights activists to the gang violence that has made homicide the number one cause of death for young black men? And finally from the impassioned eloquence of Dr.
As she says in the film: “What explains the sudden explosion in incarceration, if not crime and crime rates? Well the answer is the War on Drugs and the Get Tough Movement.” “Selma is now,” Legend said, explaining, “We live in the most incarcerated country in the world.” The mass incarceration of so many men of color is The New Jim Crow, the title of Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book. The movie Selma, and Common and John Legend’s mesmerizing Oscar night performance of “Glory,” provide the answer. Now what does our documentary on the crack era and the man at its epicenter, Freeway Rick, have to do with this epic civil rights confrontation that galvanized the nation half a century ago? What does Freeway Rick Ross, the drug kingpin, have to do with Martin Luther King and the 50 th anniversary of the Selma March? Good question.įreeway: Crack in the System has been invited by the Jubilee Film Festival to close next weekend’s historic events in Selma, Alabama.
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