In the face of voter suppression, discrimination, and the sheer power elected officials have over our lives, it is fundamental that we be represented at the ballot boxes as immigrants and working people, and you have to be a citizen to vote. For information on eligibility and the process for applying for citizenship, click here.

If you are an HTC-represented worker whose union contract provides employer-paid-for legal assistance, you can contact the Pre-Paid Legal Fund for assistance with the citizenship process. For more information call: (212) 586-6400; ext. 4258

This guide, from the ACLU, is a valuable resource to handle encounters with police for those who are protesting right now. To read the guide, click here. 

Did you know that for many years after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially banned slavery, throughout the South, state and local laws and police persecution were used to effectively re-enslave many Black Americans and to deny them the right to relocate? This PBS documentary is based on the acclaimed and painstakingly researched book by Douglas A. Blackmon. Available to watch on PBS. 

As of 2016, the United States had 25% of the world’s prisoners, with only 5% of the world’s population. This documentary makes the case that policies of criminalizing non-violent behavior (such as the “War On Drugs”) and the immense system of mass incarceration in this country has been largely for the purpose of disenfranchising millions of Black Americans and exploiting contract prison labor. Watch 13th on YouTube.

The period immediately after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery was a time of hope that ended with bitter tragedy and betrayal. From 1865 to 1877, the former slaves tasted the promise of freedom and citizenship. They exercised their right to vote and many were successfully elected representatives to Congress and state legislatures and to executive offices as well. They were backed by the full might of the U.S. Army and Government, until the President of the United States, Congress, and the Northern states abandoned them to the vengeance of their former owners. That betrayal consigned them to an infamous machinery of institutional terror, oppression, exploitation, apartheid, and lynching which still haunts their descendants. This is a four episode documentary, watch the first episode on PBS.

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, President Obama held a town hall featuring speakers from My Brother's Keeper Alliance on “Reimagining Policing in the Wake of Continued Police Violence.” Experts discuss previous and current policing reforms, and expand our ideas on what is possible going forward. Watch it on Youtube. 

This film is based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, Remember This House. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, who reads Baldwin’s words and channels his righteous anger, the documentary traces the lives of three of Baldwin’s closest friends who were assassinated: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. The film connects the Civil Rights Movement to today’s #BlackLivesMatter, and illuminates how racist minstrelsy in Hollywood perpetuated false assumptions of white superiority and Black subjugation. This award-winning documentary is a call to action against the systemic racism that still plagues our society. Watch it on YouTube.

The famous 1963 March on Washington was organized by the great civil rights leaders of the time, with the vital support of religious leaders and the labor movement. You can watch the PBS documentary about it on YouTube here. 

The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, had the remarkable idea of teaching her third-grade class about the pain and arbitrary unfairness of prejudice and discrimination by dividing them into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups. That small creative teaching exercise shook the local community and resonated far beyond. The full video on Elliott’s class is available on Youtube. 

This movie is the story of Walter McMillian’s appeal to overturn his unjust conviction for murder and sentence of death in Alabama. It is based on the memoir of McMillian’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson (to read more about the book, look under the “Read” section of the website.) You can watch it on Youtube. 

We all want to consider ourselves as “not racist.” But, as Dr. Kendi argues, we need to push beyond being “not racist,” and instead must meaningfully strive to be antiracist. Being an antiracist isn’t just an identity we get to brandish, but a continuous process where we strive to overcome our own internalized (and at times unconscious) racism, and push for policy to work towards a truly just society. Kendi’s book is a personal narrative where he acknowledges that even he, as a Black man, can hold internalized racist ideas that have consequences. It is essential reading for those of us who want a meaningful course of action to address systemic racism that starts at the individual level. Buy it here.

The New Jim Crow exposes how racial discrimination is at the root of the United State’s so-called criminal justice system. Alexander compels us to see how our country’s system of mass incarceration targets Black men, through failed policies like the so-called ‘War on Drugs,” and utilizes their bodies for cheap labor. When released from prison, these former inmates are denied access to jobs, housing, and even stripped of their right to vote. Alexander calls for the fight against mass incarceration to be central to the new Civil Rights movement. Buy it here.

Safiya Umoja Noble, a Black Woman, spent 15 years working in advertising and marketing. During that time, she witnessed the increasing influence of big companies like Google in filtering the information that we see. Now a professor at UCLA, Noble adds a new racial dimension to growing concerns about corporate influence in our public discourse online. Algorithms of Oppression shows how private interests create search algorithms that highlight positive images of whiteness while harming and discriminating against people of color. Buy it here.

Just Mercy is a nonfiction work about the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that represents people on death row, minors who were given sentences of life without parole for non-violent crimes, and inmates who have not had access to adequate legal counsel. Told through multiple personal accounts and the detailing of cases, such as overturning the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian, Bryan Stevenson (NYU law professor and Equal Justice Initiative founder) tells the stories of Black Americans in the criminal justice system. Buy it here.

If you care about democracy in the United States, you should read this book. Daley demonstrates how Republican leadership “won” a Congressional majority through the undemocratic practice of gerrymandering. After President Obama was elected in 2008, Republicans worked incredibly hard to win elections leading up to and in 2010, at local and state levels. After their electoral victories and the 2010 census, conservative politicians gained control of the redistricting processes and redrew districts to intentionally disadvantage people of color, and ensure conservative majorities in state legislatures and in Congress. The result, in many places, is a system so rigged it hardly matters who’s running for office. Reading this is necessary, because once we understand how our democracy was corrupted we can work to undue this immoral power grab. Buy it here.

Memphis in 1968 was a place where wretched working conditions, unequal access to public services, and low wages kept most Black workers in deplorable conditions of poverty. When two Black sanitation workers were crushed like garbage in the back of a defective truck, it sparked a strike by a largely Black male workforce to fight for economic justice and workplace protections. This meticulously researched book brings together a rich cast of characters to document the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike. During the strike, Martin Luther King stood up to white bosses, police chiefs and politicians, forming a multiracial coalition of ministers, workers, and union organizers under the famous slogan “I AM A MAN.” While Dr. King saw the campaign as the basis of his hopes for America, he was vilified as a subversive, harassed by the FBI, and ultimately assassinated in Memphis on the tragic morning of April 4. Buy it here.

401 years ago, the first slave ship docked on the shores of Virginia. Its arrival marked the beginning of African slavery in British North America. This collection of visual media, articles and essays, from The New York Times, illuminates the central role of slavery in the formation of the United States and its continuing effects on the social, economic and political fabric of this country. Read it here. 

This article, from Vox News, connects George Floyd’s death to the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black Americans. Through an exhaustive use of graphs and data, this article illustrates that Black America is not only facing a racist policing crisis, but the compounding effects of discriminatory health, housing and economic systems. Read it here.