Latest Michelle Alexander Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• We can't just assume that this resistance is going to produce the kinds of candidates or the kinds of parties that will truly honor people of all colors, all backgrounds, all ethnicities, from every nation and every faith and every gender, unless we do the work in our own communities of organizing and being in deep dialogue with one another across all forms of difference. It's my hope that we'll seize this opportunity and not let the moment pass.

  Michelle Alexander

  Party, Opportunity, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• My fear is that we will mistake the brand, the "resistance," for greater unity than actually exists and wind up settling for any Democrat the next time around. We have an opportunity right now to build much greater consensus about the need for a meaningful alternative and building a truly transformational movement, town by town, city by city, that has the potential to help birth truly revolutionary change in this country. That potential exists. We got a glimpse of it when such enthusiasm erupted over a democratic socialist Bernie Sanders running for president.

  Michelle Alexander

  Meaningful, Country, Running

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• The so-called resistance is very broad and we don't agree on everything, but there's a moment of opportunity when people are paying attention. It's time for us to really get serious about political education and about our own moral education in this moment, and to seize this opportunity to organize and be in deep dialogue with a whole lot of people who never even thought about being politically engaged or active before. There's real hope there and real opportunity.

  Michelle Alexander

  Real, Opportunity, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• We're living in a time when so many of the civil rights and social justice organizations are run by lawyers and policy people who are often very disconnected from the communities they claim to represent.

  Michelle Alexander

  Running, People, Justice

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I think it's critically important that the people who have been most harmed by mass incarceration, by mass deportation, by neoliberalism, by all of it, not only have a voice in crafting these platforms but emerge and are supported as real leaders in these movements.

  Michelle Alexander

  Real, Thinking, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I think that we need to begin talking about what does it mean to create these safe spaces in our communities, to begin welcoming one another into our homes and into our communities when they're returning home from prison, people who are on the streets. We need to begin doing the work in our own communities of creating the kind of democracy that we would like to see on a larger scale.

  Michelle Alexander

  Home, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I hope that we will also take seriously the necessity of building alternative parties, and do that work in our communities of organizing movements of movements, creating safe spaces and sanctuary, coming into dialogue, figuring out what a common platform might be for all of us, and building on the work that is happening elsewhere around the community. Even as we resist Donald Trump, doing so with an eye toward building a truly transformational, even revolutionary movement that can become a meaningful alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties.

  Michelle Alexander

  Meaningful, Party, Eye

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• My own view - and I'm very open to hearing other perspectives - is that this movement-building needs to begin at home, in local communities. It isn't about trying to launch a brand new national party overnight. It's about people in communities coming together across lines of difference, bringing with them their movements, their families, and coming together and saying, "How can we together build a movement of movements here at home? What would that look like? What do we want to do right here in our communities?"

  Michelle Alexander

  Party, Home, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• One of those lies is that all we need to do is elect more Democrats. No. That actually isn't going to get us to the Promised Land.

  Michelle Alexander

  Lying, Democrat

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I think first we have to begin by telling the truth, which I think has actually been a big stumbling block. We can look at Donald Trump and see how he lies, but I think we also have to look at some of the lies we've told ourselves and the lies we've accepted and internalized ourselves.

  Michelle Alexander

  Block, Lying, Thinking

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• We must muster the courage, we must find the will, we must do what is necessary to build a truly transformative movement that will end the history and cycle of caste in America.

  Michelle Alexander

  America, Movement, Ends

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms of discrimination against people released from prison - discrimination that denies them basic human rights to work, shelter and food.

  Michelle Alexander

  Jobs, Jail, Rights

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Our system of mass incarceration is better understood as a system of racial and social control than a system of crime prevention or control.

  Michelle Alexander

  Prevention, Crime, Social

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• We have now spent 1 trillion dollars waging the drug war since it began. A trillion. Those funds could have been used for education, jobs and drug treatment in the communities that needed it most. We could have used those funds for our collective well being, instead those dollars paved the way for the destruction of countless lives, families, and dreams.

  Michelle Alexander

  Dream, Jobs, War

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Of course it would make far more sense to invest in education and job creation in poor communities of color, rather than spend billions of dollars caging them and monitoring them upon release.

  Michelle Alexander

  Jobs, Color, Community

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• People charged with drug offenses, though, are typically poor people of color. They are routinely charged with felonies and sent to prison.

  Michelle Alexander

  Color, People, Drug

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Drunk driving contains a far greater risk of violent death than the use or sale of illegal drugs, the societal response to drunk drivers has generally emphasized keeping the person functional and in society, while attempting to respond to the dangerous behavior through treatment and counseling.

  Michelle Alexander

  Drunk, Risk, Drug

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• The vastly different sentences afforded drunk drivers and drug offenders tells us who is viewed as disposable - someone to be purged from the body politic - and who is not. Drunk drivers are predominately white and male.

  Michelle Alexander

  White, Drunk, Drug

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• In response to the advocacy of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, most states adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous states now have some type of mandatory sentencing for this offense - typically two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense. Possession of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other hand, was given a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mother, Jail, Hands

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• The dramatically different manner in which we, as a nation, responded to the crisis presented by drunk driving and the crisis caused by the emergence of crack cocaine speaks volumes about who we value, and who we view as disposable.

  Michelle Alexander

  Views, Drunk, Different

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• For those interested in learning more about corporations and private individuals profiting from the caging of human beings, I highly recommend the book "Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration."

  Michelle Alexander

  Book, Corporations, Making Money

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Prison guard unions have become the powerful political forces in some states, particularly California.

  Michelle Alexander

  Powerful, Prison Guards, California

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• The prison-industrial complex employs millions of people directly and indirectly. Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison guards, construction companies that build prisons, police, probation officers, court clerks, the list goes on and on. Many predominately white rural communities have come to believe that their local economies depend on prisons for jobs.

  Michelle Alexander

  Jobs, Believe, White

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• The fact that people of all colors have been ensnared by the drug war helps to preserve the system as a whole from serious critique, as it creates the impression - at a glance - that the war is being waged in an unbiased manner, even when nothing could be further from the truth.

  Michelle Alexander

  War, Color, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Private prison companies are now listed on the New York Stock exchange and are doing quite well in a time of economic recession (and depression in some communities). But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

  Michelle Alexander

  New York, Community, Economic Recession

  Source: www.truth-out.org