By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Ian Inaba
Country: united_states
Year: 2006
Running time: 100
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816207/
Bruce says: “Sponsored by the Guerilla News Network AMERICAN BLACKOUT is a film that every person should see. That is not very likely since many distributors have already backed out of deals at the last moment. In an age where the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times may be prosecuted by our government for publishing news, freedom of speech is a precious commodity. AMERICAN BLACKOUT is an expose about massive efforts to suppress the black vote in the 2000 and 2004 national elections. It is also a harbinger of new white collar atrocities aimed at disenfranchising African-Americans.
“In 2000 many black voters were turned away from the polls in Florida. Why? They had been erroneously removed by a wildly inaccurate match of names of convicted felons to registered voters, matches that only needed to be partially correct or vaguely similar to allow a name to be removed from the registered voter list in Florida. Katherine Harris, in charge of this fiasco, was concurrently in charge of the Bush for president campaign. Since that election it has been determined that 97% of those removed from the registration lists were done so inaccurately. The problem is that there were 57,000 names and Bush won Florida by 537 votes. The media focused on issues such as dangling chads and butterfly ballots, ignoring the single biggest issue of the election. Texas, the home state of Governor Bush, supplied Florida with a list of those with misdemeanors, not felonies. But that, too was discovered after the Supreme Court has voted Bush in office.
“The focus of the film is on African-American Georgia Congresswomen Cynthia McKinney. She had the audacity to question why there was not an investigation into what really happened on 9/11. She was misquoted and demonized by the press particularly on CNN’s Crossfire. In 2002 Republicans vowed that she would not be reelected and indeed she was not due to a massive Republican turnout to vote in the Democratic primary. In Georgia switching parties in the primary is part of the democratic process now that lynching is outlawed.
“McKinney ran to regain her seat in Congress in 2004 and she won. By that time the 9/11 Commission had raised all the questions McKinney had sought answers for three years earlier. A McKinney, a single mother, puts it, ‘they took away my job, my livelihood and my reputation.’ She wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines. The government and the media clearly do not care for outspoken black women. Barbara Lee of California, the only Representative to vote against the war in Iraq, is an example as is fellow Californian Maxine Waters. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio is another. McKinney has recently been harassed by guards at the Capitol who claim they don’t recognize her after twelve years. Inaba captures one such incident on tape. She is clearly being harassed.
“In the 2004 election, many odd things happened in Ohio and guess what? Most of them happened in districts with large black populations. Voters had to stand in line for seven hours. In one polling place only 2 of 17 machines were working. A detailed post election analysis proves that in some black districts voting machines were reduced in number in spite of a high expected turnout. Provisional ballots were issues to voters but not accepted as valid ballots once they were filled out.
“If anyone reading this review thinks that the worst is over let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Across the nation, people are now being removed from voting registration records because they are ‘inactive voters’ those who have not voted in the past two elections. The same people who are removing names from the rosters are making sure that is many more times difficult to re-register to vote today. In fact, the League of Women Voters has discontinued a policy of registering voters because of excessive fines imposed if there are mistakes or delays in mailing.
“The big question for me is: why aren’t the Democrats standing up and demanding that we restore democracy at the voting booths. Apparently the top dogs in the Democratic Party are as fearful of black voters as the Republicans. If blacks in this country could vote, those who run the Democratic Party might not be in office either. Ian Inaba has made a very thought-provoking film. He deserves kudos for his risk-taking, his persistence and his vision. 5 cats
“AMERICAN BLACKOUT was screened at the 2006 Provincetown International Film Festival.”