RICHARD THOMPSON FORD

RICHARD THOMPSON FORD

/

Stanford Professor of Law · Expert on Civil Rights & Antidiscrimination Law
Author of Dress Codes · Rights Gone Wrong · The Race Card

One of the things that I've tried to do in my work is demonstrate the way that laws that don't seem to be directly related to social equality, to equality of opportunity, to racial justice in fact are and that it's only through also reforming these kind of systemic and institutionalized forms of discrimination that we could truly achieve an egalitarian society. So what I've really wanted to argue against is the idea that civil rights are kind of a magic bullet and that those kinds of laws alone would be sufficient to achieve.

ANTHONY JOSEPH

ANTHONY JOSEPH

/

Award-winning Poet, Novelist & Musician, Lead vocalist of The Spasm Band
Author of Sonnets for Albert

The life of Caribbean people is not really documented. So this idea of Caribbean life being fragmented is something that I've had in my mind for a long time. So when I came to write this collection for my father, I realized that it was the same process and what I had were fragments, especially with him, because he wasn't around in a physical sense all the time. So all I had were little photographs, scattered memories, and remembrances. They're little parts of his life and parts of my experience with him... I never disliked my father. I always loved him and always was fascinated and captivated by him.

FURY YOUNG & BL SHIRELLE

FURY YOUNG & BL SHIRELLE

/

Co-Executive Directors of DJC Records

I took this class on genocide that had a huge impact on me, and it also coincided, just the timing, with the Occupy Wall Street movement. So then two years later in 2013, I was reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and the book is about how mass incarceration is like a modern-day racial caste system. And I just got the idea to do an album, because I was listening to a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd, The Wall. And it started from there, just a little seed and a spark of just this idea for this one album. And then over time, it just evolved into an EP, and then a record label and a nonprofit. –Fury Young

I think in the end, what our mission is, is to dismantle stereotypes around race and prison. But maybe from listening to that album, and you see this guy, he applied for your job, and he has a drug charge or something. Maybe you're not looking at it so crazy anymore. It's like, know what? I'll give him an interview. I'll see. And that interview may change, you know, your life and that person's life. So that's like the ideal scenario. – B.L. Shirelle