Education is the bedrock of any social movement. If one is to consider themselves a part of a movement, then they need to be proficient in what that movement stands for.

Last spring, I wrote about how we should re-center cannabis legalization conversations as an issue of racial justice and equity, just as Illinois successfully passed a legalization bill that also provided for the expungement of those incarcerated for low-level weed possessions. With the impending monopolization of cannabis on the horizon, we need to understand how the crusade for legal weed started and what it was a reaction to: the racist War on Drugs.

Indeed, America's mass incarceration system is more than that. It's written in stone in our nation's history and governmental structure. Throughout America's three-century-long political evolution, it has consistently excluded black and brown people from the political process. In order to unpack this complicated and disturbingly similar patterns of racial oppression, then perhaps Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" is essential reading.

Alexander's book has the potential to be the next publication that can inspire the next political movement. She guides readers clearly through centuries of history regarding how the United States has developed a strange addiction to incarcerating its own citizens.

Alexander compellingly explains how although we live in a "post-racial" society—one devoid of seeing color or shall we say "colorblindness"—there has been bipartisan support for essentially a "Jim Crow 2.0" system under the guise of the War on Drugs. She outlines the damning parallels between the Reagan and Clinton-era policies and the Jim Crow laws of Reconstruction, and how America's inability to reconcile its racist past has created a vacuum of millions of people imprisoned for low-level possessions of drugs.

She also takes audiences step-by-step through the incarceration process, from encountering the police right to getting booked. Along the way, Alexander explains how Supreme Court precedents have provided for these oppressions to continue.

As you could probably tell, "The New Jim Crow" isn't a wholesome or happy read, but most certainly it will enrage you in a way that motivates you to create change. Alexander exposes the mass incarceration and systematic racism in ways that we never really have known. She makes you check your privilege through a robust legal and historical analysis of how Jim Crow has essentially been resurrected in this so-called "post-racial" American society.

For these reasons, this is why I say "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander is a compelling, page-turning, and motivational read that is crucially essential for any aspiring progressive, especially in the age of hyper-conservatism.