Papers by Amanda Alexander
Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, 2017
How can lawyers and legal workers hasten change in cities like Detroit, where interlocking crises... more How can lawyers and legal workers hasten change in cities like Detroit, where interlocking crises—tens of thousands of water shutoffs and tax foreclosures, sky-high asthma rates, school closures, entrenched poverty, and stratification—do not map easily onto civil rights claims? We are trained as lawyers to shoehorn complex problems into neat claims about equal protection or due process. But this moment demands more of us. When organizers pose fundamental questions about power, freedom, and the essential conditions of our lives, as they do now, we must listen. This Law, Protest, and Social Movements course is for students interested in learning how to create social change through collective action. Together, we will develop a nuanced understanding of law as a complex tool that has the potential to both co-opt social movements and support liberation.
The unprecedented rise in the number of people held in U.S. jails and prisons has garnered consid... more The unprecedented rise in the number of people held in U.S. jails and prisons has garnered considerable attention from policy makers, activists, and academics alike. Signaled in part by Michelle Alexander’s New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow, and the unlikely coalition of activists, policy makers, celebrities, and business leaders on both sides of the political aisle who have pledged to end mass incarceration in our lifetime, the prison system has returned to public policy discourse in a way that was unforeseen less than a decade ago. On any given day in 2014, just over 2.3 million people were held in U.S. jails and prisons. This figure represents a tenfold increase in the inmate census since 1973, and about 22 percent of the world’s prisoner population. Unfortunately, while the causes and consequences of mass incarceration warrant rigorous examination, the focus on arrest and imprisonment has left a curious, yet equally historic phenomenon hidden in plain sight—the rise of a supervised society, and with it, an alternate track of citizenship.
Michigan Child Welfare Law Journal, May 2013
Review of African Political Economy, Dec 5, 2012
This article examines the World Bank's attempts to frame the relationship between states, markets... more This article examines the World Bank's attempts to frame the relationship between states, markets, and citizens through its urban assistance programmes during the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on internal memoranda, mission reports, and staff reviews, this study traces the bank's arguments about the ideal role of the state in housing and service provision. Over this period, the World Bank encouraged governments to withdraw from providing public housing directly and to act instead as an ‘enabler’ of market forces, with lasting economic and political consequences. The article concludes with a focus on South Africa in the early 1990s, when the World Bank (after two decades of practice in promoting privatised land and housing markets) counselled the African National Congress on its post-apartheid policies. In the years since, these policies have resulted in explosive confrontations with civil-society activists who remain committed to alternative visions of the role of the state in housing and service provision.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has long been active in the movement to address racial profi... more The Center for Constitutional Rights has long been active in the movement to address racial profiling, particularly in New York City. CCR has been combating systematic racial profiling by the New York City Police Department through both litigation and advocacy since the 1990s, and has worked with community groups, attorneys and activists both in New York and around the country on issues of police abuse and targeting of youth, people of color and other minority communities.
In the summer of 2011, CCR interviewed civil rights and police accountability lawyers, advocates, grassroots activists and academics across the United States to inquire about their work addressing police misconduct, abuse and racial profiling practices. The Center also conducted background research on successful models for police accountability, transparency and oversight throughout the country.
Based on this research, this report highlights strategies for combating racial profiling by police that have been employed by civil society groups in nine different cities across the United States. These strategies include (i) litigation, (ii) collaborations between law enforcement and the communities they police, (iii) legislative and administrative advocacy, (iv) soliciting the involvement of the U.S Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and (v) grassroots organizing and education. The experiences of the groups in these cities, both the successes and the failures, provide some important lessons for those doing anti-racial profiling work in the U.S.
Studio: The Studio Museum in Harlem, Jul 2010
South Africa’s first decade of democracy brimmed with the language of betrayal. Social movements ... more South Africa’s first decade of democracy brimmed with the language of betrayal. Social movements have continuously reminded the government that this is not the democracy they struggled for. For their part, photographers have tended to portray the emotional current of betrayal through images of protest marches and wide-angle shots of dense shack settlements. However, a year after the end of legislated apartheid, South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa began producing a series of portraits oddly out-of-step with prevailing notions. Mthethwa’s portraits are attuned to the stories people tell themselves, and tell about themselves to each other.
Books by Amanda Alexander
This collection looks at the on-going significance of Black Consciousness, situating it in a glob... more This collection looks at the on-going significance of Black Consciousness, situating it in a global frame, examining the legacy of Steve Biko, the current state of post-apartheid South African politics, and the culture and history of the anti-apartheid movements.
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Papers by Amanda Alexander
In the summer of 2011, CCR interviewed civil rights and police accountability lawyers, advocates, grassroots activists and academics across the United States to inquire about their work addressing police misconduct, abuse and racial profiling practices. The Center also conducted background research on successful models for police accountability, transparency and oversight throughout the country.
Based on this research, this report highlights strategies for combating racial profiling by police that have been employed by civil society groups in nine different cities across the United States. These strategies include (i) litigation, (ii) collaborations between law enforcement and the communities they police, (iii) legislative and administrative advocacy, (iv) soliciting the involvement of the U.S Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and (v) grassroots organizing and education. The experiences of the groups in these cities, both the successes and the failures, provide some important lessons for those doing anti-racial profiling work in the U.S.
Books by Amanda Alexander
In the summer of 2011, CCR interviewed civil rights and police accountability lawyers, advocates, grassroots activists and academics across the United States to inquire about their work addressing police misconduct, abuse and racial profiling practices. The Center also conducted background research on successful models for police accountability, transparency and oversight throughout the country.
Based on this research, this report highlights strategies for combating racial profiling by police that have been employed by civil society groups in nine different cities across the United States. These strategies include (i) litigation, (ii) collaborations between law enforcement and the communities they police, (iii) legislative and administrative advocacy, (iv) soliciting the involvement of the U.S Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and (v) grassroots organizing and education. The experiences of the groups in these cities, both the successes and the failures, provide some important lessons for those doing anti-racial profiling work in the U.S.