Academy Award nominations were announced Thursday morning and noticeably absent from almost every major category was the civil rights biopic Selma, which tells the story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. for equal voting rights.
Maya Schenwar has paved new terrain in her memoir cum analysis, Locked Down, Locked Out, about the prison industrial complex. We have a plethora of books and online materials that detail the facts and figures of the War on Drugs along with the policy debates on issues around mandatory minimums and employment difficulties for people with felony convictions. Michelle Alexander…
Ongoing protests against police brutality have revealed how distorted the American discourse on crime is. The biggest myth animating this discourse is black criminality: the notion that black people commit more crime, and therefore deserve more heavy-handed policing. Just a few weeks ago, on NBC’s Meet the Press, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani chided the network, saying, “I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks.”
As the editor of a progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine that has often articulated views that have prompted condemnation from both Right and Left…
By Peniel E. Joseph — People protest in Times Square Nov. 25, 2014, in New York City over the grand jury decision not to indict then-Officer Darren Wilson in the…
“Our community must reinforce its moral responsibility to rid itself of the effects of years of exploitation, neglect, and apathy, and wage an unrelenting struggle against police brutality.”
The deaths of African-Americans at the hands of the police in Ferguson, Mo., in Cleveland and on Staten Island have reignited a debate about race. Some argue that these events are isolated and that racism is a thing of the past. Others contend that they are merely the tip of the iceberg, highlighting that skin color still has a huge effect on how people are treated.
Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776 was overlooked by most liberal media when it was published last spring, but it really can be considered one of the more notable books of 2014. It is actually a very short but dense and abundantly sourced book, original and broad in its scope—in many ways a magisterial work.
Gerald Horne’s The Counter-Revolution of 1776 was overlooked by most liberal media when it was published last spring, but it really can be considered one of the more notable books of 2014.
As the leader of the police union has raged, incited and poured rhetorical gasoline on a tense city, every other significant labor union has gone mute. Not one of them seems able, or willing, to speak up and blunt the din unleashed by the PBA at the mayor, protesters and just about anyone who doesn’t share Pat Lynch’s world-view.
Prisons employ and exploit the ideal worker. Prisoners do not receive benefits or pensions. They are not paid overtime. They are forbidden to organize and strike.