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A New York state judge ruled that the Jewish Yeshiva University in New York City did not qualify as a "religious corporation" and must therefore approve the creation of an LGBT club under the city's anti-discrimination law. Lynn Kotler, a judge in the New York Supreme Court First Judicial District, ruled that under state law, Yeshiva University was considered an "educational corporation," not a religious one, and must comply with the New York City Human Rights Law. The ruling came after a group of students who attempted to organize a gay and transgender student club, the Yeshiva University Pride Alliance, sued the university after their attempt to gain recognition was denied. NEW YORK PRIVATE SCHOOL REGULATIONS THREATEN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: JEWISH GROUPS In her ruling, Kotler wrote that the university violated the city's human rights law because, according to the university's own charter, the university's purpose is as an educational institution, not a religious one. "The record shows that the purpose students attend Yeshiva is to obtain an education, not for religious worship or some other function which is religious at its core," Kotler wrote. "Thus, religion is necessarily secondary to education at Yeshiva." Kotler ruled that the university must "immediately grant plaintiff YU Pride Alliance the full equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges afforded to all other student groups at Yeshiva University." In a statement to the campus student newspaper, the Commentator, the university blasted the judge's decision for "[violating] the religious liberty upon which this country was founded" and said the ruling would have broader ramifications for numerous other institutions maintained by religious groups. "The decision permits courts to interfere in the internal affairs of religious schools, hospitals, and other charitable organizations," the university said. "Any ruling that Yeshiva is not religious is obviously wrong. As our name indicates, Yeshiva University was founded to instill Torah values in its students while providing a stellar education, allowing them to live with religious conviction as noble citizens and committed Jews. While we love and care for our students, who are all – each and every one – created in God's image, we firmly disagree with today's ruling and will immediately appeal the decision." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The ruling comes as the New York Department of Education has come under substantial criticism for a proposed regulation that would tighten state oversight of private schools. The proposal is largely seen as a targeted effort against the Orthodox Jewish yeshiva schools in New York City after a group of individuals who were raised in the community said the schools did not provide them with adequate instruction. Members of the Orthodox Jewish community say the regulations would violate their First Amendment protections to the free exercise of religion. | Civil Rights Activism |
FILE - In this Nov. 2, 1983, photo, Lily Chin holds a photograph of her son Vincent, 27, who was beaten to death on June 23, 1982. Detroit is helping to honor Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was beaten to death 40 years ago by two white men who never served jail time. The Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication begins Thursday, June 16, 2022, and focuses on civil rights efforts that started with his 1982 death. (AP Photo/Richard Sheinwald, File)FILE - In this Nov. 2, 1983, photo, Lily Chin holds a photograph of her son Vincent, 27, who was beaten to death on June 23, 1982. Detroit is helping to honor Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was beaten to death 40 years ago by two white men who never served jail time. The Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication begins Thursday, June 16, 2022, and focuses on civil rights efforts that started with his 1982 death. (AP Photo/Richard Sheinwald, File)DETROIT (AP) — Decades before Chinese immigrant Yao Pan Ma was attacked while collecting cans in New York and Thai American Vicha Ratanapakdee was fatally assaulted in San Francisco, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat in Detroit by two white men who never served jail time.Forty years later — and amid a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans — Detroit has partnered with The Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication Coalition on a four-day commemoration to honor civil rights efforts that began with Chin’s death and declare the city’s commitment against such violence. “Although hate crimes existed, Vincent Chin did bring out a flash point for Asian Americans,” Stanley Mark, senior staff attorney at the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said, calling Chin’s death “a seminal moment among Asian Americans.” Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese immigrant, was at the Fancy Pants Tavern strip club in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park for his bachelor party on June 19, 1982, when a fight erupted. Federal authorities said two autoworkers blamed Chin for layoffs at car factories due to Japanese imports. After Chin left the club, the two men tracked him down at a fast food eatery and attacked him, authorities said. Chin later died at a hospital.The Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance & Rededication commemoration starts Thursday.It comes as crimes against people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent have increased, fueled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some in the U.S. say bigots have been emboldened by then-President Donald Trump, who often disparagingly referred to the virus as the “Chinese virus.”“This recent spike of anti-Asian violence because of COVID and anti-China rhetoric deals with geopolitical things,” Mark said. “The rhetoric is: China is the boogeyman.”From March 19, 2020, through the end of last year, people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent reported 10,905 incidents — from taunting to outright assaults, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition based in California.The Justice Department said that in 2020, more than 8,000 single-bias incidents involved 11,126 victims — up from 7,103 incidents the previous year. Bias over race, ethnicity and ancestry was behind nearly 62% of the incidents.Ratanapakdee was among the Asian Americans who have been attacked in recent years. He was on a morning walk when he was shoved to the ground and his head hit the pavement. The 84-year-old died two days later.Ma, 61, was knocked down and repeatedly kicked in the head in an attack last year. He died Dec. 31.Last month, three women of Asian descent were shot in a hair salon in Dallas’ Koreatown. The suspect’s girlfriend later told investigators he has delusions that Asian Americans are trying to harm him.President Joe Biden last year signed the bipartisan COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which expedited Justice Department reviews of anti-Asian hate crimes. His administration has spent recent weeks in meetings with Asian American leaders to discuss the violence. K-pop sensation BTS visited the White House last month to speak with Biden about combating the rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.Helen Zia, an activist in Detroit at the time Chin was slain and now executor of an estate named after Chin and his mother, Lilly, said anti-Asian racism that was going on in the 1980s is similar to what is happening today.