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Civil Rights

The Civil Rights of Children

February 14, 2014 Andrew Cohen, www.theatlantic.com ,
On December 5, 2013, Plaintiff A.J. and her mother walked about a mile to reach the court because the family does not have a car and public transportation is not available. When they reached the court, Plaintiff A.J. learned that her case was continued for another week because all of the public defenders were in Crisp County Superior Court handling cases. No one from the Cordele Circuit Public Defender’s Office notified Plaintiff A.J. or her mother in advance to inform them of the Public Defender’s planned absence or of the continuance. On December 13, 2013, Plaintiff A.J. appeared in Ben Hill County Juvenile Court again; this time, a public defender was present. This was Plaintiff A.J.’s first time seeing a public defender since her arraignment on October 24, 2013. Minutes before court began, the public defender informed Plaintiff A.J. that the prosecutor was seeking detention time. Plaintiff A.J. planned to deny all of the charges against her, but decided to admit to all of the charges because she had not talked to her public defender before that day in court and she did not believe he was prepared to mount a defense.

The Co-op That Changed The South

February 9, 2014 David J. Thompson, www.ncba.coop , , ,
It was a small cooperative store on a little known island off the coast of South Carolina. During the harshest days of the civil rights struggle, embattled black leaders came through its doors seeking inspiration. Among the legendary leaders who visited the co-op were: Ralph Abernathy, Dorothy Cotton, Conrad Brown, Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr, John Lewis, Bernice Reagon, Cleveland Sellers, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Andrew Young, Hosea Williams and many others. What began in that co-op was a Citizenship School to teach blacks on Johns Island, South Carolina how to qualify to vote. Later, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) spread that program throughout the South. That one class in the co-op became thousands of classes in churches, schools and homes. In 1962, the SCLC brought in other groups who then formed the Voter Education Project (VEP). Between 1962 and 1966 VEP trained 10,000 teachers for Citizenship Schools and 700,000 black voters registered throughout the South. By 1970, another million black voters had registered.

Dr. King: Beyond The Dreamer, A Personal Story

January 20, 2014 Gar Alperovitz, www.sojo.net , ,
IN THE LAST YEAR of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. struggled with what are best understood as existential challenges as he began to move toward an ever-more-profound and radical understanding of what would be required to deal with the nation’s domestic and international problems. The direction he was exploring, I believe, is far more relevant to the realities we now face than many have realized—or have wanted to realize. I first met King in 1964 at the Democratic Party’s national convention held that year in Atlantic City—the occasion of an historic challenge by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to the racially segregated and reactionary Mississippi Democratic Party. I was then a very young aide working for Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin.

Why We Should Care About Clyde Kennard

January 20, 2014 Robert Shetterly, www.commondreams.org ,
Chances are, you haven’t heard of Clyde Kennard, an unsung hero and martyr of the Civil Rights Movement, a man of great wisdom, compassion, gentleness, and determined courage. Until a few months ago, I hadn’t either. Then a colleague told me a remarkable story about a man set on showing southern Mississippi white people that their culture would be better for them if they integrated. A man whose claim on the American Dream was so deserved that in 1960 a governor, a college president, former FBI agents, police, and members of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission decided to frame him and sentence him to Mississippi’s brutal Parchman Prison for seven years to make sure his dream was not realized.

NSA Uses Google Cookies to Pinpoint Targets for Hacking

December 11, 2013 Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson and Barton Gellman, www.washingtonpost.com ,
The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance. The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.

Report: One in Four ‘Activists’ May be Corporate Spies

December 2, 2013 Nafeez Ahmed, www.theguardian.com ,
A stunning new report compiles extensive evidence showing how some of the world's largest corporations have partnered with private intelligence firms and government intelligence agencies to spy on activist and nonprofit groups. Environmental activism is a prominent though not exclusive focus of these activities. The report by the Center for Corporate Policy (CCP) in Washington DC titled Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage against Nonprofit Organizations draws on a wide range of public record evidence, including lawsuits and journalistic investigations. It paints a disturbing picture of a global corporate espionage programme that is out of control, with possibly as much as one in four activists being private spies.

December 1, Rosa Parks Human Rights Day

November 30, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
Annual Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Event- Ceremony and Reenactment 11-30-13 Providence RI- TOMORROW at 12:30PM, the Rosa Parks Coalition and and Peoples Assembly remember the day in 1955 that Rosa Parks started the next phase of the freedom movement that eventually ended segregation in the south. This is part of the build up to International Human Rights Day on Dec 10th. December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks arrested in Montgomery: December 1 marks the 55th anniversary of a notable event that occurred in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her quiet defiance resonated down the corridors of time...

