During the hot afternoon of Saturday, July 20, Courtney Stewart, founder and chairman of the volunteer organization Reentry Network for Returning Citizens, knocked on doors and walked the streets of Southwest’s Greenleaf and James Creek neighborhoods, in search of reentering citizens to register as voters. Additional volunteers registered people at the King Greenleaf Recreation Center at 201 N Street in Southwest.
It’s been two years since Governor Jerry Brown was court ordered to fix California’s ailing prisons and the situation is still life-threatening and possibly illegal.
It’s been all over the papers and many bloggers are tackling the horrendous conditions in California. A prison system that in 2011 was ordered by the Supreme Court to figure out what to do with 30,000 people who because of the system’s overcrowding were suffering “cruel and unusual punishment.”
By Maya Schenwar Twenty years ago, when acclaimed neuroscientist Carl Hart began studying drugs, he was motivated by a desire to help communities like the one in which he grew…
by Emily Smith
In the private prison industry, longer sentences earn more money from the state.
Since 2003, Ciavarella received millions of dollars in bribes for condemning minors to maximum prison sentences. In one case, Ciavarella sentenced a 10-year-old to two years in a detention facility for accidentally bottoming out his mother’s car.
How can I make anyone understand what it’s like to cling desperately to the hope of someday being heard because that’s the only hope left? That’s one reason why the…
By Dara Cooper
Black and Brown people deserve the right to LIFE, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness. Black and Brown people deserve the right to access quality food. Those rights are connected.
Last week, thousands of people marched the streets all over the country for Trayvon Martin, after the teen’s murderer was acquitted, in part, because of racist imagery painted of Trayvon, making this dead young Black male guilty of his own murder.

July 26, 2013, San Antonio TX – Today, more than 30 organizations representing social justice movements nationwide gather at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas for the second Roots & Remedies conference (http://rootsandremedies.org).

Institute of the Black World (IBW) Calls for Economic Sanctions Against Florida Group Seeks Justice in Memory of Trayvon Martin For immediate release — Wed, July 17, 2013 (New…
More than 100 area residents gathered in Mellon Park to discuss the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.
Two diverse rallies in Pittsburgh on Sunday merged at the Hill Distict’s Freedom Corner to speak out against the not guilty verdict issued Saturday night in George Zimmerman’s trial — culminating with a sit-in that blocked Centre Avenue.
UNION SQUARE — Hours after the decision of a Florida jury was released, clearing neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman of manslaughter and murder charges in the 2012 shooting death of the unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin, hundreds of protesters amassed in Times Square to decry the verdict.