Not a Crime to Be Poor
The Criminalization of Poverty in America
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Narrated by:
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Eric G. Dove
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By:
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Peter Edelman
About this listen
In addition to exposing racially biased policing, the Justice Department's Ferguson Report exposed to the world a system of fines and fees levied for minor crimes in Ferguson, Missouri, that, when they proved too expensive for Ferguson's largely poor, African American population, resulted in jail sentences for thousands of people.
As former staffer to Robert F. Kennedy and current Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, Ferguson is everywhere in America today. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, strictly enforced laws and regulations against behavior including trespassing and public urination that largely affect the homeless, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, in one of the richest countries on Earth we have effectively made it a crime to be poor.
Edelman, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare "reform," connects the dots between these policies and others including school discipline in poor communities, child support policies affecting the poor, public housing ordinances, addiction treatment, and the specter of public benefits fraud to paint a picture of a mean-spirited, retributive system that seals whole communities into inescapable cycles of poverty.
©2017 Peter Edelman (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with The New Press (www.thenewpress.com)Listeners also enjoyed...
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Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist.
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Required reading
- By Ken Larsen on 02-15-15
By: Jason L. Riley
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Locked In
- The True Causes of Mass Incarceration - and How to Achieve Real Reform
- By: John F. Pfaff
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Locked In is a revelatory investigation into the root causes of mass incarceration by one of the most exciting scholars in the country. Having spent 15 years studying the data on imprisonment, John Pfaff takes apart the reigning consensus created by Michelle Alexander and other reformers, revealing that the most widely accepted explanations - the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons - tell us much less than we think.
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The true causes of Mass Incarceration
- By Ekaterinya Vladinakova on 04-17-20
By: John F. Pfaff
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Locking Up Our Own
- Crime and Punishment in Black America
- By: James Forman Jr.
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics - and their impact on people of color - are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime.
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Outstanding Book
- By Andrew on 12-13-17
By: James Forman Jr.
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We Are Not Yet Equal
- Understanding Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Carol Anderson's White Rage took the world by storm, landing on the New York Times best seller list and best book of the year lists from New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Review of Books. It launched her as an in-demand commentator on contemporary race issues for national print and television media and garnered her an invitation to speak to the Democratic Congressional Caucus. This compelling young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience.
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Great
- By JD on 07-06-20
By: Carol Anderson, and others
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The South Side
- A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation
- By: Natalie Y. Moore
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation on the South Side of Chicago through reported essays, showing the lives of these communities through the stories of people who live in them. The South Side shows the important impact of Chicago's historic segregation and the ongoing policies that keep it that way.
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Eyeopening!
- By Ladybug on 09-07-16
By: Natalie Y. Moore
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Viral Justice
- How We Grow the World We Want
- By: Ruha Benjamin
- Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
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Fantastic book!
- By Avie Kearney on 05-21-23
By: Ruha Benjamin
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Stupid Black Men
- How to Play the Race Card - and Lose
- By: Larry Elder
- Narrated by: Larry Elder
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In Stupid Black Men, Larry Elder takes on the mind-set of those people who always capture the most media attention - as well as masses of public money - people who say that racism is the root of all problems and who end up hurting precisely those they claim to be helping.
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New fan
- By Levonne Burris on 07-15-19
By: Larry Elder
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White Rage
- The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson
- Narrated by: Pamela Gibson
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014 and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as 'Black rage', historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, 'white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,' she wrote, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.'
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Good History, Was Hoping For More Insight
- By Mike on 09-08-16
By: Carol Anderson
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The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
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Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
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This Noble Land
- My Vision For America
- By: James A. Michener
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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This Noble Land is Michener's most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation - racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system - as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our "outstanding success". First published shortly before Michener's death, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era, infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime.
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A startling realization
- By Amazon Customer on 08-15-15
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Fight of the Century
- Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases
- By: Michael Chabon - editor, Ayelet Waldman - editor
- Narrated by: an all-star cast
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.
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Outstanding
- By Nancy B on 10-06-20
By: Michael Chabon - editor, and others
What listeners say about Not a Crime to Be Poor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- David Larson
- 11-13-17
Very Important Story
I had no idea that poor people have to pay so much more than rich people for the exact same goods and services. I also didn't realize how many towns, cities, counties, and even states use fees and fines against the poor and middle class to fund the government. Amazing book that highlights a huge problem. I didn't realize people were being sent to prison because their lawn was overgrown, or because the police officer who pulled them over decided to write them thousands of dollars in tickets for minor violations. Contrary to this book's title, in America it is definitely a crime to be poor.
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