Historian, author and activist Paul Street has high praise for James Forman Jr.âs 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 âfills a giant hole in the literature,â illuminating the role played by âBlack elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,â said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. âMany 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,â said Street, whose latest book is titled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.
Despite the messaging from politicians, the new Maryland "Juvenile Justice" bill is another attack on African (Black) youth and, by extension, the whole of the African masses.
Louisiana is one of several states passing punitive measures in response to fears stoked by orchestrated crime panics.
Half of the projects funded through the law have been allocated to expanding highways.
From the era of Malcolm X to the present, progressive forces have supported the Palestinian and Arab struggles against Zionism and imperialism.
Gus Griffin joins us to discuss Maryland's new legislation which allegedly reforms juvenile justice, but is in fact an expansion of the carceral state to include young children.
