The Blog
Do you know that the US accounts for 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the global prison population? According to wikipedia over 7.2 million adults were under correctional supervision (probation, jail or prison) in the US in 2010.
Eugene Jarecki’s latest film on America’s failed War on Drugs is now out! Over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for more than 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever before. Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In captures heart-wrenching stories from individuals at all levels of America’s War on Drugs. From the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge, the film offers a penetrating look inside America’s longest war, offering a definitive portrait and revealing its profound human rights implications.
Beyond simple misguided policy, The House I Live In examines how political and economic corruption have fueled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures. The New York Times calls the film “fearless! a model of the ambitious, vitalizing activist work that exists to stir the sleeping to wake”. To prove that is the case and share the story with a wide audience the film was launched at the Shiloh baptist church in Washington DC yesterday, screened to over 2000 people and streamed live to over 100 churches across the US. According to Jarecki (who also directed Academy award-winning Why We Fight) "America's for-profit system of industrialized mass incarceration, which I examine in my film, is just one example - though perhaps the most strident example - of our terribly misguided national tendency to put profit before people and principle."
The House I Live In is now the #1 Documentary and Independent Film on iTunes! You have 3 more days to rent it only for 99 cents there or on Amazon! For more updates follow the film on FaceBook and #EndWarOnDrugs on Tweeter.
Fingers crossed this campaign leads to significant political change!
