It’s exciting that Princeton community has taken on Michelle Alexander’s landmark book, The New Jim Crow, published in 2010. Groups and congregations around the town have been reading and learning together. Many of us have learned, for the first time, that there are more than 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States — that’s more individuals, per capita, than either Russia or China.

What’s more exciting is that people can now lend a hand to the criminal justice reform movement that has seen some significant accomplishments in New Jersey. In 2008, New Jersey launched a “Second Chance Campaign” that helped Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman gain passage of three parts of her
Omnibus Criminal Justice Reform bill in the 2009-10 legislative session. Some reforms have been accomplished, but there is plenty left to be done.

Nicole Plett

On Thursday, March 14, at 7 PM, the Princeton YWCA will present “Now Hear This,” a discussion forum that looks at the New Jim Crow as it relates to women, children and their families. Facilitated by Simona L. Brickers and Nicole Plett, the discussion will address both the unique concerns of incarcerated women and of those women who live with the consequences of having family members in prison or recently released from jail.

Brickers, a Trenton native, facilitates the African American Interest Book Club at Princeton Barnes & Noble. She teaches with the Literacy Volunteers in Mercer County, Inc. and is an NAACP Chairperson of Legal Affairs in Trenton. A doctoral student, she has served as Child Protection Board member for the City of Trenton.

Plett, a member of the Integrated Justice Alliance (IJA) and representative of Building One New Jersey, confronts the crisis of mass incarceration and the challenges of reintegration by working with institutions, organizations, and individuals. She is also an officer of the League of Women Voters of Lawrence
Township.

Says Plett: “I look forward to having more voters become aware of how important this reform process is, and how they can play a key role in getting new legislation passed.”

There will be a weeklong reading of The New Jim Crow starting Sunday, April 7, at 5 p.m. For more information on this and other events connected to this cause, click here. 

Riverblindness starts with an excruciatingly itchy rash, and when it leads to blindness, children must leave school to be full-time caregivers for family members. About 21 million of the 60 million people there are at risk of getting this socially disruptive disease. There is a drug for riverblindness, provided free by Merck & Co., but it is a challenge to get the drug to remote villages and ensure that every person takes the drug once a year for at least 10 years.

I’ll be there, supporting UFAR founder Daniel Shungu. James Floyd, a former Princeton mayor who will celebrate his 91^st birthday that evening, will be the guest of honor.

Photo by Robin Birkel: Susan Lidstone (right) shows Dana Hughes the dolls that she and volunteers from the Lebanon Quilting Guild fashioned as favors for the Fourth Annual UFAR African Soiree.on Saturday, March 9, 5 to 8 p.m., at Princeton Theological Seminary. Also shown, a brightly colored African Sunset quilt, made by Shirley Rudd, which will be auctioned at the Soiree.
 

People are talking about “The New Jim Crow,” the term proposed by Michelle Alexander in her book with that title. According to a documentary about this, the “discrimination that was legal in the Jim Crow era is today illegal when applied to black people but perfectly legal when applied to ‘criminals.’ Since the rise of the drug war and the explosion of the prison population, and because discretion within the sys­tem allows for arrest and prosecution of people of color at alarmingly higher rates than whites, pris­ons and criminal penal­ties have become a new ver­sion of Jim Crow.”

In a column in today’s Times of Trenton, meet Barbara Flythe, who is on the New Jim Crow task force. She leads the discussion at Witherspoon Presbyterian Church on first Sundays, i.e. Sunday, February 4, 11:45 a.m.   

On Wednesday, February 6, at 7 p.m., at the Princeton Public Library, see the documentary mentioned above, Matthew Pillischer’s “Broken on All Sides.” Pillischer will be there for the discussion. 

POSTPONED due to storm On Friday, February 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah, 406 Nassau Street, Mark Taylor, a professor at the seminary, will lecture on “I Was in Prison: Remembering Jesus in the U.S. Lockdown. Taylor, the author of “The Executed God,” has been active on issues involving incarceration for many years and is a compelling speaker. 

February is of course a time when many organizations try to focus on issues experienced by people of color. This year, the criminal justice system is the focus for many of these events. Here is a partial calendar from the Not in Our Town Princeton website.

Not in Our Town  invites anyone/everyone to Continuing Conversations on Race on first Mondays at 7:30 p.m. at the Princeton Public Library. 

The fundamental devaluation of dark skin — 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation — is surprisingly resilient, says Charles M. Blow in an op-ed in the New York Times.  

Anti-black sentiment has risen around the country, according to the polls.

Blow quotes Herman Cain to illustrate how using slavery as an analogy may have become “subversively chic.” Cain, running as a Republican presidential candidate, built an entire campaign around this not-so-coded language, saying that he had left “the Democrat plantation,” calling blacks “brainwashed” and arguing, “I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way.”   
  
Issues like these are on the table every month at the  Not in Our Town sessions, held on first Mondays at the Princeton Public Library. The next Continuing Conversations on Race, is set for Monday, January 7, at 7:30 p.m.

For this month, the focus is on the values honored by those in higher education. Some believe that everyone has equal opportunity at, for instance, Princeton University. Others may differ. Roberto Schiraldi and Fern Spruill will lead the discussion, focusing on such topics as minority employment, education, and the retail experience. All are welcome to share their views in an open, friendly, and confidential session. 

Nationally, more people are expressing anti-black sentiments. This discussion, as with all of Not in Our Town Princeton’s activities, focuses only on Princeton.  

The Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) gets four stars on the report card provided by  Charity Navigator; it earns 69.13 points out of 70. So Dennis Micai, executive director of TASK, will be able to share that good news at a breakfast at Princeton United Methodist Church (PUMC), Nassau and Vandeventer, on Sunday, January 13 at 8 a.m.

PUMC volunteers have been serving at TASK in Trenton for two decades, but last June the church and TASK began a new partnership to serve meals in Princeton to more than 50 people every Wednesday. Some come for the food, some for the fellowship, and dozens of volunteers from both the church and the community are helping. TASK cooks most of the meals but outside organizations (the restaurant Zorba’s Brother cooked a turkey dinner last month) have also contributed. TASK has a similar partnership in Hightstown.