The war on terror, rebranded under Obama as the "Overseas Contingency Operation," has morphed into war on democracy.

As young people make diverse claims on the promise of a radical democracy, articulating what a fair and just world might be, they are increasingly met with forms of physical, ideological and structural violence.

Cinema is consistently making a claim to particular memories, histories, ways of life, identities, and values that always presuppose some notion of difference, community, and the future. Given that films both reflect and shape public culture, they cannot be defined exclusively through a notion of artistic freedom and autonomy that removes them from any form of critical accountability.

We have in this country something remarkable. We have the local version of the Soviets' Pravda. It trades in ignorance and lies and opinions, and makes the claim that they are "truth," and it does so with people who are stupid, who don't know anything, and are basically entertainers. It merges a fundamentalist ideology with celebrity culture.

The issue of who gets to define the future, own the nation's wealth, shape the parameters of the social state, control the globe's resources, and create a formative culture for producing engaged and socially responsible citizens is no longer a rhetorical issue, but offers up new categories for defining how matters of representations, education, economic justice, and politics are to be defined and fought over. At stake here is the need for both a language of critique and possibility.

At the same time, you see in those studies, you see the emergence of various movements among black youth that are really challenging the ideology of neoliberalism since the 1980s.

Young black men are considered dangerous, expendable, threatening and part of a culture of criminality.