AC: Do you believe mandatory minimum sentencing for petty drug crimes is a case of gender and race inequality?
MM: The whole situation of this crack cocaine/powder cocaine discrepancy is big in politics right now and there have already been some reforms to that end. It’s the most blatant example of racism. It takes a hundred grams of powder cocaine to warrant the same sentence for one gram of crack cocaine. What many don’t know is that most users of crack cocaine are white, but it’s not enforced against them as much. I tend to think the best of people. I tend to think it [racial inequality] wasn’t conscious when they made these laws, but it still needs to be changed. is sending out information right now about having unwarranted black men in prison and that any person who is aware of this should take notice. I’ve heard people say that this is the civil rights issue of our time, this insane, overbuilt prison system. We have to stop the way this is going. It doesn’t make sense.
AC: How do you see your film helping prisoners like Hamedah?
MM: I’m hoping that my film is a grassroots, guerilla, hand-to-hand marketed film. PBS might broadcast it, but real change happens in church basements and real people’s houses. I’m working on putting a shorter piece up on the Web. It’s also with Media That Matters, who has a seven-minute version. I hope it will open some doors and give me some tools. Being my first documentary, my impetus was never, “I’m going to be this filmmaker.” It was, “No, I want to change laws.” It’s not about maintaining exclusive rights and making money. It’s how many legislative offices and churches and living rooms can I get this in as possible.
AC: What was the biggest challenge you faced making this film?
MM: I could say that fundraising and getting into the prisons was the biggest challenge, but doing social justice work, it’s the internal messages we give ourselves, the “who am I to do this” messages that shut us down and keep us from trying to change the world. “[We might say] this is too big, I’m just one person.” It’s still a struggle to really just be bold, and be as bold as we need to be when we see something wrong in the world. I think it may have been Parker Palmer who said, “That which you can’t not do.” I wanted to put this project down a million times, I didn’t know what I was doing, yet I had to keep doing it because it felt like I had to do it. Being a person of faith, [it pushed] something in the deepest part of me and [was something] more than me.
