BLOOD MONEY: A Film Featuring Dolores Huerta Direceted by Ellen Gavin in Conversation with Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

Blood Money is a short narrative video exposing the money and greed that fuels “the largest mass deportation in U.S. history”.  Congress has appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars to sustain a private prison network indefinitely. The companies receiving billions are rewarded for filling beds with as many immigrants ICE can grab, while spending as little as possible to run the facilities. These companies are also building new revenue streams in surveillance, monitoring, and incarceration — infrastructure that will outlast this moment and could be turned on Americans for decades to come. Here is the film:

 

I recently was able to have a conversation with activist, filmmaker and writer Ellen Gavin about her latest movie Blood Money, her friendship with Dolores Huerta as well as a far-ranging  conversation about the state of the United States of America, ICE, detention centers, the upcoming midterm elections and paths forward for justice, immigration, labor reform, pressuring the people we elect to have the political will to indeed do the right thing moving forward. Here is that conversation: