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" The only news most people ever hear about the inner city comes from grim headlines; the only residents they can name are characters on 'The Wire.' Of course, ignorance of a community doesn't stop outsiders from having opinions about it or passing laws that govern it. "

James Forman, Jr.

Name

Ignorance

Community

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" Attica. The name itself has long signified resistance to prison abuse and state violence. "

" A black man of my generation born in the late 1960s is more than twice as likely to go to prison in his lifetime then a black man of my father's generation. I was born after the Voting Rights Act, after the Civil Rights Act, after the Fair Housing Act. "

" What if we strove for compassion, for mercy, for forgiveness? And what if we did this for everybody, including people who have harmed others? "

" While mass incarceration is a national crisis, it was built locally. "

" Mass incarceration will have to be dismantled the same way it was constructed: piecemeal, incrementally and, above all, locally. "

" Most people that take jobs as police officers are taking them because they're good jobs. Many who go into these jobs are doing it because it's good work. "

" I clerked for a judge, William Norris, on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals right after law school and then for Justice O'Connor the next year. "

" Prosecutors committed to reform need talented staff members who share that commitment, and our best legal talent should flock to their offices. "

" We must continue to recruit progressive prosecutors to run in local elections, support those who do, and hold them accountable if they win. "

" We need to hire more black police officers in this country because these are good jobs, and African Americans should have their fair share of good jobs. But we shouldn't do it because we think that's going to change policing. We have to push for police reform in other ways. "

" African-Americans have always viewed the protection of black lives as a civil rights issue, whether the threat comes from police officers or street criminals. Far from ignoring the issue of crime by blacks against other blacks, African-American officials and their constituents have been consumed by it. "

" One consequence of racism and segregation is that many American whites know little or nothing about the daily lives of African Americans. Black America's least-understood communities are those poor, hyper-segregated places we once called ghettos. These neighborhoods are not far away, but they might as well be on the moon. "

" I had gone to law school thinking that I would do something in the service of black people. "

" How come we never use prison, the failure of prison, as a reason not to give more prison? There's never a moment where we say, 'OK, well, prison hasn't worked, so we're not going to try that again.' "

" The fundamental problem for the teaching profession is how undervalued it is and how underpaid teachers are. "

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" There can be racism in a system even if a particular episode of injustice is not a manifestation of that racism. Every single thing in the criminal justice system is not a manifestation of racism, but many things are. "

" I find it very frustrating how much passing the buck there is in the criminal justice system when it comes to taking responsibility for outcomes. "

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