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Civil Rights

Being Trans In America Was Already Scary. Now It’s Terrifying.

A new federal order wouldn't just deny civil rights protections to trans people. It would deny we exist altogether. I’m a trans woman, and I’m terrified. Already, on any given afternoon, I’m regularly and publicly catcalled, mocked, laughed at, and treated as an object of social disgust. Trans women are one of the most assaulted and murdered demographics in the United States, especially when they’re non-white. We’re the frequent and favorite target of even liberal-leaning culture outlets like Saturday Night Live. Even Democratic darling Kamala Harris repeatedly fought to deny life-saving medical treatment to incarcerated trans women when she served as California’s attorney general.

Supreme Court: Difficult Nominations Have Lead To Historical Injustices

Far from being unusual, the hurried and partisan Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh mirrors several notable examples of similarly politicized confirmations in U.S. history. Those conflicts, which ultimately placed justices on the court, yielded some of the most damaging civil rights decisions in our nation’s history. Unlike any other branch of government, Supreme Court justices do not have to face voters at the polls. They have no term limits. Yet the high court is the final arbiter of constitutional rights and protections.

What You Don’t Know About Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks — my Auntie Rosa — was not just a tired old lady who sat down on a bus one day. With February 4 being (what would have been) my great aunt’s 105th birthday, I’m going to Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit to pay her my respects. But I also pay her my respects by refusing to let her legacy be turned into a caricature. I believe her story is more relevant than ever because she and people like her laid a foundation so that women today can be more vocal, can run for office, can demand equal rights and equal pay, and say we don’t have to be harassed.

From Georgia To NYC: Civil Rights Roots Of Community Land Trusts

When New Yorkers discuss the community land trust, they often describe it as a complicated land ownership structure, one that’s already proven its success in Bernie Sanders’ Burlington and in Boston. But the community land trust’s origin story reveals that it’s not simply a wonky policy tool dreamed up in the Ivy tower; rather, its roots lie in the life-and-death struggle by Blacks for civil rights in the deep South. In the model, a community-controlled nonprofit owns land and ensures the buildings or other assets on that land continue to serve the community, such as by requiring homeowners to abide by sales restrictions on their homes. The “Arc of Justice,” a documentary released last summer and screened at the New School on Wednesday, explores the founding of the United States’ first community land trust by civil rights leaders in southern Georgia during the 1960s.

What Failed Civil Rights Campaign Can Teach Climate Activists

In early December, Canada’s National Energy Board gave Texas pipeline company Kinder Morgan permission to ignore local laws and permits while starting construction on its Trans-Mountain pipeline. Scheduled to ship nearly 900,000 barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia by 2019, the project is a potential lightning rod for the climate movement. As someone with more than a decade involved in campaigns to stop tar sands expansion, I’ve been struggling with a simple question: How do we stop Kinder Morgan now that it’s been approved? On the one hand, there is a newly minted provincial government in British Columbia that took power with a promise to “use every tool” at its disposal to stop the project.

Justice, Clean Air And Water In The Age Of Trump

By Oliver Milman for The Guardian - The Trump administration is peeling away rules designed to protect clean air and water, fueling a growing urgency around the struggle for environmental justice, say political leaders, academics and activists. The Trump administration’s dismantling of environmental regulations has intensified a growing civil rights battle over the deadly burden of pollution on minorities and low-income people. Black, Latino and disadvantaged people have long been disproportionately afflicted by toxins from industrial plants, cars, hazardous housing conditions and other sources. But political leaders, academics and activists spoke of a growing urgency around the struggle for environmental justice as the Trump administration peels away rules designed to protect clean air and water. “What we are seeing is the institutionalization of discrimination again, the thing we’ve fought for 40 years,” said Robert Bullard, an academic widely considered the father of the environmental justice movement. “There are people in fence-line communities who are now very worried. If the federal government doesn’t monitor and regulate, and gives the states a green light to do what they want, we are going to get more pollution, more people will get sick. There will be more deaths.” Activists and some in Congress now view the blight of pollution as a vast, largely overlooked civil rights issue that places an unbearable burden on people of color and low-income communities. Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, recently said: “Civil rights have to include, fundamentally, the right to breathe your air, plant tomatoes in your soil. Civil rights is the right to drink your water. “If your children don’t have access to clean air and water, all the ideals we preach in this country are a lie. Environmental justice must be at the center of our activism in our fight to make real the promise of America.”

Dick Gregory: A Life Agitating & Seeking Justice

By Rachel Mack for Americans Who Tell The Truth. The great civil rights activist Dick Gregory died this week. His book, Nigger, was published when I was nine years old and had a long-lasting impact on my political development and views. He spoke at my university and added to helping to shape my political views and push me toward activism. When we organized the Occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC he was a regular visitor and spoke at the event.

