Movement lawyer and political commentator, or “professional loudmouth”, Olayemi Olurin sheds light on what she knows about the American criminal “justice" system - which is a ton. Having come from The Bahamas as a young woman, she had seen plenty of poor Black folks. But she says America has a very different way of treating Black and brown people, which is that there is a focus on breaking down, criminalization and imprisonment, and just maybe there’s a lucrative payoff for it. A report by the ACLU shows that prisoners generate over $11 BILLION of goods and services and are rarely paid anything. She and Laverne talk about bail reform, the shady habit of over-policing and underfunding poor communities, and the way the prison pipeline perpetuates itself. “Our environments are who we become.”

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Mentioned in this Episode:

Mass Incarceration Is Slavery (Olurin, The Appeal)

Tyre Nichols Was Killed by Black Police Officers Because the Whole System Is Racist (Olurin, Teen Vogue)

Bayard Rustin (PBS Newshour, YouTube)

Podcast: American Police (Throughline, 2020)

Kalief Browder, 1993-2015 (2015, The New Yorker)

Justice Not Fear

How do I know if a source is credible? 

Media Bias Chart

Links of Interest:

What is bail reform? (ACLU)

How Bail Reform, Crime Surge Mix in Angry Debate (The Washington Post, 2022)

Criminal Justice Statistics (The Marshall Project)

Criminal Fact Sheet (NAACP)

The challenges facing black men - and the case for action (The Brookings Institute, 2020)

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Noam Chomsky

Other Episodes Mentioned:

Housing Segregation and Structural Racism w/ Richard Rothstein

CREDITS:

Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins

Producer & Editor: Brooke Peterson-Bell

Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight