ID: Certainly not in America.
VK: Certainly not in America where I had ownership. [laughs] And then I began to
think about the individuals who can’t speak English, who are undocumented, who are not educated — how are they treated in this system of justice? Think about the criminal
justice system before 9/11, and now after 9/11, in this war on terror where
authority is given far more freedom to treat prisoners with incredible cruelty.
It made my heart ache. I could not fathom it; my heart could not hold the kind
of pain that is likely continuing behind closed doors and behind locked cells.
And in many senses I still cannot bring myself to imagine — knowing the suffering I had experienced and how privileged I was — what it was like for those unnamed others. After my experience, after I was
released, it was fascinating because many people — like the nurse who took care of me — said to me, “Well, I guess you learned your lesson: stay away from protests.” Family members were like, “You just shouldn’t have done that.” There was this need to put the blame on me, and I realized this is a human
defense mechanism, because for other people to recognize that I was completely
innocent and unjustly taken would be recognition that it could happen to them.
To completely face our own fragility and our own vulnerability in the face of
systems of justice, that’s something that is so risky to imagine as Americans who have grown up with this
feeling of comfort and safety. And it creates this line between all those
people in Guantanamo Bay and all the people everywhere who have been detained
and deported: “They must have done something wrong.” What happened after that is I wanted a law degree. I had to have a law degree.
I was planning to apply to law school [before the arrest] but it just made me
feel so certain that I needed it, to understand what the capacity of the law
is. That’s a post 9/11 experience that doesn’t appear in the film but has had a huge impact on how I’ve come to understand my identity.
ID: Thank you very much. You’ve been very generous with your time.
VK: No, actually this has been a really good conversation. A lot of people who
do interviews are like, “Why did you make the movie?” you know... I’m just so used to going through the motions but it’s so wonderful and refreshing to have such an exchange where I learn so much.
