Usual Cruelty Quotes

“thought of James Baldwin’s letter to Angela Davis as she languished in a jail cell forty-eight years ago. “Dear Sister,” he began. “One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But, no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

“Over thirty years ago, the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Salerno that, “In our society, liberty is the norm, and detention prior to or without trial is the carefully limited exception.”
― Alec Karakatsanis, Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System