In 2006, the state of Texas began detaining immigrant families and children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, TX. The detention center did not stop housing immigrant children until 2009, after the ACLU of Texas sued Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Rather than turning to more humane and practical solutions like probation or home-like community shelters, however, Texas may soon reinstate the practice of detaining immigrant families. According to KUT, ICE recently requested 100 new family detention beds in the state.

We need to consider how the criminalization of immigration contributes to mass incarceration. We must also look at the looming possibility of family detention, the effects of which would be devastating to the physical and mental well-being of immigrant children and families in Texas. MW

Immigrant Family Detention Could Return to Texas

by Erika Aguilar

Undocumented families waiting for their immigration status to be determined could soon be held in detention centers in Texas. The federal government is reviewing contracts from companies interested in running them.

Central Texas housed immigrant families in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor from 2006 to 2009, and some immigration rights advocates say they fear the practice of detaining families could return.

The ACLU of Texas sued the T. Don Hutto Center and  Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2007 for detaining immigrant children.

“The ICE field office started using its discretion a little more bit more wisely, allowing some of the bond-eligible families to bond out,” said Lisa Graybill, the legal director for the ACLU of Texas. “Others were placed in shelters like Casa Marianella, which is a shelter for immigrant families and immigrant women, and other sort of community-based alternatives.”

After that, the only detention center in the country still housing families was in Pennsylvania. That center will be closed in March. But last November, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement put out a request for proposal for 100 new family detention beds in Texas.

Graybill says this move is two steps forward, one step back. She says a former Texas Youth Commission facility in Crockett is one place she believes the federal government is considering.

“I’m not saying that the United States doesn’t have the obligation to police its borders and that ICE doesn’t have the responsibility to monitor immigration enforcement, I’m just saying in terms of detention, while a status is being adjudicated, there are more reasonable places we can house people that are more cost effective and more humane,” Graybill said.

Only women are now being held at the T. Don Hutto center, which has 512 beds.

Andrea Black, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, a national coalition of immigration organizations, says that sometimes when mothers get arrested for being in the country illegally, the children are the ones who suffer and get put into the state foster care system.

“A year later, the children are put through a process where their parental rights are severed, and the mother has no idea that this is even happening and no way to fight on behalf of their children,” Black said.

Immigrant rights advocates say probation-like alternatives should be used instead, including ankle bracelets, home visits and home-like community shelters.

It’s not clear whether the federal government plans to build a family detention center for immigrants or whether community shelters are being considered too. The bids were due to the federal government this month, so more information could be released soon.

Confederate memorial, Winona, Mississippi

By Alan Bean

I had always assumed that the confederate memorial in Winona, Mississippi had been destroyed in 1978 along with the courthouse.  It seemd a bit counter-intuitive, but there was no sign of Civil War nostalgia on the grounds of the new courthouse where Curtis Flowers was convicted of murder in the summer of 2010. 

Curtis has been tried for the murder of four people in a Winona furniture store in July, 1996.  He has been convicted four times.  Two trials ended in hung juries.  Three convictions were overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court, which is currently reviewing his most recent conviction. 

Meanwhile, Curtis sits on Parchman prison’s death row. 

Friends of Justice is convinced that Curtis Flowers is innocent, but you would be hard pressed to find a white resident of Winona, Mississippi who agrees with us.  At Flower’s 2010 trial, it became apparent, perhaps for the first time, that District Attorney Doug Evans and his investigator, John Johnson, had decided Curtis Flowers was the killer less than three hours before the murder scene was discovered.  The only evidence connecting Curtis with the crime at that time was a check for three days wages found on the desk of the slain Bertha Tardy.  The check was made out to Curtis Flowers.  Though this hardly constituted evidence of wrongdoing, Evans and Johnson centered their investigation on Flowers from the beginning; no other suspects or alternative theories of the crime were ever considered. 

The former site of the Montgomery County Jail in Winona, Mississippi

Melanie Wilmoth and I were in Winona this Monday to visit with Archie and Lola Flowers, Curtis’s parents.  We were driving home from a local restaurant when I asked about the location of the old county jail and courthouse. 

In June of 1963, that Fannie Lou Hamer, Annell Ponder, Sue Johnson and Lawrence Guyot were savagely beaten by several local police officers and a state trooper at the county jail.  A few days later, they were arraigned at the county courthouse.  Their crime: demanding to be served in the white-only restaurant of Winona’s segregated bus depot two years after the federal government integrated bus depots, train stations and airports across the South.   

Archie Flowers didn’t answer my question about the old courthouse, he just guided the car in the direction of downtown Winona.  “The courthouse used to be right here,” Lola told me, pointing to the Montgomery County library. 

There it stood, the conferate memorial that graces virtually every courthouse in the old South.  This one had been erected in 1909, just 44 years after they drove old Dixie down.   Southern pride still burned strong.  The monument was dedicated “To the Confederacy President Jefferson Davis and the soldiers who fought for state rights.”

Even in 1909, southerners embraced the historical fiction that the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with the South’s “peculiar institution.”

The next morning, Melanie and I returned to the library.  A Civil Rights display featuring pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. greeted us as we entered the room.  I was impressed.  Mississippi is one of three southern states where citizens can choose to celebrate Martin Luther King Day or Robert E. Lee Day, whichever floats your boat.  A Civil Rights display was above and beyond the call of civic duty.

I moved to the desk and asked if the library had any information about the old courthouse and county jail.  “I’m not sure,” the librarian told me.  “If we have anything it will be in the book we’ve got on Montgomery County history.”

She plucked an imposing tome from the library shelves.  It was one of those local histories that most rural counties produce every half century or so.  This one had been published in 1994, three decades after Fannie Lou Hamer and friends were savagely beaten at the county jail and three years before Curtis Flowers went on trial the first time.

Like most county histories, the book began with a section on local history.  Although there was an extensive section on the Native American people who occupied the county before the arrival of white settlers, there was no discussion of slavery. 

The book featured articles on every white family with roots in the county and several hundred pictures, but although Montgomery County is 45% African-American, not a single black face appeared anywhere.  Melanie and I weren’t the first readers to notice this.  One reader had scrawled his disgust on the table of contents page.  “Sorry people,” the message read, “us black folks are not listed in family histories.  Apparently we don’t exist though the copyright is 1994.  Go figure racist white folks.  Go Obama!”

The book’s extensive section on the Civil War merely reproduced documents from the war era with not even a passing reference to slavery.  The war was all about Abraham Lincoln’s desire to “destroy all the institutions of the South and withdraw from her people the constitutional guarantees for the protection to property and the right to enjoy the same.”

A visitor to Montgomery County would have no idea that black people had ever lived in Montgomery County or that slavery and Jim Crow segregation were integral to the county’s legacy.  No wonder the note writer was confused and angry.

But that was 1994 and this is 2012.  I doubt you would have seen a civil rights display in the Winona library back when Curtis Flowers was first arrested in 1997. 

At first blush, historical myopia and denial have little relevance to the fairness of the Montgomery County criminal justice system.   Fannie Lou Hamer, Annell Ponder, June Johnson and the other civil rights leaders arrested at Winona’s bus depot in 1963 weren’t simply denied justice; their captives took sadistic pleasure in their ability to beat and sexually humiliate the men and women in their control.  Thanks to pressure from the Kenney White House, the officers were tried in federal court, but an all white, all-male jury acquitted them after deliberating for a matter of minutes.  The law of the land did not apply to black people (especially black civil rights activists) in 1963. 

How much had changed when Curtis Flowers went to trial for the first time 34 years later?

A lot.  When Doug Evans illegally kept black residents off the jury, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the verdict.  When, at a subsequent trial, five black jurors were selected, all five voted to acquit Mr. Flowers while all seven white voted to acquit.