Armed Cops Raid Reporter’s Home, Seize Files

October 28, 2013 Lisa Simeone, www.abombazine.com ,
Armed agents bashing down your door before dawn, while you're still asleep in bed or in the shower or on the toilet, pointing guns at you and screaming, scaring the shit out of you and your children, and often, one of their favorites, shooting your family pet? And sometimes, for good measure, raiding the wrong house? Where does this happen? And how often? In the USA. Every day. Every day. Over 100 times every day. Don't believe it? Then you don't know what's going on in your own country. Maybe you should watch something other than American Idol or Homeland or MSFuckingNBC and read something more than just emails from MoveOn or your Fearless Leader who sits in the White House.

Mississippi to Make History by Opening Civil Rights Museum

October 24, 2013 Dexter Mullins, www.aljazeera.com
It's an unremarkable plot of land, nestled between the state's archives, fairgrounds and Capitol building, but history will be made there Thursday when state officials and civil rights leaders gather to break ground for the country's first state-funded civil rights museum. It is being built in conjunction with a new state history museum erected on the same site, and both are scheduled to open in 2017, in time for the state’s bicentennial. The museums will be built “side by side,” as the locals say, and will be connected by a common entryway, sharing classroom space, an auditorium and resources.

This Snack Food Corporation Has a Creepy Plan to Spy on You in the Grocery Store

October 19, 2013 Brian Fung, www.washingtonpost.com ,
Mondelez International, whose properties include Chips Ahoy, Nabisco, Ritz and other high-profile snack brands, says it's planning to debut a grocery shelf in 2015 that comes equipped with sensors to determine the age and sex of passing customers. The shelf, which is hooked up to Microsoft's Kinect controller, will be able to use basic facial features like bone structure to build a profile of a potential snacker, Mondelez chief information officer Mark Dajani told the Wall Street Journal. While pictures of your actual face won't be stored, aggregate demographic data from thousands of transactions will be.

Stop-And-Frisk in Public Housing

September 24, 2013 NY Times Editorial Board, www.nytimes.com
Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan made the right decision last week when she granted class-action status to a lawsuit brought by public housing residents and visitors who say they were illegally stopped or arrested by the police in their buildings. The ruling in Davis v. the City of New York clears the way for a trial in one of three federal class-action suits challenging different aspects of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, under which hundreds of thousands of times a year people are detained, often while doing nothing wrong.

Path to Autocracy: Could America Become a Police State?

September 24, 2013 L Michael Hager, www.truth-out.org , ,
In the name of post-9/11 security, the Patriot and FISA acts have severely compromised the civil liberties of all Americans. Yet it's not just a matter of individual privacy. Daniel Ellsberg observed that when people know that their every comment on phones or emails "is being recorded and can be retrieved," they won't feel free to speak their minds. That's especially true when what they want to say contradicts official policy or can be seen as political protest. "We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," said Ellsberg.

NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell’s imagination – Guardian Editor

September 24, 2013 Dominic Rushe, www.theguardian.com ,
The potential of the surveillance state goes way beyond anything in George Orwell's 1984, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, told an audience in New York on Monday. Speaking in the wake of a series of revelations in the Guardian about the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance operations, Rusbridger said: "Orwell could never have imagined anything as complete as this, this concept of scooping up everything all the time. "This is something potentially astonishing about how life could be lived and the limitations on human freedom," he said.

Egyptian Arrested for Naming Donkey After General

September 24, 2013 Mariam Rizk, www.freedetainees.org , ,
The state news agency says a farmer in southern Egypt has been arrested after putting the military chief’s name and an army-style cap on his donkey while riding it through town. MENA news agency said that Omar Abul-Magd was arrested late Friday in Qena province for allegedly insulting Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who led the popularly-backed coup against President Mohammed Morsi. Since Morsi’s ouster, authorities have cracked down on critics of the powerful military. Earlier this week, a military court ordered five pro-Morsi protesters to serve up to three years in prison for chanting against the army. Three were tried in absentia.

Obama-Appointed Review Panel Set to Whitewash Illegal NSA Surveillance

September 22, 2013 Kevin Gosztola, www.firedoglake.com ,
A group of experts appointed to review the surveillance engaged in by the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies is working under the control Office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and is not focused on investigating surveillance abuses that former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden has exposed. Revelations around top secret surveillance programs and the critical debate spurred was what drove President Barack Obama to appoint the review group in the first place.
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