Billions of dollars for prisons, while schools crumble and teachers bargain or beg for decent pay, billions of bucks for prisons, while homes and buildings crumble in Philadelphia and New York. What also crumbles are families, as children are separated from parents, as wives are separated from husbands, and people are separated from their communities. All at the hands of a system that is demonstrably unjust and riddled with class and racial disparities. You are all perhaps aware of numerous studies which document such disparities. But studies don't change policies, and the American policy of caging, repressing and devaluing Black life is centuries old.
History repeats itself, but in different ways.
It is our challenge to construct, to build a new history, one where the liberation of our people is central. We can think as tribes did, as the so called Indians did, and we will fail. Or we can think as a people, utilizing the precious tool of unity. The late great Malcolm X explained that our repression didnt stem from our various religious, political or fraternal associations, but from our being black in a white supremacist and racist nation. That truth has not changed.