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One thief in particular[...] responded: "Grandfather, I know, I understand, and you must forgive me. But I have been struck more times than I have cheeks left to turn. Must I count for you the days I entered these shops only to be greeted by a detective on my heels? What kind of a fool would I be to sit at home now and twiddle my thumbs? How is it my job not to hit back? You are like my father's father, but this Polis where we live—isn't it obvious? It is no sanctuary...," which to me by then sounded like the very best of arguments.

— Pay As You Go by Eskor David Johnson (Page 187 - 188)

In northern Mexico, I interviewed and spent a long afternoon with a man who, after living for almost four decades in Los Angeles, where his whole family still resided, tried crossing the desert to reunite with them after being caught up in an immigration raid. He was caught by the Border Patrol, pushed into the back of a truck ("dog-catchers," they sometimes call them), where, after the truck slipped off the road and flipped, the man broke his back—luckily avoiding serious spinal damage. Border Patrol agents gave him a back brace and a bottle of pain pills, and then swiftly deported him. I remember him shaking his pill bottle like a maraca, somehow finding the strength to joke about the pain waiting for him after he'd swallow the last of the pills. Less than a week later, still planning his next move, he died. The cause of death was deemed a heart attack, though it's hard to imagine the stress and the recent severe injury weren't a factor. I spoke with his daughter in LA a few days later: she wanted to hear about her father's last days. I didn't have much to report, but explained that despite his intense pain and confusion, he was exceedingly polite with me, and that he lamented the fact that he had no money treat me to a Coke.

— Case for Open Borders by John Washington (Page 199)

Believing in magic is the same as love: those convinced of its existence, and of falling in love, end up doing so sincerely, and those who doubt their feelings thwart the very possibility of having them, a paradox that leaves us forlorn, wondering what we might have become if only we'd allowed ourselves to believe.

— A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba (Page 90)

A veritable master class in populist dialectics: call attention to an already out-of-control situation, offer an unattainable solution and accuse the political adversary of being responsible for it all.

— A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba (Page 24)

Consider peer researcher Vincent Thompson, who while still on parole was pulled over for a search on the pretext of a low-pressure tire, and subsequently reincarcerated. When we visited him in jail as he awaited a transfer to an upstate facility, he was bereft and digging deep for the determination necessary to weather the outsized consequences of a minor mistake. The reincarceration resulted in his eviction. His landlord had Vincent's possessions dumped on the curb, where they were taken or destroyed. He lost the $1,500 security deposit he had scraped together for the down payment on the apartment. The eviction marred his rental record and would make nearly impossible to obtain a new lease. He also borrowed several thousand dollars from his girlfriend for a lawyer to fight the charge, and lost his internship and the monthly stipend that it paid, as well as the deposit and two months of payments on his car. Eight months later, when Vincent was released, he had to start all over again. A tiny amount of marijuana-a substance that was in the process of being decriminalized in New York when he was pulled over-had ended up costing him and his girlfriend well over $10,000 in addition to eight months of his life.

— Cars and Jails by Julie Livingston, Andrew Ross (Page 136 - 137)