Interesting talk Dec. 6

PEORIA -- Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Monday Dec. 6 at the Holiday Inn City Center, 500 Hamilton Blvd.

Alas, the ticket price is $20, but probably worth it. The talk likely will be lively on a hot topic. 

She also will be at Bradley University's Romeo B. Garrett Hall at 12 noon to 1:20 p.m. for a book signing. 

Illinois now has a record number of prison inmates, the Chicago Tribune says. The situation is costing Illinois taxpayers plenty, and endangering the lives of the inmates in overcrowded prisons.

Writing in the Huffington Post, Alexander stated:

"...crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the past few decades -- and currently are at historical lows -- but imprisonment rates have soared. Quintupled. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth."

A review of Alexander's book states: "Michelle Alexander has produced the best book ever written on mass incarceration and the war on drugs."

The review notes that mass incarceration is basically a racist system of social control, not crime control.  Read that review for a more detailed argument.

The HuffingtonPost.com identifies Alexander as: a longtime civil rights advocate and litigator. She won a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship and now holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Mortiz College of Law at Ohio State University. Alexander served for several years as director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, and subsequently directed the Civil Rights Clinics at Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor. Alexander is a former law clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court, and has appeared as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is her first book.

The event is presented by Parker & Associates, Rachel Parker, who was just elected to the Peoria County Board, and her husband General Parker who is running for the Peoria District 150 School Board. (Rachel Parker, a District 150 board member, will leave her post when she is sworn in to the County Board.)

 -- Elaine Hopkins

 

 

Comments

[me.yahoo.com/a/cCBJquwDj9t3PylAelvxOQUCUsMnNBnLarg4YfVf]

The Westside Environmental Plan of Action Committee (WEPAC), plans to lend our support to this painful, yet real lecture topic and its presenter.

Tell it like it is.

D Doc McClellon
WEPAC

[Dennis in Peoria]

A wonderful insightful speech about felons who have served their time, get released...want to turn life around...then be legally discriminated against.

I recorded her speech, & it will air on CAPtions on Sunday, Dec. 12 5 pm, Wednesday, Dec. 15 7 pm & later at Midnight Comcast Cable 22.