These facts suggest radical change mixed with a disturbing degree of historical continuity.  Things have changed for the better; but not nearly enough.  That is why the case of Curtis Flowers and hundreds of other Mississippi defendants must be viewed through the lens of the Magnolia State’s troubled racial history.  Did Curtis Flowers get a fair trial in 1997, in 2010, or at any time in between?  You be the judge.

It’s not just journalists and academics who have been inspired by Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness.” Having worked as an assistant public defender, I find the book speaks a truth that I have already witnessed. My former boss, Dawn Deaner, the elected Public Defender for Nashville and Davidson County, studied the data and found that although African-Americans constitute 20% of the population in Davidson County, Tennessee, 60% of the people in Davidson County jails are black. Even more shocking, 80% of the children held in jail waiting to be tried as adults are African-American.

I echo Ms. Deaner’s words in an editorial published in The Tennessean today, “Everyone who cares about equality and fairness in our criminal justice system owes it to themselves to read her book, and to make their own evaluation of how and why 1 in 3 young African-American men is currently in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.”

Dawn Deaner

 Dawn Deaner

As Nashville’s public defender, I applaud Jim Todd’s Jan. 18 article about the unfair sentences meted out under Tennessee’s Drug Free School Zone Act (DFSZA), and his call for a legislative remedy to that problem.

I write, however, to shine a light on another disparity created by the Act that goes beyond the sentences imposed, and represents a much more serious inequity permeating our American criminal justice system — the mass incarceration and criminalization of minority individuals.

In 2010, 73 percent of adults charged in Nashville with violating the Drug Free School Zone Act were African-American, even though African-Americans represented only 20 percent of Nashville’s adult population that year, according to U.S. Census data. These disproportionate numbers are even more troubling when you realize they are not limited to DFSZA arrests. On an average day in 2010, the Davidson County Jail held an adult inmate population that was 61 percent African-American, 6 percent Hispanic, and 33 percent Caucasian — a mixture wildly different than our city’s adult population that year (roughly 20 percent African-American, 6 percent Hispanic and 70 percent Caucasian). The numbers are even more disparate for our children. In December 2011, 80 percent of juveniles held in Nashville’s jail pending trial as adults were African-American.

Beyond statistics, a trip to the A.A. Birch Criminal Court Building reveals the same reality — the faces of our city’s criminal defendants are predominantly faces of color, regardless of whether they are charged with minor offenses or serious felonies. Unfortunately, Nashville is not alone in this racial disparity, as civil-rights advocate Michelle Alexander points out in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. In the book, Alexander explains how — primarily as a result of American’s “war on drugs” — minorities have come to be overrepresented in the criminal justice system, even though they are not committing a higher share of crime. She goes on to make a case for how a wide variety of American laws, institutions and practices — ranging from racial profiling to biased sentencing policies, political disenfranchisement and legalized discrimination — trap African-Americans in a virtual (and often literal) cage.

 Continue Reading

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. is inspired by Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” 

In fact, he is so inspired that he will give you a copy of the book so long as you want one and promise to read it. All you have to do is send him an email at lpitts@miamiherald.com with the subject line “I want it. I’ll read it.” At the end of the month, Pitts will draw 50 names and send an autographed copy of the book (free of charge) to those 50 individuals.

Pitts isn’t doing this as some publicity scheme. He isn’t getting reimbursed by his employer or Michelle Alexander’s publisher. He is paying for the books out of his own pocket. ”I chose to do it that way,” Pitts says, “in order to impress upon you how vital I personally feel it is that you read this book.”

If you have not yet read “The New Jim Crow,” now is the time! MW

The new Jim Crow alive and thriving

LPITTS@MIAMIHERALD.COM

By Alan Bean

Barack Obama, a moderate Democrat, should heed the example of conservative Republican Hailey Barbour.  In this Washington Post op-ed, Barbour explains why he pardoned 215 people during his last days as Mississippi Governor.  Barbour believes people can change, that even murders can be rehabilitated.

Contrast that with Mitt Romney’s tough-on-crime criticism of Rick Santorum’s willingness to give ex-felons the vote.  Contrast that with Barack Obama’s play-it-safe refusal to put his pardon pen to meaningful use.

There is a Nixon-goes-to-China aspect to all of this, or course.  Conservatives like Barbour won’t be mistaken for bleeding heart liberals when they make compassionate gestures.  Given Haley’s record of racial insensitivity, his good-ol’-boy reputation will survive a little criticism from self-serving Mississippi Democrats.  If Barack Obama followed suit he could be portrayed as soft on crime, especially if his compassionate intervention benefited a disproportionate number of African-American felons (which, given the skewed demographics of our American Gulag, it almost certainly would).

Or is Obama simply afraid of his own shadow? 

The folks who might down him as soft on crime are the same folks rending their garments over Barbour’s acts of mercy.   Most of these people, regardless of party affiliation, will not vote for a black president no matter what he does; and that for the same reason few African-Americans in South Carolina will be voting for Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich understands this dynamic and plays it to his advantage (if you can’t get the black vote, appeal to white racial resentment).  Obama would not worsen his position with conservative white people by using his executive power to commute and pardon folks in the federal system; those who would be offended aren’t his demographic.

Political considerations aside, I am impressed by Governor Barbour’s candid compassion.

Why I released 26 prisoners

By Haley Barbour

The furor over the pardons I recently granted as governor of Mississippi initially focused on numbers. I would like to set the record straight.

People thought — incorrectly — that I had let 215 prisoners out of jail because the secretary of state reported that many people received clemency.

In fact, 189 of those people were not released from prison. In most cases, they had already been out for many years. These folks are no more a threat to society now than they were the week before I gave them clemency.

I believe in the governor’s power to grant clemency, but I granted fewer than 10 pardons or reprieves in my first term as governor. After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, my staff just didn’t have time to deal with the issue, so at the end of my first term I pardoned only the inmates who had worked successfully at the governor’s mansion that term.

This was not a new thing. For decades, Mississippi governors have granted clemency to the inmates who work at the mansion. I followed that tradition four years ago and did so again at the end of my second term. No one should have been surprised.

Despite all the publicitythis month, few seem to notice the limited scope of my recent actions. I authorized the release of 26 prisoners from custody. As of last week, there were 21,342 inmates in the state corrections system and 60,517 people under Mississippi Department of Corrections supervision. I released 12 one-hundredths of 1 percent (0.0012) of our state’s inmates. About 95 percent of the clemencies I approved were recommended by our state parole board, and I accepted the parole board’s recommendations about 95 percent of the time.

When people realized that only 26 prisoners were being released — and that half of those 26 were given suspended sentences for medical reasons — the political attacks on my pardons shifted. The story became that many of the 13 non-medical releases were murderers. Of those 13, only 10 were pardoned; the other three were put under house arrest or a revocable, indefinite suspension.

All this public noise, then, boils down to 10 inmates — in particular, the five who worked at the governor’s mansion during my second term.

Historically, most of the inmates sent to the mansion, known in Mississippi as trusties, have been murderers, convicted of crimes of passion. Experts agree that these inmates are the least likely to commit another crime and the most likely to serve out their sentences well. My experience has been that this view is correct. About a third of the inmates sent to the mansion were returned to prison because of rules violations or infractions, but most worked there successfully during my terms. All but one of these mansion trusties had been convicted of murder.

The criteria the Corrections Department uses to select the prisoners who work at the mansion narrows the pool to those convicted of terrible crimes, almost always crimes of passion.

These crimes must be punished, but these offenders are not hard-core, cold-blooded criminals. In fact, to work at the mansion, an inmate must be classified as minimum-security by the Department of Corrections.

I always intended to follow the tradition of gubernatorial clemency for the mansion inmates. When I did so at the end of my first term, I was criticized for pardoning murderers. I never made any secret of the fact that I would again pardon those who successfully completed work during my second term.

