Poor minorities live in a new age of Jim Crow, one in which the ravages of segregation, racism, poverty and dashed hopes are amplified by the forces of privatization, financialization, militarization and criminalization, fashioning a new architecture of punishment, massive human suffering and authoritarianism.

In some cities such as Washington, DC, that 75 percent of young black men can expect to serve time in prison.

War at home is matched by a war on youth. I wrote about this recently. Young people graduate with an average of $23,000 in student loan debt, and they are the ones saddled with it. Youth have become indentured servants and that turns them away from public service.

There appears to be no space outside the panoptican of commercial barbarism and casino capitalism.

The United States has become addicted to violence, and this dependency is fueled increasingly by its willingness to wage war at home and abroad. War in this instance is not merely the outgrowth of polices designed to protect the security and well-being of the United States.

This is a moment in our history - that we can thank neoliberalism for - that has really destroyed what Hannah Arendt called "the virtue of thoughtfulness."

Young children are being arrested and subjected to court appearances for behaviors that can only be termed as trivial.