Tonight we’re at @BowdoinCollege for the Annual Commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., talking with author of @thenewjimcrow, Michelle Alexander.
Show this thread
-
“I don’t subscribe to the notion that ‘For those people it makes sense to lock them up in cages’...Treating people worse than a dog in the pound is not a rational way of addressing people who commit violence.” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread
“People who commit violence have often first survived violence...Exposing them to more trauma and expecting them to be better? That’s just nuts.” -Michelle Alexander
-
-
“90% of victims say they would rather perpetrators go through a restorative justice program. Most people want more than just retribution. They want to make sure nothing like what happens to them ever happens again.” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread -
“The system of mass incarceration and mass deportation depends on us not caring about people who have been labeled ‘criminal.’ We can’t afford to live in a society that allows us to think of anyone as ‘Us vs. Them.” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread -
Speaking of the need to care about one another: “None of us would want our children to be locked in a cage. None of us would want that for anyone they knew. But for them, it’s okay?” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread -
“We are going to have to be willing to put our own selves at risk. I don’t think my book would have done what it did if it weren’t for the people in Ferguson standing up and for the people across the country who said ‘I’m going to stand up too.’” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread -
“The biggest lie we buy into is that we have no power. We have ENORMOUS power.” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread -
“The number of people in prison skyrocketed, regardless of whether crime was going up or down...because we decided to get tough on ‘Them.’” -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread -
“The Southern Strategy was a deliberate strategy to play on the fear of poor, white communities by promising to ‘get tough’ on a racialized ‘other.’ And a wave of punitiveness swept the country, resulting in a quintupling of our prison population in a very short amount of time.”
Show this thread -
“Everyone knows that the safest communities aren’t the ones with lots of police and prisons. They are the ones with good schools,” etc. -Michelle Alexander
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.