Search:

Free the land : how we can fight poverty and climate chaos / by Lim, Audrea,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An eye-opening examination of how treating land as a source of profit has a massive impact on racial inequality and the housing, gentrification, and environmental crises. Climate change, gentrification, racial discrimination, and corporate greed are some of the most urgent problems facing our society. They are traditionally treated as unrelated issues, but they all share a common root: the ownership of land. Environmental journalist Audrea Lim began to notice these connections when she reported on the Native communities leading the fight against oil drilling on their lands in the Canadian tar sands near her hometown of Calgary, but before long, she saw the essential role of land commodification and private ownership everywhere she looked: in foreclosure-racked suburbs and gentrifying cities like New York City; among poor, small farmers struggling to keep their businesses afloat; and in low-income communities attempting to resist mines and industrial development on their lands, only to find that their voices counted less than those of shareholders living thousands of miles away. Free the Land is a captivating and beautifully rendered look at the ways that our relationship to the land is the core cause of the most pressing justice issues in North America. Lim expertly weaves together seemingly disparate themes into a unified theory of social justice, describes how the land ownership system developed over the centuries, and presents original reporting from a wide range of activists and policy makers to illustrate the profound impact it continues to have on our society today. Ultimately, this book offers a message of hope: by approaching these socioeconomic issues holistically, we can begin to imagine just alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism, new ways to build community, and a more sustainable, equitable world"--
Subjects: Climatic changes.; Land use; Race discrimination.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

A knock at midnight : a story of hope, justice, and freedom / by Barnett, Brittany K.,author.;
"An urgent call to free those buried alive by America's legal system, and an inspiring true story about unwavering belief in humanity--from a gifted young lawyer and important new voice in the movement to transform the system. Brittany K. Barnett was only a law student when she came across the case that would change her life forever--that of Sharanda Jones, single mother, business owner, and, like Brittany, Black daughter of the rural South. A victim of America's devastating war on drugs, Sharanda had been torn away from her young daughter and was serving a life sentence without parole--for a first-time drug offense. In Sharanda, Brittany saw haunting echoes of her own life, both as the daughter of a formerly incarcerated mother and as the once-girlfriend of an abusive drug dealer. As she studied this case, a system came into focus: one where widespread racial injustice forms the core of America's addiction to incarceration. Moved by Sharanda's plight, Brittany set to work to gain her freedom. This had never been the plan. Bright and ambitious, Brittany was a successful accountant on her way to a high-powered future in corporate law. But Sharanda's case opened the door to a harrowing journey through the criminal justice system. By day she moved billion-dollar deals, and by night she worked pro bono to free clients in near-hopeless legal battles. Ultimately, her path transformed her understanding of injustice in the courts, of genius languishing behind bars, and the very definition of freedom itself. Brittany's riveting memoir is at once a coming-of-age story and a powerful evocation of what it takes to bring hope and justice to a system built to resist them both"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Barnett, Brittany K.; Jones, Sharanda; Clemency; Criminal defense lawyers; Judicial error; Prisoners;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Unmasking AI : my mission to protect what is human in a world of machines / by Buolamwini, Joy,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Dr. Joy Buolamwini is the self-described "Poet of Code" who has had a lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art -- disciplines that, she felt, pushed the boundaries of reality. After tinkering with robotics as a high school student in Tennessee, to developing mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow, Buolamwini eventually found herself at MIT. As a graduate student at the "Future Factory," Buolamwini's groundbreaking research revealed that AI systems -- from leading tech companies -- were consistently failing on non-male, non-white bodies. In Unmasking AI, Buolamwini goes beyond the news headlines about racism, colorism, and sexism in Big Tech to tell the remarkable story of how she uncovered what she calls "the coded gaze" -- evidence of racial and gender bias in tech -- and galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both tech industry and research sector, Buolamwini shows how race, gender, and ability bias can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity vulnerable in our AI-dependent world. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Buolamwini, Joy.; Artificial intelligence; Artificial intelligence; Discrimination in science.; Sex discrimination in science.; Artificial intelligence;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

