Searing documentary film Stranger Fruit shown in Newark!

Stranger Fruit-Powerful Police Brutality Film To Be Shown in Newark!

by Zayid Muhammad

Filmmaker Jason Pollock’s searing investigative documentary Stranger Fruit is destined to become a documentary film art classic!

Using Nina Simone’s nearly forgotten treatment of Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, her legendary artistic condemnation of lynching, and the thunderous oracle of Malcolm X capturing the racial legacy of Police Brutality, the film not only tells what happened to Michael Brown on that hot, fateful August 9^th day in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri; It also tells what happened to the Michael Brown case, and even more important, it tells what happened to Michael Brown’s humanity after his senseless death.

The film indicts in detailed fashion, police authorities in the greater St Louis area involved in the case, the previous record of the officer involved, Darren Oliver, who appears to have killed Brown in a fit of rage of racial overreaction rooted in centuries of racial oppression, the pathetic prosecution of Oliver, not meant to prosecute him at all, the Department of Justice who went along with the police version of the facts and appears to have done no meaningful investigation of the case at all of their own, and the local and national media’s willingness to accept the police narrative of the incident, criminalizing Brown to justify Oliver’s actions, and even turning their character assassination guns on the filmmakers themselves.

What the film actually does is step outside of the box of merely reporting the narrative of the case and actually investigates all of its angles, the eyewitness testimony, the forensic evidence, the background of all of the key players, not just what had been alleged about the victim Michael Brown.

The film details how both the local and federal authorities ignored a wide range of eyewitness testimony contradicting the police version of the events, and how not one, but two independent medical examiners asserted that Brown was shot with his hands up as was indicated by eyewitness testimony and that Brown was ultimately killed by Oliver shooting Brown in the head as Brown was falling down, collapsing from his wounds posing absolutely no threat to anyone!

Not to mention the authorities absolutely making no effort to get Brown any medical assistance after he had been shot.

Not to mention the insidious spectacle horror of Brown’s body left out in the street for over four hours...Stranger Fruit...the continuum of Strange Fruit spectacle of lynched “black bodies swinging in the southern breeze”...

One would think that with all of that evidence being revealed that that would have to lead to some accountable disciplining of Brown and all of those involved in what became an extensive cover up.

Just as tragic, that is not what happened.

What happened instead was the twofold forging of a media attack on Brown. The first was that here was this ‘big bad Black guy’, threatening a police officer and going for his gun. The second was that Brown was a criminal bully who committed a ‘strong arm robbery’ that was captured on videotape just eleven hours before his fateful encounter with Officer Darren Oliver.

What actually happened was that it was Brown who was actually afraid for his own life, not understanding how not getting out of the street fast enough for Oliver ultimately leads to him getting shot down in the street with his hands up!

What actually happened was that the police suppressed additional store video footage from the night before showing Brown leaving his merchandise behind the counter. He came back the next day and actually took back what he felt was his purchased items that he left the night before.

Media coverage of the film only addresses this aspect of the film that challenges the official narrative demonizing Michael Brown, and does not in any way address the litany of issues of how badly the case was mishandled by the state, by the feds and by the bulk of its media coverage.

The film ends very touchingly showing other mothers who have also lost children to police violence coming to the aid of Lezley McSpadden, Michael Brown’s mother.

The filmmakers are now working with Michael Brown’s family, their attorney, and other activists on the issue, to get the case reopened. Go to their webpage...www.strangerfruit.com...for information on those efforts.

Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (NCAP) is hosting a showing of this incredible film on Tuesday, February 26^th at the Newark Public Library at 6pm. Ironically, it will be on the anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s killing. Members from Brown’s family and the family of Jerome Reid, New Jersey’s ‘Hands up, Don’t shoot’ case, will be special guests.

For more information, please call 973 202 0745...