WASHINGTON, D.C., – The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, along with members of the civil rights, drug policy reform and criminal justice communities will host esteemed civil rights advocate and author Michelle Alexander during a discussion and book signing of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness on Thursday, May 6, 2010, 5:30 p.m. Ms. Alexander’s first book focuses needed attention on the disproportionate impact and residual consequences of minorities entrapped in the criminal justice system.
“Like Jim Crow, mass incarceration marginalizes large segments of the African American community, segregates them physically in prisons, jails and ghettos, and then authorizes discrimination against them in voting, employment, housing, education, public benefits and jury service. So many of the old forms of discrimination - the ones we supposedly left behind - are suddenly legal again, once you've been branded a felon.” --Michelle Alexander
WHAT: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Discussion and Book Signing
WHEN: Thursday, May 6, 2010
Discussion 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.; Book Signing 7-8 p.m.
WHERE: Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
1401 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20005
WHO: Michelle Alexander, Author, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Remarks: Barbara Arnwine, Marcia Johnson-Blanco and Tanya Clay House, Lawyers’ Committee
Nkechi Taifa, Open Society Institute
Kara Gotsch, the Sentencing Project
Sam Hutchinson, National African American Drug Policy Coalition
Jasmine Tyler, Drug Policy Alliance
Event Co-Sponsors: the National African American Drug Policy Coalition, the Open Society Institute, the Sentencing Project, the Washington Bar Association and the Drug Policy Alliance (Books sold on site by Teaching for Change’s Busboys and Poets Bookstore).
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. The principal mission of the Lawyers' Committee is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice under law, particularly in the areas of fair housing and fair lending, community development, employment; voting; education and environmental justice. For more information about the LCCRUL, visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.
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