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.”
In 2018 the late Glen Ford wrote about the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the Brazilian presidency, and the nature of fascism in Brazil, the U.S. and around the world. Margaret Kimberley reads…
Democrats are using the hearings investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol as one long campaign commercial. They believe that saying the name Trump often enough will ins
A 1965 Freedomways interview with Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer provides an unvarnished and unsentimental portrait of Mississippi – and of the tasks of the Freedom Movement.
Eritrea emerged as an independent nation after decades of struggle. It celebrates Martyrs' Day in honor of those who paid the ultimate price.
This week’s featured author is Shanté Paradigm Smalls. Smalls is Associate Professor of Black Studies in the Department of English and Faculty in Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at St. John’s…
