Racial Justice

How Detroit Police Slapped False Murders On Young Black Men

April 3, 2015 Aaron Cantú, www.truth-out.org Educate! Corruption, Law, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Racial Justice

A 2005 report published by the Northwestern University School of Law traced the first documented use of "snitch testimony" in the United States to 1819, when the state of Vermont convicted Jesse Boorn for murder based on testimony from his cellmate. The cellmate told a judge that Boorn confessed to the crime inside their jail cell while awaiting his trial. In exchange for testifying, the cellmate was freed after Boorn's trial, and Boorn was sentenced to the gallows. This basic reward system underpinning jailhouse informant testimony persists into the present day. It's not difficult to imagine why a prisoner informant would lie about overhearing a confession if it means real material benefits.

Over 100 People Were Killed By Police In March

April 3, 2015 Kanya Bennett, www.aclu.org Educate! police brutality, Police the Police, Racial Justice

Here’s a statistic for you: It's been 31 days since the release of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing report, but the number of fatal police encounters is already over 100 and counting. That’s an average of more than three people killed each day in March by police in America. This isn’t a problem concentrated in a few rogue police departments. Even those police departments with the best of intentions need reform. Take, for example, last week’sDepartment of Justice report that Philadelphia police shot 400 people – over 80 percent African-American – in seven years. This is in a city where the police commissioner is an author of the very same White House task force report calling for police reform.

Mumia Hospitalized In Diabetic Shock, Family Denied Access

April 2, 2015 San Francisco Bay View, www.sfbayview.com Educate! Mass Incarceration, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Political Prisoner, Racial Justice

From Mumia’s attorney Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center: “Yesterday morning, March 30, Mumia Abu-Jamal was rushed to the hospital after passing out at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Mahanoy. He was admitted to the Schuylkill Medical Center with a blood sugar level of 779. Today, he received visits from his wife, Wadiya, and his brother, Keith Cook. Mumia’s blood sugar had dropped to 333 as of a couple hours ago. This is still elevated and at an unhealthy level. “Mumia does not have a history of diabetes but had been experiencing a series of symptoms that should have alerted medical staff at the prison to the onset of the disease. Instead, he was not given comprehensive diagnostic treatment and a medical crisis emerged that could have resulted in his slipping into a diabetic coma or worse. . .

Black America’s State Of Surveillance

March 31, 2015 Malkia Amala Cyril, www.progressive.org Educate! Racial Justice, Surveillance

Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, my mother, a former Black Panther, died from complications of sickle cell anemia. Weeks before she died, the FBI came knocking at our door, demanding that my mother testify in a secret trial proceeding against other former Panthers or face arrest. My mother, unable to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left that they would be watching her. They didn’t get to do that. My mother died just two weeks later. My mother was not the only black person to come under the watchful eye of American law enforcement for perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying.

NLG Students To Hold ‘Black Lives Matter’ Day Of Action

March 31, 2015 National Lawyers Guild, www.nlg.org Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Law, Racial Justice

On Thursday, April 2, two days before the 47thanniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., National Lawyers Guild (NLG) students and faculty will hold aday of action at law schools nationwide in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement against racist police violence and white supremacy. Despite strong, grassroots organizing and regular demonstrations since the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, police killings of unarmed Black Americans continue with impunity. This week, NLG members will coordinate with other student and local groups to disrupt business as usual and call attention to the racist legal system which criminalizes and oppresses people of color.

UNC Students Urge School Stop Honoring KKK Leader

March 30, 2015 Tyler Kinkade, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Racial Justice, Student Activism

Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are renewing a push for the school to change the name of a building named after a 19th-century Ku Klux Klan leader. Saunders Hall is named after William Saunders, a Confederate colonel who later became a chief organizer for the KKK in North Carolina. UNC named the building, which primarily houses the history department, in 1922 to honor Saunders' work compiling Colonial records. Students have been pushing the school to rename the building for years. This year, student activists are asking the university to rename it for Zora Neale Hurston -- who, prior to integration, was the school's first black student -- and to require that each student take a campus tour explaining the racial history of the university.

Solidarity Not Fear: World Social Forum Opens In Tunisia

March 26, 2015 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Educate! Racial Justice, Tunisia

Tens of thousands of people marched in the pouring rain through Tunisia's capital on Tuesday to kick off the 14th World Social Forum—a global gathering of civil society movements—and bring the message of peace and solidarity to the site of last week's deadly attack on the National Bardo Museum. "The march is really inspiring, and despite the rain, the energy is very high," Mai-Stella Khantouche, member of the California-based Causa Justa/Just Cause, told Common Dreamsover the phone from the demonstration as it proceeded to the museum. "There are so many different organizations and people here coming together to show solidarity," added Khantouche, who is attending the Forum as a delegate with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.

