“I study the pinch pot in my hands. It seems suddenly urgent not to see them seeing me. Heat crawls from my cheeks to my hairline. I hear the furious thrum of blood in my ears. With my fingers I smooth down the walls of my pot. To my utter relief, no more questions follow.” […]
“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
“The notion of work as punishment has enabled prison administrators to compel incarcerated people to work on farms and in dairies for low or no pay and without basic labor protections, sometimes in service of secretive billionaires they’ll never meet.”
“Many progressives mistrust her for her past as a prosecutor. As an ex-convict — and also the son of a crime victim — I can tell you it’s not that simple.”
Adolfo Davis hoped a Supreme Court ruling would give him a chance at a new beginning. But nothing about freedom turned out as he expected.
“What happened on that Friday and in the days after, when police rounded up even more kids, would expose an ugly and unsettling culture in Rutherford County, one spanning decades. In the wake of these mass arrests, lawyers would see inside a secretive legal system that’s supposed to protect kids, but in this county did […]
Every story we selected for the number one slot in our weekly newsletter, all in one place.
“Their stories had one thing in common: No prison officials alerted them their loved ones were seriously ill until after their deaths.”
We recommend these incisive essays on Abbott Elementary, The White Lotus, and The Dropout in Scalawag’s series on pop culture and justice.
“It’s been more than a year that we haven’t been able to see him…We’re getting old. We don’t know how much time we have left.
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