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…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — The Anniversary of the 1965 Watts Revolt occurs in the context of a larger history of Black struggle, sacrifices and achievements: the assassination, sacrifice and…
An Indiana city learns that a weak response to white supremacists has predictable consequences. By Edward Burmila, The Nation — In big cities like Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles, a farmers’ market might not be a center of economic and social life. But in Bloomington, Indiana—with a population of 80,000 when Indiana University is in session—the farmers’ market has run for 45 consecutive years, and it’s a big deal.…
By Ron Hampton — Big-city prosecutors and police chiefs recently attended a summit in Washington, D.C. held at the office of the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank that…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was finally given the official boot by his department. He was fired for violating department policy. The issue was his use of the chokehold in the slaying of Eric Garner. Police departments nationally scrambled furiously in the aftermath of the chokehold death of Garner in 2014 and the non-indictment then of Pantaleo to publicly declare that they do not use the…
Garner scratched-out a living in the gray market. “Not today,” he said when cops came for him. Now he’s dead. By Bob Hennelly, Salon — On the fifth anniversary of Eric Garner’s homicide we were flooded with the video images of his takedown by NYPD officers. What’s been lost in this retrospective was Mr. Garner’s defiant stand minutes earlier when he was first confronted by the police for the economic “high…
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….
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…
By BLMLA — Twice in 20 months, employees have called police on black members, resulting in their murder. 24 Hour Fitness has refused to address this. THIS MUST STOP! On March 8, 2017, LA County Sheriff deputies responded to a call from 24 Hour Fitness employees at the location in the Ladera Heights section of Los Angeles, the employee claimed Dennis Todd Rogers, another unarmed Black gym member had stayed too long…
Text calls on member states to tackle discrimination against people of African descent. By Jennifer Rankin, The Guardian — The European parliament has called for action to tackle the “structural racism” facing millions of Europeans of African descent in an unprecedented resolution that was overwhelmingly approved by MEPs. The resolution calls on European Union member states to develop national anti-racism strategies to deal with discrimination in education, health, housing, policing, the justice…
Since Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, violent crime has spiked to levels unseen for a quarter century. Inside the crackup of an American city. By Alec MacGillis, The New York Times — On April 27, 2015, Shantay Guy was driving her 13-year-old son home across Baltimore from a doctor’s appointment when something — a rock, a brick, she wasn’t sure what — hit her car. Her phone was turned off,…