An essential guide to forces shaping our nation and the 2016 presidential election.
Journalist and Nation Institute fellow Jaffe debuts with an in-depth account of the wave of populist anger driving “a new era of protest and activism” in the United States.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, many Americans have sought to wrest control of their lives through political movements like the tea party and Occupy. “For the people taking part in them,” writes the author, “it is not a question of left or right, but of the powerless against the powerful.” United in their anger at wealthy elites and both major political parties, people in economic distress have been protesting and striking over issues from the minimum wage and labor bargaining to home foreclosures and student debt (more than $35,000 for the average student in 2015). Through richly detailed reporting, including more than 100 interviews, Jaffe shows how protest movements over these and other issues (including racism and immigration reform) have grown into a larger fusion movement in which activists have recognized the connections among such disparate arenas as the Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, and immigration reform. She illustrates the intersections for individuals like Ivanna Gonzalez, a Moral Monday protester in North Carolina, who realizes, “being a woman, a student, an immigrant, and a worker were all parts of her life.” Even as students go into debt to earn college degrees, notes Jaffe, many are likely to end up in the service industry, where the median annual income is $20,000. Her insights offer a new context for understanding seemingly random events—such as Wal-Mart strikes, student debt strikes, and the Chicago teachers’ strike—and the strong sense of solidarity underlying them. She suggests many participants discovered shared concerns when brought together in occupied spaces of the Occupy movement. Her book even makes sense of protests that have linked the tea party in partnership with the teamsters and the NAACP.
An essential guide to forces shaping our nation and the 2016 presidential election.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-56858-536-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A vital book for any library or classroom—and for foot soldiers in the fight for racial justice.
A compact, exceptionally diverse introduction to the history of black women in America, rooted in “everyday heroism.”
As Berry (History/Univ. of Texas; The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, 2017, etc.) and Gross (History/Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick; Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex and Violence in America, 2016, etc.) persuasively argue, black women have “significantly shaped” our nation—and fought for their rights—throughout every period of American history. Yet their contributions often have been overlooked or underappreciated. In the latest book in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, the authors offer a selective but wide-ranging search-and-rescue mission for black female activists, trailblazers, and others who have left a mark. In the first chapter, they introduce Isabel de Olvera, who became one of the first black women to set foot on what is now American soil after joining an expedition from Mexico in the early 17th century. From there, Berry and Gross proceed chronologically, opening each chapter with a vignette about a signal figure such as Shirley Chisholm, the daughter of Caribbean immigrants who became the first black female member of Congress. Along the way, the authors frequently discuss members of traditionally underrepresented groups, among them the lesbian blues singer Gladys Bentley and the conjoined twins Millie and Christine McKoy, whose exploitation by mid-19th-century showmen suggests the perils faced by black women with disabilities. The result is a narrative that highlights both setbacks and achievements in many spheres—sports, business, education, the arts, military service, and more. While their overall approach is celebratory, Berry and Gross also deal frankly with morally complex topics, such as women who committed infanticide rather than see a child enslaved. Amid their gains, black women face enduring challenges that include police brutality and other forms of “misogynoir,” or “gendered, anti-Black violence.” For anyone hoping to topple the remaining barriers, this book is a font of inspiration.
A vital book for any library or classroom—and for foot soldiers in the fight for racial justice.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3355-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A timely and impassioned argument for social justice.
Profound contrasts in policing and incarceration reveal disparate Americas.
MSNBC host and editor at large of the Nation, Hayes (Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, 2013, etc.) expands the investigation of inequality begun in his previous book by focusing on law and order. Offering a persuasive analysis, he distinguishes between the Nation, inhabited by the “affluent, white, elite,” and the Colony, largely urban, poor, “overwhelmingly black and brown” but increasingly including working-class whites. The criminal justice system, argues Hayes, is vastly different for each: “One (the Nation) is the kind of policing regime you expect in a democracy; the other (the Colony) is the kind you expect in an occupied land.” In the Colony, “real democratic accountability is lacking and police behave like occupying soldiers in restive and dangerous territory.” Law enforcement, as noted by law professor Seth Stoughton, takes a “warrior worldview” in which “officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies.” Acknowledging that America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, Hayes traces the country’s history of punishment to the experience of European settlers who, “outnumbered and afraid,” responded with violence. Between 1993 and 2014, although the crime rate declined significantly, most Americans feel that crime has increased and therefore support aggressive police action. Furthermore, although most crime occurs intraracially, the Nation believes that the Colony is a constant, insidious threat; unmistakably, “we have moved the object of our concern from crime to criminals, from acts to essences.” Among other rich democracies, ours is the only one with the death penalty. Whereas in Europe, humane treatment has been widely instituted, in the U.S., perpetrators are treated as unredeemable. “The American justice system is all about wrath and punishment,” the author asserts. Arguing for the erasure of borders between Nation and Colony, Hayes admits, regretfully, that such change might fundamentally alter the comfortable sense of order that he, and other members of the Nation, prizes.
A timely and impassioned argument for social justice.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-25422-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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