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Racial Justice

State Of The Black Union: Shadow Of Crisis Has Not Passed

January 23, 2015 Truth Out Staff and Black Lives Matter, www.truth-out.org ,
2014 was a year that saw profound injustice, and extraordinary resilience. Homicides at the hands of police sparked massive protests, meaning that America could no longer ignore bitter truths of the Black experience. Gabriella Naverez, a queer Black woman was killed at 22 years old, unarmed. 37 year old Tanisha Anderson’s family dialed 911 for medical assistance. Instead, Cleveland police officers took her life. Anyia Parker, a Black trans woman was gunned down in East Hollywood. This brutal attack was caught on camera, yet her murder, like so many murders of Black trans women, have gone unanswered. This country must abandon the lie that the deep psychological wounds of slavery, racism and structural oppression are figments of the Black imagination. The time to address these wounds is now.

Becoming And Being An Activist

January 21, 2015 Sam Smith, www.samsmitharchives.wordpress.com , , ,
I knew a civil rights leader named Julius Hobson. He used to say that he could start a revolution with six men and telephone booth. He seldom had more than ten at one of his demonstrations. Once in a church with about 30 parishioners, he commented, “If I had that many people behind me, I’d be president.” But between 1960 and 1964, Julius Hobson ran more than 80 picket lines on approximately 120 retail stores in downtown DC, resulting in employment for some 5,000 blacks. He initiated a campaign that resulted in the first hiring of black bus drivers by DC Transit. Hobson forced the hiring of the first black auto salesmen and dairy employees and started a campaign to combat job discrimination by the public utilities.

Six Ideas For A Police Free World

January 21, 2015 José Martín, www.rollingstone.com , , ,
After months of escalating protests and grassroots organizing in response to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, police reformers have issued many demands. The moderates in this debate typically qualify their rhetoric with "We all know we need police, but..." It's a familiar refrain to those of us who've spent years in the streets and the barrios organizing around police violence, only to be confronted by officers who snarl, "But who'll help you if you get robbed?" We can put a man on the moon, but we're still lacking creativity down here on Earth. But police are not a permanent fixture in society. While law enforcers have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the "disorderly conduct" of the urban poor.

State Of The Dream 2015: Underbanked & Overcharged

January 21, 2015 United For A Fair Economy, www.faireconomy.org , , ,
State of the Dream 2015: Underbanked and Overcharged is United for a Fair Economy's twelfth annual look at race, wealth, and inequality. This report finds that over one in five households (mostly Black, Latino, or Native American) are underserved by the banking industry, costing these households an average of $3,029 per year in fees and interest just to access their own money. This "wage theft" takes a total of $103 billion per year out of the communities that need it most. This report makes several recommendations that could expand access to accessible, affordable banking services, including expanding the role of the US Postal Service. By expanding postal banking services in 31,000 locations across the nation, we can increase access to important wealth-building tools in those communities that are currently underserved.

Injustice At The Intersection

January 20, 2015 Benjamin Ross, www.dissentmagazine.org , , ,
Raquel Nelson’s troubles didn’t end there. In the wake of her son’s death, she was charged with vehicular homicide because, with three young children and an armful of groceries, she chose not to walk a third of a mile to the nearest marked crosswalk. A jury whose members never ride local buses found Nelson guilty of a crime whose true perpetrators were poverty and traffic engineering. She nearly went to jail, but after a national outcry, the judge reversed her conviction. She ultimately paid a $200 fine for jaywalking. The death of another young black man this summer has made the setting of these events familiar. Like Ferguson, Missouri, the run-down corner of Cobb County, Georgia, where A.J. Newman was killed is a declining inner suburb.

Beyond MLK: 9 Others Who Died For Black Liberation

January 19, 2015 Atlanta Blackstar, www.handsupunited.org , , ,
Black history has been celebrated in America throughout the month of February since 1976, and 50 years prior in Negro History Week. During this time, classrooms across America typically engage in activities from plays and artwork to writing assignments that highlight the contributions of Black people. Despite its nearly 100-year history, Black History Month often excludes the contributions of African and Caribbean-born leaders and even some American-born leaders, who get buried beneath staples such as civil rights activists Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. These leaders and activists have earned their rightful place in history, however a disservice is done to countless other leaders from around the world who too fought for Black liberation.

Thoughts About The Greatness of Selma, Unity, And King

January 16, 2015 Alan Gilbert, www.democratic-individuality.blogspot.com , , , ,
The movie “Selma,” directed by Ava DuVernay, is a subtle, restrained account of a period of the most extreme American violence against black people, focused on the leadership and struggles of Martin and Coretta King as well as the many who joined them in Selma and around the country. The experience DuVernay conjures, for instance, the horrific shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson in a restaurant in Selma, his father’s grieving at the coroner’s office, Jimmie’s body seen through the glass and King’s compassion, is alive today in the movement Black Lives Matter! about the murders of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice and Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin... The director sought to capture many people from the civil rights movement.

