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Black and Latino students called attention to how gun violence affects communities of color during the National School Walkout on March 14, 2018

The gun reform debate has largely ignored race. Black students made sure the school walkouts didn’t.

By News & Current Affairs

Students of color highlighted police violence, poverty, and more during the National School Walkout. By P.R. Lockhart — In Atlanta, high school students took a knee in protest. In Baltimore and Chicago, teenagers called for programs to address poverty and mental health services. And in Brooklyn, students demanded that the police system be reformed. Across the country, many students of color who participated in the National School Walkout on Wednesday…

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Marielle Franco, a Brazilian Politician Who Fought for Women and the Poor, Was Killed. Her Death Sparked Protests Across Brazil

Marielle Franco, a Brazilian Politician Who Fought for Women and the Poor, Was Killed. Her Death Sparked Protests Across Brazil

By News & Current Affairs

By Kiratiana Freelon — Marielle Franco, 38, a black politician from Rio de Janeiro, died fighting for the rights of women and favela dwellers. As a councilwoman from the Maré favela, she denounced the police brutality that favela residents, most of them black, regularly experienced. On Wednesday around 9:20 p.m., armed men gunned the councilwoman down in her car in the center of Rio de Janeiro with nine shots—four to…

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Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi; Ras Baraka, mayor of Newark, New Jersey; and Mayor Michael D. Tubbs of Stockton, California, have all sought to implement criminal justice reforms in their cities. (AP Photo / Rogelio V. Solis ; Reuters / Eduardo Munoz ; Courtesy of Michael Tubbs)

A Crop of Reform-Minded Mayors Trying to Fix Policing and Fight Mass Incarceration

By News & Current Affairs

In their choice of a police chief and through other local initiatives, mayors can make major strides in improving the way their constituents interact with police and the criminal justice system. By Collier Meyerson — “It angers me how we keep going down the same path expecting a different result. We believe over-incarceration and over-policing leads to less crime, yet we have more crime,” Chokwe Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson,…

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At a time when Colombia’s peace implementation is threatened in part by government failures to fulfill obligations under its peace accord with the FARC, global advocates are encouraging international solidarity with women who are struggling for a peace that includes their human rights. (Photo: darioadn.co)

Afro-Colombian Women Mobilize for Justice and Healing on International Women’s Day

By News & Current Affairs

In Colombia, women are demanding an end to the impunity, silence and invisibility that fuel attacks on female human rights defenders. Tumaco – Afro-descendant women’s organizations in Colombia are marking International Women’s Day by highlighting Black women’s role in peacebuilding and calling for reparations for conflict-related gender-based violence and other human rights violations. As members of communities that have long suffered governmental neglect, Afro-Colombian women and girls have faced disproportionate rates of conflict-related human rights violations with minimal access to justice or services. Ongoing violence in the wake of Colombia’s peace accord with the FARC, including killings of human rights defenders and displacement of entire communities, has especially impacted Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Peoples.

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