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Commentaries/Opinions

Why Prison Doesn’t Work

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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The Distorted Exaggeration of Black-on-Black Crime Ignores Much of America’s Criminality

By Commentaries/Opinions

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.”

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Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions

By Commentaries/Opinions

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.

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Revolution in Reverse?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

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.

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Labor must reject Pat Lynch’s bitter bile 

By Commentaries/Opinions

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.

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