Civil Rights

Could Civil Rights Movement Have Happened With Militarized Police?

August 21, 2014 Carl Gibson, www.occupy.com Strategize! Civil Rights, Militarization, Movement, Police

Would Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic marches to end segregation and grant voting rights to Black Americans have happened at all if Bull Connor’s police owned the same military equipment that the Ferguson Police Department has today? Can peacefully exercising First Amendment rights create any lasting change if police have the weaponry – and, apparently, the legal authority – to immediately and violently disperse crowds? Bull Connor became legendary as the Birmingham public safety commissioner who ordered police dogs and fire hoses to be used on peaceful civil rights protesters in 1960s Alabama. Birmingham became known as “Bombingham” after multiple racially-motivated bombingsaimed at intimidating the city’s black residents rocked the city, from the North Smithfield neighborhood to the notorious 6th Avenue Baptist Church bombing. In response, Dr. King declared “Project C (Confrontation)” on the Birmingham police, both to expose Connor’s heavy-handed law enforcement approach and to fill the jails with civil rights protesters willing to throw themselves at the grinding machine of the nation’s most racist police department.

Debate: From Dred Scott To Michael Brown

August 19, 2014 Blair L.M. Kelley, www.theroot.com Educate! Civil Rights, History, Missouri, Slavery

News out of Ferguson, Mo., has been devastating. Since unarmed teenager Michael Brown was killed by an as-yet-unidentified police officer, local police have responded to the community’s demonstration of outrage with unprecedented force—using military-style weaponry to suppress peaceful protests, arrest black elected officials and detain journalists. And Brown’s death seems to have unearthed a history of disregard for the rights of black residents. There is outrage across the country because Ferguson officials have not behaved as though the black citizens of this majority-black town have the same rights as all other Americans. Reporters keep saying that these images do not look like America, but Ferguson is America. And in America, black citizens should enjoy equal protection under the law and the right of a free press to report on what is happening anywhere in the United States. And this moment in Ferguson, Mo., makes me think about the historic Dred Scott v. Sandford case, an 1857 Supreme Court decision which had its roots in this same part of the country.

New Orleans’ New Civil Rights Leaders

August 18, 2014 Bill Quigley, www.southernstudies.org Organize! Civil Rights, Immigrant Rights, Immigration, New Orleans

Like many cities in the South, New Orleans has a proud history of civil rights leadership -- along with an equally grim history of civil rights violations. That history is repeating itself today. The African American community is again facing economic injustice and abuse from law enforcement. But, this time, the immigrant workers who rebuilt New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are also the targets of brutal civil rights violations. And those same workers are showing extraordinary bravery in fighting to end them. In November 2013, I was proud to stand alongside immigrant workers and community leaders engaging in peaceful civil disobedience in New Orleans to expose a brutal program of stop and frisk racial profiling-based immigration raids called CARI (Criminal Alien Removal Initiative), which targets Latinos. Squads from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), together with local police, have been conducting race-based immigration raids anywhere Latinos gather: stores, apartment buildings, churches, laundromats. The raids have led to constant terror for the immigrant workers and families who rebuilt the city we live in and love. The blatantly unconstitutional nature of the raids led to a Congressional inquiry and front-page coverage in the New York Times. Yet ICE continues to rely on them to meet its massive deportation quotas.

How Should Police Respond To Protests?

August 16, 2014 Radley Balko, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Civil Rights, Missouri, Police

The events these last few days in Ferguson, Missouri ought to be of grave concern to anyone who believes in the First Amendment, and specifically the rights to free speech, protest, and assembly. As you may have read, last night was particularly ugly, as police arrested a St. Louis alderman, Huffington Post reporter Ryan J. Reilly, and our own Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery. Police also tear-gassed a news crew from Al-Jazeera. There are also reports, video, and images of police teargassing, arresting, and otherwise intimidating peaceful protests all over the town. While it’s true that there have been incidents of rioting, looting, and violence directed at police, the initial protests against Michael Brown’s killing were peaceful.* The only hint of violence at the first protest was described by an Associated Press reporter, who reported chants of “kill the police.” That report has since been disputed by people at the protest, who have suggested that the AP journalist or police misheard other chants. From what I can find, that report was also never confirmed by any other journalist. The problem lies in how local police responded to that initial protest. They brought out the full riot arsenal. Here we have a community that doesn’t see itself reflected in the police force. Ferguson is 67 percent black, while its police force is more than 90 percent white. It’s a community with long-simmering racial tension between police and the people they serve. It has now been well-reported that blacks are significantly over-represented when it comes to stop-and-frisks, traffic stops, and arrests in Ferguson, even though the town’s white residents are more likely to be caught with contraband like drugs or illegal weapons.

