‘Power’ (2024) Review – A Vital Documentary That Commands Your Attention

The new Netflix documentary Power is a fairly damning indictment of the power structure in the United States right now. This is nothing new throughout history. Any king or queen in Western civilization or Anglo-Saxon Europe maintained their own Royal guard or enforced policing for the needs of some royal family. However, Yance Ford’s (Strong Island) powerful documentary draws quickly understandable lines from the birth of modern-day policing that will be divisive in America. For most, watching Power should be an eye-opening experience.

Ford’s outline is easy to understand and accurate for anyone who has studied socioeconomic power dynamics. In essence, Ford argues that policing is about control, particularly of those in power. A fascinating structure of Ford’s and other academics’ argument is that there have been three phases of policing in the United States. First, there were “slave patrols” in the South looking for runaways. The next step was enforcing control over the influx of immigrant workers entering the United States. The next phase was to control and segregate people of color around the civil rights movement, which is still active today.

Ford and writer Ian Olds (Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi) create well-rounded arguments for each. Control over immigration is particularly effective because it lays out the argument that “power” can be a creation of numbers. The ones in control began guiding “The Great Arrival” of Italians, Greeks, and Irish immigrants into the manual labor workforce. The utilization of police to suppress labor uprisings began to take full effect. The documentary interviews various experts who explain that there was a time when these groups were never under consideration of being known as “white.”

So, what happened? When this growing population was coming dangerously close (and would in the future) to outnumbering the “white” population in power, they changed their minds and welcomed those groups with open arms. Of course, this increased the number of people in control. As we approach the Civil Rights era, those in control of the government now utilize the police to enforce their power, govern, make the laws, and implement them. Again, to maintain control. Yes, numbers are power. Yes, control is power. And those who have it know how to wield it to retain it.

In Power, those who wield control in phase one are the slave owners. The total worth of enslaved people in the United States exceeded the country’s combined industrial and commercial economies (Wright, 2022). How do you suppress uprisings when there are no rules governing labor laws? Through a publicly funded workforce. And, of course, when marginalized and disadvantaged groups demand equal rights, the police are there to quash peaceful protests. Of course, when equality is enforced, those in power find workarounds.

For example, the documentary discusses the “Black codes,” where after slavery ended, laws were passed so that no “Black person could have jobs other than farm work, manual labor, or domestic service jobs.” They were also prohibited from owning a gun; if they were “suspected” of committing a crime, they could be arrested without probable cause or evidence. Even so-called experts in the 1850s, like Samuel Cartwright, developed the theory of “Drapetomania,” which posited that only those with a mental illness would want to escape the enslaved life.

There are modern examples that the film does not address, but we should explore them here because such occurrences are still prevalent today. People of color experienced segregation into minority areas of cities with poor quality of life, and communities fell victim to blockbusting. Even now, in the political system, those in power employ the strategy of gerrymandering. (There is a great documentary called Slay the Dragon that shows the redrawing of political lines to manipulate elections—to maintain governance.)

Power then makes another powerful case: the post-21st century “stop and frisk” policy in New York City. The result was that 80% of the law’s enforcement targeted the black and Latino populations. For all that work, only 0.1% of those frisks resulted in gun arrests. This is a mountain of evidence that is overwhelming at times. The result is a profound effect on the viewer. The point is not only inadequate training but also the ones who govern and have improper facts. This leads to monumental decisions that have negative lasting effects for decades.

Power is a formidable entry in the social justice genre. Ford’s film commands attention because it’s not exclusively about inherent evil or even police brutality. The film shows how power corrupts and, in turn, controls. Ford’s film forces you to watch what should make you uncomfortable in your own skin.

Power is currently playing in select theaters and will be available to stream on Netflix on May 17, 2024.