Social Justice – Bitch Flicks

Negotiated Identities and Gray Oppositions in Ridley’s ‘American Crime’

With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that.

This guest post by Sean Weaver appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

When I was a young preteen kid, my dad told me tales of how Miami Vice and Magnum, P.I. once helped him entertain the dream of becoming a private detective. He was so enamored by detectives and the law that he took a college course on crime, criminal investigation, and the law. Unbeknownst to him, I remember stumbling across one of his old tape recorders, hitting play, and listening to his own secret sting operation play out. Perhaps that’s where I began my long career of advocating social justice–justice against a system that is seriously flawed.

With all nostalgia and conspiracy theories aside, at first glance, Jonathan Ridley’s (director of 12 Years a Slave) American Crime seems like one of those old school detective thrillers, the likes of which have entertained American television and cinema since the 1980s. Up to its premiere on March 5, 2015, I had seen previews on ABC. I imagined it would be everything I had hoped in a detective drama: the gritty neo-noir tone, the masculine detective hero out to solve the un-solvable case, and the plot line driven by suspense and a nagging “Who dun it?” Instead, what I came across is a show that is powerfully poignant, thought-provoking, and one that delves the viewer deeper into the conditions of the human experience.

This isn’t a show aimed at entertaining. It is a show that relies on provoking the viewer into moving past that cushy comfort zone of self-identification, and questioning the very foundations that control our daily lives: social justice, race, and gender. In her review on American Crime in The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley beautifully captures the sentiment and driving force of this show. She states, “This series is at heart a murder mystery—someone has been killed, and the show withholds who did it. But solving the crime isn’t the point. The murder is a clue to the mysteries of character, experience, and self deception…”

It is a murder mystery. But, as Stanley so eloquently puts it, it isn’t. It’s so much more. In the introduction to her book Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective, film critic Philippa Gates writes:

“The detective genre has traditionally been a male-centered one based on the social assumption that heroism, villainy, and violence are predominantly masculine characteristics. The detective genre has traditionally been a male-centered one based on the social assumption that heroism, villainy, and violence are predominantly masculine characteristics…Not only is the genre male-centered, it is also hero-centered, tending to adhere to a structure of binary oppositions— good/bad, civilized/uncivilized, law/crime, order/chaos, and heroes/villains…[However] Not all detective films make absolute distinctions between these oppositions, and the examination of the indeterminate, ‘gray’ area between heroism and anti-heroism also proves illuminating in terms of the social mores and attitudes toward crime and law that it can reveal.”

Gates rightly points that not all detective films, and in this case show, make absolute distinctions in these traditional masculine tropes/themes. American Crime focuses on illuminating this “gray” area that reveals the social mores and attitudes toward crime and law, and in turn attitudes on crime, race, and gender in American society. It forgoes the masculine detective hero out to solve the crime, and instead focuses on those impacted by such crimes—whether they are guilty by circumstance/hearsay, victims in their hurt, or even willing participants. Like Stanley also points out, this “gray” area exists in the things the characters fail to say or do. By focusing on this “gray” area, viewers can truly come to appreciate the complexities of this astounding show.

Set amidst the dark and drug-filled backdrop of San Modesto, California, the show centers primarily on four families and the suspects associated with a high profile murder, all poised to give into the collision course of hate, fear, and suspicion that guide their highly racialized and gendered lives. In short summary for those who haven’t yet seen American Crime, the driving plot is that a White man is killed by a Black man, under the guise of a “hate crime.” Hold on to that for a second. A Black man is charged with committing a hate crime against a White man. Talk about flipping the traditional binary. With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that. And finally, each character is hell-bent on seeking a social justice, whatever that may be, that reasserts their own existence. I’d rather not give away to many more details. Take my word for it, watch it.

With all the background stuff out of the way, the task of unpacking the complex lived realities of the Skokie and Nix families is rather daunting. However, at the head of the Skokie family is Barbra Hanlon (Felicity Huffman), mother of the murdered White man, and ex wife of Russ Skokie (Timothy Hutton). Barb fits all the characteristics of the stereotypical suburban middle aged White woman. She is assertive, grieving, and every bit fearful of those she perceives as “other.” She is the walking parrot of the patriarchy, and embodies all its masculine ideals. She wields power, through her very own existence. So much so, that if you hadn’t watched the first few episodes, you would swear that she was the intended murdered victim.