Civil Rights Commission Implores Eric Holder To Take Stronger Action On Ferguson

August 16, 2014 Marina Fang, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Civil Rights, Missouri, police brutality

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is urging Attorney General Eric Holder to delve deeper into possible civil rights violations in the police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and to press for more accountability by police in communicating information to the public. In a Friday letter to Holder, the commission expressed support for the Department of Justice's investigation of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager killed by a Ferguson police officer on Aug. 9, but called for more extensive scrutiny of the excessive police response to the subsequent protests. In particular, the commission requested that the Department of Justice examine the racial discrepancies between Ferguson's residents and the city's police force, writing that they "may be related, directly or indirectly, to the tension between concerned citizens and local government." While over 60 percent of Ferguson's residents are black, only three out of its 53 police officers and only one of its six city council members are black. The police force also has a history of racial profiling: Blacks in Ferguson are twice as likely to be stopped by police as whites. Racial profiling contributed to the city of St. Louis' police chief's decision to remove his officers from assisting the Ferguson police.

Dorothy Zellner Reflects On 50 Years Of Struggle

July 28, 2014 Philip Weiss, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Civil Rights, Israel, Jewish, Palestine

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer, the legendary effort by the civil rights movement to open up the vote in Mississippi to black people. That struggle is the subject of Freedom Summer, a documentary that will air on PBS’s American Experience, tonight. One subject of the film is Dorothy Zellner, a former staff member for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, who is today active in the Palestinian solidarity movement as a member of the board of the Friends of Jenin Freedom Theatre, a founding member of Jews Say No, and a volunteer for Jewish Voice for Peace. A few weeks ago during a commemoration of our visits to Gaza five years ago, Zellner told me “We are winning.” I asked her for an interview. She agreed, and the Q-and-A below reflects two conversations, with some edits. Question: You’ve said on a couple of occasions, We’re winning, we’re turning the corner. What is happening, why do you say that? Dorothy Zellner: Well this is not an original thought. When I express this idea in meetings with other activists, people nod and agree. I’m very well known as a pessimist. That’s why when I said it people actually paid some attention.

Leading Civil Rights Groups Just Sold Out On Net Neutrality

July 25, 2014 Lee Fang, www.republicreport.org Educate! Civil Rights, FCC, i, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

Last Friday, just before the Federal Communication Commission closed its comment period for its upcoming rule on “network neutrality,” a massive coalition of Asian, Latino and Black civil rights group filed letters arguing that regulators should lay off of Internet Service Providers regarding Title II reclassification and accept FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s original plan. In other words, something close to half of the entire civil rights establishment just sold out the Internet. The civil rights group letters argue that Title II reclassification of broadband services as a public utility — the only path forward for real net neutrality after a federal court ruling in January — would somehow “harm communities of color.” The groups wrote to the FCC to tell them that “we do not believe that the door to Title II should be opened.” Simply put, these groups, many of which claim to carry the mantle of Martin Luther King Jr., are saying that Comcast and Verizon should be able to create Internet slow lanes and fast lanes, and such a change would magically improve the lives of non-white Americans. The filings reveal a who’s who of civil rights groups willing to shill on behalf of the telecom industry. One filing lists prominent civil rights groups NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Urban League, the National Council on Black Civil Participation and the National Action Network. The other features the Council of Korean Americans, the Japanese American Citizens League, the National Black Farmers Association, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, the National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce, the Latino Coalition, and many more.

Paris Defies Ban On Pro-Palestine Demonstrations

July 20, 2014 Revolution et Libertes, www.bayareaintifada.wordpress.com Resist! Civil Rights, Israel, Palestine, Wars and Militarism

The French police can be seen HERE attacking a disabled pro Palestinian demonstrator who is bound to a wheelchair. As people rush to defend the man from the police and cameras appear, the police back off. People who could not reach the main demonstration had their own demo in front of the train station.The ban on Pro Palestine demonstrations started after clashes broke out between a march of supporters of Palestine and Zionists. Video shows Zionists breaking store fronts and collecting weapons to use against the pro Palestine march. Moments later, video shows the Zionist running for their lives as pro Palestinians counter surge. The Zionists then run to safety hiding behind their main supporters: the State and its police:

When The Black Students Of Wesleyan Took Over Fisk Hall

July 16, 2014 Rebel Empire Productions, www.youtube.com Resist! Black Power, Civil Rights, History, Malcolm X, Wesleyan

FISK TAKEOVER Based on the events of February 21st, 1969 at Wesleyan University. Follow us https://twitter.com/RebelXEmpire Check out http://thefisktakeover.tumblr.com/ On Friday, February 21st, 1969, the Black Students of Wesleyan took over Fisk Hall. They brought all academic processes to a halt to protest for a day of Remembrance for Malcolm X and forever changed the history of Wesleyan University.

At The Heart Of An Occupation And Beyond

July 1, 2014 Nathan Schneider, www.attheheartofanoccupation.blogspot.com Educate! Civil Rights, Democracy, Journalism, Occupy

I was drawn in initially before it existed by the idea that something like this might happen. In the summer of 2011, I was meeting with activists from around the world who were involved with different manifestations of global uprising that year, and I started wondering whether people were planning something like that in the United States. I started looking for planning processes. First, I found the group that was planning to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington DC. I went to one of their meetings, and it was through that that I learned about this group planning to occupy Wall Street. That was late July or early August. Out of curiosity and a desire to see the process of people trying to figure out what joining this global movement might mean in the United States, I went to my first meeting on August 10th, 2011. I had been covering activism in New York for a few years. I didn’t recognize anyone, which was really exciting. They were younger than a lot of the people that I’d been following around and getting to know. There was a sense of possibility that I had never felt before in that group, while also a sense of chaos and madness in good ways and sometimes in frustrating ways. I went as a reporter looking to cover this, and the first thing that happened when I arrived was having to present myself as a reporter and having a debate ensue about that. By the time the occupation began, I had felt a sense of connection with this community beyond the kind of normal reporter relationship.