Trump Rolls Back Civil Rights Efforts Across The Government

By Jessica Huseman and Annie Waldman for Pro Publica - Previously unannounced directives will limit the Department of Justice’s use of a storied civil rights enforcement tool, and loosen the Department of Education’s requirements on investigations. Elizabeth Hill, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, told ProPublica that the new “enforcement instructions seek to clear out the backlog while giving every complaint the individualized and thorough consideration it deserves.” Lifting the requirement of collecting three years of data will allow complaints to be addressed “much more efficiently and quickly,” she said in an emailed statement. Read the full statement here. For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious. Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.

Police Without Warrants Searched Low Income Housing

By Llowell Williams for Care2. Longmont, CO - Though the United States strives to realize justice and equality for all Americans, it is an unfortunate truth that when it comes to people of lower socioeconomic status, the reality is often far short of that. A rather stark example of this was recently exposed in the Colorado town of Longmont, a community located north of Boulder and Denver. In Colorado, landlords have the legal right to conduct inspections and perform maintenance on their rental units provided they issue a notice beforehand. In Longmont, however, management for low income housing took this right too far, resulting in the gross violation of tenants’ constitutionally guaranteed civil rights. In one such notice issued by the Longmont Housing Authority, as provided by a renter to NBC affiliate KUSA, a renter was told their apartment would be undergoing an inspection that would include a police officer and a drug-sniffing dog.

Enviro Groups Stage Massive People’s Climate March On Washington

By John Zangas of DC Media Group. Washington, DC - Hundreds of grassroots environmental groups from around the country rallied Saturday at the U.S. Capitol in a mass march against administration plans to deregulate environmental protections. Among their demands: respect the environment, stop denying climate change exists, continue policies to protect the water and air, and don’t strip EPA regulations. The broad-based coalition linked climate change to fossil energy extraction as not only the cause of the present period of massive ice melt and species extinction, but also as a nexus to the oppression of minorities and indigenous people. There were over 350 sister marches held in many major cities across the U.S. Tens of thousands walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, with indigenous people leading the way, past a barricaded Trump International Hotel.

Not Your Grandma’s Civil Rights Strategy

By Jon Else for Tom Dispatch - On a glorious afternoon in August 1963, after the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom wrapped up on the national mall, President John F. Kennedy, prodded by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, welcomed John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, and other march organizers to the White House for a discussion of proposed civil rights legislation. Fifty-four years later, on an afternoon in January 2017, when the even more massive Women’s March on Washington wrapped up, President Donald Trump responded with a sarcastic tweet. Just the day before, Trump’s team had removed the “civil rights” page from the issues section...

Fight For $15 And Movement For Black Lives Plan Nationwide Action

By Fight for $15 and Movement for Black Lives. MEMPHIS -- The Fight for $15 and the Movement for Black Lives will take to the streets nationwide April 4 – the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination – in a two-dozen-city “Fight Racism, Raise Pay” protest. Thousands of underpaid workers, local racial justice activists, elected officials and clergy will hold rallies, marches, teach-ins, and other demonstrations to stress that the push for economic and racial justice remains as deeply linked today as when Dr. King was killed in 1968 supporting striking black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. The coast-to-coast protests will culminate in a march by thousands of workers, national civil rights leaders and politicians on the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, where they'll hold a memorial at the site of Dr. King's assassination 49 years ago.

Civil Rights Groups Demand Immigration Agents Stop Impersonating Police Officers

By Staff of ACLU - LOS ANGELES - The ACLU Foundation of Southern California and a coalition of advocacy groups today sent a letter to Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, Mayor Eric Garcetti and city council members, demanding that they take steps to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from impersonating police officers to gain access to homes and businesses in Los Angeles. The deception critically endangers LAPD policies that seek to assure immigrant community members they can report crimes and assist police investigations without fear of deportation. These policies have been vital in furthering public safety. ICE permits its agents to misrepresent themselves as police officers, probation officers, religious workers and other officials to gain community members’ permission to enter homes without warrants. The ruse has also been used to get individuals to volunteer information they might not otherwise divulge.

Lawyer Defending Racial Gerrymandering Picked For Top Civil Rights Job

By Lee Fang for The Intercept - JOHN GORE, AN ATTORNEY who has worked to defend laws that critics say are designed to weaken the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, was selected by President Donald Trump to serve as a senior civil rights official at the Department of Justice. Gore’s new role as Trump’s choice for deputy assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is notable because he will lead the division that oversees civil rights laws, including voter suppression issues. Trump and his nominee to lead the Justice Department, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, are strong supporters of voting restrictions such as voter identification.

Chicago Police Routinely, ‘Systemically’ Abused Civil Rights

By Nadia Prupis for Common Dreams - Chicago police systematically violated people's civil rights by routinely using excessive force, particularly against African-Americans and Latinos, according to a bombshell report (pdf) from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released Friday. The report is the conclusion of a 13-month investigation into the Chicago Police Department (CPD), launched after the October 2014 police killing of 17-year-old black Chicago resident Laquan McDonald, whose fatal shooting was captured by the patrol car's dashboard camera. According to the inquiry, police routinely violated the Fourth Amendment by using "unnecessary and avoidable" force, including deadly force, which investigators attributed to poor training and accountability systems.

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