She creates fact from the truths she is unable to face. She decries her son a hero, even after authorities question her son’s involvement in an illegal drug cartel: “You want me to say stuff about my son that isn’t true? He is a war hero, a veteran.” Finally she gives into the easy out of declaring racism and her son’s murder a hate crime, knowing that the lead suspect of her son’s murder is in a relationship with a White woman. She groups people by the stereotypes engrained in her social upbringing—even going as far as declaring, “It was probably one of those illegals.” At one point, she comes into her power and wields it, well, like a man—even going as far as purchasing a firearm. The feminist in me cringes at this description. Because on the surface it seems like the stereotype of the grieving hysterical mother is being perpetuated once again. But there comes a point in the show where the viewer realizes she is not just a woman facing “hysteria.” No, the show is pushing past the perceived identities we take so much stock in. Instead, it shows how easily it is for the oppressed to become the oppressors by wielding fear and distrust. It also shows how people often negotiate the power of their identities at the expense of others.

The antithesis to Barb’s masculine ideals is her ex-husband, Russ. Like his wife, Russ takes stock in illusions that the exterior just needs to be brushed off. Russ is the failed man. When I say failed man, I mean he fails to live up to the expectations of the patriarchal world that controls his life. He is weak, timid, and ultimately unable to hold ground with his wife. At one point Barb delivers the ultimate emasculation speech, concerning where and who should bury their dead son exclaiming, “You walked out. You no longer get to say you’re his father.” The viewer becomes perplexed and is left with figuring out whether she is right or wrong. Is he the hero because he has returned? Does he return to step into the perceived masculine role of putting the pieces back together? Does his masculinity rely on the perceived social norm that the man is the back bone of family? Has he really overcome his gambling addiction? For Russ, the answer is yes, because countless times he declares, “We need to be a family.” In the end, Russ can only reclaim his own lost masculinity by taking his own sense of justice. In the final episode, Barb is distraught that the man she deems murdered her son is released. Her masculine veneer fades, and the viewer is left with a defeated woman realizing the realities she has fabricated are nothing but lies. After being cast off by Barb in a moment of rare intimacy between the two, Russ returns home to the gun that Barb has entrusted in his care. She has rejected his last attempt to once again reunite the family, his last attempt to be a man. He fails to be the hero, and instead becomes the villain he has tried to protect his family from by murdering Carter Nix (Elvis Nolasco).

On the receiving end of the prosecution is the Nix family. Carter Nix stands accused for the murder of Matthew Skokie. While the show never reveals whether or not Carter killed Skokie (which to me is a nod to the infamous system in which the guilty go free and the innocent accused), the viewer is left to come to their own conclusion. The facts are plentiful, but the truth is even harder to discern, and is found only in what is left unsaid. On the surface, it might seem like the show is reproducing the Black “thug” stereotype; Carter is a drug addict dating a White woman with the same problem. In fact, every chance they get the prosecution tries to save Carter’s girlfriend Aubry (Caitlin Gerard) from the menacing Black man: “Give us something to put him away.” However, Carter is far from the stereotypes that seem to define his life, and consequently his actions. Like his White counterpart Russ Skokie, Carter is a defeated man, emasculated in every sense of the word. While the circumstances differ, the same power structure is at play. The reason Carter relies on drugs is to create realities he wishes to see as truth. In one scene, Carter discusses how Aubry has saved his life with his sister Aliyah Shadeed (Regina King). He states he was miserable being an accountant, subservient to the White men that controlled his life. He then shares with her a magazine clipping of a Black man and White woman, the reality he wishes to share with Aubry, but cannot due to the interference of what is socially acceptable and not. He must negotiate his identity for drugs, and perceived lived realities, all while fighting an impenetrable system of control.

