When the Beginning Began
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When the Beginning Began by Julius Lester
In his first year working in Los Angeles's Skid Row, Forrest Stuart was stopped on the street by police fourteen times. Usually for doing little more than standing there. Juliette, a woman he met during that time, has been stopped by police well over one hundred times, arrested upward of sixty times, and has given up more than a year of her life serving week-long jail sentences. Her most common crime? Simply sitting on the sidewalk--an arrestable offense in LA. Why? What purpose did those arrests serve, for society or for Juliette? How did we reach a point where we've cut support for our poorest citizens, yet are spending ever more on policing and prisons? That's the complicated, maddening story that Stuart tells in Down, Out and Under Arrest, a close-up look at the hows and whys of policing poverty in the contemporary United States. What emerges from Stuart's years of fieldwork--not only with Skid Row residents, but with the police charged with managing them--is a tragedy built on mistakes and misplaced priorities more than on heroes and villains. He reveals a situation where a lot of people on both sides of this issue are genuinely trying to do the right thing, yet often come up short. Sometimes, in ways that do serious harm. At a time when distrust between police and the residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods has never been higher, Stuart's book helps us see where we've gone wrong, and what steps we could take to begin to change the lives of our poorest citizens--and ultimately our society itself--for the better.Julius Lester is the author of the Newbery Honor Book To Be a Slave, the Caldecott Honor Book John Henry, the National Book Award finalist The Long Journey Home: Stories from Black History, and the Coretta Scott King Award winner Day of Tears. He is also a National Book Critics Circle nominee and a recipient of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. His most recent picture book, Let's Talk About Race, was named to the New York Public Library's One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing. In addition to his critically acclaimed writing career, Mr. Lester has distinguished himself as a civil rights activist, musician, photographer, radio talk-show host, and professor. For thirty-two years he taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He lives in western Massachusetts.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780152012380 |
| ISBN 10 | 0152012389 |
| Title | When the Beginning Began |
| Author | Julius Lester |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace and Company |
| Year published | 1999-03-15 |
| Number of pages | 112 |
| Prizes | Commended for Sydney Taylor Book Award (Older Readers) 1999, Short-listed for National Jewish Book Award (Children's) 1999 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |