All right, we're back with
award-winning director Ava DuVernay. So the documentary
"13th," you talked about-- first of all, it came out like
in 2016 originally, right? Something like that, yeah. Yeah, and now, everyone's
talking about it again and bringing it up,
which is giving you a whole new audience. And as I said, it's so
powerful, and so heartbreaking. But in it, you talk about
Republicans and Democrats trying to outdo each
other as to who is going to be tougher on crime. I was shocked. You look at Bill Clinton. And you look at
the three strikes. And you look at all the things
that hurt so many black people over the years. It was surprising. Yeah, I mean, the piece,
overall, that part of it deals with recent history,
recent political history. I think the thing that I
hoped people would get out of "13th," and the
reason why I made it as a brisk 100-minute
American history lesson, truly, it's really all
the things that we've ever been taught in school, less
about Clinton, and policies, and Bush, and all
those guys, and more about that the very foundation
of our criminal justice system is flawed, and that was created
to subjugate and oppress, that the foundations
of the police departments in this country
are born out of slave catchers, right? Law enforcement at that
time that were sent out to subjugate black people. And so that's what hopefully
"13th" just shows you, that we're on a continuum. People ask what to do now. The first thing
is to know what's already been done so that
we can build on the gains. We can build on the losses. And we can be a little bit
more strategic about how we're moving forward. So that's the real
point of "13th," to talk about not just
mass incarceration and police brutality,
but to talk about the idea of
criminalization. You talk about white privilege. Embedded in white privilege
is the sense of white people aren't criminals. That's one of the
base lines, right? That's what I want people
to take from "13th." And I'm so thrilled that folks
are discovering it again. Yeah, I mean, is. It's a perfect-- it
is a history lesson. And when you see what
13th, is the amendment, and how that really created
this loophole, but also just how dangerous,
like you said, was from that movie, "Birth of
a Nation," how everyone you know created this monster. Anyway, it's really
unbelievable. And I just keeps saying
you must watch that movie. And if you think that you don't
need to see it, you're wrong. You need to see it. How does what's
happening now compare to what's happened in the past? Because you have
done so many projects on this exact behavior. But what do you think
the difference is? Or is there? Huge differences. I mean, I believe you have
Congressman Lewis on the show. Is that right? Yes. Congressman Lewis, the
strategies, the great bodily risk and harm, the
thinking that had to go behind protests of the
'60s that he participated in are light years behind in terms
of their danger, the jeopardy, than folks who are
protesting today. And that's because of what
he and his comrades did. And so there's definitely
been differences. I mean, the fact that you
and I are sitting here-- you and me sitting here on
national TV talking about this? That's a big deal, right? And so there have been gains. The important thing, I
think, strategically, as we move forward,
anyone who believes in justice and dignity,
to really come together to think of
strategies that build on what's happened in the past. But we are in a better place. We're in a place where
we can be thinking about you know technology,
all kinds of ways that we can kind of fight this. And many of my colleagues
have been thinking about ways to activate this rage that we
feel and just all of that group think, I think, will hopefully
lead us into a direction where there's some
actual action taken. Yeah, there's got to be
a plan and some place to put all that rage, I agree. We have to take a break, Ava. This is amazing. We'll be right back. You're starting
a new initiative. What is the new initiative? Well, I think one of the
things that I've been-- I'll tell you a
little bit about it. Because I've been thinking
a lot about my own rage, my own emotions. When I look at George Floyd's
tape, I see my uncles-- not just in a general sense. But he looks like
people in my family, literally the facial features. So time that video plays
on CNN or anything else, I see people that I love on the
ground begging for their life. So there's a sense
of those images, what we're asking of each
other, and the storytelling around these instances,
the stories that we're telling each other. That's what I've really been
interested in interrogating. We need to change
what those stories are and change the way
that we tell them. And so what we've come up
with in a short amount of time is an idea that we call LEAP. It's the Law Enforcement
Accountability Project. And what it is we're
asking for narrative change and we're creating
narrative change around police abuse, misconduct,
and murder of black people. We're changing the
lens of the story. And it connects to
something I told you at the top of the show,
which is, why do we not know who is killing us? How can officers-- and there
are wonderful officers. My cousin, whom I love
deeply and grew up with, is a police officer in Texas. There are good officers. But we have heard many good
officers speaking up over the past week saying this
was wrong and this cannot be. And so what we're trying
to do through storytelling, through LEAP, is
say, we need to start telling the stories
about those who murder and about those who are
not being held accountable. So this project looks at
narrative storytelling across all genres film, theater,
dance, literature, poetry, sculpture, music, to start to
get us to think about the fact that we have this big blindspot. We allow officers who
do harm to disappear. They move to other
departments in other cities. They continue to get
paid while they're under administrative review. They are free to go about their
lives faceless and nameless. And when we talk about police
accountability and caring for each other, we need you
to be able to name those names and know who those people are. So that's a lot of what
the project focuses on. That's great. Well, you are an amazing woman. I thank you for everything. I thank you for "13th," which,
again, everyone must watch. It's available on Netflix. For more information
on Ava's new initiative go to our website. Ava DuVernay, you
are incredible. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. And I'll say, for people
who don't have Netflix, we've put it free
on YouTube, as well. So no excuse not to learn. Thank you. No excuse! Free on YouTube, "13th." Thank you so much. Thanks for your time, Ava. Thank you.