This one’s gonna run and run but I liked my mate Doug Cook’s classy Meme on the subject.
Recalls the breakdown of the Westworld robots who are trained to say the same thing every time until they get a mind of their own.
Remember, May was anti-Brexit.
I should start by saying that I am not North American.
I am a Scotsman.
A caucasian Scotsman at that.
And yes, a Liberal.
I love the United States and my experiences there have been universally positive.
But these were experiences in areas of privilege and that are essentially cleansed for tourists. Largely Liberal areas where whites and people of colour live in harmony (Manhattan, Florida, California, Chicago city centre, Toronto).
In these places I did not see the ghettoes and the communities of colour that this shocking documentary uncovers and that has spurred on the whole Where Black Lives Matter movement.
The title refers to the 13th Amendment to the American constitution that was passed in 1864 and aimed to abolished slavery once and for all.
What 13th sets out to expose is the centuries long political outcome, that has resulted in ‘Mass Incarceration’ mainly of black and coloured men in the USA.
Plea bargaining is one of the most heinous causes of it. Because without money and facing massive gambles 97% of Black men plead guilty to avoid a trail where sentences will be massive due to minimum incarceration legislation.
In other words they can plead guilty to a crime they did not commit and receive perhaps a three year sentence. Or they can fight their conviction and, if unsuccessful, face a 30 year Minimum Incarceration, without parole, term.
The odds don’t look good.
So, they typically take the rap and plea bargain.
Under this type of increasingly aggressive legislation and successive governments’ “War on Drugs” and “War on crime” the US Prison population has risen from 200,000 to 2.5 million since 1970.
Incidentally Crack cocaine conviction (Black working class, inner city) has a significantly longer incarceration minimum to powder cocaine conviction (White, suburban.)
The US has only 5% of the worlds population, but 25% of world’s prison population.
1 in 17 of white men in the USA are incarcerated, but 1 in 3 of Black men are.
Black men represent 6.5% of the US Population, but 40.2% of the prison population.
Does this mean black men in the USA are intrinsically criminal?
No it does not.
It means , the film-makers argue, that there is a political will in all parties and for many, many years to incarcerate black men as a form of replacement of slavery.
It is big business. (ALEC represents the financial interests of corporations.)
It makes politicians look tough.
“The War on Crime” literally, wins votes and Democrats are as guilty of it as Republicans.
Mass incarceration is the new slavery. Which was replaced by Convict Leasing, lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, the Jim Crow segregation laws. And Yet it was only AFTER and DESPITE the Civil Rights Act that Mass Incarceration became the ‘solution’.
But there is hope. Hillary Clinton is planning to redesign the incarceration regime (that her husband dramatically escalated) as started by Obama; the first ever President to visit a Prison and who oversaw the first drop in incarceration numbers in 40 years.
As Trump says (with glee). “In the good old days this wouldn’t happen (blacks protesting at his events) because they treated them rough. They’d carry them out on a stretcher.”
It’s a mess and this documentary makes Ia right good job of exposing it.
OK it’s very one-sided and it is represented by extremely articulate coloured American middle class academics and commentators.
But they were not always thus.
I, for one, think it’s a thing of greatness and I’d urge you to watch it.
Ken Loach does it again.
If you know Ken Loach (and importantly his writing partner Paul Laverty) you’ll know I, Daniel Blake.
It’s a nightmare.
A total nightmare.
Life on poverty line Britain that is.
And Loach hammers this home with gusto.
He chooses Newcastle as his latest political landscape, partly because “it’s grim up North” but also because, in my experience, Geordies are the salt of the earth; kind, lovable folks. And this is the main emotional driver of this nightmare.
Daniel Blake is caught in a trap.
A beaurocratic hell populated by “computer says no” mini Hitlers occupying mainly minor roles in the Jobseeker hell that is Tory Britain. In a bid to out ‘scroungers’ the system has eaten itself and is spitting out vulnerable pitiful fodder like Daniel (played deeply sympathetically by comedian Dave Johns. He’ll never win an Oscar but this part was made for him) and the lovable but deeply vulnerable Katie (played equally well by Hayley Squires – Call the Midwife).
He’s had a heart attack and his doctors say he can’t work but the Benefits Police say he has to go on jobseeker allowance and look for work or lose all entitlement to any money AT ALL.
It’s farcical.
She’s moved from a women’s hostel in London because she can’t afford a flat in London with her two children (one slightly miscast as a rather posh daughter, Daisy). She’s having the same problems, only hers start from a tinpot Hitler chucking her out of the Job Centre for being late for her appointment.
They bond. He helps her. She helps him. It’s grim but deeply affecting. We then follow their shared struggle.
In many ways this movie is like a Ken Loach Primer. It has all his usual trademarks and the ‘working class people are good’ message is laid on way too thickly.
But.
And it’s a big but they are in a profoundly believable real-life drama and I found myself in tears (of collective shame?) three times during it.
It certainly makes the reality of food banks in Britain very, very meaningful. I won’t pass a collection point again if my conscience holds up.
Everything that is good about Loach is in this film. In parts it’s laugh out loud funny (but it’s laughs of derision at our State). In parts it’s deeply moving, even though some of the plot is verging on the ridiculous.
But who cares. Ken Loach holds a mirror up to our frankly DISGUSTING society and mocks it.
But he mocks it with the most vicious of venom.
It feels real. Really real.
It’s a must see.
A few tickets left for tomorrow night but you’ll have to be fast.
Spitalfields Market, Shoreditch, Saturday October 15th, 2016.
The spirit of Punk’s not dead, 40 years on.
We were in Shoreditch, London at the weekend and found this great place called Dinerama.
Here’s what they say about themselves…
“Dinerama is back roofed and winterproofed every Thu/Fri/Sat from 5pm to late. Tuck into Street Feast favourites Smokestak, Breddos, Yum Bun and Fundi, plus new heroes Farang and loads more. Head upstairs for Hot Wine and Frozen Toffee Vodka from Dick’s Magic T-Bar, proper cocktails from The Zephyr Lounge and tiki drinks in all the colours of the rumbow in the House of Bamboo.”
It’s a kind of warehouse/ popup venue with bars, DJ’s and lots of food. It’s great fun.
This couple (Mandy and Reggie) were being married and I thought this image, shot through the reflection from inside the venue, as it poured with rain, was just magic.
So much so that I got a whole bunch more…
gibberish 