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Social Justice Vol. 28, No. 1 (2001): 138-155.

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Published in Black-Workers Remember: an oral history of segregation, unionism, and the freedom struggle by Michael Keith Honey, pg. 20-23.

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In the absence of a strong protest organization in the African American community, the police in the 1930s and 1940s were happy to demonstrate their power by victimizing many hapless individuals. And yet individuals did resist. Ms. Henderson, for example, acted against her powerlessness to stop a grisly lynching by becoming an official witness to it. Her friend Mary Alexander made the choice that many people would: she hid herself from direct knowledge of police crime and thus from responsibility to tell about it. Henderson not only took careful note of the crime but located Carlock's wife and stayed with her to offer emotional support. What became of Henderson we do not know, but the testimony of witnesses suggests that many such humble and unheralded people in their own way tried to resist the bloody repressiveness of Jim Crow....

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"The Challenge of Prison Abolition: A Conversation" A dialog between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez , Social Justice, 27:3=81 (2000:Fall) p.212

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Palafox, J. (2000). Opening up borderland studies: A review of U.S.-Mexico border militarization discourse. Social Justice. 27. 56-72.

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Article published in the Social Justice: Critical Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2000).

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This article is an edited excerpt from his upcoming book, Hard Time Blues: How politics built a prison nation, published by St. Martin's Press in January, 2002. ...

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Paul Street, “Race, Prison, and Poverty: The Race to Incarcerate in the Age of Correctional Keynesianism,” Z Magazine (May 2001), p. 26.

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Street P. Dark Connections: Empire abroad, prisons at home. Z Magazine 2003; January: 41-45.

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Chapter 3 of "If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance," New York: Third Press, 1971.

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Despite a long history of exalted appeals to man's inherent right to resistance, there has seldom been agreement on how to relate in practice to unjust immoral laws and the oppressive social order from which they emanate....

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Anna Mae Aquash statement to the Court of South Dakota September, 1975

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Darrow's Crime & Criminals, originally published by Charles H Kerr in 1902, is not only one of the greatest works by the greatest attorney in US history, it is also a little masterpiece in the literature of social criticism and the struggle for freedom. In a few pages radiant with the forceful eloquence and dry humor for which he was so justly renowned, Darrow offers the man in the street - or more precisely in this case, in jail - a crash course in the theory and practice of law and criminology. He discusses what crime is, what causes it, why more people go to jail in winter than in summer, why the real criminals almost never go to prison, why punishment doesn't work, and - in the end - why the US criminal justice system is in fact a system of injustice, a colossal and barbaric failure. This new edition includes a remarkable essay 'Darrow's Crime And Criminals A Century Later' by Leon M Despres. Opening with valuable biographical and historical background regarding Darrow's views on crime and criminals, Despres also discusses the results of a survey made in 1996, in which a number of prisoners at Cook County Jail were invited to co...

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This address is a stenographic report of a talk made to the prisoners in the Chicago jail. Some of my good friends have insisted that while my theories are true, I should not have given them to the inmates of a jail. Realizing the force of the suggestion that the truth should not be spoken to all people, I have caused these remarks to be printed on rather good paper and in a somewhat expensive form. In this way the truth does not become cheap and vulgar, and is only placed before those whose intelligence and affluence will prevent their being influenced by it. —Clarence Darrow ...

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Source: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in America,” The Arena 23 (January 1900), 15-24.

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Taken from the third chapter of "The Reason why the colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition," published in 1893.

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In this sensitively told tale of suffering, brutality, and inhumanity, Worse Than Slavery is an epic history of race and punishment in the deepest South from emancipation to the civil rights era—and beyond. Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi’s infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was, in the pre-civil rights south, synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break the wills of civil rights workers who journeyed south on Freedom Rides....

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Acknowledgements Prologue PART ONE: AFTER SLAVERY, BEFORE PARCHMAN 1. The Emancipation 2. The Mississippi Plan 3. American Siberia 4. The White Chief PART TWO: THE PARCHMAN ERA 5. The Birth and Birthplace 6. The Parchman Farm 7. The Other Parchman: White Men, Black Women 8. Going Home 9. Executioner's Song 10. A Farm with Slaves Epilogue Notes Index...

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Speech by Frederick Douglass on the occasion of the Twenty-Sixth Anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., April 16, 1888....

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In 1888, Douglass visited South Carolina and Georgia and realized how little he had known about the true conditions of his people in the South. On April 10, soon after his return, he wrote to one of the leaders of a movement for encouraging the emigration of southern Negroes to the northwest: "I had hoped that the relations subsisting between the former slaves and the old master class would gradually improve; but while I believed this, and still have some such weak faith, I have of late seen enough, heard enough, and learned enough of the condition of these people in South Carolina and Georgia, to make me welcome any movement which will take them out of the wretched condition in which I now know them to be. While I shall continue to labor for increased justice to those who stay in the South, I give you my hearty `God-speed' in your emigration scheme. I believe you are doing a good work." A few days later, he spoke in Washington at the celebration of the twenty-sixth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia. His address revealed how deeply he had been moved by his southern tour. His voice quivered with rage as he d...

