Black Panther and Cuban exile Assata Shakur has inspired generations
of radical protest, including the contemporary movement for Black
lives. Drawing its title from one of America's foremost
revolutionaries, this collection of thought-provoking essays by
award-winning Panther scholar Donna Murch explores how social protest
is challenging our current system of state violence and mass
incarceration.
Murch exposes the devastating consequences of overlapping punishment
campaigns against gangs, drugs, and crime on poor and working-class
populations of color. Through largely hidden channels, these
punishment campaigns generate enormous revenues for the state. Under
such conditions, organized resistance to the advancing tide of state
violence and mass incarceration has proven difficult.
This timely and urgent book shows how a youth-led political movement
has emerged in recent years to challenge the bipartisan consensus on
punishment and looks to the future through a redistributive, queer,
and feminist lens. Murch frames the contemporary movement in relation
to earlier struggles for Black Liberation, while excavating the
origins of mass incarceration and the political economy that drives
it.