If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We have now spent 1 trillion dollars waging the drug war since it began. A trillion. Those funds could have been used… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
What are people released from prison expected to do? How are they expected to survive? Can't get a job, locked out of… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The prison-industrial complex employs millions of people directly and indirectly. Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison guards, construction companies that build prisons, police,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Of course it would make far more sense to invest in education and job creation in poor communities of color, rather than… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We would never throw up our hands and say to those white boys - well, too bad, if you had just stayed… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In a growing number of states, you're actually expected to pay back the costs of your imprisonment. Paying back all these fees, fines, and costs may be a condition of your probation or parole. To make matters worse, if you're one of the lucky few who actually manages to get a job following release from prison, up to 100% of… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share
We're foolish if we think we're going to end mass incarceration unless we are willing to deal with the reality that huge… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning of race may evolve over time or lose much of its significance is hardly a reason to be struck blind. We should hope not for a colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can see… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share
Since the nations founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die but then… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Felon disenfranchisement laws have been more effective in eliminating black voters in the age of mass incarceration than they were under Jim Crow…These figures may understate the impact of felony disenfranchisement, because they do not take into account the millions of ex-felons who cannot vote in states that require ex-felons to pay fines or fees before their voting rights can… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share
“That was King’s dream—a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Activists take the risks, while advocates are professional tinkerers with the system. What's necessary is for those who are advocates to support those who… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Civil rights protests were frequently depicted as criminal rather than political in nature, and federal courts were accused of excessive “lenience” toward lawlessness, thereby… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
We cannot 'fix' the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share
The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. —W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image