I think that it was really important to watch this documentary considering what has happened recently. I find the documentary extremely informative and eye-opening. I also really learned a lot from the discussion that we held after the movie. The conversation spanned from general to personal examples. As a whole, I thought the movie did a great job building context and going into the past and present of the issue. I often get distracted during documentaries, but this film did such a  great job weaving the stories together that I never lost focus. Despite being only a 30-minute movie, it was very impactful and sightful.

This documentary was short but impactful. While it should be pretty obvious that racism is something that continues to persist in this country, this documentary highlights how police, prosecutors and courts have historically targeted people of color for incarceration in our country. Something I learned was that Latinos are becoming the fastest growing minority in the U.S. prison system. Documentaries like this and the recent killings of notable figures like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd speak volumes on how the criminal justice system in America not only needs to be reformed but that it needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the bottom-up. Otherwise we will likely never live in a society without discrimination.

The documentary was disappointing but not surprising. The courts and prosecutors have targeted people of color, this can be observed through the disproportionate incarceration rates. Earlier in my law class, we discussed how the criminal justice system has failed people of color by continuing to manifest oppression. It is amazing to me that people can argue that racism doesn’t exist in America because America is based on institutionalized racism, so everything is impacted by race. This film along with the current killings of innocent black people should be a wake-up call that the law system needs to be reformed.

This was an interesting weekly film, and I’m really glad I got to see it. I’ve always known that the history of Latino/Chicano people in the United States was vast and rich, but it can be hard to learn about it in academic contexts because the history isn’t documented in the same way it is for many Americans. My experience with Chicano history has always been verbal storytelling from my family, or murals in my neighborhood, neither of which tend to overlap with the content I learned in high school for U.S. history. It can be frustrating to hear these magnificent stories, and then never hear them acknowledged or repeated throughout decades of schooling.

Bad Hombres was a movie that took care to collect some of these stories and repeat them, particularly regarding the historic fight to decolonize justice in the United States. One story I appreciated from the movie was of a young woman, whose neighborhood had been flagged growing up for gang activity. This is something that happens to lots of neighborhoods in the US, particularly with BIPOC inhabitants, and it can be invisible to those who don’t live there. It’s a process in which greater police surveillance is employed in the interest of deterring crime. Oftentimes, the end result of this is greater punishment for what would be minor violations. The woman interviewed in the film did a great job of explaining what that’s like, and how justice can take different forms depending on your background.

The short film Decolonize Justice – Bad Hombres spends some time covering the use of gang injunctions in Los Angeles, a tool used to combat the prevalence of gangs. Before watching the film I had vaguely known about these probably only reading brief snippets in headlines or in a sound bite from the news here or there. I’d always thought the injunctions were something that was unofficial, but had a term assigned to it. I essentially thought these amounted to police patrolling specific neighborhoods more frequently and shifting their attention towards possible gang activity. What this film taught me was that this is not at all what the injunctions are like. They are completely formal, signed off by a judge, and once it is signed off on for a particular gang, the police officers then get to decide which specific people they wish to enforce this upon, restricting them from certain activities. The restricted activities can be as mundane as two people being seen in public together. This gives police the power to restrict people’s freedom and liberties even if they don’t participate in any illegal activities. To me, this appears to be a gross overreach of power from police departments.

Humans have had a lot of history of hurting other humans for their own benefits. We have seen that during the slavery period where Africans were enslaved against their will to help the Spaniards and the Europeans. This history still resides with us today even after the abolishment of slavery because police brutality targets coloured human beings. This documentary showed how much change is truly needed in education especially for the US criminal justice system so we can in the future live in a society free of discrimination!

Even though this documentary is about half an hour long, I experience a strong feeling against the prejudice experienced by Latinx American. I have learned that the progress has been made in the United States to alleviate this issue, but it is not enough to entirely solve the problems. Before watching this documentary, my preconceived notion is that only the African American were subjected to discrimination, but this has taught me that this is not the case, and rather we should be inclusive to all the community.

Watching the documentary made me realize the prejudice on Latinx community within America’s police and prison systems. I liked how the documentary was formatted in describing which American event and how that event triggered the prejudice the Latinx community started experiencing to present day. The interviews included here and there when describing the history was a nice addition to the film that not only gave a new perspective on the history mentioned but also added emotions to these events in history. I was also reminded of a concept I had frequently heard about: expecting police to give out a certain number of tickets within a time frame. Since police are forced to hand out tickets despite people doing no harm, police tend to target the Latinx and Black community, seeing them as “easy targets”. To see that such a practice is still being done today only emphasizes how progress and work needs to continue to dismantle the bias against the Latinx community in America’s police and prison systems.

I watched the documentary Bad Hombre last week. The film dove into the injustices of the police and prison systems in the United States with emphasis on the prejudice and profiling of Latinx populations. The current political climate stresses the issues of systemic racism as an aspect of society that immediately needs to be changed and watching this film during this time greatly complemented those notions. I found the film did a great job emphasizing how these issues have been occurring for a great deal of time through the inclusion of prejudices in the past that I had not been aware of such as with Zoot Suit clothing and the creation of Hollywood films that aimed to exploit precursing prejudices for monetary gain. The inclusion of these topics both showed the growth of the United States but also how it has not come far enough. The most impactful moment in the film for me was a section when the topic of Gang Injunctions was being discussed and members of a community spoke as to how as a community they legally fought the government that had implemented the ordinance. It was an inspiring moment that served to give hope that these issues can be overcome.

By far, this was one of the most interesting documentaries I watched that focused on activism for minority rights. In this short film, the one parts that struck me the most are racial profiling. One of the professors who was of Latinx heritage was discussing that the appearance or physical tendencies of Latinx people would oftentimes make them a target by police officers. Part of the reason why this is so is because there has been movies from the 1800s/1900s that portrays Hispanic people as villainous characters. This reminded me of the movies that were made by white people showing black people as villains as well and how that factored into the way black people are mistreated. This documentary was definitely an eye opener as it further reminded me that black people are not the only minority fighting a system that is against them.