Finally the last person who seems to take a central role in the unfolding drama is Aliyah, Carter’s sister. She is every bit the counterpart to Barb Skokie. In fact, she is just as strong and willfully powered. She becomes the spearhead of a campaign to free Carter and is right to point the finger at a system that is massively corrupt. In one brilliant dialogue with Carter she states, “You sleep with their women, use their drugs, and take their guns. And you don’t expect to be locked up here?” She is a strong figure and is masculine in her own rights. However, in her fight to free Carter from his metaphorical chains she becomes just as guilty of upholding and instilling fear and hate. Like Barb, she becomes the victim; it is no longer her brother’s fight. In doing so, she manages to push Carter into breaking up with Aubry, forcing Carter to take sides in an invisible war. Just before the final scene in which her brother is murdered, Aliyah gives a speech in her mosque stating, “If we as a people cannot forgive, then we are cursed to hate.” The irony is that Aliyah was only able to forgive once her cause had been won. But her victory comes at the cost of her own negotiated identity, proving that the true American crime is not the physical act of murder itself, but something far more harmful: the negotiation and deception of one’s self.

Sean Weaver has a MA in English/Literature from Kutztown University. He is currently News Editor at Vada, an online magazine from the UK with a new queer perspective. When he isn’t reading or writing, he is hard at work looking for new ways to understand what it means to be queer.

Twitter: @levirush8

Blog: http://post-colonial-scholar.blogspot.com

A Tender Tribute to Aaron Swartz: ‘The Internet’s Own Boy’

‘The Internet’s Own Boy’ is a passionate, intelligent tribute to the tragically short but brilliant life of the programmer and activist. The documentary successfully captures Swartz’s spirit and rightly underscores his visionary genius and socio-cultural importance. Recounting both his days of triumph and despair, it acknowledges his vulnerabilities and fears as well as his drive and passion.

Film poster for The Internet's Own Boy — Film poster for *The Internet’s Own Boy*

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Directed by Brian Knappenberger, The Internet’s Own Boy (2014) is an involving and profoundly moving documentary about Internet icon Aaron Swartz. Swartz was not only an innovative and influential programmer, he was also a deeply committed Free Speech and Open Access advocate. In late 2010 and early 2011, Swartz downloaded academic documents from JSTOR at MIT. Arrested in January 2011, he was charged with wire fraud and theft of information. Facing up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine, he took his own life in his New York apartment on Jan. 11, 2013. He was 26 years old.

Examining both his private and public life, The Internet’s Own Boy intermixes home movies, stills, news footage, and interviews with friends and relatives. Home videos of Swartz as a child illustrate his intellectual precocity while family members recall his love of learning. At the age of 12, he created a Wikipedia-like information site before Wikipedia called info-org. The documentary comprehensively chronicles both his Internet and activist careers. Swartz programmed for Creative Commons, helped develop RSS and co-founded Reddit. When Reddit was bought by Conde Nast in 2006, the programmer relocated to California. But he literally recoiled from office life, and abandoned start-up culture. Peter Eckersley, a former roommate of Swartz and technological projects director at Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells us, “He was totally unexcited about starting businesses and making money.” Swartz was inspired by the example of World Wide Web inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, who wanted his creation to be used by all. He could have been like any other self-serving member of the 1 percent but he chose another path.

Swartz soon became a leading Open Access and Free Speech activist. He saw the Internet as an instrument of freedom and enlightenment, and his profoundly moral and generous vision is evident from his personal blog, excerpts of which are featured in the documentary: “I work for ideas and learn from people. I don’t like excluding people…I want to make the world a better place.” Swartz co-founded Demand Progress in 2010, an advocacy group that successfully fought the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). That public information and records should be out of reach of the public struck him an absurd injustice. In 2008, he downloaded electronic federal court records from the expensive public access service PACER. (Although investigated by the FBI, Swartz was not charged.) Expressing unease with social and economic inequality, he became increasingly politically engaged. In 2009, he co-founded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Aaron Swartz offered–and still offers–another way of thinking and being.

