Michelle Alexander, Future Lion of New York
Future Lions of New York [February 16, 2018 - New York Times] Since the legendary chaos of 1970s and ’80s, New York has evolved to the point where the city’s “Disneyfication” is taken as a matter of public record. This is not true, or at least it’s not the whole story. The attacks of Sept. 11 and the Great Recession hit the city hard — as did a tourist-friendly Times Square. And yet New Yorkers remained and innovated. This era’s influencers, more diverse in gender and race than the lions of the past, reflect how the city’s power base has evolved. Here is a partial list of standouts — subject, as always, to change.
THE ACTIVIST
Michelle Alexander, a scholar and civil-rights litigator, exposed the warehousing in prisons of African-Americans in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and as a professor at Union Theological Seminary.
