The following clip is taken from James Baldwin’s 1968 appearance on the Dick Cavett Show. In all honesty, how many of his words don’t apply in 2014 America? Continue reading #JamesBaldwin on #Racism: 1:01 minutes of Truth
Category Archives: Africana
Deadspin #Police-#Shooting Database Update: We’re Still Going
By Kyle Wagner
Last Wednesday, we launched an impossibly ambitious project: cataloguing every police-involved shooting in America over the last three years. After one week, we’re further along than we could have imagined. Continue reading Deadspin #Police-#Shooting Database Update: We’re Still Going
Tracking Police-involved Killings in the US
A Gawker article caught my eye this weekend. It is entitled: “What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings.” In it, I expected to learn about different state and national agencies and watchdog groups that do just that. Much to my dismay, no one really does. That is, with the exception of two or three reporters who’ve recently started, no one really does. Continue reading Tracking Police-involved Killings in the US
UPDATED: It’s a miracle #MichaelBrown even graduated from this beleaguered school
UPDATE:
I called Normandy high school today and asked the person who answered the phone to confirm or deny that the entire class of 2014 had to share graduation gowns for their pictures. The person denied the story.
August 14, 2014
Mark Sumner
In Pluto’s diary on the life of Michael Brown, you might notice one detail that’s both touching and disturbing:
Mike’s graduation photograph was taken in March 2014, still many months ahead of when he would be able to graduate in August. Imagine the “why” of this fact:
The grinding poverty in Mike’s world only allowed Normandy High School to acquire two graduation gowns to be shared by the entire class. The students passed a gown from one to the other. Each put the gown on, in turn, and sat before the camera to have their graduation photographs taken. Until it was Mike’s turn.
What kind of American school would have to share robes across the entire senior class? Continue reading UPDATED: It’s a miracle #MichaelBrown even graduated from this beleaguered school
Ferguson, Missouri’s Complicated History of Poverty and Racial Tension | The New Republic
You Can’t Understand Ferguson Without First Understanding These Three Things – Reflections from a former state senator from St. Louis
By Jeffrey Smith
You can’t really understand Ferguson—the now-famous St. Louis suburb with a long history of white people sometimes maliciously, sometimes not, imposing their will on black people’s lives—unless you understand Kinloch. Continue reading Ferguson, Missouri’s Complicated History of Poverty and Racial Tension | The New Republic
Maya Angelou: “Because if You Were Black You Never Felt Really Safe” | BillMoyers
August 14, 2014
The racial divide that exists in communities like Ferguson, Missouri, and the effect it has on the lived experience of white and black people, reminded us of a conversation from last week’s show in which poet Maya Angelou remembers how, as a little girl, she hated going to the white neighborhood in her hometown of Stamps, Arkansas, because she felt unsafe and unprotected there.
Continue reading Maya Angelou: “Because if You Were Black You Never Felt Really Safe” | BillMoyers
Rev. William Barber’s electrifying speech at Netroots Nation 2014
Reverend William Barber visited Netroots Nation and provided an inspirational speech that electrified the entire room. Most importantly, Rev. Barber gave a history lesson on moral fusion movements. Rev. Barber described the moral fusion movement in the context of the first and second reconstruction. He is imploring the effecting of the third reconstruction.
Continue reading Rev. William Barber’s electrifying speech at Netroots Nation 2014
Rand Paul: Opportunist or Ferguson’s Libertarian Civil Rights Hope?
Senator Rand Paul published an op-ed in Time Magazine and gave a speech this week about Ferguson Missouri and Civil Rights. Given Senator Paul’s long-held views on civil rights, how should we interpret this latest effort? Is it opportunism or a genuine attempt at curing a longstanding social wrong? Let’s examine the record: Continue reading Rand Paul: Opportunist or Ferguson’s Libertarian Civil Rights Hope?
@RepJohn Lewis Calls For #MartialLaw in #Ferguson | MSNBC
Congressman John Lewis – a recognized leader of the Civil Rights Movement – spoke out Thursdayon the police violence in Ferguson, Missouri, during an msnbc interview saying President Obama should use the authority of his office to declare martial law to “federalize the Missouri national guard to protect people as they protest.”
Continue reading @RepJohn Lewis Calls For #MartialLaw in #Ferguson | MSNBC
The Criminalization of Everyday Life | BillMoyers
Sometimes a single story has a way of standing in for everything you need to know. In the case of the up-arming, up-armoring and militarization of police forces across the country, there is such a story. Not the police, mind you, but the campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that is, a $500,000, 18-ton, mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle of a sort used in the war in Afghanistan and, as Hunter Stuart of the Huffington Post reported, built to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs and nuclear, biological and chemical environments.” Sounds like just the thing for bouts of binge drinking and post-football-game shenanigans.
Continue reading The Criminalization of Everyday Life | BillMoyers