Fencing in God Film Series: Broken On All Sides

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013, 6pm-8pm
613 Schermerhorn

Please join us for a screening of Broken On All Sides. 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.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Laura McTighe. Laura is a Ph.D. student in North American Religions at Columbia University.  She earned her M.T.S. in Islamic Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 2008, and her B.A. in Religion and Peace & Conflict Studies from Haverford College in 2000. Her research centers on lived religion, migration, and well-being, informed by an anthropology of social suffering and structural injustice.  She is particularly interested in how these themes are negotiated and subverted by formerly incarcerated and convicted people’s movements in the United States.  Laura’s research has unfolded in consistent conversation with her work to support community-led responses to the twin epidemics of mass imprisonment and HIV/AIDS.  Her writings have been published in Islam and AIDS: Between Scorn, Pity and Justice (2009), the International Journal for Law and Psychiatry (2011), Beyond Walls and Cages: Bridging Immigrant Justice and Anti-Prison Organizing in the United States (2012) and a variety of community publications.  She currently serves on the boards of Women With A Vision in New Orleans, Men & Women In Prison Ministries in Chicago and Reconstruction Inc. in Philadelphia.  

This event is free and open to the public.

Fencing in God? – Religion, Immigration, and Incarceration is a semester-long series of events focused on the ways in which religion and mobility intersect with immigration and incarceration. Throughout the Spring 2013 term, the IRCPL will present three public lectures and three related film-screenings intended to facilitate and encourage long-term discussions around the topics of religion, immigration, and incarceration.