Book Selections

"Why We Vote is a bold and sometimes daring reconstruction of judicial doctrine giving expression to the democratic aspirations of the Constitution. It shifts the focus from equal protection to the freedom that democracy generates-the right of those who are ruled to choose their rulers. It explains why the protection of that right requires the extension of the franchise to all citizens. It provides the grounds for the rules that facilitate, as a purely practical matter, the exercise of the right to vote, ensure that the vote of one is equal to that of another, and guarantees feasible access to the ballot for independent candidates and new political parties"--

"Congressman John Lewis was a paragon of the Civil Rights Movement and political leadership for decades. A hero we won't soon forget, Lewis was a beacon of hope and a model of humility whose invocation to "good trouble" continues to inspire millions across our nation. In his last year on earth, even while battling cancer, he dedicated time to share his memories, beliefs, and advice-exclusively immortalized in these pages-as a message to the generations to come. Organized by topic ranging from justice, courage, faith, and forgiveness to the pandemic, environment, marriage, money, and even death, and many more besides, Carry On collects the late Congressman's thoughts for readers to draw on whenever they are in need of guidance. John Lewis had great confidence in our future, even as he died in the midst of one of our country's most challenging years to date. With this book, we can continue to learn from his perseverance, dedication, profound insight, and unwavering ability to see the good in life, and live up to the legacy he has left us"--

"An in-depth look at how U.S. Latino advocacy groups are using ethnoracial demographic projections to bring about political change in the present. For years, newspaper headlines, partisan speeches, academic research, and even comedy routines have communicated that the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation--one that will purportedly change the "face" of the country in a matter of decades. But the so-called browning of America, sociologist Michael Rodrguez-Muiz contends, has less to do with the complexion of growing populations than with past and present struggles shaping how demographic trends are popularly imagined and experienced. Offering an original and timely window into these struggles, Figures of the Future explores the population politics of national Latino civil rights groups. Based on eight years of ethnographic and qualitative research, spanning both the Obama and Trump administrations, this book investigates how several of the most prominent of these organizations--including UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Voto Latino--have mobilized demographic data about the Latino population in dogged pursuit of political recognition and influence. In census promotions, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and policy advocacy, this knowledge has been infused with meaning, variously serving as future-oriented sources of inspiration, emblems for identification, and weapons for contestation. At the same time, Rodrguez-Muiz considers why these political actors have struggled to translate this demographic growth into tangible political gain and how concerns about white backlash have affected how they forecast demographic futures. Figures of the Future looks closely at the politics surrounding ethnoracial demographic changes and their rising influence in U.S. public debate and discourse."--Amazon.com.

A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality. The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals. After discussing the book's origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley reflects on what a militantly antiracist, radical movement in the heart of Dixie might teach contemporary social movements confronting rampant inequality, police violence, mass incarceration, and neoliberalism.

Racism is America's original and most enduring sin, with well-known historic and contemporary markers: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality. Yet a resurgence of white racism in the twenty-first century, from white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, to the skyrocketing number of hate crimes being reported around the country, has also brought into sharp relief another uniquely American tradition: antiracism. In Anticracism, Alex Zamalin tells the powerful story of this political theory and practice. He examines the way in which the black antiracist tradition has strongly engaged questions of freedom, equality, justice, struggle, and political hope in dark times. Through a study of major figures, texts and political movements, he traces the history of antislavery abolition, black socialism, and the civil rights movement, leading all the way up to the contemporary Movement for Black Lives.

""Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer's Life in the Battle for Change" combines Michael Tigar's wry legal and societal observations with his analysis of landmark civil rights and international justice cases on which he, as an attorney, worked . The result is a narrative that blends law, history, and progressive politics"--