
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….
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,…
There is a reason why the Baltimore Police Department was investigated by the Justice Department after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray. By Kelly Macias, Daily Kos — In 2014, when the state of Maryland voted to decriminalize the possession of 10 grams or less of marijuana, advocates said that it would help to reduce racial bias and systemic racism against black people. Even though data shows that blacks and whites use…
National African American Drug Policy Coalition Call for Papers and Panel Presentations Join NAADPC members, state chapters and affiliates of NAADPC in panel discussions, research sessions, and select presentations in…
By Astead W. Herndon, The New York Times — An air of solemnity hangs over Lucy McBath’s bid for Congress. It is present in her campaign stump speech, when she recounts the 2012 murder of her son, Jordan Davis, a black teenager who was shot and killed by a white man at a gas station when the 17-year-old refused to lower the volume of the rap music playing in his…
Baltimore is going through the same policing pangs as the rest of the nation, but worse. By Nick Fouriezos, OZY — This is a homecoming for Gary Tuggle, only going…
By Miles Kampf-Lassin, In These Times — “We are far from done. This is the beginning and we should use this momentum to keep going forward.” Chicago has long been a city on the brink. Decades of racial stratification, disinvestment, segregation and endemic poverty have left large swaths of the population struggling to survive, while new development has disproportionately favored wealthier residents. The communities left behind by this process are…
The Obama Justice Department thought Ville Platte, Louisiana — where officers jail witnesses to crimes — could become a model of how to erase policing abuses that plague small towns across the nation. Jeff Sessions decided not to bother. By Ian MacDougall, ProPublica — On a chilly morning in December 2016, 12-year-old Bobby Lewis found himself sitting in a little room at the police station in Ville Platte, a town…