Kalief Browder's Family Reflect On His Life And Legacy Ahead Of 'TIME: The Kalief Browder Story'

On May 15, 2010, sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder, a Bronx, New York resident was arrested while walking home from a party for allegedly stealing a backpack. Though he was never convicted of the crime, Browder would spend over the next one thousand days of his life locked away on Rikers Island, being beaten, starved and tortured. Browder spent eight hundred of those days in solitary confinement before he was finally released, with all charges dismissed, over three years later.

A victim of a broken justice system, which cares little for impoverished people of color, Browder was unable to escape the things that he saw and experienced while at Rikers. On June 6, 2015, at the age of twenty-two-years old, Browder hanged himself at his home. The day before, he told his mother, Vendica Browder, “Ma, I can’t take it anymore.”  At the time of his death, Browder’s story was making waves across the country. Now, with their compelling, six-part documentary event series, TIME: The Kalief Browder Story, Spike and The Weinstein Company are finally giving Browder the voice he so desperately wanted. This comprehensive look at his life, case, and incarceration at Rikers allows Browder the opportunity to speak for himself.

The evening before the series debut, ESSENCE caught up with Kalief Browder’s siblings: Nicole, Deion, Kamal and Akeem Browder, his lawyer Paul Prestia and filmmakers, Jenna Furst and Nick Sandow for a special screening and Q&A in New York City. Bronx City Council member Ritchie Torres moderated the panel.

Ritchie Torres: For the Browder family, can you give us a sense of who Kalief was as a person?

Nicole Browder: Kalief was a normal person like all of us. He was a happy kid, a silly kid; he was very smart. He always stood up for what was right. He was hardheaded and very playful. We picked on him a lot of the time because he was the youngest. Before he went to Rikers, he was a normal teenager getting to know who he was.

Deion Browder: One thing I will always remember about Kalief was how energetic he was. He was always into sports. He always wanted to try new things. He would do a lot of things to stand out as if to say, “Hey, I am here!” But, he was just a fun and energetic person, and he brought life to everyone around him.

Kamal Browder: He was always the competitive type. I brought a game called NBA 2K, and his team used to always be the Portland Trail Blazers. I don’t know how he found out who Clyde Drexler was, but he used to always call him Clyde the Glide, and he used to do insane dunks to make me mad.

Akeem Browder: Kalief was my younger brother, and you look to your younger siblings, and you want to protect them. He was just a kid. I mean no matter how old my younger brothers or my sister gets, they’re kids to me.

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Review: 'TIME: The Kalief Browder Story' Is A Searing Look At One Man's Stolen Life And A Justice System That Has Failed So Many

The justice system is failing us right now, and it has been for years. If we look at the world around us, the man who walks the halls of the White House and the policies that are reigning down on the citizens and residents of this country, it’s clear that laws are being made to keep us shackled and immobile for generations and centuries to come. We are all being crippled whether literally or morally. However, no group of people has been more devastated, cast aside and broken by the system than impoverished people of color. In her astounding Netflix documentary, “13th” director Ava DuVernay, connected this thread that runs through the past one hundred and fifty years. It is a cycle of impoverishment, imprisonment, death and destruction, and it has been so deeply and so irreparably ingrained in our society that our youngest citizens have given their lives as a result of it.

On May 15, 2010, sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder, a Bronx, New York resident was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. Though he was never convicted of the crime, Browder would spend over the next one thousand days of his life locked away on Rikers Island, being beaten, starved and tortured. He would spend eight hundred of those days in solitary confinement before he was finally released, with all charges dropped in June 2013. On June 6, 2015, at the age of 22-years old, Browder hanged himself at his mother’s home. Not only did the justice system fail Browder, as his fellow citizens, we must also take responsibility.

During the two years between his release from prison and his death, Browder sought to tell his story. As a society, we denied him the right to life, we denied him the right to a fair trial, and in doing so, we attempted to deny his very existence. In a six-part documentary produced by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and The Weinstein Company, writer/director Jenner Furst outlines Browder’s life in detail. He allows the late young man to speak for himself while using archival footage, haunting surveillance tapes, interviews with his loved ones and commentary from activists like Michelle Alexander, Van Jones, and Jay-Z, as well as words from former Rikers inmates and corrections officers. “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story” highlights how deeply broken we are as a society and what little empathy we have for those whose paths are different from our own.

