A Drug Kingpin, the CIA, and Prisoners: Freeway Rick Ross and America’s Mass Incarceration Problem

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.
Freeway: Crack in the System has been invited by the Jubilee Film Festival to close next weekend’s historic events in Selma, Alabama. 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?
The movie Selma, and Common and John Legend’s mesmerizing Oscar night performance of “Glory,” provide the answer. “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. 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.”
READ MORE:http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/01/a-drug-kingpin-the-cia-and-prisoners-freeway-rick-ross-and-america-s-mass-incarceration-problem.html