Drug War. Michelle Alexander on Bill Moyers Journal

Last week was the 42nd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

To mark the anniversary Bill Moyers  sat down with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander "to discuss how far we've really come as a country, how poor and working class Americans have been falling behind and what America must do to fulfill Dr. King's vision."

Alexander, a legal scholar and civil rights advocate, is the author The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Here is some of what she had to say:

Just a couple decades after the collapse of the old Jim Crow system, a new system of racial control emerged in the United States. Today, people of color are targeted by law enforcement for relatively minor, nonviolent, often drug-related offenses. The types of crimes that occur all the time on college campuses, where drug use is open and notorious. That occur in middle class suburban communities without much notice, right?

Targeted, often at very young ages, for these relatively minor offenses. Arrested, branded felons, and then ushered into a parallel social universe, in which they can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in many of the ways in which African Americans were discriminated against during the Jim Crow era.

Alexander is coming to Seattle. She will talk about her book be at William Gates Hall at the University of Washington Law School April 13th and at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center the following evening.

********************

The so-called War on Drugs is a waste of resources and a lost opportunity for tax revenue. History clearly teaches us that prohibition leads to increases in violent crime not decreases in drug abuse.
The so-called War on Drugs is a cheap excuse to lock people up rather than provide meaningful opportunities. Dr. Curtis supports decriminalizing possession of small quantities of almost all drugs and full legalization of marijuana (along with taxation of it to fund health and education programs).

********************

Review of New Jim Crow at Real Chance
Interview with Michelle Goodman at Democracy Now!