Black Liberation and Justice in Detroit
What would it take to make Detroit a “just city” – an actual sanctuary of justice for its residents? Amanda Alexander, founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Justice Center is working on exactly that. Based on a wide range of experiences – from learning alongside ACT UP AIDS activists, to spending time in newly post-apartheid South Africa, to the Movement for Black Lives – Alexander combines her background as a historian and an attorney to reimagine safety and justice in Detroit.
In this episode of
Shades of Freedom, Alexander weaves together her own experiences, and the long history of global civil rights movements, to discuss what’s going on right now in Detroit, including innovative supports for community members that prevent contact with the legal system in the first place, shifting funds from a focus on policing to prevention, and supporting communities to define and create their own safety.