The mansion inmates I fully released are not threats to society. They have paid the price for their crimes, having served an average of 20 years’ imprisonment.

In Mississippi, the constitutional power of pardon is based on our Christian belief in repentance, forgiveness and redemption — a second chance for those who are rehabilitated and who redeem themselves. Other great religions have similar tenets; so does the U.S. Constitution.

Mississippi spends about $350 million a year on our corrections system, much of it aimed at rehabilitating those who went wrong. Regrettably there are bad actors who will never be rehabilitated, but many who go to prison can be helped. Our state recidivism rate is just above 30 percent, far below the national average.

For some who are rehabilitated and redeem themselves, the governor is the only person who can give them a second chance. I am very comfortable giving such people that opportunity.

Confessing Church Pastors in Germany

Timothy George had recently departed Southern Seminary in Louisville when I arrived as a doctoral student in the summer of 1989, but people still spoke of him in hushed tones of respect.  At the time, George was a leading member of a new breed of Southern Baptist Calvinists who believed, among other things, that we are all born destined for heaven or hell and there ain’t a damn thing we (or God, it appears) can do about it.

Calvinism appeals to egghead evangelicals in search of a rigorously intellectual theological system draped in the mists of history.  And John Calvin, like the judgin’ exam in Peter Cooks Coal Miner sketch, is noted for his rigor.

Timothy George stirred a bit of excitement in 2009, when, in collaboration with luminaries like Charles Colson, he published a Manhattan Declaration, subtitled as “a call of Christian conscience”.  With a prison reformer like Colson on board, you might expect the declaration to touch, however briefly, on the shame of mass incarceration.  But no, the only topics deemed worthy of discussion were (you guessed it) abortion, gay marriage, and the purported persecution of the American Church.

Now, professor George is claiming that the 500,000 signatories to his bold confession are akin to the German churchmen who signed the Barmen Declaration opposing Hitler in the darkest days of the Third Reich.

Pardon me if I wince in embarrassment.

Any politician with any hope of winning the Republican nomination these days must oppose abortion and gay marriage.  (Moaning about the persecution of the American church remains optional.)  This takes courage?

The equivalent to Barmen would be a declaration decrying race-baiting politics and mass incarceration.  Can you imagine one of the remaining Republican candidates taking a stand on one of these truly controversial issues?  When politicians like Mitt Romney embrace pro-life politics as the price of winning the nomination we aren’t dealing with heroic resistance, we’re talking craven capitulation.

There are circles, mind you, where raising concerns about gay marriage or abortion would be heroic–but the safe confines of the Southern Baptist Convention don’t qualify.

Here’s the second problem.  If the signatories of George’s Declaration are the spiritual heirs of Barmen pastors, who is the latter-day equivalent of Adolf Hitler?

If you guessed Barack Obama, go to the head of the class.

Again, criticizing Obama (or any leading Democrat) in the world of conservative evangelicalism isn’t principled; it is mandatory.

Comparing Hitler with contemporary politicians (conservative or liberal) is puerile and perverse.  A handful of Democrat or Republican might conceivably resort to autocratic sadism if they were given the chance . . . who knows?  But here’s the point: they aren’t given the chance.

George W. Bush may have led us into an unspeakably destructive and unproductive war in Iraq, but he couldn’t have charged over that particular cliff had we not been eager to follow.  Opponents to the war effort were ignored, but they had no reason to fear a knock on the door in the dead of night.

How many American politicians can be accurately characterized as “pro-abortion”?  How many women who opt for termination are blind to the moral implications of their tragic choice?  How many of these women see abortion as an unmitigated good.  Some, I fear, but not many.  The question is whether, all things considered and in select circumstances, the alternative to an abortion might be worse.  How many pro-life activists have quietly opted for termination?  Their name is legion.

There are few places in American public life where unqualified support for gay rights isn’t dangerous–San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Boulder–but not many.

Moreover, you can support gay rights without condoning every aspect of “the gay lifestyle” (whatever that is).  What passes for a “straight lifestyle” in contemporary America is vulnerable to endless critique, but few want the government telling straight people how to conduct themselves behind closed doors.  As one would expect, opinions on sexual ethics run the gamut in both straight and gay communities.

What would happen if Timothy George decided, following a crisis of conscience, that he was in favor of gay rights?

You know what would happen.  He would lose his job before nightfall.

What happens when Timothy George portrays “the homosexual agenda” as a threat to heterosexual agenda?  A standing ovation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most courageous Christian theologian in Nazi-era Germany, paid dearly for hi opposition to Hitler.  Stripped of his clothing, he was led naked into the execution yard, where he was garroted with thin piano wire.

Timothy George may co-opt Bonhoeffer’s ”the cost of discipleship” if he chooses, but we may be forgiven if we roll our eyes.

Scholar compares culture-war issues to Germans who resisted Hitler

Bob Allen

Associated Baptist Press

MARION, Ala. (ABP) – A Baptist historian compared today’s battle for the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious freedom to courageous heroes who resisted the Nazis in Germany.

Timothy George, dean of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, told a group of ministers Jan. 17 that “The Manhattan Declaration,” a document he wrote in 2009 with Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship and Robert George of Princeton University, was inspired by the Barmen Declarationof 1934.

At a seminar co-sponsored by Judson College and the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, George handed out copies of his 4,700-word manifesto that includes a pledge to civil disobedience of laws that would compel religious institutions to perform abortions or same-sex marriages.

“This document isn’t a political one, but a moral one,” George said, according to a news story about the event written by the Judson College communications office. “It’s an example of the church taking a stand on issues and reaching across dividing lines to find support from people of various political and religious persuasions. I think this is what the church can and should do.”

George said in an article in the Spring 2011 issue of the Beeson magazine that the Manhattan Declaration was written on the 75th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration, a statement of the “Confessing Church” done in response to the strongly nationalistic and anti-Semitic “German Christian” movement that supported Hitler.

Early drafts of the Manhattan Declaration cited Barmen as precedent, George said, but those references were deleted because “the plight of the church in North America today, serious as it is, is not analogous to the repression Jews, Christians and many others experienced in Hitler’s Germany.”

George went on to enumerate parallels between the two documents. Both, he said, “appeal to the authority of Holy Scripture.”

“Each offers quotations from the Bible as the theological basis of its statements,” he explained. “Each recognizes that the Christian faith can be, and often has been, distorted by accommodation to the ‘prevailing ideological and political convictions’ of the day.”

George said like Barmen, the Manhattan statement is not “political” in the sense of being tied to a particular party or ideology. Democrats, Republicans and independents have all signed on.

“Some say today that the church should take a sabbatical from speaking to the culture at large,” George said. “Hitler himself was happy (at least for a while) to leave the Christians alone so long as they stayed within the four walls of their church buildings and refrained from ‘meddling’ in matters related to public policy and the common life of the German people. But both Barmen and Manhattan refuse to say that there are areas of life which do not belong to Jesus Christ. Both affirm the sovereignty of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Finally, George said, both documents recognize “the cost of discipleship.”

“Both call for the kind of conscientious courage that dares to count the cost of following Jesus Christ along the way that leads finally to the cross,” he wrote.

At the Alabama gathering, George said nearly 500,000 people have signed the Manhattan Declaration. He said the document, controversial for defining marriage as between one man and one woman, has been widely misunderstood as espousing intolerance toward gays.

“It is the marriage section that’s brought more criticism,” George said. “Some have accused us of being hateful, but there’s not a word of condemnation in the document against the gay community. What we argue for is ‘the common good’ that enriches society.”

Baptist leaders who have sighed the Manhattan Declaration include Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Mark Coppenger, director of the Nashville extension center of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; David Dockery, president of Union University; former Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham; Richard Land, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Russell Moore, Southern Seminary’s senior vice president and theology dean; Bob Reccord, founder of Total Life Impact and former president of the SBC North American Mission Board; and Hayes Wicker, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Naples, Fla., where Colson is a member.

Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

Defining “Evangelical” and Other Unsolved Mysteries

By Cathleen Falsani

As someone who self-identifies as an evangelical Christian, I often begin to feel like the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary, particularly in the midst of a heated presidential election cycle.

It’s Evangelical Week here on Discovery! Travel with us as our explorers track the elusive evangelical in its native habitats. Watch as evangelicals worship, work and play, all captured on film with the latest high definition technology. And follow our intrepid documentary team members as they bravely venture into the most dangerous of exotic evangelical locations — the voting booth!

I understand the interest in us evangelicals, I really do. The way much of the mainstream media covers our communities in the news can make us seem like a puzzling subspecies of the American population, not unlike the Rocky Mountain long-haired yeti.

Are we really that difficult to comprehend?

In a word, yes.

Last autumn, we here at the God’s Politics blog launched an ongoing series called “What is an Evangelical?”in the hopes of providing a better answer to the question that, apparently, so many of our neighbors and friends in the media are preoccupied with in these days leading to the November 2012 general election where, we are told, evangelical voters may again cast the deciding swing votes.

To that end, we invited a number of evangelical Christian thinkers — pastors, writers, scholars, filmmakers, artists, theologians, etc. — to tell us in their own words what they believe it means to be an evangelical, or, rather, what it should mean.

Not surprisingly, the answers we’ve received and published so far have been as varied and nuanced as the authors themselves. Evangelicals are decidedly not a monolith. Here, for your reading pleasure and edification, is a sampling of some of their answers:

Randall Balmer, Episcopal priest and professor of American Religious History at Columbia University:

Antebellum evangelicalism also included a robust peace movement, and Charles Grandison Finney, the most influential evangelical of the 19th century, excoriated capitalism as utterly inimical to Christianity. Finney allowed that “the business aims and practices of business men are almost universally an abomination in the sight of God.” What are the principles of those who engage in business? Finney asked. “Seeking their own ends; doing something not for others, but for self.” Other evangelicals echoed Finney’s suspicion of business interests, as did evangelicals of a later era, people such as William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic nominee for president. But the one overriding characteristic of these evangelicals was their concern for those on the margins of society.

David Vanderveen, Entrepreneur, surfer, and author:

Being an evangelical Christian means accepting grace and being honest about your faith with others. First, I think you have be honest with yourself and God; and, then, when you’re as true as you can be about both what you actually know and what you actually don’t — that’s what’s worth sharing.

Lynne Hybels, Author and co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill.:

In Jesus I found a radical call to compassionate action in the world. At Jesus’ first public appearance he said, “I have come to set the captives free and to preach good news to the poor.” Then, through his teaching and life of servanthood, he slowly and methodically turned the values of the powerful Roman Empire upside down. He threw the moneychangers out of the temple because they were exploiting the poor. He said that when we feed the hungry or clothe the naked it’s like we’re doing it to him. He said to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us. Jesus changed the rules and ushered in an upside-down Kingdom.

Greg Fromholz, Author, filmmaker, and director of the Church of Ireland’s 3Rock Youth Program:

When I think of the question … my brain, it splits in two. One side hears the word and immediately thinks of a bland, beige, flaccid idea — something that inspires apathy. The other part of me thinks of brands and what they are now synonymous with. You know, like Kleenex equals tissues, and Hoovers equal vacuums. Evangelical? Well, judgmentalism. Control. Even hatred. And that really bugs me because these are only symptoms of a word no longer living up to its meaning.

Wes Granberg-Michaelson, Author and former General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America:

You can always interview someone who will validate the stereotype. But there are other millions who don’t. Yet, no one seems to notice (or care). Sensible studies of this elastic group called “evangelicals” reveal those with strong views on the political right, but others with moderate, centrist political convictions, and still more on the progressive side of the spectrum. These views become even more diverse as you look at evangelicals who are younger and those who are non-white — in other words, those parts of the evangelical constituency who are shaping its future.

Linda Midgett, Documentary filmmaker and Emmy Award-winning television producer:

I think an evangelical is someone who believes Jesus is the Son of God, that the Word of God is true, and that we all need redemption from this fallen word. There’s other theology I could throw in, but it’s pretty boilerplate. And I believe it all, wholeheartedly. Larry Shallenberger, Pastor and author: The term “Evangelical” is like a pair of hand-me-down underwear. It’s been stretched over so many shapes and sizes that it’s lost its snap and doesn’t fit anyone anymore. It’s been pulled around the circumference of Mars Hill, Seattle and Mars Hill, Grand Rapids. Billy Graham, Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jay Bakker, Benny Hinn, Scot McKnight, Don Miller, Jimmy Carter, W., John Piper, Ken Ham, Jim Wallis, and Bill Hybels have all had their turn sporting this hand-me-down garment.

Susan Isaacs, Author and actor:

While I may detect a difference between “evangelical Christian” (theological connotation) and “evangelical” (political connotation), a person outside the faith may not. Tell an agnostic you’re an evangelical — meaning you believe in the words of the Apostle’s creed — and he may assume you’re anti-gay, anti-Obama and pro-British Petroleum….I don’t know if we’ll ever divest “evangelical” of its political connotation. We might have to ban the word the way Germany outlawed Hitler as a surname. Which is sad, because the Greek root, evangel, means “good news.”

As you can see from the answers some of our authors have offered, “evangelical” at best has a fluid definition, depending on whether the question is asked in a cultural, religious, historical, or political context — and then colored by where both the speaker and the listener situate themselves in those worlds.

Perhaps defining “evangelical” is a bit like trying to define (definitively) what pornography is. To paraphrase former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in a 1964 Court opinion, I shall not today attempt further to define it, but I know it when I see it.

The best answer I’ve heard lately to the question, “What is an Evangelical,” arrived unexpectedly at a New Year’s Eve party I attended a few weeks ago in the southern California town where I live. Not long before the clock struck 12, a mutual friend casually turned to my longtime friend (and now neighbor) Rob Bell, former pastor of Mars Hill church in Michigan, and casually asked him what “evangelical” really means.

With a glass of champagne in one hand and a smile on his face, Rob answered, “An evangelical is someone who, when they leave the room, you have more hope than when they entered.”

No matter how we might extrapolate what an evangelical is from there, I hope Rob’s answer is one that all of us evangelicals would affirm with a heartfelt, “Amen.”

Cathleen Falsani is Web Editor and Director of New Media for Sojourners. She is author of four nonfiction books, including her latest, BELIEBER!: Fame, Faith and the Heart of Justin Bieber. Follow Cathleen on Twitter @GodGrrl.

by Melanie Wilmoth

Over the past decade, federal and state governments have increasingly turned to prison privatization. A report released this week by The Sentencing Project highlights the rise of private prisons in the U.S. and the consequences of privatization.

Private prisons now hold approximately 8% of the entire prison population in the U.S. This shift toward privatization, The Sentencing Project reports, began with public policies enacted in the 1970s and 1980s:

“The War on Drugs and harsher sentencing policies, including mandatory minimum sentences, fueled a rapid expansion in the nation’s prison population. The resulting burden on the public sector led private companies to reemerge during the 1970s to operate halfway houses. They extended their reach in the 1980s by contracting with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to detain undocumented immigrants.”

Private prison corporations are in the business of warehousing prisoners. They contribute to and profit from mass incarceration. With the help of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), for-profit prison companies have lobbied for mandatory minimum sentences, three strikes laws, truth-in-sentencing policies, and immigrant detention centers. As a result of increasing prison privatization, two of the largest private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, have combined annual revenues exceeding $2.9 billion.

