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Filmmakers put justice on trial

Members of the Long Beach community and students from Cal State Long Beach gathered on Friday and Saturday at the Justice on Trial Film Festival at the University Theatre on campus.

Founder and organizer of the festival, Susan Burton said the film festival screened documentaries that exposed “grave defects in the American criminal justice system.”

“Students are our future, so they need to be better informed about how to take care of our world and serve our communities,” Burton said.

Attending the event as part of an extra credit assignment, junior psychology major Rachel Chauvin said she felt that the criminal justice system could be run better.

“I have respect for the justice system,” Chauvin said. “I just think there’s too much pressure to give out [citations] instead of guaranteeing safety.”

The festival played three films in three different screening rooms at the same time on both days. Viewers had to choose which one they wanted to watch each day. The main theater played films such as “The Cooler Bandits” and “Documented.”

Junior sociology major Saul Gonzalez said he chose to watch the film “Fruits of War” in screening Room B on Friday because it looked like it covered immigration issues and Latino gangs in “an interesting way.”

“Since I am Latino, these issues are important to me,” Gonzalez said. “These are big problems in our community, and people should be aware.”

After the films, guests from all three screening rooms were invited to listen to the keynote speakers in the main theater. Friday’s speaker, Daryl Atkinson, was convicted in 1996 and incarcerated for 40 months for a “first-time, non-violent drug crime,” according to the event’s program.

Atkinson said that after he was released, he completed college and law school. He said he is now a self-ascribed advocate for providing a second chance to people formerly incarcerated.

“We are not just the sum total of our contact with the criminal justice system,” Atkinson said, meaning that those who were formerly incarcerated should be viewed as people and not just former criminals.

Atkinson urged the importance of abolishing, rather than amending, the current justice system based on the harshness and often racial biases. He also said a new and fair system needs to be used instead. He compared this approach to that of segregation.

“We did not improve segregation; we abolished it completely, and that is what needs to be done with the current criminal justice system,” Atkinson said.

Attendees were surprised Friday by an unscheduled brief Q-and-A with “The Cooler Bandits” director John Lucas and one of the men formerly incarcerated and documented in the film, Richard “Poochie” Roderick. Lucas said he has known Roderick since 1985, so he considered this project to be making a film about his friends.

“Our jails are not full of innocent people. There are many guilty people in there, doing their time and paying their dues,” Lucas said. “You don’t see many films about that though… I wanted to make a movie to show the people.”

Several attendees sought Roderick after the event to thank and congratulate him and seek advice about avoiding getting stuck in the system. Roderick said his motivation to stay out of the system started “the minute they slapped the cuffs” on him.

Roderick said he knew he was doing criminal acts that weren’t a part of the person he wanted to be. He said he took his incarceration as a timeout to turn his life around.

At Friday’s screening, Long Beach native and legal consultant Michelle Ramos said that the film festival is a great platform to raise awareness about these kinds of issues.

“Society needs to be more educated about what happens to the people within the social justice system, and hopefully this festival helps,” Ramos said.

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