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.
The party that installed its presidential candidate without a primary vote now blames its 2024 loss on everything except its own contempt for its base and allegiance to neo-liberal policies.
"SONNY" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
Six years ago, George Floyd was murdered by police. The reaction was swift - the streets erupted and demands to defund the police spread across the country. Yet, the response from Democrats was…
Compliant Arab regimes spent decades spreading anti-Iran propaganda, but the current assault on Iran is shattering those lies.
The U.S. indicted 94-year-old Raúl Castro not out of concern for the people of Cuba or the U.S., but because six decades of sanctions have failed to destroy Cuba's revolutionary continuity.
