Saturday, July 29, 1:30-8pm, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 30 W. Woodruff Ave.

Join the People’s Justice Project, Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio, and International Socialist Organization [ISO] Columbus for a free screening of Ava DuVernay’s award winning documentary “13th.”

“13th” is a 2016 American documentary by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the “intersection of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States” and is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which freed the slaves and prohibited slavery (unless as punishment for a crime).

DuVernay’s documentary opens with an audio clip of former President Barack Obama stating that the U.S. has five percent of the world’s population but twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. She demonstrates that slavery has been perpetuated in practices since the end of the American Civil War through such actions as criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weigh more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration of people of color in the United States. She examines the prison-industrial complex and the emerging detention-industrial complex, demonstrating how much money is being made by corporations from such incarcerations.

Participate, following the screening of the film, in a panel discussion and Q&A with local and national activists and break bread together as we learn more about how slavery has been reformed from the Plantations to the Prison Systems and what we can do about it.

Dinner and childcare will be provided.

Sponsored by the People’s Justice Project, Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio, and International Socialist Organization [ISO] Columbus.