Although The Internet’s Own Boy does not give a gender-aware reading of Swartz, it is clear that the programmer and activist embodied a certain egalitarian masculinity. Although Swartz possessed attributes that have been traditionally associated with masculinity–such as single-mindedness and risk-taking–he neither personified nor espoused ideals of dominant masculinity. Unlike the ruinous gambling of the bankers who wrecked so much havoc on the world’s economy during the financial crisis, his risk-taking sought to serve the greater good. Swartz simply did not want to be a prized exemplar of corporate masculinity. He seemed uninterested in exercising power, and he did not exhibit the customary misogyny of his industry. Indeed he challenged institutions of power and wealth, asking why they possess so much control over human knowledge. Men like Swartz expand modern definitions of masculinity. The other way of thinking and being that he offered transcends gender, race, age, and sexuality, and he remains an inspirational figure for all.

Critics may argue that the documentary offers a romanticized account of its subject. It sides with Swartz, that’s true, but the argument presented is utterly persuasive. Isn’t it, in fact, self-evident? How can anyone be locked away for 35 years for downloading academic documents? There is, also, no denying that Swartz is a romantic figure. He was an attractive, young man who wanted nothing more than to share knowledge. The Internet’s Own Boy chronicles this sad, shameful story of prosecutorial zeal with insight and compassion. It both angers, and moves the viewer. The prosecutors’ lack of imagination and humanity simply takes your breath away. If there is a modern-day American martyr, it is Aaron Swartz.

The Internet’s Own Boy is a passionate, intelligent tribute to the tragically short but brilliant life of the programmer and activist. The documentary successfully captures Swartz’s spirit and rightly underscores his visionary genius and socio-cultural importance. Recounting both his days of triumph and despair, it acknowledges his vulnerabilities and fears as well as his drive and passion. The story of Aaron Swartz is one of the most important of the millenium and it is encouraging that The Internet’s Own Boy is on this year’s Oscar shortlist. It’s a documentary about our time and we all need to see it.

Nun Better: ‘Sewing Hope’ and ‘Radical Grace’

Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances.

I’m Episcopalian, which I like to tell people means I get the best parts of Catholicism and Protestantism – though it would probably be just as true to say we get the worst of both worlds. We do technically have nuns, but they don’t seem to be completely awesome the way Catholic nuns are.

Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances: Sewing Hope is about Sister Rosemary’s work to help women and girls in Uganda, while Radical Grace tells the story of three US nuns who fight for social justice.

The West does not have a very good image of Uganda. Hands up if you remember Kony 2012 and the associated controversy, not least of which was the issue of white saviorism. White people sure do love to swoop in and rescue brown people from themselves, completely eliding the history (and present) of western colonialism that is often the root of many of the problems in the Two-Thirds World. The cool thing about Sister Rosemary is that she is not a white savior. She’s a local Ugandan who runs a school for women and girls who were forced to be soldiers in Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Many of these women were also sex-slaves, and bear the burden of social stigma on top of single parenthood and personal trauma.

Saint Monica’s, the school run by Sister Rosemary, trains the women in tailoring and baking, providing them with skills that are in demand both in the local hospitality industry and for the international sale of goods. The school not only helps them work toward economic independence, but it also provides a holistic, person-centered environment for healing.

What’s really extraordinary about Sister Rosemary’s work is that she’s not just providing skills from a brute economic bottom line – she’s helping trauma survivors recover. Early in the film, Sister Rosemary speaks about the importance of listening, and this is immediately followed by several women telling their own stories of horror and brutality. Sister Rosemary explains that her method is not to welcome girls by saying she knows what they have been through, but to provide a supportive environment. This includes both emotional support and very practical things like childcare.

Sister Rosemary is working within her context and making a difference from the ground up using the resources available to her and to women in her culture. The US context is very different, and so concomitantly are the methods and tactics of Sisters Simone, Jean, and Chris.

I saw a rough cut of Radical Grace at the Athena Film Festival. — I saw a rough cut of *Radical Grace* at the Athena Film Festival.

Being censured by the Vatican for “radical feminism” (no, not that kind of radical feminism) didn’t stop the sisters from fighting the injustices of their own society. As Nuns on the Bus, they traveled around assorted US cities and petitioned a number of politicians, campaigning for healthcare reform and now immigration reform.

The sisters are tackling issues both of wider society (poverty, the prison-industrial complex) and specific to the Catholic Church (women’s ordination). They are undeterred by the backlash they face, which ranges from the disapproval of the Church hierarchy to on-the-ground accusations of being “worse than pedophile priests” (yes, one protestor really says that).

