
Mohammed Nurhussein, Black Star News — The legacy of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s 1857 Dred Scott ruling (and opinion) endures today: “[Black Africans imported as slaves] had for more…
Mohammed Nurhussein, Black Star News — The legacy of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s 1857 Dred Scott ruling (and opinion) endures today: “[Black Africans imported as slaves] had for more…
April 23rd Edition of Vantage Point Topics A New Book: Ronald W. Walters and the Fight for Black Power, 1969 – 2010 Is “Stop and Frisk” Still a Problem in…
Men arrested for ‘loitering’ had no choice but to keep their heads down, out of fear for their lives. For black people, it’s a familiar situation. By Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez — After video footage went viral of two black men being arrested in Starbucks for “loitering”, many were outraged. The two men had entered Starbucks for a meeting and were instead faced with the profiling and discrimination black people experience on a daily basis.
The Enduring Impact of President Johnson’s Crime Commission Elizabeth Hinton, Boston Review — In his televised speech following five days of civil unrest in Detroit during the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson announced the creation of the Kerner Commission to evaluate the uprisings there and in other cities, and to prescribe policies to suppress future disorder. The American public also demanded insight into why cities burned and what drove…
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,…
By Ronald E Hampton — Critics of community policing say that the idea of a friendly beat officer acting as some magic bullet solution for serious crimes such as murders,…
By Ronald E Hampton — Many African-Americans today believe that law and order is not being kept in their communities. The average African-American citizen is terribly dissatisfied with the police…
The 27-year-old activist whose father’s killing sparked a national outcry did not die at the hands of police like him. But her death is still an outrage that speaks to…
By Herbert Dyer, Jr. — The viral video of a white, middle-class University of Utah Hospital Head Nurse, one Alex Wubbels, being manhandled and thrown into the back of a police car…
By Phillip Smith, www.alternet.org Last month, the Drug Policy Alliance released a report noting that marijuana arrests under New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio continue to be marked by…
Since neither drug users nor dealers consider themselves crime victims, deepening the drug war must rely on coercive tactics that erode public trust. By Dean A. Dabney, The Conversation The…
The harm that biased marijuana enforcement has on Black, Latino, and low-income communities is real. By Cat Packer, Drug Policy Alliance I went into law school thinking that I wanted…