Skip to main content
Tag

Mass Incarceration

Protesters in Baltimore in the aftermath of Freddie Gray's death in 2015.

The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an ‘Aberration’

By Commentaries/Opinions

From mass incarceration to mass deportation, our nation remains in deep denial. By Michelle Alexander, NYT — Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has…

Read More
Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy in St. Augustine, Florida. June 1964.

‘Until We Are All Free’: Learning from Tubman, King, and Stevenson

By Commentaries/Opinions

All of them returned to the South’s frontline struggle for racial justice. By R. Drew Smith — In 2020, January remembrances of Martin Luther King Jr. are occurring against the backdrop of two high-profile films emphasizing sacrificial servant leadership. First, the film Harriet provided a renewed focus on celebrated abolitionist Harriet Tubman. This biopic chronicles her mid-19th century enslavement in Maryland, her daring escape to a hard-won freedom in Philadelphia, and her…

Read More
New Jersey considers task force to look into reparations for slavery

New Jersey considers task force to look into reparations for slavery

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By News12, New Jersey — New Jersey’s African American lawmakers want to start studying how the state could make reparations for slavery. The New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus introduced a bill Thursday that would establish a Reparations Task Force. The task force would investigate the lingering effects of slavery and the role of state government. “The great national stain of this country’s history is this conversation around slavery. And the…

Read More
Black Lives Matter Poster

The Racist Roots of American Policing: from Slave Patrols to Traffic Stops

By Commentaries/Opinions

But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. Connie Hassett-Walker, The Conversation — Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There are many precedents to the Ferguson,…

Read More
Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind

By Editors' Choice

In three decades of advocating for prison abolition, the activist and scholar has helped transform how people think about criminal justice. By Rachel Kushner, New York Times — There’s an anecdote that Ruth Wilson Gilmore likes to share about being at an environmental-justice conference in Fresno in 2003. People from all over California’s Central Valley had gathered to talk about the serious environmental hazards their communities faced, mostly as a…

Read More