Pubdate: Sun, 08 Feb 2015
Source: South Bend Tribune (IN)
Copyright: 2015 South Bend Tribune
Contact:  http://www.southbendtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/621
Author: Howard Dukes

ALEXANDER ADDRESSES NEGATIVE IMPACT OF DRUG LAWS

It would seem that the decision to invite Michelle Alexander, author of 
the book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of 
Colorblindness," to speak Monday at Saint Mary's College was inspired by 
stories ripped from recent headlines.

Instead, Mana Derakhshani, a French professor and associate director
of the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership at Saint Mary's,
says part of her interest in the book stemmed from her desire to find
good material for a faculty reading group.

"Originally, I ran across her book when it first came out, and I was
intrigued by the title," Derakhshani says. "Still, I didn't read it
right away, but I was intrigued by the title and I wanted to read it,
and when the faculty decided that they wanted to do a reading group,
several (people) thought that this would be a good one."

Derakhshani says those discussions took place prior to the unrest in
places such as Ferguson, Mo., after a grand jury decided not to indict
Officer Darren Wilson after an altercation with Michael Brown that
resulted in the unarmed teenager being shot and killed. The grand jury
believed Wilson acted in self-defense after Brown reached for the
officer's weapon, while the Brown family believes that the shooting
was a deadly example of the type of overly aggressive policing that
has fostered fear and mistrust of police in minority
communities.

Alexander's book focuses on the role that the war on drugs played in
the explosion of incarceration rates starting in the early 1980s, as
well as the devastating burden that having a felony conviction places
on the lives of the nonviolent offenders who comprise the overwhelming
majority of people arrested, convicted and eventually returned to
their communities after doing their time. Still, Alexander, who was
not available for an interview, believes that laws that mandated
different sentences be imposed on those caught with powder cocaine as
opposed to crack cocaine, court rulings broadening the ability of law
enforcement to detain and search people suspected of drug crimes, and
the militarization of police forces nationwide are connected to the
long-standing belief - the Rev. Martin Luther King even touched on
allegations of police brutality in his "I Have a Dream" speech - that
law enforcement in minority communities is sometimes
heavy-handed.

The title that attracted Derakhshani's attention refers to the period
between the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 when Southern states passed a series of laws aimed at
eliminating the citizenship rights of the former slaves. A law
professor at The Ohio State University, Alexander believes that the
war on drugs similarly makes it impossible for those returning to
society after serving drug sentences to engage with mainstream society.

Derakhshani says Alexander's lecture comes at an important time for
reasons beyond the recent tragedies in places such as Ferguson and New
York.

"Locally, with (the dispute over) the ticketing (of students for
certain disciplinary violations), that forces us to address it back
this school-to-prison pipeline," she says.

Saint Mary's students Markie Harrison and Laura Early both say they
are looking forward to attending Alexander's lecture.

Harrison says she became interested in the book while in high school,
and it became a source for her senior paper at Saint Mary's.

"I've been very interested in the criminal justice system and its
relation to race, and so I decided to do my senior composition paper
on the television show 'Law & Order' because it's a very popular show
and I wanted to examine how race was represented in that television
show."

Early says she caught snippets of an Alexander lecture, most likely on
C-Span, while channel surfing, and what the professor said remained
embedded in her consciousness.

"I heard this lady speak at a college lecture hall, and I kind of
tuned in a little bit and she was saying how the prison system is a
replica of the Jim Crow laws," Early says. "I forgot about it, but
when it was time to pick topic, I told my adviser that I wanted to do
it on mass incarceration and injustice within the prison system. She
mentioned to me that Alexander had a book on mass incarceration titled
'The New Jim Crow,' so I got the book and I read it and I was addicted
to it. I was just in awe."
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