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.”
“I don't mean just in the struggles in these prisons. America is one whole concentration camp in and of itself.”
"During the last week of July, I traveled to the front lines of Somalia’s unresolved border conflict with Somaliland, the Somali secessionist state now recognized by Israel but not by
There is near unanimity of opinion against data centers in the U.S. But elitist and compromised environmental groups and the climate industry should not lead this fight.
"What’s with a Pomade Man’s testosterone obsession?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence
Johanna Fernandez left a powerful and revolutionary legacy through her scholarship and activism.