#BlackInSchool / by Diallo, Habiba Cooper,author.; Ibrahim, Awad,writer of foreword.;
Includes bibliographical references."A young Black writer documents the systemic racism in her high school diary and calls for justice and change. The prevalence of anti-Black racism and its many faces, from racial profiling to police brutality, in North America is indisputable. How do we stop racist ideas and violence if the very foundation of our society is built upon white supremacy? How do we end systemic racism if the majority do not experience it or question its existence? Do our schools instill children with the ideals of equality and tolerance, or do they reinforce differences and teach children of colour that they don't belong? #BlackInSchool is Habiba Cooper Diallo's high school journal, in which she documents, processes, and resists the systemic racism, micro-aggressions, stereotypes, and outright racism she experienced in Canada's education system. Powerful and eye-opening, Cooper Diallo illustrates how our schools reinforce rather than erode racism: the handcuffing and frisking of students of colour by police at school; one-dimensional, tokenistic curricula portraying Black people; and the constant barrage of overt racism from students and staff alike. She shows how systemic racism works, how it alienates and seeks to destroys a child's sense of self. She shows how our institutions work to erase the lived experiences of Black youth and try to erase Black youth themselves. Cooper Diallo's words will resonate with some, but should shock, appall, and animate a great many more into action towards a society that is truly equitable for all."--
Subjects: Diaries.; Diallo, Habiba Cooper; High school students; High schools; Racism in education; Racism; Students, Black;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Black tunnel white magic : a murder, a detective's obsession, and '90s Los Angeles at the brink / by Jackson, Rick,author.; Connelly, Michael,1956-writer of foreword.; McGough, Matthew,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."This is the story of Rick Jackson, a famed LA homicide detective and eventual cold case investigator, and the case that he's never managed to let go. In June 1990, a white male UCLA student was found stabbed to death in a tunnel near the infamous Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers had lived. That night, Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were called on the scene and soon focused their investigation on the young man's two male roommates, one Black and one white. Nothing about the case made sense, though- not the relationship between these young men, not the potential influence of Wicca (then a trend among youth, and closely tied to the moral panic around Satanism), not the justice system that tried the two roommates very differently, and not Los Angeles itself, which was and remains a fraught tinderbox of racial bias and violence. In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Jackson takes us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, with no foreknowledge of information that would emerge later in the case. Readers will feel as though they are a fly on the wall, piecing together the truth about what happened to Ron Baker as the detectives did themselves, day by day and clue by clue"--
Subjects: Biographies.; True crime stories.; Personal narratives.; Murder; Murder; Race relations.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

What she said : conversations about equality / by Renzetti, Elizabeth,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A passionate advocate for gender equity, and one of our most respected journalists, explores the most pressing issues facing women in Canada today. The fight for women's rights was supposed to have been settled. Or, to put it another way, women were supposed to have settled -- for what we were grudgingly given, for the crumbs from the table that we had set. For thirty per cent of the seats in Canada's Parliament; for four per cent of the CEO's offices; for a tenth of the salary of male athletes; for the one per cent of sexual assault cases that result in convictions; for tenuous control over our health and bodies. "Aren't we over it yet? No, we're not," Elizabeth Renzetti writes. For more than thirty years, Renzetti was an award-winning journalist at the Globe and Mail. Her columns over the years followed the trajectory of women's rights and were written with humour and with sympathy. In this forcefully argued, accessible book, Renzetti explores a range of issues: the increasingly hostile world of threats that deter young women from seeking a role in public life; the rise of the toxic manosphere; the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of sexual harassment and assault; the inadequacy of access to health care and reproductive justice, especially as experienced by Indigenous and racialized women; the ways in which future technologies must be made more inclusive; the disparity in pay, wealth, and savings, and how women are not yet socialized to be the best financial managers they can be; the imbalanced burden of care, from emotional labour to child care. Renzetti explores the nuance of these issues, so often presented as divisive, in order to unite women at a time when women must work together to protect their fundamental right to exist fully and freely in the world. Exploring too the places where progress is being made, What She Said is a rallying cry for a more just future."--
Subjects: Equality; Women; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