Proponents of privatization claim that private prisons are more cost-effective. However, The Sentencing Project reports that findings are inconclusive. Some research suggests that private prisons are no more cost-effective than publicly-operated facilities. One reason that costs may be lower in private prisons is that workers are paid significantly less and receive fewer benefits. Because these corporations are for-profit, they are logically going to cut corners whenever possible:

“Privately managed prisons attempt to control costs by regularly providing lower levels of staff benefits, salary, and salary advancement than publicly-run facilities (equal to about $5,327 less in annual salary for new recruits and $14,901 less in maximum annual salaries). On average, private prison employees also receive 58 hours less training than their publicly employed counterparts.”

In addition, prisoners often receive lower-quality care in private facilities. There have been numerous reports of abuse in facilities operated by private prison companies. One example is the Walnut Grove case that Friends of Justice reported on last year. In this case, a class-action lawsuit was filed against a private juvenile facility run by GEO Group when reports emerged of sexual abuse, improper medical care, extended prisoner isolation, and violence among inmates in the facility.

As cases like the one in Walnut Grove tell us, inadequate inmate programs and services mixed with under-paid and under-trained staff is a recipe for disaster. In order to end mass incarceration, we have to stop privatizing prisons. So long as individuals and corporations are profiting from locking up people en masse, over-incarceration will continue to be a problem.

By Mark Osler

Should we consider a candidate’s religion when we vote? For many of us, the instinctive answer is “of course not!” To do so seems somehow contrary to the idea of separation of church and state, or prejudiced, or something like that. Examined more closely, though, that instinctive reaction may not be the best answer. Faith influences action, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise when we go to the polls.

The American repulsion to considering faith when voting is in large part rooted in a famous speech given by John F. Kennedy when he was running for President in 1960. Addressing a convention of Baptist ministers in Houston, he defended himself from the accusation that his Catholic faith would lead him to “take orders from the Pope.” There is no doubt that what Kennedy was addressing was prejudice against Catholics. It was a masterful speech, of the sort that makes one wistful for that time. However, it is important to recognize what Kennedy did and did not say.

What he did say, forcefully, was that he would not take orders from the Church, and that he would make his decisions “in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.”

What he did not say, even in referring to his religious views as “his own private affair,” was that those personal religious views would have no influence on his conduct in office. In other words, President Kennedy artfully established that outside forces would not force his hand, while reserving the ability to have his own personal faith remain a guide to principled action.

Sadly, this fine distinction between the unallowable (a church dictating policy) and the inevitable (personal faith influencing decision-making) has been lost, in part because of Kennedy’s clumsy and inaccurate description of the separation between church and state as “absolute.” Americans now expect a President who lives in two spheres: A private life, where religion is allowed, and a professional life where faith can have no influence.

The problem with this two-spheres construct is that it lacks integrity, if we understand integrity to be the integration of belief and action. What kind of faith is it that has no influence on the most important decisions we make? Why would we accept as a leader someone who divorces her deepest principles from her actions?

In the current election, all of the Presidential candidates (in either party) are Christians who seem to take their faith seriously, which makes the question posed here an important one. Would Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith affect the way he conducts himself in office? I certainly hope it would, because I believe that faith (for those who have chosen to follow a faith) should be an animating principle that does direct action, not something that a leader drops at the doorway as he enters the oval office. It seems that Romney agrees, too: In a speech at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in December, 2007, Governor Romney echoed the distinction (between external influence and personal faith) that Kennedy implied. While recognizing that “no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions,” Romney went on to explain that “I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers — I will be true to them and to my beliefs.”

Imagine this: There is a grave national crisis, perhaps an escalating conflict with another nation. The President must make a tough choice on how to respond. As a Christian, he reflects on this decision in prayer. If we tell ourselves that the experience of prayer, that deep and solemn reflection, really has no influence on the decision he then makes, we are fooling ourselves. The connection between faith and action, even in the absence of external pressure from a church, not only is real but should be real. We are better off knowing a candidate’s personal faith and the effect it will have than continuing to pretend that there is no connection between faith and action. We need to press for honest answers from our politicians as to how their faith influences their work.

In a January 8 op-ed in The Washington Post, Baylor University President Ken Starr correctly observed that “the litmus for our elected leaders must not be the church they attend but the Constitution they defend.” He is right, but that is not the end of the story. We should not limit the path to leadership based on the church someone attends (or doesn’t), but on the personal beliefs they hold and how those beliefs influence action. If Rick Santorum’s personal faith somehow dictates that the legal marriages of gay men and lesbians should be annulled by the government… yes, I am going to consider that when I vote against him, regardless of his church membership.

To people of faith, religious belief profoundly influences our professional lives. If it does not, it is only a shadowy outline of what faith should be. As voters, we should not pretend otherwise, and with overtly Christian candidates we should support those who reflect prayerfully, live with integrity, and whose faith guides them to positions we support.

Professor Osler’s column originally appeared in the HuffPost

By Melanie Wilmoth

In a recent episode of Fresh Air on NPR, Dave Davies interviews attorney and author Michelle Alexander. In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander argues that, as a result of the war on drugs, the U.S. has created a system of mass incarceration which disproportionately targets people of color.

“The war on drugs,” Alexander states, “was part of a grand Republican Party strategy, known as the Southern Strategy, of using racially coded get-tough appeals on issues of crime and welfare to appeal to poor and working-class whites, particularly in the South, who were resentful of, anxious about, threatened by many of the gains of African-Americans in the civil rights movement.”

The “wave of punitiveness” and get-tough policies that followed the declaration of the war on drugs had an incredible impact on communities of color. Although African-Americans make up about 13% of the general population, they make up nearly 40% of the prison population. “In major American cities today,” Alexander points out, “more than half of working-age African-American men either are under are correctional control or are branded felons.”

In addition, if and when these individuals are released from prison, they face legalized discrimination in pubic housing, employment, education, and public benefits such as food stamps. Without access to public housing, jobs, and educational opportunities, many formerly incarcerated individuals end up back in jail or prison, reinforcing the cyclical nature of mass incarceration.

The mass incarceration of people of color in the U.S. paired with the disenfranchisement of felons after release contributes to a new racialized caste system, or what Alexander calls “the new Jim Crow.”

The solution? According to Alexander, “piecemeal policy reforms” are not enough to create meaningful change within the criminal justice system. It will take nothing short of a human rights movement to dismantle the system of mass incarceration and end the new Jim Crow.

Read the full transcript of NPR’s interview with Michelle Alexander below.

Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America

Heard on Fresh Air from WHYY

January 16, 2012 - DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. Today we remember Martin Luther King and his contribution to the cause of civil rights. Our guest, legal scholar and attorney Michelle Alexander, believes the gains of the civil rights movement are being undermined by the mass incarceration of African-Americans associated with the war on drugs.

She says millions swept up in the drug war, even those who avoid lengthy prison terms, are forever branded as felons and denied basic rights and opportunities which would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens. The result, Alexander says, is a new caste system in America.

Michelle Alexander is a graduate of the Stanford law school who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. She was director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Project in Northern California. She’s now an associate professor of law at Ohio State University.

Her book is called “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Well, Michelle Alexander, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let’s start with the scale of incarceration among African-Americans. How big a problem is this?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, it’s truly staggering. Today there are more African-Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and jails or under correctional control or saddled with criminal records. In fact, in major American cities today, more than half of working-age African-American men either are under are correctional control or are branded felons, and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.

This is something that now affects the overwhelming majority of African-Americans in the United States. If not them directly, then they often have a relative who’s been affected by the system.

DAVIES: And you call this the new Jim Crow. Why use that phrase?

ALEXANDER: Well, I think it’s important for people to understand that the system of mass incarceration isn’t just another institution infected with conscious or unconscious bias. It’s a different beast entirely. People are swept into the criminal justice system, particularly in poor communities of color, at very early ages, targeted by police, stopped and frisked.

Sometimes when they’re walking to school, their backpacks are rifled through in a search for drugs. Once they’re old enough to drive a car, their cars may be pulled over, stopped and frisked. So they’re shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons; typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes, often drug offenses, the very sorts of crimes that occur with roughly equal frequency in middle-class white neighborhoods and on college campuses but go largely ignored – shuttled in to jail and to prisons, branded as criminals and felons. And then when they’re released, they’re relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement; rights like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits.

So many of the old forms of discrimination, that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era, are suddenly legal again once you’ve been branded a felon.

DAVIES: Let’s talk about the origins of this. I mean, it was President Reagan, I believe, that declared the war on drugs in 1982. I mean, do you see this as directed at African-Americans in cities?

ALEXANDER: Yes, absolutely. I mean, it was President Richard Nixon who first coined the term a war on drugs, but it was President Ronald Reagan who turned that rhetorical war into a literal one. And he declared the drug war primarily for reasons of politics, racial politics.

Numerous historians and political scientists have now documented that the war on drugs was part of a grand Republican Party strategy, known as the Southern Strategy, of using racially coded get-tough appeals on issues of crime and welfare to appeal to poor and working-class whites, particularly in the South, who were resentful of, anxious about, threatened by many of the gains of African-Americans in the civil rights movement.

You know, to be fair, I think we have to acknowledge that poor and working-class white really had their world rocked by the civil rights movement. Wealthy whites could afford to send their kids to private schools and continue to give their kids all of the advantages of wealth has to offer.

But in the wake of the civil rights movement, poor and working-class whites really were faced with a social demotion. It was their kids who might be bussed across town to go to a school they believed was inferior. It was their kids and themselves who were suddenly forced to compete on equal terms for scarce jobs with this whole new group of people they, you know, believed, had been taught their whole lives to believe were inferior to them.

And this state of affairs created an enormous amount of confusion, resentment, but it also created an enormous political opportunity.

DAVIES: You know, what’s interesting about it is that when I remember – I mean, I’m old enough to remember back in the ’80s, and what I associated with the war on drugs were some things that seemed to be aimed very much at middle-class kids, too.

I mean, my sense was that, you know, Nancy and Ronald Reagan didn’t like, you know, middle-class kids who had experimented with the drug counterculture in the ’60s and ’70s doing that stuff. And so we saw these ads, you know, the fried egg that said, you know, this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs.

There were these DARE programs. I’m not sure what the acronym stands for, but it’s a drug education program that was done in all kinds of high schools, including middle-class high schools.

ALEXANDER: Yes, there was a public-education effort that occurred in middle-class, white communities associated with the drug war. But what happened in poor communities of color wasn’t public education but rather mass incarceration.

So, you know, after the drug war was declared, a couple years after the drug war was declared, crack hit the streets and really began to ravage inner-city communities, and with the media frenzy associated with crack cocaine, a wave of punitiveness really washed over the United States.

But this wave of punitiveness did not result in sweeps of college campuses or universities or middle-class white students having their backpacks, you know, searched and rifled through. It wasn’t them who were being followed home from school, you know, from the school bus. That became the reality.

The drug war was a literal war. It has been, it continues to be, a literal war waged in poor communities of color complete with SWAT teams and military-style equipment and tactics, even though studies have consistently shown now, for decades, that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites.

DAVIES: Let’s talk about how the war on drugs actually worked and the impact that you write about on African-Americans in – particularly in inner cities. What about the way federal grants were administered, and the kinds of incentives they gave to local police departments? How did that work?

ALEXANDER: Yes, well, you know, after the war on drugs was declared, drug convictions increased astronomically. In fact, drug convictions have increased more than 1,000 percent since the drug war began, and many people assumed that the explosion in drug arrests and convictions was due to some kind of spike in drug use and abuse. But that’s not actually the case.

One of the reasons that drug arrests have skyrocketed is because federal funding has flowed to state and local law enforcement agencies who boost the sheer numbers of drug arrests. Through the Edward Byrne Memorial Grand Program and related funding streams, state and local law enforcement agencies have been rewarded in cash by the millions for the sheer numbers of people swept into the system for drug offenses, thus giving law enforcement agencies an incentive to go out looking for the so-called low–hanging fruit: stopping, frisking, searching as many people as possible, pulling over as many cars and trying to search them as possible, in order to boost their numbers up and ensure that the funding stream will continue or increase.

DAVIES: All right, so you see a lot of legal latitude in what police can do. You see federal incentives for mass arrests. And it’s easier to go into communities of color because they can get away with it?

ALEXANDER: Oh absolutely. If these kinds of sweep tactics were employed on college campuses or directed towards middle-class high-school students in suburban neighborhoods exiting from their school bus, there would be just incredible amount of outrage. You know, the drug war would have ended a long, long time ago if these tactics had been employed in middle-class or upper-middle-class white communities.

But because they are employed almost exclusively in ghettoized communities, they face virtually no political repercussions. And because so many of these communities are just fighting for survival, with people suffering from, you know, staggering rates of unemployment and often high rates of violent crime, there is a tremendous amount of disorganization, a lack of political power.

Many people have already been disenfranchised as a result of felony convictions, and the police and politicians face few repercussions for engaging in incredibly aggressive and counterproductive tactics.

DAVIES: Michelle Alexander’s book is called “The New Jim Crow.” We’ll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: If you’re just joining us, we’re speaking with Michelle Alexander, she’s a legal scholar and lawyer. She’s written a book called “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

You know, I wanted to read something from David Kennedy, he’s a criminologist whose work I know you know, you actually quote him at one point in your book. He’s spent many years working in communities – working with law enforcement, working with community leaders, with victims, with ex-offenders. And he’s also somebody who agrees that there are far, far too many young African-American men incarcerated and thinks that the police tactics which lead to that are counterproductive.

But I want to read something that he wrote in his book “Don’t Shoot.” He writes: The relentless law enforcement we see is intended to save lives, to protect neighborhoods, to bring order to the streets. I have spent my adult life with the men and women who do the work, and I know this to be true.

I have no time for the easy armchair cant that says this is all about profiling and racism and bias in the criminal justice system. It simply is not so. Nobody who has ever actually been on these streets could believe it for a moment. There is disparate treatment in law enforcement, no question, but that’s not what’s driving the problem.

The smug notion that there is no problem here, or that this is all a moral panic, or that the problem with high-crime communities is the institutional racism of the criminal justice is a crock.

You know David Kennedy’s work. Do you think he’s not getting it?

ALEXANDER: I think he’s not getting it in that instance. There’s – you know, much of David Kennedy’s work I agree with, but I think it’s very easy to kind of brush off, as he does, the notion that the system operates much like a caste system if you are, in fact, not trapped within it.

You know, I have spent years representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality, and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color; and attempting to assist people who have been released from prison, quote-unquote “re-enter” into a society that never seemed to have much use to them in the first place.

And in the course of that work, I had my own awakening about our criminal justice system and this system of mass incarceration. Probably 10 years ago, I might have shared David Kennedy’s view, but I don’t any longer. My years of experience and the research that I have done has led me to the regrettable conclusion that our system of mass incarceration functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control.

Now, that’s not to say that many of the people who work within it, including my own husband who’s a federal prosecutor, aren’t well-intentioned. Many of them are. But the problem is that the structure of the system guarantees that millions of people will be swept into the system for relatively minor crimes, the very sorts of crimes that are ignored on the other side of town, swept into the system, branded criminals and felons and then stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement.

DAVIES: In Philadelphia here, we have an African-American mayor and an African-American police commissioner, who say they’re very, very concerned about what’s happening in African-American communities. And I think one of the things that they would say is that no, it’s not an accident that this aggressive policing occurs in the communities they do because that’s where the murders are happening.

