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.”
Glen Ford wrote many powerful essays, but his unflinching analysis of the history of the holiday we call Thanksgiving remains relevant over 20 years after it was published.
The official rationale for a new U.S. military operation against Venezuela is narcotics, but the true objective remains regime change. This escalating conflict demands a robust anti-imperialist…
El Jones presents the poem "Disturbing the Peace," written for the protest at the Halifax International Security Forum, November 22, 2025.
Washington is targeting the Venezuelan people in an escalating regime-change offensive, combining open military violence with an economic siege that has already claimed thousands of lives.
In this week’s segment, we discuss a march to support Mumia Abu Jamal and all political and elder prisoners. But first, we hear about the latest climate change conference, COP30, and the limits of…