Community Wants Answers In Police Killing Of Undocumented Man

March 23, 2015 Candice Bernd, www.truth-out.org Resist! Black and Brown Unity, police brutality, Racial Justice, Undocumented

"Are you going to kill me?" That was the last thing Rubén García Villalpando reportedly asked Grapevine, Texas, Police Officer Robert Clark before Clark answered his question - in the affirmative. According to witnesses, García Villalpando had his hands up when Clark shot him twice, February 20, in Euless, Texas - a city technically outside the officer's jurisdiction. Clark's shooting of García Villalpando echoes what has become an all-too-familiar, tragic tale across the nation amid a national debate on the policing tactics used in communities of color, sparked initially by the killing of Michael Brown and subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which have come to the fore again recently with the release of a Department of Justice (DOJ) report detailing the city's systemic racist policing policies of collecting revenue off the backs of Black people.

Mall Of America Security Catfished #BlackLivesMatter

March 19, 2015 Lee Fang, www.firstlook.org Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Consumerism, Racial Justice, Surveillance

Documents obtained by The Intercept indicate that security staff at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota used a fake Facebook account to monitor local Black Lives Matter organizers, befriend them, and obtain their personal information and photographs without their knowledge. Evidence of the fake Facebook account was found in a cache of files provided by the Mall of America to Bloomington officials after a large Black Lives Matter event at the mall on December 20 protesting police brutality. The files included briefs on individual organizers, with screenshots that suggest that much of the information was captured using a Facebook account for a person named “Nikki Larson.”

Right Wing Activist Fires Staffer Who Refused To Incite Violence @BlackLivesMatter

March 18, 2015 Liam Mathews, www.animalnewyork.com Resist! Law, Racial Justice, Violence

James O’Keefe, the right-wing’s garbage answer to both Michael Moore and Punk’d, is drawing attention again, this time for allegedly firing an employee who refused to strong-arm an operative into following a hidden-camera video script that would bait anti-police brutality protestors into making violent statements against police. His “investigative reporting”/propaganda organization Project Veritas recently used the same manipulative tactics against Eric Garner’s daughter. Rich Valdes, former Director of Operations for Project Veritas, is threatening to sue O’Keefe for wrongful termination “because [O'Keefe] was unhappy with me for being unwilling to strong-arm the guy to do his dirty work,” he told the Post.

College Campus Racism Is Not Just Sigma Alpha Epsilon

March 13, 2015 Terrell Jermaine Starr, www.alternet.org Educate! Higher Education, Racial Justice, Student Activism

Zellie Thomas was at a meeting with members of the activist group #NJShutItDown Tuesday afternoon at Montclair University where participants reflected on the 9-second video that captured members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon chanting racist epithets. As the ten or so mostly college students began recalling racist incidents on their own campuses, they decided to lead a Twitter conversation about it using #NotJustSAE. “We know that this topic is relevant to a lot of students, especially at predominately white institutions,” Thomas, 30, the lead on conceiving the hashtag and advisor to #NJShutItDown, told AlterNet. “All of the racism they face and experience and the micro-aggressions get swept under the rug. It doesn’t get in the news, it doesn’t get its own hashtag. They just have to deal with it.”

Ferguson Alternative Spring Break For College Students

March 11, 2015 Jon Swaine, www.theguardian.com Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Ferguson, police brutality, Racial Justice, Student Activism

College students are being urged to scrap plans for beer bongs on sunny beaches, in favour of a serious-minded spring break in Ferguson, the Missouri town that was roiled by protests and unrest following the fatal police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old. Six months after the death of Michael Brown, activist leaders in the St Louis suburb are looking to sign up 250 young people for a grittier week of “community service and civic engagement” including registering new voters, running food banks and cleaning up streets. “Maybe there were some people who had planned to go down to Miami or Acapulco, and now see that there is something bigger,” said Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman for the town and a co-founder of the Ferguson alternative spring break programme.

PTSD Among Ferguson Activists Long After Police Abuse

March 11, 2015 Terrell Jermaine Starr, www.alternet.org Resist! Ferguson, mental health, PTSD, Racial Justice

Johnetta Elzie rose to national prominence as a leading protester in Ferguson last summer. Her activism protesting the police shooting death of Michael Brown has been highlighted in national publications like the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, but the police aggression and the intensity of protesting nonstop took a serious toll on her mental health. During the height of the protests, she was tear-gassed at least nine times, faced off against menacing police dogs, regularly confronted by aggressive law enforcement officers, and spent many nights running away from cops. A rubber bullet struck her left collarbone during one protest. “It was just crazy for me to see the police responding to us like we were almost at war. Only we weren’t armed,” Elzie, a native of St. Louis, told AlterNet.

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