An evocative and emotionally devastating piece of work, “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story” fleshes out the full being of a young man who was under surveillance for the entirety of his short life. This scrutiny never afforded him the opportunity of a complete childhood, much less a chance at manhood.

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Image: SpikeTV

A Sit-Down With Former Lifer Bilal Chatman & Directors Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway on ‘The Return’, New Beginnings & Our Broken Criminal Justice System

Our society likes to paint a certain picture of the incarcerated. They are likened to monstrous beasts that we are forced to lock up in cages. We’re told that they’re dangerous and irredeemable, not worthy of walking the streets among us. However, as those whose lives have been cruelly interrupted by the criminal justice system know, that could not be further from the truth. These men and women are our mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Our journeys have taken different paths, but sometimes those paths wind up merging once again.

In 2012, California altered its ruthless “Three Strikes Law” with the passing of Proposition 36. It was an amendment that suddenly freed hundreds of thousands of non-violent prisoners, who had previously been sentenced to life behind bars. Directors Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway followed this groundbreaking reform in their documentary film “The Return”. In the film, the filmmakers follow two newly released former lifers. Kenneth Anderson, a man who’d missed seeing his children grow up, and Bilal Chatman, a man determined to move forward despite the time he’d lost.  In the gut-wrenching narrative, we watch as Kenneth desperately tries to reconnect with his family and his ex-wife, Monica Grier, while Bilal steadfastly moves to reintegrate himself into society.

During the Tribeca Film Festival, I got the opportunity to sit down with Bilal Chatman, as well as Directors Duane de la Vega and Galloway to talk about this long return home.

Aramide Tinubu: For over 15 years, your projects have focused on subjects that have profoundly affected our society. Did Proposition 36 inspire you to do “The Return”, or was it the criminal justice system in general that sparked your interest?

Kelly Duane de la Vega: What was really exciting about this story, was that for the first time in our history, voters voted to shorten the sentences of the currently incarcerated.  It really was the first time we could really look at an implementation of reform.  What does that look like? What can we learn from it? We wanted to follow the story through the institutions, the courtrooms, the prisons, but also on the outside. We wanted to look at the families, the people who have suffered and served time on the outside, while their loved ones served on the inside.  We were eager to see what would happen. We had hoped that it would be a hopeful story, and I think it ultimately is a hopeful story; the recidivism rate is at a record low for this population. But, it’s also a heartbreaking story, because so many families have been broken and services are so few and far between.

AT: Bilal how did you get connected Katie and Kelly?

Bilal Chatman: Survival. My attorney knew them, and part of the three strikes law gave the judges the option of allowing you out or not. So the District Attorney used my case as a contested case. They were saying, “We do not what to let him out.” So with that, you also have to be able to be disciplinary free while you are in prison. You had to meet the criteria. Your crime had to be non-violent first, and then you couldn’t have too many disciplinary problems like fights or violence. In my case, I had a drug case, so what would it have looked like if I had drug sales or drug problems in prison? Knowing that, I made myself look more attractive to the courts because I did a lot of things while I was in there. I did anything that was possible, anything that was positive, anything that could have made me better. I went to everything, Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous. I made myself ready, and I should have been released, but they were like, “No”.  So my attorney said, “I know these filmmakers who have been following Prop 36 and they’d love to interview you.”  My attorney said, “We’re going to try to get them into the courtroom so that the judge can tell them, and you, and the world, that they aren’t going to let you out.  He said, “The best thing that could happened is that they don’t let you out.” And at the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But he said, “That could be the best thing because then the world will see how terrible this system is.”

AT: Oh for sure.

BC:  But at the same time, it can also open the door for the judge and the DA and everybody to say what they want to say on camera. Needless to say, they didn’t let [Kelly and Katie] into the courtroom, but I was fortunate enough to be released.

KD: And they knew we were watching.

BC: Absolutely.

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Image: The Return