A New Generation Reclaims MLK Day

January 16, 2015 Ms. Bullhorn, www.transformativespaces.org , ,
Chicago’s young black organizers, who have mobilized with great speed and ingenuity since nationwide protests erupted in August, have been especially creative in their tactics and radical in their messaging. While some of the language employed in their chants and speak outs has included talk of indicting police officers like Darren Wilson, youth organizers from BYP 100and We Charge Genocide, among others, have also broadened the dialogue around police violence to include the language of de-incarceration, transformative justice, and calls for an all out systems change. Local activist and teacher Jerica Jurado, whose students have been involved in a number of protests in recent months, credits an already active community of young people for having brought their vision to the front lines.

The Role Of Twitter In The Movement

January 16, 2015 Jenée Desmond-Harris, www.vox.com , ,
To understand how Ferguson and the stories around it captivated the mainstream media, it's essential to understand Black Twitter. "Black Twitter" is the somewhat controversial shorthand for the conversations that happen among African-Americans on Twitter. African-Americans use the social network in greater numbers than members of any other racial group, and have earned a reputation for steering Twitter's trending topics. In a 2014 piece explaining the phenomenon, the Washington Post's Soraya Nadia McDonald called Black Twitter "a virtual community ready to hashtag a response to cultural issues." In some cases this means sharing inside jokes that send African-American cultural references viral. In others, like this one, it means uniting as a potent force to force issues of race and racism to the top of the national agenda.

Black Woman Shot Dead By Police: Where Is National Outcry?

January 15, 2015 Terrell Jermaine, www.alternet.org ,
The day before Aura Rosser was shot and killed by Officer David Reid of the Ann Arbor Police Department in November, she was on the phone making plans for the holidays with her sister, Shae Ward. They were considering cruise destinations far from the frigid Michigan weather that was bound to arrive in December: Florida Keys, the Bahamas, anywhere south. They communicated throughout the day on social media, but that phone call was the last time Ward heard Rosser’s voice. The next day, Officer Reid and his partner, Mark Raab, responded to a domestic disturbance call around 11:45pm at the home of Aura Rosser, 40, and her boyfriend, Victor Stephens, 54, in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan and a liberal bastion about an hour from Detroit.

‘Black Lives Matter’ Protesters Met With LAPD Chief

January 12, 2015 Charles Davis, www.laist.com , , ,
Melina Abdullah began her week in jail. On Monday, the Cal State professor was one of two people arrested for trying to deliver a letter to Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck on behalf of protesters who for almost two weeks now have camped outside LAPD headquarters. They've been holding signs declaring "Black Lives Matter" and demanding an end to what they see as a pattern of impunity for cops who kill unarmed people of color. By Friday, she was meeting with Beck himself—and while he didn’t meet any of their demands, the fact that he was even acknowledging them was portrayed as a sign of progress. “It was worth it,” Abdullah told reporters at a press conference immediately after she and three other activists met with Beck to discuss the deaths of people such as Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old black man who was unarmed when he was shot in the back last August.

Even Police Not Safe From Backlash When Criticising The Police

January 12, 2015 Crystal Shepeard, www.care2.com , ,
Nashville, Tennessee was also the site of protests last month. One Nashville resident, who considered himself pro-cop, was upset with the police response. He was so incensed with Metropolitan Nashville Police Department Police Chief Steve Anderson’s refusal to take a harder stance, he emailed him. The fact that the chief had allowed the peaceful protests to happen without police interference and served the protestors coffee and hot chocolate while they listened to their concerns was unforgivable. In his letter, he said he was upset that the protestors were not arrested and that he no longer felt safe in the city. Police Chief Anderson responded with a very public letter saying that the police were responsible to all of its citizens and that all were deserving of respect, even if their opinions differed.

Black Wealth Matters

January 12, 2015 Chuck Collins, www.otherwords.org , ,
The racial wealth gap has persisted for decades. It widened following the Great Recession. According to the Pew Research Center, the median wealth of white households in 2013 was a stunning 13 times greater than the median wealth of black households — up from eight times greater in 2010. White households had 10 times more wealth than Latino households. While people of all races saw their net worth implode during the recession, recovery has come much more quickly to whites. The wealth divide is growing at an alarming rate today, with median wealth tumbling downward for people of color while ticking slightly upward for whites.

Ferguson Protesters Stall Opening Of Missouri Senate Session

January 10, 2015 Associated Press, www.washingtonpost.com , , ,
The start of Missouri’s legislative session was interrupted Wednesday by demonstrators who chanted and unfurled banners in the Senate while protesting the fatal Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown. Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, who was presiding over the chamber, said demonstrators were violating Senate rules of decorum and ordered proceedings suspended while police cleared people from the visitors’ galleries. The Senate resumed after about 30 minutes, but no one was allowed to return to the visitors’ section. Protest leaders and a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety said no one was arrested.

Officials Ban Die-Ins At Grand Central Station

January 10, 2015 Alyssa Figueroa, www.alternet.org , , ,
On Tuesday, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority announced it would no longer permit die-ins at Grand Central Terminal. Since the failure to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner, protesters have been participating in die-ins at the Terminal nearly every night. This sort of demonstration has become an increasingly popular tactic of the Black Lives Matter movement, in which protesters raise awareness of racist police violence by lying down to symbolize its end result: the death of people of color. “They were happening on a regular basis since the Eric Garner non-indictment,” said Aaron Donovan, spokesman for the MTA. “Not exactly nightly, but almost nightly.”
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