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.
Now, I wasn’t Yuri Kochiyama amidst toppled chairs, gun smoke scented chaos, cradling Malcolm’s heavy head on the Audubon Ballroom
All too often we witness petit-bourgeois African women willingly taking positions of leadership, power, and influence within the political and military infrastructure of the United States.
As a space for democratic deliberation and decision-making, the jury box still has the potential to shift the criminal legal system – but first we must change who is able to serve on a j
This week the U.S. state’s propaganda and the Black elite were on your minds.
Senior care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility.