Send Undocumented Youth To Freedom Summer

June 27, 2014 IndieGogo, www.indiegogo.com Organize! Civil Rights, Education, Freedom Summer, History, Immigrant Rights

On the 50th Anniversary of Freedom Summer 1964, invest in a new generation of freedom fighters: the brave undocumented student leaders of Freedom University! Project Summary In Georgia, undocumented students face severe discrimination based solely on their immigration status. Under Policy 4.1.6, they are barred from attending the state's top public universities. In their fight to overturn this policy and challenge the resegregation of higher education in the South, they have taken inspiration and guidance from the young freedom fighters who came before them -- most notably, the veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the summer of 1964, SNCC embarked on a brave experiment called Freedom Summer, which sought to empower blacks in Mississippi to defend their civil, political, and economic rights. Freedom Summer involved a voter registration project and the establishment of community centers and freedom schools.

Generational Struggle Needed To Re-Make The South

June 24, 2014 Chris Kromm, www.southernstudies.org Strategize! Activism, Civil Rights, History, Organizing, South

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, the massive organizing project that brought more than 1,000 volunteers to Mississippi and drew national attention to the ongoing civil rights struggle in the South. Freedom Summer was launched as an assault on segregation and inequality on many fronts. Activists set up 30 Freedom Schools as an alternative to the state's underfunded and segregated education system. The Medical Committee for Human Rights offered free health clinics. While Freedom Summer went beyond electoral politics, a key focus from the beginning was breaking down voting barriers and harnessing African-American political power. Mississippi was chosen in part because less than seven percent of the state's black voters were registered in 1962, according to the Congress of Racial Equality, and Freedom Summer built on ongoing voter registration efforts. Organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as a rival to the white-controlled state Democratic Party, and Freedom Summer helped pave the way for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

How To Build A Powerful People’s Movement

June 24, 2014 Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, www.thenation.com Strategize! Barack Obama, Civil Rights, History, Labor, Moral Mondays, North Carolina

How do we build a people’s movement? We start with vision. Prophetic moral vision seeks to penetrate despair, so that we can believe in and embrace new futures. It does not ask if the vision can be implemented—questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The slaves didn’t get out of slavery by first figuring out how to get out; they got out because they were driven by a vision that said, “Oh freedom over me. / And before I’d be a slave / I’d be buried in my grave / And go home to my Lord and be free.” If we are going to have a real populist movement in this country, we have to reinstate an imagination that is not driven by pundits but by a larger vision. Most of the time, your greatest vision comes in your darkest night, because it is then, Martin Luther King Jr. said, that you see the stars. Populist movements don’t build when everything is fine. A populist moral vision is a form of dissent that says there’s a better way, there’s a moral way.

Armed Resistance In The Civil Rights Movement

June 17, 2014 Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, www.prospect.org Strategize! Black Power, Civil Rights, History, Nonviolence, Racism

On his first visit to Martin Luther King Jr.’s house in Montgomery, Alabama, the journalist William Worthy began to sink into an armchair. He snapped up again when nonviolent activist Bayard Rustin yelled, “Bill, wait, wait! Couple of guns on that chair!” Worthy looked behind him and saw two loaded pistols nestled on the cushion. “Just for self-defense,” King said. In his new book, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, Charles E. Cobb, a former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, explores what he sees as one of the movement’s forgotten contradictions: Guns made it possible. According to Cobb, civil-rights leaders recognized that armed resistance was sometimes necessary to preserve their peaceful mission. Guns kept people like King alive. Danielle L. McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University, argues that armed self-defense was also far more common for black women in the South than has generally been acknowledged.

Civil Rights Champion Yuri Kochiyama Dies

June 7, 2014 Portside, www.portside.org Educate! Activism, Civil Rights, History, Japan, Socialism

Japanese-American activist and Malcolm X Ally, Yuri Kochiyama, has died at the age of 93. She spent two years in an internment camp and helped win reparations for Japanese-Americans. She was with Malcolm X when he was assassinated. She inspired generations. Tributes from 18 Million Rising and the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA; links to some of her writings and interviews. In the wake of her passing, 18MR is honoring Yuri by gathering stories about the ways she impacted individuals, our communities, and the movement. Tell us how you will remember her. BOLD I'll always remember Yuri as a compelling, inspiring leader who urged me to be my best radical self. I was a just a young, angry 20-year old student activist when I first met her - and I thought I knew everything there was to know about racism and injustice. Yuri listened to me at a time when I felt no one else would. Instead of lecturing me about my youthful foolhardiness, she affirmed my experience and agitated me to think bigger, be braver, and act more boldly. Nearly two decades years later, Yuri Kochiyama's words still guide me.

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