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.”
This week we discuss the bipartisan consensus on punitive immigration policies and a community organizing solidarity event in the Bronx and call for freedom of a political prisoner. But first we talk…
Frank Chapman and Hatem Abudayyeh join us from Chicago to discuss the city council vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and update us on events in Palestine and in Chicago.
Aly Wane is on the advisory board of the Immigrant Justice Network. He joins us from Syracuse, New York to discuss the failure of the recent immigration bill and the bipartisan consensus on punitive…
We're joined by Kevin Steele and Raven, two organizers of the Spirit of Mandela Coalition and About the People. We discuss their work and the "People's Senate Giveback & Genocide Convention…
The nations that brag the most about "democracy" routinely ignore the will of their people. Support for Israel's war crimes in Gaza is but one example of this phenomenon.
