Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives
Donna Murch
Haymarket Books
Drawing its title from one of America's foremost revolutionaries --Black Panther and Cuban exile Assata Shakur -- this collection of essays by award-winning Panther scholar Murch explores how social protest is challenging our current system of state violence and mass incarceration. Murch exposes the devastating consequences of state-sponsored overlapping lucrative punishment campaigns against gangs, drugs, and crime on poor and working-class populations of color. Organizing resistance has proven difficult, however this timely and urgent book shows how a youth-led political movement has emerged in recent years that challenges the bipartisan consensus on punishment and looks to the future through a redistributive, queer, and feminist lens. Murch frames the contemporary movement in relation to earlier struggles for Black Liberation, while excavating the origins of mass incarceration and the political economy that drives it.