By John L. Micek, The Philadelphia Tribune — State Rep. Chris Rabb wants the state to pay reparations to people who are wrongfully sent to prison. In a memo seeking co-sponsors for his proposal, Rabb, D-Philadelphia, notes that Pennsylvania is one of 15 states without a law mandating compensation for innocent people for the years they lose behind bars. “Without a state compensation law, the only option for exonerees to…
All of them returned to the South’s frontline struggle for racial justice. By R. Drew Smith — In 2020, January remembrances of Martin Luther King Jr. are occurring against the backdrop of two high-profile films emphasizing sacrificial servant leadership. First, the film Harriet provided a renewed focus on celebrated abolitionist Harriet Tubman. This biopic chronicles her mid-19th century enslavement in Maryland, her daring escape to a hard-won freedom in Philadelphia, and her…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — As 2019 ticked to a close, the screamingly outrageous headlines have not slowed. Every day there is something, whether it is a flurry of presidential tweets or yet another Republican spouting off about something or other. Who would have thought, though, that amid the Christmas holiday we would learn that billionaire candidate Michael Bloomberg is using convicted prisoners to make calls for his campaign? He…
By Gabriel Sayegh, Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice — The fight to close Rikers is reaching a boiling point again. Next week, the New York City Council will vote on the land-use proposal for the construction of replacement jail facilities in the boroughs. The proposal is a major component of the City’s contentious plan to close Rikers, and the entire process has generated controversy within the movement to…
By Julianne Malveaux — Twenty-one-year-old Deandre Sullivan overslept one morning. Selected to serve on a jury, he was supposed to report by 9 a.m. He didn’t awaken until 11 and figured he’d have to pay a fine for his no-show. But hours after he failed to appear, he was hauled into a West Palm Beach, Florida court. There, Judge John Kastrenakus sentenced him to 10 days of incarceration, a fine,…
By John W. Whitehead, CounterPunch — “The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can ‘pay their debt to society,’ make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — The Central Park 5 has been the textbook poster case for the one thing that has consistently and horribly racially disfigured America’s criminal justice system. That’s the stain of wrongful convictions. The 5 have the happy and tragic distinction of being the most celebrated wrongfully convicted prisoners released from prison but in the decade since their exoneration and release hundreds of other prisoners with much…
But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. Connie Hassett-Walker, The Conversation — Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There are many precedents to the Ferguson,…
By Julianne Malveaux — Many know them as the Central Park Five, but filmmaker Ava DuVernay forces to us see the five wrongfully convicted men as individuals. Their names are names we must remember, as individual, courageous, principled Black and Brown men. They are Korey Wise, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, and Kevin Richardson. DuVernay’s new Netflix mini-series, “When They See Us”, ask what “they” see when they see…
Malveaux! — Dr. Ron Daniels is an activist who brings people together about issues like reparations, gentrification, resistance to white supremacy. He does it under the banner of the Institute for the Black World, which he leads We also discuss NAARC, the National African American Reparations Commission. “Please subscribe to UDC-TV and watch me talk with Dr. Julianne Malveaux about reparations.” — Dr. Ron Daniels
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