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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Abolition X
Editors note by nancy a heitzeg

It is impossible to note the 50th Anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination without noting too the even more urgent need for prison abolition and for a coalition between what Mumia calls “organic and radical intellectuals.”  The ubiquity of prison, in a nation ostensibly built on freedom, is a contradiction none of us can any longer bear. Voices from the inside and  out must unite. Again.

As Dan Berger notes in “Malcolm X’s challenge to mass incarceration”:

“Malcolm X spent his political life resisting the kind of criminalization of black communities that has catalyzed protests around the country over the last six months. He was an outspoken critic of a system that has justified the arrest, imprisonment and death of so many people long before it reached the kind of crisis proportions that see a black person being killed by law enforcement or vigilantes every 28 hours, on average…

Shortly before his death, Malcolm X praised civil rights activists in Selma, Alabama, for pursuing “a version of freedom larger than America’s prepared to accept.” Fifty years later, inside the world’s biggest jailer, Malcolm X still beckons us to work for an America that may one day be described as something other than a vast prison. “

Hear him now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IQzv_Qr7Lk

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