Part One of this interview appeared here, in the January 6 issue of BAR. On January 20, BAR will begin publishing excerpts from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [The New Press].
“Mass incarceration has turned the Black community against itself,” says Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Black Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Mainstream organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights put out laundry lists of proposed reforms, while failing to make America’s Black Gulag a priority. “If the way we pursue reforms does not contribute to the building of a movement to dismantle the system of mass incarceration,” says the veteran civil rights lawyer, “and if our advocacy does not upset the prevailing public consensus that supports the new caste system, none of the reforms, even if won, will successfully disrupt the nation’s racial equilibrium.”
The duopoly trap for the 2024 election has been set, but Black voters can refuse to step into it.
A 1930 speech by Black anarchist and labor organizer, Lucy Parsons, recalls the radical origins of May Day.
Red Scares, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, "Black Identity Extremists" are all indicative of how the colonized are treated by the state.
The Eritrean people struggle against sanctions and warfare instigated by the US. They recognize their efforts on International Workers Day, May Day.