Mayor Nutter, here in Philly, often says that 75 to 80 percent of the murders in the city involve black male victims and, where they are solved, black male perpetrators. And so when you get aggressive police tactics going, they’re going to focus on the communities where the violence happens, it’s seen as connected to drugs, and that’s going to generate a lot more arrests.

ALEXANDER: Yes, I hear that all the time, that the reason that the police are rounding up folks en mass in poor communities of color is because that’s where the violent offenders are, that’s where the drug kingpins can be found. But the reality is, is that law enforcement has invested an extraordinary amount of their resources, their time, energy and resources not into investigating the most serious crimes or bringing down the drug kingpins but rather in arresting people for these low-level, relatively minor offenses.

In these communities, you make the same kinds of mistakes in your youth, experiment with the same kinds of drugs, sell drugs at the same rates as the middle-class white kids, but you must pay for the rest of your life for your mistakes.

Now, to say that this is because we are concerned about violence I think is to miss the larger point here, which is that, you know, all of the research shows, in fact William Julius Wilson’s work in his book “When Work Disappears,” I think is particularly apt, shows that those communities that have the highest levels of joblessness also have the highest levels of violence.

In fact, as William Julius Wilson points out, if you compare rates of violent crime, but control for joblessness, you’ll see that white jobless men have about the same rates of violent crime as black jobless men. That doesn’t exclude – excuse violence by any means, joblessness does not excuse violence, but what we see is that violence, particularly in communities where there’s concentrated poverty, is very much related to joblessness.

DAVIES: What are the consequences of having a felony conviction on your life?

ALEXANDER: Well, I think most people have a general understanding that, you know, when you’re released from prison, life is hard. It’ll be hard, but, you know, if you really apply yourself and show some level of self-discipline, you’ll be able to make it.

The reality is far harsher. The reality is that when you’re released from prison, people who are released from prison typically have little or no money at all. They need to find a place to sleep, but if they try to get access to public housing, they find often that they’re barred from public housing because of their criminal conviction.

In fact, people returning home from prison who want to go reunite with their children or their spouse, that – their family risks eviction from public housing if they allow their loved one to come home to them.

DAVIES: So it is legal for a public housing authority to make a felony conviction a basis for exclusion?

ALEXANDER: Absolutely. In fact, even arrest without a conviction, can be the basis for exclusion from public housing. So people who have arrest records but have not been convicted are frequently excluded from public housing. So, you know, people released from prison, you know, having been convicted, often find that they cannot get access to public housing, and in many regions of the country, you’re barred from public housing for a minimum of five years when you’re released from prison.

So where do you sleep? Where do you go? Trying to find work is extraordinarily difficult. You know, trying even to get a job as a barber or get a job as a janitor can be difficult. Employers are legally authorized to discriminate against you. Food stamps may be off-limits to you. Under federal law, you’re deemed ineligible for food stamps for the rest of your life if you’ve been convicted of a felony drug offense.

Fortunately, many states have now opted out of the federal ban on food stamps for drug offenders, but it remains the case that thousands of people still can’t even get food stamps to feed themselves because they were once caught with some drugs.

And to make matters worse, you know, when you’re released from prison, you’re often saddled with hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees, fines, court costs, accumulated back child support. In a growing number of states, you’re actually expected to pay back the cost of your imprisonment.

And, you know, get this: If you’re one of the lucky few who actually manage to get a job upon release from prison, up to 100 percent of your wages can be garnished to pay back all those fees, fines, court costs, accumulated back child support. What, realistically, do we expect folks to do? The system seems designed to send folks back to prison, which is what, in fact, happens the vast majority of the time.

DAVIES: Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University. Her book is called “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” She’ll be back in the second half of the show. I’m Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. It’s Martin Luther King Day, and our guest Michelle Alexander’s book argues that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of African-Americans in the war on drugs. Alexander says millions arrested for minor crimes find themselves branded as felons for life, and thus denied basic rights and opportunities. Her book is called”The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Let me ask you, you described this as, you know, in effect a caste system. What do we do about this?

ALEXANDER: Well, my own view is nothing short of a major social movement has any hope of ending mass incarceration in the United States. Piecemeal policy reform just kind of tinkering with this machine I think is doomed to fail in the long run. You know, if we return to the rates of incarceration we had in the 1970s or the early 1980s, before the war on drugs, we would have to release four out of five people who are in prison today – four out of five. More than a million people employed by the criminal justice system would lose their jobs.

Most new prison construction has occurred in predominantly white rural communities, communities that are quite vulnerable economically and have often been sold on prisons as an answer to their economic woes. Very often these rural communities have been offered benefits of prisons that haven’t really materialized, but nonetheless, those prisons across America, you know, would have to close down. Private prison companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange would be forced to watch their profits vanish.

This system of mass incarceration is now so deeply entrenched in our political, economic, and social structure that it is not simply going to fade away without some kind of major shift in our public consciousness, which is why I hope that, you know, in honor of the memory of, you know, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and so many of the other people who risked their lives for meaningful racial and social equality in the United States, that we will build a new human rights movement for education, not incarceration, for jobs, not jails, a human rights movement that will honor the basic human rights to work, to shelter, to food for all people no matter who you are or what you’ve done.

DAVIES: You know, there are civil rights organizations still active today. Do you see any of this happening?

ALEXANDER: I think there are definitely promising signs. You know, one of the reasons I was inspired to write the book was that I became frustrated at the failure of civil rights organizations to really rise to the challenge that mass incarceration poses for our country and for communities of color. I’m encouraged by so many inspiring grassroots efforts that are underway. There are faith communities nationwide that are beginning to organize to end mass incarceration. The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, which is a network of several thousand progressive black churches has made ending mass incarceration its number one priority. The United Methodist Church recently announced that it was divesting from private prisons and all companies that profit from caging human beings. There is, I think a real turn that’s occurring among people of faith and conscience and it definitely gives me hope for the future.

DAVIES: How do you rate President Obama’s performance?

ALEXANDER: Oh, I’ve been very disappointed. You know, I think that he’s had numerous opportunities to speak boldly and forcefully about the harms of the drug war and the need for us to end mass incarceration as we know it. What we see is that in his drug policy budget he has invested about the same ratio of dollars to enforcement as compared to prevention as the Bush administration did. So we haven’t seen the change that I was hoping for in the Obama administration, although the rhetoric has changed. Gil Kerlikowske, the drugs czar in the Obama administration, has said publicly that he doesn’t think we should call it a war on drugs anymore because we shouldn’t be at war with our own people. But it’s not enough just to change the rhetoric. We have to be willing to actually end the policies and practices that have proved so devastating over the past 40 years.

DAVIES: You know, the book makes a powerful case that I think that of some terrifically harmful impacts of the war on drugs and the way it’s implemented in these communities. But there is a question of sort of its origins and the extent to which it is racially motivated. And you describe this war as quote, “a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control.” It sounds like you’re saying policymakers engineered the mass arrest of African-Americans to keep them subjugated. Do you mean to say that?

ALEXANDER: Well, what I mean to say is that the system of mass incarceration was born of racial opportunism. It was born of a desire by politicians to exploit our nation’s racial divisions and anxieties for political gain. When politicians began, you know, rallying around the get tough bandwagon it was an effort to appeal to the racial anxieties, stereotypes and resentments of poor and working-class whites.

War on drugs was in fact an effort to make good on those campaign promises to get tough on a group of people not so subtly defined as black, brown. But that doesn’t mean that, you know, everyone involved in the drug war or all those politicians who have ever supported harsh tactics were racist in the old Jim Crow sense but, you know, it’s critical for us to remember that many people, even during the old Jim Crow, who voted for segregation laws voted for literacy tests and poll taxes and all of that weren’t hostile bigoted people who would gleefully watch a black man hanging from a tree in a lynching. Many of them were good people. Martin Luther King Jr. in his speeches would often remind his audiences that, you know, most folks who support Jim Crow aren’t evil bad people, they’re just deeply misguided. They’re blind, spiritually blind to the harms of the policies that they support. And I think the same thing can be said today, many people of good will are blind to the harms of mass incarceration and the devastation, the war on drugs has caused.

