As a homeless ex-felon, Ira McKinley had an incomparable perspective on the desolation facing his community in inner-city Albany, N.Y. But when he began interviewing people for The Throwaways, he had no intention of getting in front of the camera. It took encouragement from co-director Bhawin Suchak and, finally, a visit to Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, to persuade McKinley that his own life was the perfect "in." McKinley's tale — from his father's shooting death at the hands of police to getting refused food stamps after being released from jail — leads to a powerful examination of the far-reaching impact of mass incarceration and police brutality on black communities. As in Ferguson, we find a neighborhood laid to waste. Boarded up and all but emptied by arrests, inner-city Albany has become a "food desert" where families travel miles for groceries. For some, this documentary is too sweeping in its focus, but the aim is clear: acknowledge the complex reality of people, whose very lives are considered disposable, and create hope.
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