Resources

The Journeys Toward Justice Curriculum is designedto help equip, resource, and train justice-minded African American community organizations – both faith-based and non – who seek to educate and advocate for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel. This curriculum contains a Facilitator Guide and the Student Guide.

It is with much humility, a sense of sacred service and privilege, that The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) publishes this study guide to support reading and discussion groups of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by civil rights attorney and author Michelle Alexander.

With much faith, we release this guide as one more contribution to the tributaries of education, advocacy and activism to re-energize a national movement towards racial and class justice in the United States. We hope that the SDPC family, and all who use this study guide, will find power not just in the words on the pages, but in the creative and compelling conversations they will have with others.   And most of all, we hope by its very publication, those who are locked behind bars or trapped in the revolving cycle that is The New Jim Crow, will feel a little more love coming their way. 

This study guide is designed to accompany Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  Attorney Alexander masterfully describes an ugly reality that most of us see but don’t see. The reality she describes is encountered whenever we come across any group of Black high school graduates and observe the ratio difference between males to females. We see it when, a college class has 25 Black students, and there are only five Black men. We stumble across it daily as we witness police officers routinely “patting down” Black men, then driving them away in police cars and “paddy wagons.”

The scourge of the drug trade contributes to untold human rights violations, massive corruption and violence that perpetuate brokenness and suffering on a worldwide scale. In 2009, the United Nations put forth a multilateral response to the global drug problems. The Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation Toward an Integrated and Balanced strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem identified two foundational solutions. There needs to be more development assistance to reduce supply and focus more attention on health to lower the demand. The Plan had broad support by Member States and engendered great hope for progress in this area.

The Plan suggested “framing collective responses against drugs less like a war and more like an effort to cure a social disease.” It encouraged a middle ground approach between criminalization and legalization. The Plan was laudable, but in its application, supply and use of some substances decreased, while supply and use of other substances increased. Now, seven years later, there is growing awareness that the implementation of the strategies related to the original plan, particularly in the United States, included widespread criminalization of addicts. And as a result of the drug trade and such failed strategies, many are still trapped in a life-time cycle of criminalization, greater drug dependency and violence linked to the drug trade. 

Over a year before Katrina left the shores of Africa, a federal contract was awarded to Innovative Emergency Management, Inc. to coordinate a simulation exercise of a Category Type 4 Hurricane in the New Orleans area. Local, state, federal and volunteer organizational emergency officials collaborated in this simulation and exercise. The Hurricane Pam exercise, as it was tagged, had all the ingredients of a virtual storm with winds of 120 mph and up to 20 inches of rain, topping the levees and flooding the New Orleans area. What was forecasted was that 300,000 people would not evacuate in advance; 1000 shelters would be needed; 97 percent of all communications would be down; boats and helicopters would be needed for thousands 2 of rescues; 175,000 people would be injured; 200,000 would become sick and 60,000 would be killed; over 500,000 buildings would be destroyed. The Delta was on alert – stand-by in New Orleans!

For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. Acts 4:20

Michelle Alexander

Introduction

“We begin with ourselves. Each of us must answer the question: What will we do with the fullness and incompleteness of who we are as we stare down the interior material life of the cultural production of evil?”

Emilie M. Townes

Beloved,

I am pleased to share this educational resource which supports the sacred memory agenda of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference (SDPC). Our sacred memory agenda is an acknowledgement that we live in a world in which narratives and stories, images and social media are all a part of the cultural production of evil; they can likewise be part of the cultural production of good. Our sacred memory agenda is an affirmation that the responsibility and charge to keep our true narrative alive is ultimately ours. Our sacred memory agenda can serve to be a force for global good. Th e United Nations (UN) declared 2015 – 2024, the International Decade of People of African Descent and the Permanent Memorial to Honor the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade at the United Nations, entitled ‘Th e Ark of Return,’ has been established at its New York headquarters. As a UN, non-governmental organization (NGO), SDPC’s sacred memory agenda will contribute to the international collective impact of documentation, remembrance and celebration initiatives being undertaken by people of African descent throughout the world, under the rubric of the UN’s declaration.

Most of all, however, our sacred memory agenda is an expression of our faith by deed. Th e Word declares:

“Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Deuteronomy 4:9 (NIV)

For centuries, we, people of African descent, in the Diaspora (and on the continent), have been living in a crucible of transgenerational enslavement and trauma borne out of the cultural production of evil. We have resisted, navigated, died and survived debilitating and destructive legacies in its many forms of systemic racism, sexual abuse and economic exploitation. We, all the people of the United States of America, have been living in a crucible of transgenerational myth-making and reinvention of narratives that support what Townes refers to as the “cultural production of evil.” Most especially these myths and their legacies, psychosocial and structural, are rooted in a refusal to admit or address the consequences of a proclaimed democracy that was in fact founded upon native genocide and African enslavement. With each generation, the unhealed wounds and chasms of material disparities present in this crucible undermine the possibilities for living in the fullness of one’s humanity.

Borne in the suffering of enslaved persons in the midst of a declared democracy, the prophetic tradition of the African American church and SDPC has been unwavering in its role and efforts to be a healing balm of hope and help while speaking truth to power about injustices. It is abundantly clear, that for such a time as this, Black church leadership must carry the mantle of “Servants as Wounded Healers and Warrior Healers.” And, as Healers, we must lead the people in acts of remembrance, lamentation and celebration of our journey.

SDPC’s sacred memory agenda is an extension of our past truth-telling educational, advocacy and activism initiatives. These initiatives include our “bearing witness” methodologies related to Katrina and mass incarceration and resulting in a documentary, commissions and hearings processes. By extension, this work has led to current projects that elevate truth telling, justice, racial healing and transformation ministry; thus, a sacred memory agenda. For us to be our best selves as “Wounded Healers” and “Warrior Healers,” more attention must be given to what Howard Thurman calls the “Inward Journey.”

We beseech and need you to continue the journey. We pray this guide will help us collectively to achieve that goal. May this guide prick your soul, your theological imagination and ministry gifts to unleash a bountiful blessing of healing and health, compassion and love, strength and creativity to the people you serve.

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers

General Secretary