Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution - REVIEW

by Elie Mystal

Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past.

Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm readers with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of eighteenth-century white men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media.

You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don’t need to accept the “whites only” theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn’t have to be.

Elie Mystal is The Nation’s legal analyst and justice correspondent, an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center, and the legal editor of the More Perfect podcast on the Supreme Court for Radiolab. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, the former executive editor of Above the Law, a former associate at Debevoise & Plimpton, and a frequent guest on MSNBC and Sirius XM. The author of Allow Me to Retort (The New Press), he lives in New York.

The New Press
ISBN-13: 978-1620976814

Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough - REVIEW

by Prithi Kanakamedala

Meet the Black Brooklynites who defined New York City’s most populous borough through their search for social justice.

Before it was a borough, Brooklyn was our nation’s third largest city. Its free Black community attracted people from all walks of life-businesswomen, church leaders, laborers, and writers-who sought to grow their city in a radical anti-slavery vision. The residents of neighborhoods like DUMBO, Fort Greene, and Williamsburg organized and agitated for social justice. They did so even as their own freedom was threatened by systemic and structural racism, risking their safety for the sake of their city. Brooklynites recovers the lives of these remarkable citizens and considers their lasting impact on New York City’s most populous borough.

This cultural and social history is told through four ordinary families from Brooklyn’s nineteenth-century free Black community: the Crogers, the Hodges, the Wilsons, and the Gloucesters. The book illustrates the depth and scope of their activism, cementing Brooklyn’s place in the history of social justice movements. Their lives offer valuable lessons on freedom, democracy, and family-both the ones we’re born with and the ones we choose. Their powerful stories continue to resonate today, as borough residents fill the streets in search of a more just city.

This is a story of land, home, labor, of New Yorkers past, and the legacy they left us. This is the story of Brooklyn.

Prithi Kanakamedala is Professor of History at Bronx Community College, City University of New York.

Washington Mews Books/NYU Press
ISBN-13: 978-1479833092

On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice - REVIEW

by Mike Africa Jr.

The incredible story of MOVE, the revolutionary Black civil liberties group that Philadelphia police bombed in 1985, killing 11 civilians—by one of the few people born into the organization, raised during the bombing's tumultuous aftermath, and entrusted with repairing what was left of his family.

"As necessary and powerful as it is captivating." – Michael Harriot, New York Times bestselling author of Black AF History

"Searing and urgent." – Bakari Sellers, New York Times bestselling author of My Vanishing Country and The Moment

Before police dropped a bomb on a residential neighborhood on May 13, 1985, few people outside Philadelphia were aware that a Black-led civil liberties organization had taken root there. Founded in 1972 by a charismatic ideologue called John Africa, MOVE’s mission was to protect all forms of life from systemic oppression. They drew their ideology from the Black Panther Party and pre-dated animal and environmental rights groups like PETA and Earth First. MOVE emerged in an era when Black Philadelphians suffered under devastating policies brought by the long, doomed war in Vietnam, Mayor Frank Rizzo’s overtly racist police surveillance, and, eventually, President Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs. MOVE members lived together in a collection of West Philadelphia row houses and took the surname Africa out of admiration for the group's founder.

But in MOVE's lifestyle, city officials saw threats to their status quo. Their bombing of MOVE homes shocked the nation and made international news. Eleven people were killed, including five children. And the City of Brotherly Love became known as the City That Bombed Itself.

Among the children most affected by the bombing was Mike Africa Jr. Born in jail following a police attack on MOVE that led to his parents’ decades-long incarcerations, Mike was six years old and living with his grandmother when MOVE was bombed. In the ensuing years, Mike sought purpose in the ashes left behind. He began learning about the law as a teenager and became adept at speaking and inspiring public support with the help of other MOVE members. In 2018, at age 40, he finally succeeded in getting his parents released from prison.

On a Move is one of the most unimaginable stories of injustice and resilience in recent American history. But it is not only one of tragedy. It is about coming-of-age for a young activist, the strong ties of family, and, against all odds, learning how to take indignities on the chin and to work within the very system that created them. At once a harrowing personal account and an impassioned examination of racism and police violence, On a Move testifies to the power of love and hope, in the face of astonishing wrongdoing.

Mike Africa Jr. is a sought-after speaker and writer who has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and on NPR. He starred in the HBO documentary 40 Years a Prisoner and was featured in the Audible original docu-series about the MOVE bombing, Summer of ’85, produced by Kevin Hart and Charlamagne tha God, and narrated by Hart. As a keynote speaker, Mike has been invited to speak everywhere from the Smithsonian and the University of Pennsylvania to the 55 Year Anniversary of the Black Panther Party.

D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, and Black Boy Smile, as well as coauthor of Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised. He is also editor at large for Salon and a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore. 

Mariner Books
ISBN-13: 978-0063318878