DAVIES: You know, it seems to me that it would not be in anybody’s interests, including the people who dreamed up the war on drugs or who have advocated aggressive police tactics, it’s certainly in none of those peoples’ interest to have, you know, huge numbers of African-American men condemned to a position where they can’t get employment, they can’t become law-abiding citizens and in fact ,are much more likely to become criminals or predators. That doesn’t – that’s not in anybody’s interest. Is there an appeal that says we simply have to do something different for all our sakes?

ALEXANDER: Oh, absolutely. You know, at the end of the book I argue that what is necessary is for us to build a broad-based human rights movement that is multiracial, multiethnic and includes poor and working-class whites who are typically pit against poor folks of color or treating the rise of successive news systems of control. We need to see, understand the ways in which the system has harmed all of us, but especially folks who are trapped in ghettos and cycling in and out of prisons and jails in their families. The system has harmed all of us, not in identical ways, but has harmed all of us nonetheless. And most importantly, it has damaged our ability to see our fates as linked, to see the fates of poor and working-class whites, have linked the fates of poor folks of color so that it is possible to build a meaningful alliances for quality jobs, quality education, quality health care for all.

Dismantling the system of mass incarceration is going to require connecting the dots between forms of discrimination that harm Latinos, you know, have become really the new boogie man in, you know, in recent election cycles and we now have a prison building boom aimed at suspected illegal immigrants, with the fate of African-Americans, as well as with the faith of poor whites living in rule communities where they believe their only hope for a good job may be working in a prison. So this movement absolutely must be broad enough to encompass the quest for basic human rights, the right to work, the right to a quality education, the right to quality health care for all, no matter who you are or what mistakes you have made in the past.

DAVIES: Michelle Alexander’s book is called “The New Jim Crow.” We’ll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVIES: If you’re just joining us, we’re speaking with Michelle Alexander. She’s a legal scholar and lawyer. She’s written a book called “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

How did you get involved in this issue?

ALEXANDER: Well, really, my commitment to this work began when I became the director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU in California. And we launched a major campaign against racial profiling known as the DWB Campaign or the Driving While Black or Brown Campaign. And it was during that period that I began working representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color, and attempting to assist people who have been released from prison quote/unquote “re-enter” into a society that never had shown much use for them in the first place. And it was during that period of time that I had a series of experiences that really began what I often refer to as my awakening.

DAVIES: You want to describe a case that was particularly compelling to you?

ALEXANDER: Yes. You know, there is one case in particular I’ll never forget. It involved a young African-American man probably no older than 19 who walked into my office one day. I was interviewing young black men that day who had claims of racial profiling against the police. As part of our campaign against racial profiling we had put up billboards in Oakland, in San Jose and in other communities with a hotline number for people to call if they believed they had been stopped or targeted by the police on the basis of race. And immediately after that hotline number was announced we received thousands of calls. In fact, our system crashed temporarily, we had to expand it. A

And this young man walks into my office with a thick stack of papers. He had taken detailed notes of his encounters with the police over a nine-month period of time. I mean he had names, dates, witnesses, in some cases badge numbers, just an extraordinary amount of documentation. And he was a good-looking young man. He was charismatic, well-spoken, and the stories of discrimination he told were compelling and were corroborated by other stories we had heard about what had been going on in his neighborhood in Oakland, and so I became excited. I thought here’s our dream plaintive. Here’s the one we’ve been looking for, as we had been looking to file lawsuits against the Oakland Police Department and a number of others.

And so I began asking more talking and we’re talking, and then he says something that makes me pause. And I said did you just say you’re a drug felon? And he says yeah, yeah, you know, I’m a drug felon. I am, but listen. And I just interrupted him and I said I’m so sorry. We’re not going to be able to represent you. We, in fact had been screening people with prior criminal convictions. We believed we couldn’t represent someone who had been convicted of a felony or really had any criminal record at all because we knew that law enforcement would argue that, of course, we should be following stopping and searching people like that, people with prior criminal convictions. And we knew that if we put someone with a criminal record on the stand they would be cross-examined about their prior criminal history and their credibility might be destroyed before the jury. So I said I’m sorry we can’t represent you if you have a felony record. And he becomes enraged and he says but listen, listen, I was innocent. I was framed. The police planted drugs on me and they beat up me and my friend. I have this drug conviction but I was framed, I was innocent. And I just kept telling him sorry, I’m sorry. We can’t represent you. And he keeps trying to explain the circumstances and how he accepted a plea even though he was innocent. And I kept apologizing.

…represent you and he keeps trying to explain the circumstances and how he accepted a plea, even though he was innocent, and I kept apologizing.

And finally, he becomes enraged and he tells me, you’re no better than the police. You’re just like them. The minute I tell you I’m a felon, you stop listening. You just can’t even hear what I have to say. He’s like, what’s to become of me? What’s to become of me? I can’t even get a job now that I have this felony. He said, I can’t even get housing. I’m living in my grandmother’s basement right now, because nowhere else will take me in. I can’t even get food stamps. How am I supposed to feed myself? How am I supposed to take care of myself as a man? He says, good luck finding one young black man in my neighborhood they haven’t gotten to yet. They’ve gotten to us already.

And he snatches up all those papers and detailed notes and just starts ripping them up and he’s yelling at me as he walks out. You’re no better than the police. You’re just like them. I can’t believe I trusted you.

Months later, I opened the newspaper and what was on the front page? Well, the Oakland Riders police scandal had broken. It turned out, a gang of police officers, otherwise known as a drug taskforce – known as the Oakland Riders – had been planting drugs on suspects in his neighborhood and beating folks up. And who is identified as one of the main officers accused of having planted drugs on suspects and beaten folks up, was the officer he had identified to me as having planted drugs on him and beat up him and his friend.

And it was really at that moment that the light finally went on for me and I realized he’s right about me. The minute he told me he was a felon, I stopped listening. I couldn’t even hear what he had to say. And I realized that my crime wasn’t so much that I had refused to represent an innocent man, someone who had been telling me the truth, but that I had been blind to all those who were guilty and that their stories weren’t being told.

The millions of folks who have been labeled criminals and guilty, that even civil rights lawyers like me, people who claimed to care and have dedicated themselves to working for racial justice – we were turning a blind eye to the millions who had been labeled guilty and weren’t allowing their stories to be told.

And that was really the beginning of my journey, of asking myself, how am I, the civil rights lawyer, actually helping to replicate the very forms of discrimination and exclusion I’m supposedly fighting against?

DAVIES: Did you ever talk to that guy again?

ALEXANDER: No. I never have. I actually tried to find him to apologize. I even wanted to dedicate this book to him, but was unable to track him down. The only phone number I had for him was disconnected and I have been unable to offer my apology.

DAVIES: Do you have any particular rituals for Martin Luther King Day?

ALEXANDER: Well, the one that I adhere to consistently is to reread his speeches. I find that Martin Luther King has become so sanitized and so watered down that it’s easy to forget how radical his message was, how fierce a critic he was – not just of the systems, of racialized exclusion and oppression that were manifested in Jim Crow, but of our nation, as a purveyor of war and as largely indifferent to the needs of the poor and the least advantaged.

So I find that reading what he actually said, as opposed to listening to the soundbites that are recycled in the media and on the radio are important to stay connected to his memory and legacy.

DAVIES: Well, Michelle Alexander, thanks so much for speaking with us.

ALEXANDER: Thank you for having me.

DAVIES: Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University. Her book is called “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness.”

Coming up, David Bianculli on the season premiere of the FX series, “Justified,” and the premiere of a new Fox drama called “Alcatraz.” This is FRESH AIR.