CHECK IT OUT! Kill the Messenger

October 27, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Kill the Messenger—showing now in theaters—presents three interwoven intense, infuriating, and inspiring stories. One is the story of how, during the 1980s, the United States government facilitated flooding the inner cities of the United States with crack cocaine, destroying lives, and then used that to unleash a vicious "war on drugs" that was a war on poor Black and Latino people—a war that is more intense today than ever. And then the CIA used the profits from crack sales to finance a war of terror against the people of Nicaragua. The second story is that of the courageous journalist Gary Webb, how and why he risked and sacrificed everything to bring this story to light. And the third is the despicable and vicious ways the government moved to suppress this story, including through character assassination and orchestrated gossip campaigns, as reflected in the movie's title. The script is adapted in part from Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, and movie is powerfully done—you'll walk out of the theater shaken and furious. Go with friends, invite the audience to connect with revcom.us, and make sure you have people to talk to afterwards—there's a lot in this movie to think about and act on.

Read "The CIA/Crack Connection: Interview with Gary Webb"—an interview with Gary Webb in 1997—at revcom.us.

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