The sisters are grounded in their commitment to the social gospel, which sees Jesus’ message as being primarily one of radical justice for the people on the margins of society. At the same time, the nuns are committed to thoughtful interrogation of their own faith, and to challenging the institution – which, as they say, is “always going to be ten years too late, if not a hundred” when it comes to social issues.

In some ways these nuns are an embarrassment to the hierarchy. They make the institutional Church look like a reactionary dinosaur; and yet it’s clear that they are working from a place of love. The Church is something they want to be better, and they’re taking matters into their own hands.

Vatican-approved picture of nun being badass

The filmmakers want us to see these stories and be moved by them to get involved. Whether it’s donating to Sister Rosemary and her women, or helping to get the final cut of Radical Grace finished so the story can get out there, they are hoping to motivate us to action. As Rebecca Parrish, director of Radical Grace, notes, there is potential for alliance between secular feminism and progressive religious movements, and we must overcome the divisions of ideology if we want to make the world a better place.

You can learn more about Sewing Hope here, or donate to the Radical Grace kickstarter here.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

The Remarkable Story of ‘Anne Braden: Southern Patriot’

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (2012)

“I believe that no white woman reared in the South–or perhaps anywhere in this racist country–can find freedom as a woman until she deals in her own consciousness with the question of race. We grow up little girls–absorbing a hundred stereotypes about ourselves and our role in life, our secondary position, our destiny to be a helpmate to a man or men. But we also grow up white–absorbing the stereotypes of race, the picture of ourselves as somehow privileged because of the color of our skin. The two mythologies become intertwined, and there is no way to free ourselves from one without dealing with the other.” – from “A letter to white Southern women from Anne Braden,” 1972

Written by Leigh Kolb

Anne Braden didn’t think that guilt was productive.

She thought that what got people involved in the civil rights movement was a vision of a different world.

Born in 1924, Braden grew up in Anniston, Alabama–where the Freedom Riders’ bus was fire-bombed in 1961. She talks about being a young white child in the south, and seeing her mother’s house cleaner’s daughter wearing her hand-me-down clothes. They were different sizes, so the clothes didn’t fit right, and Braden says, “Something happened to me when I looked at her. I knew something was wrong.”

Braden dedicated her life to exposing and fighting against racial and economic injustice. She was subversive. She was arrested. She was praised by Martin Luther King Jr.

She wanted a different world.

Anne Braden

Braden is the subject of the documentary Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, which is available on DVD and at select screenings nationwide.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot trailer

Award-winning filmmakers Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering created this first-person documentary, and its brilliance rests greatly on the fact that Braden herself and her contemporaries, biographer and mentees tell the story. The seemingly hands-off approach by the filmmakers (no audible interview questions or voiceovers) works incredibly well, and lets Braden’s remarkable legacy unfold on its own merits. The soundtrack is appropriately present, but not noticeably so, as it should be in a documentary.

This documentary, in short, is amazing. Aside from the technical success of the film is the fact that Braden herself was an extraordinary human being.

Read the full transcript of the film here

Braden says that when she had the realization that something was wrong, it was like photography: “You put the film in the developing fluid and it begins to come clear, but it’s been there all along.”

The images kept becoming clearer and clearer to Braden as she worked as a journalist in the south and covered the courthouse, seeing black men be imprisoned for looking at white women the wrong way, and seeing how murdered black people were not newsworthy.

She didn’t feel guilt. She felt motivated to change her world.

Early on in her career, Braden recognized that issues of class and race were inextricably linked. She says,

“I was in a prison and life builds prisons around people and I had the prison that I was born white in a racist society. I was born privileged in a classist society. The hardest thing was class. I don’t know that I could have ever broken out of what I call the race prison if I hadn’t dealt with class.”

She married Carl Braden, who was a “radical” activist active in the labor movement. “We got married to work together,” she says. By 1951, Braden was combining marriage, motherhood and activism.

