Just days after Donald Trump was elected president, Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker behind 13th, a devastating Netflix documentary about America’s prison system, sat down with Oprah Winfrey. While Oprah praised DuVernay for providing viewers with a “wake-up call” about the prison industrial complex that keeps millions of citizens incarcerated and destroys families, DuVernay warned the audience at the Museum of Tolerance that under Trump’s presidency, things could get worse. “He’s addressed a lack of empathy for imprisoned and incarcerated people,” Duvernay said of the president-elect, “he’s talked about the industry around it. He’s ‘very good at business’ and he feels that it’s a business.”
Duvernay’s documentary outlines exactly how Trump’s policies could affect the system, allowing privately-owned prisons to further profit by keeping more Americans, particularly African-Americans, behind bars and for longer sentences. “Stocks for private industry rose by over 50 percent the day after his election,” Duvernay said. “Everything that we talk about in this film under him and the policies that he’s advocating will continue or worsen — unless we demand something different.” Watch Duvernay’s remarks above and Oprah’s praise of the film in the video below.
