Historian, author and activist Paul Street has high praise for James Forman Jr.’s new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Forman is a professor at Yale Law School and a former public defender in Washington, DC. His book “fills a giant hole in the literature,” illuminating the role played by “Black elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,” said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. “Many ordinary, working class Black voters in the 70s and 80s have actively supported the racially disparate war on crime and drugs that ended up producing racist mass incarceration,” said Street, whose latest book is titled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.
In this week’s segment, we hear about a community forum that will discuss the need to organize in the wake of an acquittal in the 2023 killing of Jordan Neely in the New York City subway system.
Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of Friends of the Congo. He joins us to discuss the ongoing humanitarian and political crisis in eastern Congo, where the Rwandan government continues its…
Tag, a Spirit of Mandela coordinating committee member, joins us to talk about their upcoming community forum at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn on Saturday, February 1st. This is the first in a…
Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on Jamarl Thomas's YouTube podcast. She discussed her latest Black Agenda Report article on “The Death of DEI.” The issues surrounding DEI are contradictory.…
Black people must be discerning about racist attacks on DEI programs while also acknowledging that “diversity” can be a con that damages Black politics, just as it was meant to do.
