The Wire writers speak out
(posted by Angelica)
I’ve heard nothing but good things about The Wire and will be checking out the first season shortly (yes I am way off schedule). Meanwhile, this piece by the show’s writers is certainly powerful and eloquent:
Yet this war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That’s the world’s highest rate of imprisonment.
The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.
What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.
Our leaders? There aren’t any politicians — Democrat or Republican — willing to speak truth on this. Instead, politicians compete to prove themselves more draconian than thou, to embrace America’s most profound and enduring policy failure.
Note where this piece is published — Time magazine. I doubt a mainstream mag like Time would have published anything as radical as this if it were not for the fact that the success of the show gave these guys a platform. I’m glad that they’re using it.
March 9th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Yeah, The Wrire is teh awesome. But this:
Not quite. As I wrote here about Kucinich and Paul. Kucinich is unwavering on the obscene nature of the “war” on drugs.