Join us for Justice Bound, a book club seeking justice. Justice Bound will be continuing online! Our next book will be The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. We will be meeting to discuss this book in July. If you're interested in reading along with us, you can request a copy through the library. Email aleese@fclspa.org to be included in the discussion which will take place over Zoom.

     Here's a description of the book: "Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."

     As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Previous reads of Justice Bound:

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

To Do Justice: A Guide for Progressive Christians ed.Rebecca Todd Peters and Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty

Common Ground: Talking about Gun Violence in America  by Donald V. Gaffney

Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America  by Eliza Griswold