One-shot Harry / by Phillips, Gary,1955-author.;
"Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King's Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kingslow, with whom he'd only just reconnected. The LAPD declares the car crash an accident, but when Ingram develops his photos there are signs of foul play. Ingram feels no choice but to play detective, even if it means putting his own life on the line. Armed with his wits, his camera, and occasionally his Colt .45, Harry Ingram plunges head-first into the seamier underbelly of LA society, tangling with racists, leftists, blackmailers, gangsters, zealots and lovers, all in the hope of finding something resembling justice for a friend"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Novels.; African Americans; Murder; Photojournalists;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Seeking social democracy : seven decades in the struggle for equality / by Broadbent, Ed,1936-author.; Abele, Frances,author.; Sas, Jonathan,author.; Savage, Luke,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The first full-length treatment of Ed Broadbent's ideas and remarkable seven-decade engagement in public life. Ed Broadbent is unique among living political leaders of international stature in offering a fully developed analysis of social democracy and its relevance in the 21st century. His career as a political philosopher, activist, and politician and his conversations with contemporaries such as Willy Brandt, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Fidel Castro, and Mikhail Gorbachev inform his analysis of the struggles for social justice in the long 20th century. Having come to the socialist and social democratic traditions by way of academic study, Broadbent tested and tempered his ideas in the great postwar struggles over social rights, gender and racial equality, workers' rights, the containment of capital, and reversing the commodification of private life. The book explores the roots of his egalitarianism and the formation of his social democratic ideas, Broadbent's engaged internationalism and relationship with key historical figures, and his experiences and reflections in practical politics and pursuit of government across several of the most momentous decades in the history of Canada. He was a Member of Parliament for over two decades and was, for most of this period, leader of the New Democratic Party. He remains to this day an important social democratic voice in the public debates of the nation. Part political history, part intellectual biography, part manifesto for social democracy this first-ever full-length treatment of Broadbent's thought will be animated in dialogue with three collaborators from different generations, each similarly immersed in the history of social democratic ideas--the result being a fresh analysis of social democracy, Canadian politics, and a lively contribution to current debates and dilemmas."--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Broadbent, Ed, 1936-; Equality.; Socialism.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Black ghost of empire : the long death of slavery and the failure of emancipation / by Manjapra, Kris,1978-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The 1619 Project illuminated the ways in which every aspect of life in the United States was and is shaped by the existence of slavery. Black Ghost of Empire focuses on emancipation and how this opportunity to make right further codified the racial caste system-instead of obliterating it. To understand why the shadow of slavery still haunts society today, we must not only look at what slavery was, but also the unfinished way it ended. One may think of "emancipation" as a finale, leading to a new age of human rights and universal freedoms. But in reality, emancipations everywhere were incomplete. In Black Ghost of Empire, acclaimed historian and professor Kris Manjapra identifies five types of emancipation--explaining them in chronological order--along with the lasting impact these transitions had on formerly enslaved groups around the Atlantic. Beginning in 1770s and concluding in 1880s, different kinds of emancipation processes took place across the Atlantic world. These included the Gradual Emancipations of North America, the Revolutionary Emancipation of Haiti, the Compensated Emancipations of European overseas empires, the War Emancipation of the American South, and the Conquest Emancipations that swept across Sub-Saharan Africa. Tragically, despite a century of abolitions and emancipations, systems of social bondage persisted and reconfigured. We still live with these unfinished endings today. In practice, all the slavery emancipations that have ever taken place reenacted racial violence against Black communities, and reaffirmed commitment to white supremacy. The devil lurked in the details of the five emancipation processes, none of which required atonement for wrongs committed, or restorative justice for the people harmed. Manjapra shows how, amidst this unfinished history, grassroots Black organizers and activists have become custodians of collective recovery and remedy; not only for our present, but also for our relationship with the past. Timely, lucid, and crucial to our understanding of the ongoing "anti-mattering" of Black people, Black Ghost of Empire shines a light into the deep gap between the idea of slavery's end and its actual perpetuation in various forms--exposing the shadows that linger to this day"--
Subjects: Liberty; Race relations; Slavery;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Vanguard : how black women broke barriers, won the vote, and insisted on equality for all / by Jones, Martha S.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."According to conventional wisdom, American women's campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The movement was led by storied figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But this women's movement was an overwhelmingly white one, and it secured the constitutional right to vote for white women, not for all women. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha Jones offers a sweeping history of African American women's political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot and how they fought against both racism and sexism. From 1830s Boston to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and beyond to Shirley Chisholm, Stacey Abrams, and Kamala Harris, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women who, although in many cases suffragists, were never single-issue activists. She recounts the lives of Maria Stewart, the first American woman to speak about politics before a mixed audience of men and women, African Methodist Episcopal preacher Jarena Lee, Reconstruction-era advocate for female suffrage Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Boston abolitionist, religious leader, and women's club organizer Eliza Ann Gardner, and other hidden figures who were pioneers for both gender and racial equality. Revealing the ways black women remained independent in their ideas and their organization, Jones shows how black women were again and again the American vanguard of women's rights, setting the pace in the quest for justice and collective liberation. In the twenty-first century, black women's power at the polls and in politics is evident. Vanguard reveals that this power is not at all new, but is instead the culmination of two centuries of dramatic struggle"--
Subjects: African American women social reformers; African American women suffragists; African Americans; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI