THE BLACK INITIATIVE: Fighting Brazil’s racist drug war

The war on drugs is an instrument of racism, which incites violence and hinders democratic development in Brazil. Watch our new short documentary to find out how a black civil society organization in Brazil, Iniciativa Negra, takes up the fight against this war on people.

The Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy (INNPD, Iniciativa Negra Por Uma Nova Política sobre Drogas) is a black civil society organisation in Brazil which addresses the importance of drug policies on the lives of black people. The majority of the population of Brazil is black (around 53%), but coming from a racist historical process of enslavement, they were never allowed the same level of political-economic and social equality as the white population. The War on Drugs became the tool used to keep it that way. As Nathália Oliveira, co-founder of Iniciativa Negra puts it:

“Today, the War on Drugs feeds the racist system that maintains the privileges of the white population, of whiteness, over the black population in Brazil, therefore keeping power concentrated in the hands of this whiteness, preventing the mobility of the black population to access and share these spaces of power.“