Civil Rights

DOJ Finds Tulsa Massacre Was ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack’

February 4, 2025 Aaryn Urell, Equal Justice Initiative. Educate! Black History, Black Wall Street, Civil Rights, History, Justice Department, Militarization, Oklahoma, Report, Tulsa, Tulsa Massacre, Tulsa Race Riot

The Justice Department issued a report Friday on the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when as many as 10,000 white Tulsans murdered hundreds of Black residents and burned businesses and homes to the ground in an attack that federal investigators found “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.” “The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

Apology Demanded: County Executive Bars Civil Rights Hero From Meeting

November 7, 2024 the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition, Popular Resistance. Resist! African Cemetery, Civil Rights, Desecration, Maryland, Repression

On Thursday October 31, 2024, Paul Pumphrey, a highly respected community elder and organizer was refused permission to attend a meeting on racial justice and later escorted out of the Executive floor by orders of Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. “Mr. Pumphrey is a giant among civil rights leaders in Montgomery County,” said Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, President of BACC. “This is unacceptable and the community demands an independent investigation and a public apology. Ironically, this behavior by Mr Elrich represents a continuation of Jim Crow policies.

Zionist Organizations’ Latest Strategy To Criminalize Palestine Advocacy

September 25, 2024 Amira Jarmakani and Emmaia Gelman, Mondoweiss. Educate! Anti-Semitism, Civil Rights, Education, Israel, Palestine Solidarity, Zionism

Universities welcomed their students back this fall with a set of policies designed to silence pro-Palestine speech and preemptively criminalize protest. Fortified by strategies from the security industry, they provide an administrative alibi for further militarizing campuses. Yet there’s another, more insidious move at play, one belied by the fact that some universities house these new repressive policies under the guise “free speech” and student’s rights. Across the county, universities are employing the right-wing tactic of weaponizing rights to quash dissent. In the process, we are seeing how the pretense of civil rights mobilizes a machinery of repression aimed to eradicate the movement for Palestinian liberation.

Racist Hotel Owners File For Bankruptcy Ahead Of Civil Rights Trial

September 10, 2024 Brandy Calabaza, NDN Collective. Resist! Bankruptcy, Civil Rights, Native Americans, Racism, South Dakota

Rapid City, SD – On Saturday, September 7 the Retsel Corporation, owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel, filed for bankruptcy just before the start of the federal civil rights trial brought by NDN Collective scheduled to begin Monday. NDN Collective filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2022 against the Grand Gateway Hotel after it denied service to Native Americans because of their race. The Retsel Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows the business to remain open as it reorganizes its debts. Under this filing, all other litigation must pause until the business settles in bankruptcy court and that timeline is still to be determined. As a result, the civil rights lawsuit against the Grand Gateway is on hold.

UN Report Details Rampant US Human Rights Violations At Home And Abroad

November 10, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Civil Rights, Human Rights, Report, United Nations (UN), US Imperialism

A United Nations body has issued a damning report blasting the United States for its rampant violations of a major human rights treaty that it ratified in 1992. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) enshrines the rights to life, to vote, and to freedom of expression and assembly; and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It forbids discrimination in the enjoyment of civil and political rights based on race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status (which includes sexual orientation).

‘McCarthyite Backlash’: Response To Criticism Of Israel Alarms Groups

October 31, 2023 Chris McGreal, The Guardian. Educate! Civil Rights, Free Speech, Israel, McCarthyism, Palestine

Civil rights groups in the US have warned of a “wave of McCarthyite backlash” against criticism of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza after Americans expressing support for the Palestinians have been sacked, faced threats of violence and hounded by pro-Israel groups. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has warned of the “continued criminalisation of advocacy for Palestinian rights” and described an “increasing tide of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab attacks in the US” following the Hamas cross-border attack in which about 1,400 Israelis were killed and more than 200 abducted.

Prosecution Of Trudi Warner For Holding Sign Sparks Public Resistance

September 25, 2023 Just Stop Oil. Resist! Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Europe, London, Solidarity, United Kingdom (UK)

If Michael Tomlinson KC, the Solicitor General, hoped that prosecuting Trudi Warner, a 68 year old retired social worker from Walthamstow, East London would deter others from doing the same thing, it’s not going to plan for him. On Monday, 25 September, a matter of days after the announcement of his decision to apply for the committal to prison of Ms Warner, for holding up a sign, more than 250 members of the public are replicating her action outside criminal courts around the country (including in London, Bristol and Manchester) as part of the growing public campaign, Defend Our Juries. Meanwhile many others, including the Climate Psychology Alliance and a Professor of Law have spoken out.

Cops Incorporate Private Cameras Into Their Surveillance Networks

May 16, 2023 Beryl Lipton, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Educate! Civil Rights, Community Control, Police, Private Cameras, Surveillance

Police have their sights set on every surveillance camera in every business, on every porch, in all the cities and counties of the country. Grocery store trips, walks down the street, and otherwise minding your own business when outside your home could soon come under the ever-present eye of the government. In a quiet but rapid expansion of law enforcement surveillance, U.S. cities are buying and promoting products from Georgia-based company Fusus in order to access on-demand, live video from public and private camera networks. The company sells police a cloud-based platform for creating real-time crime centers and a streamlined way for officers to interface with their various surveillance streams, including predictive policing, gunshot detection, license plate readers, and drones.