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The status of the Negro was the focal problem of Reconstruction. Slavery had been abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, but the white people of the South were determined to keep the Negro in his place, socially, politically, and economically. This was done by means of the notorious "Black Codes," passed by several of the state legislatures. Northerners regarded these codes as a revival of slavery in disguise. The first such body of statutes, and probably the harshest, was passed in Mississippi in November 1865....

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Article from the Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine, Vol. 55, Issue 07, December 2003.

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La polarisation politique se produit lorsque les opinions ou les attentes d'une personne ou d'un groupe de personnes reflètent celles d'un parti politique (aux États-Unis: démocrate ou républicain) ou d'une idéologie (libérale ou conservatrice). La polarisation politique n'est pas quelque chose à craindre. En fait, c'est un test pour la démocratie et pour le progrès. L'exemple le plus remarquable de polarisation politique des temps modernes fut les États-Généraux français au cours duquel les révolutionnaires étaient assis à l'aile droite de l'Assemblée, tandis que ceux qui étaient contre la révolution étaient assis à l'aile gauche de l'Assemblée. Si la polarisation politique est un test décisif pour la démocratie et le progrès, l'excès en tout est préjudiciable. Habituellement, lorsque la polarisation affecte le résultat du vote populaire, cela signifie que les organes politiques ont déjà été polarisés. Pour cette raison, quiconque est élu, que ce soit par le collège électoral ou la Chambre des représentants, doit faire plus que ses prédécesseurs pour rassembler le pays grâce à des initiatives, des décisions ou des politiques bipar...

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Le collège électoral américain a commencé à semer le doute chez les électeurs américains seulement 20 ans après la ratification du 12ème amendement de la Constitution américaine en 1804, qui prévoit l'élection du président et du vice-président par le collège électoral. En l'absence de vote majoritaire pour une personne, la Chambre des représentants (un vote par état) choisit le président, et le Sénat le vice-président. Aujourd'hui, 213 ans après que le premier signe annonciateur ait surgi en 1824 avec l'élection de John Quincy Adams, l'efficacité du collège électoral demeure un sujet brûlant et qui suscite beaucoup de polémique…À l'époque où la constitution américaine a été écrite et ratifiée, elle était, grâce à sa vision, une entreprise totalement en avance sur son temps. Elle incarne l'exceptionnalisme américain, caractérisé par une histoire unique, une mission unique et des valeurs uniques. Alexis de Tocqueville fut le premier à identifier cet exceptionnalisme et à lui donner son approbation ou sa bénédiction dans son livre De la démocratie en Amérique. Il fut un observateur français de la démocratie américaine qui a voyagé à tr...

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TABLE DES MATIÈRES 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….3 2. C’est quoi le collège électoral? Comment fonctionne-t-il?.........................................................4 3. Polarisation politique et élections présidentielles et leurs résultats..…………………………...6 4. Le collège électoral et l’entrave à la démocratie…….…………………………………………8 5. Qu’est-ce que la démocratie?.....................................................................................................17 6. Pourquoi le collège électoral est-il une fiction polie?................................................................19 7. Existe-il des remplacements potentiels du collège électoral?....................................................20 8. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….21 9. Références……………………………………………………………………………………..22 10. Du même auteur……………………………………………………………………………...22...

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Political polarization occurs when the views or expectations of one person or a group of people reflect those of a political party (in the US: Democrat or Republican) or an ideology (liberal or conservative). Political polarization isn’t something to fear. In fact, it’s a test for democracy and for progress. The most notable example of modern times political polarization was the French Estate General during which those who were for the revolution seated at the right wing of the Assembly, while those who were against the revolution seated at the left wing of the Assembly. If political polarization is a litmus test for democracy and progress, just like everything else, too much of it is detrimental. Usually, when polarization affects the outcome of the popular vote, that means the political bodies have already been polarized. Because of that, whoever is elected, either by the electoral college or the House of representatives, must do more than his predecessors to bring the country together thanks to bipartisan initiatives, decisions or policies. But here is the thing: presidents elected exclusively by electoral vote or by House of rep...

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The US electoral college started to cast doubt in American voters only 20 years after the 12th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1804, which provides for election of the president and vice president by the electoral college. Should there be no majority vote for one person, the House of Representatives (one vote per state) chooses the president and the Senate the vice president. Today, 213 years after the first harbinger sign surfaced in 1824 with the election of John Quincy Adams, the efficiency of the electoral college is still a hot and a highly moot topic… At the time the US constitution was written and ratified, it was, thanks to its vision, an endeavor that was entirely ahead of its time. It epitomizes American exceptionalism, which is characterized by a unique history, a unique mission, and unique values. Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to pinpoint that exceptionalism and to give it his approval or benediction in his book Democracy in America. He was a French observer of American democracy who traveled throughout the new American country and let his French colleagues and philosophers back home know, afterw...

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1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….3 2. What is the electoral college anyway? How does it work?.........................................................4 3. Political polarization and presidential elections and their outcomes…………………………...6 4. The electoral college and the hindrance of democracy…………………………………………8 5. What is democracy?...................................................................................................................17 6. Why is the electoral college a polite fiction?.............................................................................19 7. Are there any potential replacements to the electoral college?..................................................20 8. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….21 9. References…………………………………………………………………………………….22 10. From the same author………………………………………………………………………...22...