Social Justice

Crime in America features selections from a series of six books Paul Brakke wrote on what's wrong with the criminal justice system and how to fix it. These books deal with the police, courts, and prisons, and consider of some of the crises now facing America due to illegal immigration, the opioid crisis, and the growing divide between racial, ethnic, rural-urban, and income groups. This book summarizes the critical insights of these other books in order to reach the widest possible audience, because one of Brakke's reasons for writing this book is to inspire real change.

As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories - when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a Black man charged with raping a White woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was 12 years old.

As a street chaplain, activist, and cofounder of Open Table Nashville, Lindsey Krinks takes us on an unforgettable spiritual journey to tent cities, alleys, slums, and the front lines of movements for justice. Praying with Our Feet challenges preconceptions about people who live on the streets, calling us to move from charity to justice and to get our hands dirty in the struggle for a better world.

This suspenseful true story of a drug cartel hitman who got away with murder after murder in California's Central Valley over three decades reveals how the criminal justice system fails our most vulnerable immigrant communities. On the surface, 58-year-old Jose Martinez didn't seem evil or even that remarkable - just a regular neighbor, good with cars and devoted to his family. But in between taking his children to Disneyland and visiting his mom, Martinez was also one of the most skilled professional killers police had ever seen.

This audiobook covers some of the key cases in which Justice Kennedy was involved during his three decade span on the U.S. Supreme Court. This includes an assessment of the evolution of Kennedy's thinking on topics such as separation of powers, marriage equality, and the death penalty. For legal scholars and interested U.S. Supreme Court observers, this book provides a case-centric summary of Justice Kennedy's thinking and some of the key cases during his long Supreme Court tenure.

The world is not as God intends it to be. God's heart is to make things right, and for the world to be just. But complex problems warrant more sustained attention than quick posts on social media. How can we actually make a difference? Activist Mae Elise Cannon takes us beyond the hashtags to serious engagement with real issues. God calls the church to respond substantively to the needs of the poor, the realities of racial inequity, and the mistreatment of women and the marginalized.

The 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenager in Florida, and the subsequent acquittal of his killer, brought public attention to controversial "Stand Your Ground" laws. The verdict, as much as the killing, sent shock waves through the African American community, recalling a history of similar deaths, and the long struggle for justice. On the Sunday morning following the verdict, black preachers around the country addressed the question, "Where is the justice of God? What are we to hope for?"

The police now have unparalleled power at their fingertips: surveillance technology. Seamless, persistent, even permanent surveillance is available - sometimes already deployed, sometimes waiting for the right excuse. Automatic license-plate readers allow police to amass a granular record of where people go, when, and for how long. Drones give police eyes - and possibly weapons - in the skies.

In 1955, Katharine Clark, the first American woman wire reporter behind the Iron Curtain, saw something none of her male colleagues did. What followed became one of the most unusual adventure stories of the Cold War. While on assignment in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Clark befriended a man who, by many definitions, was her enemy. But she saw something in Milovan Djilas, a high-ranking Communist leader who dared to question the ideology he helped establish, that made her want to work with him. It became the assignment of her life.

On growing up in the American South of the 1960s - an all-American white boy - son of a long line of Methodist preachers, in the midst of the civil rights revolution, and discovering the culpability of silence within the church. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for The Birmingham News.

Kids have always been on the front lines of the fights for justice. From marches protesting child labor to the student strike that helped build the case for Brown v. Board of Education to modern-day March for Our Lives and the Climate Strike, Kids on the March tells the empowering story of children and teens throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century rallying to fight for liberty, justice, and equality.

A dynamic family exchange that pivots between the voices of a father and son, The Movement Made Us is a unique work of oral history and memoir, chronicling the extraordinary story of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and its living legacy embodied in Black Lives Matter. David Dennis Sr, a core architect of the movement, speaks out for the first time, swapping recollections both harrowing and joyful with David Jr, a journalist working on the front lines of change today.

In this remarkable book, Sandra Day O’Connor explores the law, her life as a Supreme Court Justice, and how the Court has evolved and continues to function, grow, and change as an American institution. Tracing some of the origins of American law through history, people, ideas, and landmark cases, O’Connor sheds new light on the basics, exploring through personal observation the evolution of the Court and American democratic traditions.

Most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying Black men and women even their names. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes 19 extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through US history and back to Africa.

When tough-on-crime laws passed 30 years ago during an era of drug-fueled violence, they were supported across the political spectrum. The subsequent "war on drugs" sent non-violent offenders to prison for decades and, in some cases, life. As a result, the nation's prison and jail population today is 2.3 million, more than quadruple the number that were incarcerated in 1980. One in 100 adults is behind bars in America.

Ever wonder how the strength and determination of women helped shape the landscape of reproductive rights in America? Are you fascinated by the power of an independent, militant women’s movement, which could even influence the conservative Supreme Court? If so, Free Abortion on Demand Without Apology: Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe America should be your next listen.

Hope is a decision, but it is a hard one to recognize in the face of oppression, belittlement, alienation, and defeat. To help embolden hope, here is a powerhouse collection of essays and personal stories that speak directly to teens and all YA readers. Featuring Angie Thomas, Marie Lu, Nicola Yoon, David Levithan, Libba Bray, Jason Reynolds, Renée Ahdieh, and many more!

Lord knows, Rev Al has had his personal and very public ups and downs - but he's come out bigger and better than ever. Though the host of MSNBC's PoliticsNation is as fiery and outspoken as ever about the events and issues that matter most, he's learned that the only way we can get right as a nation is by getting right from within. In this, his first book in over a decade, Rev Al will take you behind the scenes of some unexpected places - from officiating Michael Jackson's funeral, hanging out with Jay-Z and President Barack Obama at the White House, to taking charge of the Trayvon Martin case.

In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution.

Portugal, 1967. Sonia thinks she knows what her future holds. She'll become a poet, and together she and her artist boyfriend, Ze Miguel, will rise above the government restrictions that shape their lives. The restrictions on what Sonia can do and where she can go without a man's permission. The restrictions on what music she can enjoy, what books she can read, what questions she can ask.