Public Order Act Dubbed ‘The Worst Attack’ On Dissent ‘For Decades’

May 7, 2023 Tom Anderson, The Canary. Resist! Civil Rights, Police, State Repression, United Kingdom (UK)

The draconian Public Order Act was given royal assent on 2 May, dramatically increasing police powers to arrest protesters. The Home Office has already cited the new Act in threatening letters to anti-monarchists. The campaign group Republic received intimidating letters this week, listing the arrest powers under the new Act. Extinction Rebellion has also received similar threats. In fact, the Guardian reported that one ‘senior’ insider, who knew about the discussions between the police and the government, confirmed that the Act had been brought into force early, ahead of the coronation on 6 May.

Federal Lawsuit Filed Against Washington DC Over Police Violence

February 23, 2023 Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Resist! Civil Rights, Lawsuit, Police, police brutality, Washington D.C.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), and its Center for Protest Law & Litigation, filed a federal lawsuit against the District of Columbia challenging the Metropolitan Police Department’s “repressive and violent tactics including the authorized indiscriminate use of ‘less lethal’ projectile weapons against peaceful protestors and bystanders, gratuitously and without notice or warning and in order to intentionally retaliate against and inflict pain upon protestors challenging policing in our society.” The lawsuit seeks to end the MPD’s unconstitutional and punitive tactics of indiscriminately deploying less lethal weapons, including maiming projectiles, into crowds of persons engaged in First Amendment protected activities, in particular those challenging racist police violence.

Five Suggestions For When State Repression Comes To Town

January 28, 2023 Lauren Regan, It's Going Down. Strategize! Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Prisons, State Repression

CLDC has been providing movement aligned legal support to the campaigns and activists in the so called U.S. for over 20 years now. In that time period, I have personally witnessed numerous waves of state repression targeting the campaigns that were moving the needle on the moral compass—anti-racism, environmental and animal defense, water and food safety, Indigenous sovereignty, LGBTQIA+, and others. The state, whether government actors or big corporate profiteers, have a limited playbook that they tend to repeat over and over. This is why knowing your movement history is core to building resilience. History has demonstrated that when state repression comes to town it is often because your campaign is winning or demonstrating strength and the state elects to spend vast resources on derailing your momentum.

Privacy Is The Entry Point For Our Civil And Basic Rights’

July 28, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Educate! Abortion, Civil Rights, Privacy, Surveillance

From the outset, the gutting of Roe by Dobbs is so devastating for, of course, the constitutional reasons, that at one time, Roe codified and really affirmed that abortion was a basic right. Dobbs, in overruling that, overturning that, has laid open states to pick and choose whether they will allow abortion providers and individuals that kind of right. But we’re in a very different moment now in 2022 than we were in the 1970s, and that’s really because of the rise of the digital age. With it, as you mentioned in your opening, is that the Internet is our primary pathway for almost everyone, I think, to information, to healthcare to, you know, telehealth appointments. And so there are these huge questions now about how people will access both just information, and then who is going to have access to that data that we are all of us engaging in and creating a footprint for.

Supreme Court’s ‘Miranda’ Decision Further Guts Civil Rights Law

July 6, 2022 Reuters. Educate! Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police, Supreme Court

A U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday illustrated the extent to which the court has transformed a Reconstruction-era law meant to protect the rights of freed slaves and marginalized Americans into a formidable shield for the most powerful, including police, prosecutors and businesses. The June 23 decision bars lawsuits against police for using evidence obtained without advising people of their rights – the ‘Miranda’ warnings the court mandated nearly 60 years ago that have since become the framework through which most Americans understand their rights against police intrusion.

Miscarriage Of Justice Catalyzed A Movement Led By Asian Americans

June 26, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Organize! Asian Americans, Auto Workers, Civil Rights, Racism

Vincent Chin was beaten to death in Detroit in June 1982, by two white auto workers who reportedly said it was because of him that they had lost their jobs. At the time, listeners may recall, Japan was being widely blamed for the collapse of the Detroit auto industry. Chin was Chinese-American. Elite media, as reflected by the New York Times, didn’t seem to come around to the story until April 1983, with reporting on the protests emanating from Detroit’s Asian-American community about the dismissive legal response to the murder.

Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee Prepares For Demonstrations

October 17, 2021 Elise Brehob, Industrial Worker. Organize! Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prisoner rights, Worker Rights and Jobs

As 2021 comes to a close, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee is collaborating closely with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak as they organize collective actions inside prisons and jails from August 21 to September 9, 2022. These actions will include labor strikes, work equipment sabotage, sit-ins, boycotts and hunger strikes. The campaign, called “Shut ‘Em Down 2022,” plans to focus on locally organized actions driven by incarcerated people to meet their abilities and the demands of their specific facilities. IWOC is a committee of the Industrial Workers of the World. “When you’re incarcerated, human rights abuses are happening left and right because the mentality is that you are there as a punishment,” says Courtney Montoya, media liaison for IWOC and Jailhouse Lawyers Speak.

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