CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

My Substantial Praises and Minor Criticisms of the HBO Documentary “The Alabama Solution”

I’ve been asked by multiple readers (which is a lot for me) if I have watched the recently released HBO documentary The Alabama Solution, and if so, what I think about it.

Perhaps because I have been doing this work in a considerably lonely and underfunded manner for about 16 years, starting too young, sticking with it maybe because I’m slightly insane, and perhaps because none of my work was included in the documentary, I think my small subset of readers might expect me to have a much edgier take on the film than I do.

At first, I didn’t want to watch the documentary, at least for a while. I’ve been extremely steeped in my workaholism for the last year. My work is relatively painful, as you might imagine. I didn’t think attaching vivid images of the horrifying world with which I’d been constantly preoccupied for so long would be good for me.

And between you and me, my life has been kind of fucked up for a couple of months, quite apart from prison issues, beginning roughly around the time the documentary came out, so I didn’t think watching it would be great for that reason as well.

But, after a few days, with the encouragement of others, I changed my mind and watched it. So, to those of you who have asked: Yes, I watched it, and it was beautifully, masterfully done.

Especially since I don’t live in Alabama, my work has often felt very lonely. The journalist Eddie Burkhalter has become a good friend and mentor long distance. Beth Shelburne, who worked on the documentary, has also been very helpful to me at times. Despite being very busy, she has been very encouraging at crucial stages in my work. She was particularly kind and encouraging when I reached out when I finished my book on Bullock Prison and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I am forever grateful to my loved ones who have been in my life through this work. Still, the work has felt lonely for most of the years doing it.

The reason I was hesitant to watch the documentary was that I knew it would be very good. And it was very good. I’m biased by being obsessed with the topic, but I found it breathtaking.

That’s why I didn’t plan to write anything about it. What more need be said? It speaks so well for itself. I felt an enormous sense of relief after watching it, relief that people, prisoners and journalists alike, whose work I trust, were able to get this lonely, underreported story onto a major network, with a project so beautifully done.

I knew before watching that I was going to break at some point, and I broke a few times. The moment that broke me most is after prisoner/activist Kinetic Justice, a hero of nonviolent action, is beaten nearly to death by guards, survives, comes out of it considering whether nonviolence is working tactically or whether it will take “a whole lot of bloodshed” to make a change, wrestles with that, then continues to relentlessly advocate a nonviolent strategy when he is able to reconvene with the other prisoners again, which precedes the nonviolent work stoppage by the prisoners. This moment filled me with tears of inspiration, grateful that a hero like this is living in the same dark times as the rest of us.

I don’t want to single out Kinetic or anyone else, in the documentary or not, but his story, and his work and his leadership, illustrate the extent to which the prisoners taking action and speaking out in this struggle are the real civil rights leaders and American heroes of our time.

So, I didn’t........

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