The Struggle Within Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States

An accessible yet wide-ranging historical primer, The Struggle Within discusses how mass imprisonment has been a state-sponsered tool of repression deployed against diverse, left-wing social movements over the last 50 years. Author Dan Berger goes on to examine some of the most dynamic social movements across half a century, including black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, Native American sovereignty, Chicano radicalism, white antiracist and working-class mobilizations, pacifist and antinuclear campaigns, earth liberation, and animal rights. Berger’s encyclopedic knowledge of social movements in the United States provides a rich comparative history of numerous campaigns that continue to shape contemporary politics. The book also offers a little-heard voice in contemporary critiques of mass incarceration by investigation how mass incarcerations have occurred within a slew of social movements that have provided steep challenges to state power.

Dan Berger is an assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington–Bothell. He is the author of The Hidden 1970s, Letters from Young Activists, and Outlaws of America, and his writings on race, prisons, media, and American social movements have appeared various journals. He is the cofounder of Decarcerate PA, an organization that works to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania. He lives in Seattle. Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor of geography at the CUNY Graduate Center at City University of New York. She is a member of the founding collective of Critical Resistance, one of the most important national antiprison organizations in the United States. She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, which was awarded the Lora Romero First Book Award by the American Studies Association. She lives in New York City. dream hampton has written about music, culture, and politics for 20 years. Her articles and essays have appeared in Detroit News, Essence, Harper’s Bazaar, the Village Voice, and a dozen anthologies. She lives in Detroit.

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