Early on, her activism focused mainly on writing for and talking to black audiences about white people’s roles in racism and classism. The head of the Civil Rights Congress, William Patterson, told her that black people already know what she’s telling them–she needed to talk to white people, because they are the problem. She remembers that he said to her, “You know you do have a choice. You don’t have to be a part of the world of the lynchers. You can join the other America–the people who struggled against slavery, the people who railed against slavery, the white people who supported them, the people who all through Reconstruction struggled.” She says, “I was very young, and that’s what I needed to hear.” Her work began in earnest.

The Bradens bought a house for a young black family, the Wades, in an all-white neighborhood (it was a way around segregation–Andrew Wade gave them the down payment, the Bradens purchased it, and then transfered the deed). The Wades’ home was shot at, crosses were burned in the yard and a bomb was set off underneath their daughter’s window (remarkably no one was physically hurt).

The Wades, showing where rocks had been thrown and broken the windows of their home.

The bomber was never caught or tried, but the Bradens were, along with five other whites who helped defend the Wades’ house. They were charged with sedition–it was, prosecutors said, all a plot by communists to overthrow Kentucky and the nation.

Braden says that “If you use every attack as a platform, they can’t win and you can’t lose. It works like a charm.” They used their arrest and jail time as a platform. “You can’t kill an idea anyway,” she says. “To a segregationist, integration means communism.”

The film highlights footage from Ku Klux Klan rallies, newspaper stories, meetings, marches, beatings and shootings during the red scare and the civil rights movement. The footage–often presented without narration–is powerful and provides the visual, historical context to Braden’s stories.

The film moves forward through each decade, highlighting social justice struggles (especially regarding race and economic injustice) and Braden’s continuous role. The complexity of anti-communist sentiment, the freedom of speech and association and violence of the ongoing civil rights struggles are examined in depth.

It was difficult watching the momentous struggles and changes of the 60s make way into the 70s, when she says, “That sense of being part of something larger gets lost.” Political activists were repressed and imprisoned, and much of the momentum was lost.

Anne Braden

As the footage from the 70s surfaces, it’s in color; all of a sudden history doesn’t seem so far away. When white women are screaming and chanting about “Niggers” when busing was implemented in 1975, and throwing rocks at the buses, it’s jarring how close it all is. David Duke screams about white power. Communist workers at an anti-Klan rally are shot and killed in the late 70s.

In a statement that seems all-too true today, Braden says of the lasting legacy of this era:

“And this idea of reverse discrimination took hold of the country, and I think it’s the most dangerous idea that’s ever been inflicted on this country. It tells white people that the source of their problem is people of color and it’s such a damn lie because it’s based on the theory that what black people got took something away from white people, and that is the opposite of what happened, every piece of legislation everything that happened that the black movement won, helped most white people and certainly poor and working class white people.”

At a 1980 rally in response to the communist workers’ deaths, she said,

“The real danger today comes from the people in high places, from the halls of congress to the board rooms of our big corporations, who are telling the white people that if their taxes are eating up their paychecks, it’s not because of our bloated military budget, but because of government programs that benefit black people; those people in high places who are telling white people that if young whites are unemployed it’s because blacks are getting all the jobs. Our problem is the people in power who are creating a scape goat mentality. That, that is what is creating the climate in which the Klan can grow in this country and that is what is creating the danger of a fascist movement in the 1980s in America.”

As the film progresses, we see Braden marching for economic justice and to end police brutality. She stands out, with her cropped gray hair, small body and denim jumpers. Her voice shakes into a megaphone when she speaks at rallies, but her age doesn’t stop her. She keeps marching. When she can’t march, she’s pushed in a wheelchair.

Braden passed away in 2006 at age 81. Right before she died, she said, “I just don’t have time.” She still felt she had too much to do.

Anne Braden and Cornel West

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so inspired by a documentary. By the end, I was crying, near-sobbing–in celebration of Braden’s life, in mourning her death and in feeling a burning fire in my white belly that I needed to do something in this world. Anne Braden had effectively told me that I needed to get to work.

At a march, Braden says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won.” It hasn’t been, and we must continue her legacy.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot puts Braden’s lifelong activism into the developing fluid and makes it clear to all of us. We should all look carefully at these images and be moved to not just frame them for display, but to make them shape our world now.

The Flobots’ “Anne Braden”

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.