Partners: 1) Mercer County Youth College, James Kearney Campus
2) Integrated Justice Alliance, Racial & Economic Disparities Committee
3) Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc, Delta Upsilon Social Action Committee
4) YWCA of Trenton/Princeton 2013 Stand Against Racism Project
Date: Friday April 26,2013
Activity: View and discuss the documentary, “Broken On All Sides”, By Matthew Phillischer.
Synopsis
The project began as a way to explore, educate about, and advocate change around the
overcrowding of the Philadelphia county jail system. The documentary has come to focus on
mass incarceration across the nation and the intersection of race and poverty within criminal
justice. The feature-length documentary is available for activists and educators to use in
order to raise consciousness and organize for change. Since its completion in February 2012
the director, Matthew Pillischer, has been doing a grassroots tour of the movie: setting up
meetings in cities across the country, where a screening of the movie can kick off discussions
by people who were formerly incarcerated and their families and allies on how we can
dismantle the system of mass incarceration. If your school, workplace, organization, or
religious institution can host a screening, please contact the director.
The documentary centers around the theory put forward by many, and most recently by
Michelle Alexander (who appears in the movie), that mass incarceration has become “The
New Jim Crow.” That is, since the rise of the drug war and the explosion of the prison
population, and because discretion within the system allows for arrest and prosecution
of people of color at alarmingly higher rates than whites, prisons and criminal penalties
have become a new version of Jim Crow. Much of the discrimination that was legal in the
Jim Crow era is today illegal when applied to black people but perfectly legal when applied
to “criminals.” The problem is that through subjective choices, people of color have been
targeted at significantly higher rates for stops, searches, arrests, prosecution, and harsher
sentences. So, where does this leave criminal justice?
Through interviews with people on many sides of the criminal justice system, this
documentary aims to answer questions and provoke questions on an issue walled-off from
the public’s scrutiny
Contacts: Aula Maarufu Sumbry 609-638-7635; Donald Davis 609-570-3157