Portside

The permanence of racial injustice makes the struggle for the future necessary today, says James Forman Jr. Over the next few weeks, The Atlantic will be publishing a series of responses to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. This is the first in a series. Readers are invited to send their own responses to hello@theatlantic.com, to follow along on Twitter at #BTWAM, or to read other responses to the book from Atlantic readers and contributors.

The rise of Black Lives Matter has presented opportunities for Clinton and her opponents, who are seeking to energize black voters to build on the multiethnic coalitions that twice elected Barack Obama. But the candidates have struggled to tap into a movement that has proven itself to be unpredictable and fiercely independent.

The value for me personally was in what the protest exposed in Bernie Sanders, and by extension, myself. When asked directly about white supremacy and police violence against people of color, Sanders responded by talking about fixing the economic system and providing more jobs. But the BLM protestors chanted “Say her name!” in reference to Sandra Bland because Bland’s particularity demonstrates that increased economic opportunities alone will not solve the problem.

The murder of three men and six women at a church in Charleston is a national tragedy, but in America, the killing of black people is an unending spectacle.

Numbers alone can't convey what the justice system does to the individual black body. Kalief Browder was sent to Riker's Island when he was 16 years old for a crime he did not commit. He spent three years there without a trial.

“It’s disturbing when you have what amounts to American soldiers viewing American citizens somehow as the enemy,” local alderman Antonio French told CNN.

Getting captured on film was the only "mistake" police officer Michael Thomas Slager made when he killed Walter Scott. Otherwise, he did everything by the book, and likely would never have been charged.

For the first time in Ferguson, Missouri's history, half of the city council will be black. The city's residents are predominantly black, but their council members have been predominantly white.

We can no longer ignore the fact that members of law enforcement have become a threat to the lives of black men and women.

On March 30, Mr. Abu-Jamal collapsed in the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy from diabetic shock before being hospitalized in the ICU at Schuylkill Medical Center. Despite his serious condition, he was transferred back to the prison just two days later. The medical attention given to Mr. Abu-Jamal thus far has been administered without adequate information and has raised questions of medical neglect.