12/20/2021
Heather Ann Thompson on Mass Incarceration
Historians in the Newstags: racism, prisons, authoritarianism, Mass Incarceration
This month marks the forty-year anniversary since revolutionary journalist and political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to life in prison, sparking the Free Mumia movement and continued calls to repair America’s broken justice system.
Now the Philadelphia community is mourning the death of political activist and former political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz, who passed away last week at age 78 after a brief battle with cancer.
How have figures like Mumia and Shoatz continued to be important for Black liberation and prison abolition movements? Today, Karma Chávez guest hosts a wide-ranging conversation with historian Heather Ann Thompson about policing, mass incarceration, and why overhauling the criminal justice system is the civil rights issue of our time.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of