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In December 2016, Bobby Lewis, then 12, was detained and questioned by a Ville Platte detective without a parent or lawyer initially present.

How the Trump Administration Went Easy on Small-Town Police Abuses

By News & Current Affairs

The Obama Justice Department thought Ville Platte, Louisiana — where officers jail witnesses to crimes — could become a model of how to erase policing abuses that plague small towns across the nation. Jeff Sessions decided not to bother. By Ian MacDougall, ProPublica — On a chilly morning in December 2016, 12-year-old Bobby Lewis found himself sitting in a little room at the police station in Ville Platte, a town…

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Secretary-General Kofi Annan (centre) addresses a Security Council Meeting on Iraq

Annan Victim of One of the Greatest Fake News Concoctions in History

By Editors' Choice

By Ian Williams — UNITED NATIONS, (IPS) — Looking at the deserved outpouring of eulogies over Kofi Annan I could not help remembering the advice of the old Latin saying, “Say nothing about the dead unless it’s good.” But one can’t help wishing that there had been more support of Kofi Annan when he was alive, not least when the Murdoch media Faux News fabricators persecuted him…

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Inmates in prison

Prisons Are Already Retaliating Against Inmates Protesting ‘Modern Slavery’

By News & Current Affairs

On Tuesday, inmates across the country launched a strike to protest labor conditions in prisons. Only three days into the strike, some inmates have experienced retaliation. By Tarpley Hitt, Daily Beast — Inmates are already experiencing retaliation for alleged participation in the nation-wide prison strike that launched August 21, representatives from the prison labor advocacy group Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) told The Daily Beast. The strike, organized by a…

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Ben Jacques walks among the unmarked graves of slaves at the Old Burying Ground in Stoneham.

A reckoning over the North’s role in slavery

By News & Current Affairs

By Zipporah Osei, Boston Globe — The Old Burying Ground in Stoneham is one of those classic New England cemeteries with markers honoring the memory of Colonial settlers as well as activists in the abolition movement. For much of the year, sections of the nearly 300-year-old cemetery are closed to the public. But every so often, the Stoneham Historical Commission opens up the space for guided tours of the tombstones…

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