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The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society and Spectacle

2. December 2009

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The Culture of Punishment: Prison, Society and Spectacle

It is impossible to come in contact with commercial media and not be exposed to the specter of criminal justice as entertainment. Turn on the news and you can see car chases. Turn on afternoon fare and it is syndicated reality shows featuring people being chased down by police.

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From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution

27. November 2009

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From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution

Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton perhaps explained Black revolutionary nationalism best when he drew lines against what he called reactionary nationalism. Revolutionary nationalism is a force that sees capital and the ruling order in a fundamentally different way;

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Working From Within: Chicana and Chicano Activist Educators in Whitestream Schools

27. November 2009

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Working From Within: Chicana and Chicano Activist Educators in Whitestream Schools

A peculiar tension has always existed between activist educators working in public and higher education. Maybe it is the contradiction of cultivating consciousness of youth while being on the payroll of institutions (and certainly the state) that seldom believe in such politically minded pursuits.

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Sacco and Vanzetti

12. August 2009

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Sacco and Vanzetti

As I watched Sacco and Vanzetti, an 80-minute-long documentary by Peter Miller, it drew me to the point of grabbing my pen, and paper and rewinding the film over and over again so not to miss an important fact, interview, or scene about one of the most famous political trials in U.S. history.

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Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege

12. August 2009

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Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege

Ignoring race and subscribing to the colorblind mentality haven't proven to alter race relations in the United States. Shannon Sullivan argues in her Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege, however, that the conscious awareness of white privilege and the notion of colorblindness is not enough to fight the problem.

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The Jena 6

6. July 2009

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The Jena 6

"The DA's pen has replaced the lynching noose" -Mumia Abu Jamal Barely noticed In the midst of the hullabaloo and media hype over the death of Michael Jackson, a notorious case of racial injustice against six working-class African-American youths came to a quiet conclusion in the LaSalle Parish courthouse on June 25, 2009, in the parish (county) seat of Jena, state of Louisiana.

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Letter to the President: The Streets Get Political

30. June 2009

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Letter to the President: The Streets Get Political

Letter to the President: The Streets Get Political, produced by Russell Simmons, directed by Thomas Gibson, composed by Quincy Jones, and narrated by Snoop Dogg, is a wake-up call to the world that hip-hop and rap does not mean money, ignorance, and violence, but a voice from a imprisoned, oppressed, and repressed community. This is an excellent film on the history of hip-hop and rap in the U.S. in relation to race, class, and sexism.

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The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation

20. June 2009

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The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation

It is no secret that the United States does not hesitate to incarcerate. While the US only represents 5% of the global population, it cages nearly 25% of the world's prisoners-approximately 2.3 million people. Of these 2.3 million people, approximately half are African American (13% of US population). Of course, the vastly disproportionate caging and state coercion of African Americans in the US has a long and brutal history. This bloody legacy is made manifest in prisons like Angola, named for the country from which many southern plantation slaves were abducted.

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We Shall Not Be Moved: Posters and the Fight Against Displacement in L.A.’s Figueroa Corridor

28. April 2009

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We Shall Not Be Moved: Posters and the Fight Against Displacement in L.A.’s Figueroa Corridor

Gentrification is one of those great battles the working class continues fight on a regular basis. Not that it has much of a choice. Urban desirability and the quest for community in cities across the United States have turned many a block into "neighborhoods in transition," condominium war zones where the enemy combatants are the less well-to-do.

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From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King

22. April 2009

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From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King

Presenting one's memoir consciously as that of a former Black Panther Party member, even as simply a factual statement, is bound to bring any such book into some heady company. Think Assata Shakur's Assata, George Jackson's Blood in My Eye, Bobby Seale's Seize the Time and nearly a dozen other autobiographies and biographies. And though From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography Of Black Panther Robert Hillary King (nee Robert King Wilkerson) is no Soul On Ice (Eldridge Cleaver's bubbling personal manifesto), King's words percolate with the urgency and determination that made the Panthers once one of North America's most revolutionary units.

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Fragmented Lives, Fragmented Parts: Culture, Capitalism and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border and Violence & Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juarez

20. April 2009

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Fragmented Lives, Fragmented Parts: Culture, Capitalism and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border and Violence & Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juarez

Although overshadowed these days in mainstream media by drug cartel violence, Cuidad Juarez has come to capture the minds of many people concerned about social justice, and for good reason. In no other city in Latin America do controversies such as globalization, economic collapse, institutionalized violence against women, history, immigration, resistance, North American exceptionalism and the much lauded Eduardo Galleano-esque mythology so crisply cut paths.

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