“This is a common thread for the history of Asians in America whether it’s an economic crisis or somebody to blame for the World Trade Center being destroyed: It’s Asians, yellow and brown people that have historically been scapegoated and blamed for these things,” she said.“It goes to a threat that is more than a couple of hundred years old — blaming a group that is seen as the forever-enemy alien.”To the horror of Zia and many others, neither of the two men accused of beating Chin received any jail time. Ronald Ebens pleaded guilty to manslaughter, while his stepson, Michael Nitz, pleaded no contest. Each was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $3,700. “These men are not going to go out and harm somebody else,” Wayne County Circuit Judge Charles Kaufman, who has since died, explained at the time. “You don’t make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal.”The declaration shocked many. “The sentence put a target on every Asian American’s head,” said Zia, who is now an author living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ebens and Nitz also were later acquitted of federal civil rights charges.Federal prosecutors had said Ebens blamed people of Asian descent for problems in the U.S. auto industry, and killed Chin because of his race. The defense admitted Ebens killed Chin, but said he was drunk and had been provoked.The Associated Press was unable to reach Nitz for comment this week. A voicemail message was left Wednesday at a telephone number listed for Ebens.“There was a full expectation (Ebens and Nitz) would receive the full wrath of the criminal justice system,” Zia said. “I think the family — people — thought the justice system was going to work.”___News Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York. Williams is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. | Civil Rights Activism |
Published June 16, 2022 9:31AM article American Airlines aircraft (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images) A man mistakenly identified as the suspect who stole from a store in a Dallas airport spent 17 days in a New Mexico jail without knowing why — and his lawyer says it’s because American Airlines sent the wrong photo to police. According to a lawsuit filed against American Airlines, in May 2020, DFW Airport police were investigating a burglary and found video showing the suspect board a flight to Reno, Nevada. When investigators served a search warrant to American Airlines requesting "any and all" travel information for passengers on that particular flight, the airline reportedly sent information for only one man: Michael Lowe, a professional outdoorsman and career guide from Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowe was not the culprit, but the information the airline sent to police was enough for them to issue an arrest warrant on charges of felony burglary and misdemeanor criminal mischief, court documents state. More than a year later, Lowe was picked up on those warrants while attending a July 4th celebration with friends in Tucumcari, New Mexico. He spent the next 17 days in a crowded jail cell, alternating between sleeping on a concrete floor and a metal bunk. His lawyer said no one told him why he was behind bars, even when he saw a judge eight days after his arrest. Michael Lowe on a May 2020 flight to Reno, Nevada. (photo from court documents) "In twenty-five years of practicing, I’ve never seen anything this egregious," Scott Palmer, one of his attorneys, told FOX Television Stations. "It’s hard to imagine anything more terrifying than being jailed for seventeen days without a clue as to why, or for how long you would be in there." According to the lawsuit, when Lowe was finally released, he had to buy a Greyhound bus ticket and walk miles to be picked up. The bus broke down, turning a 12-hour trip into a two-day journey home, his lawyer said. RELATED: Domestic flight prices increased 47% since beginning of 2022 "Upon stepping through the threshold of his home, Mr. Lowe allowed himself to sob until he could no longer stand," the lawsuit states. Eventually, Lowe was able to hire an attorney and get the charges against him dropped. A detective in Texas compared Lowe’s mugshot to the photos of the burglary suspect and concluded that American sent information on the wrong passenger. "As required by law, American cooperates with and responds to court orders for information related to possible criminal activity, and that’s what we did in this instance when we were presented with a search warrant," an American Airlines spokesperson said in response to the lawsuit. Lowe, meanwhile, has been living in fear that "cannot be rationalized away," his lawyer said. RELATED: United Airlines passenger accused of raping woman in first class during London-bound flight "When shopping, he can become preoccupied with worry over whether he forgot to pay for something," the lawsuit says. "The sight of a patrol car now produces a state of anxiety, and his interactions with the National Park Service Police, previously always friendly, are now hurried through as contact with any law enforcement produces too great a panic response." "American Airlines has an absolute duty to its passengers, and we hope to change American’s practice in regards to how it responds to search warrants so that no one else ever has live through Michael’s nightmare," Palmer said. "In the absence of a change in procedures, any passenger is just one misstep away from having their lives turned upside down." | Civil Rights Activism |
Justice Sonia Sotomayor didn’t tell a gathering of liberal lawyers Thursday what will happen in the big upcoming abortion decision, nor did she give any hint of when it would drop. She didn’t talk about the internal drama roiling the court or how she’s getting along with her colleagues. These topics were off-limits for her speech at the American Constitution Society convention.But she did perhaps offer some reassurance to the crowd — ahead of what is expected to be a devastating series of decisions for progressives coming in June — that ultimately, “the arc of history bends toward justice.” In response to a question about rapidly declining public trust in the Supreme Court, Sotomayor said that institutions like the court are made up of human beings and that it is human nature to “make mistakes.”One “mistake” she raised was the 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford where the court found that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” therefore denying them the rights and privileges of citizenship throughout the entire United States.The Dred Scott decision is widely agreed to be among the worst decisions issued by the Supreme Court in its history, both for its racism, inaccurate history and poor legal reasoning. But, as Sotomayor noted, the decision was ultimately overturned by the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. And even though the racist logic continued in the court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision upholding racial segregation, that, too, was overturned in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.“When we, as institutions, have made mistakes,” Sotomayor said. “Other parts of the branches [of government]” and “the people have worked to make change.”“Dred Scott lost his 11-year battle for freedom,” she said. And yet, with the decision in Brown, “He won the war.”“That’s why I think we have to have continuing faith in our court system, in our system of government,” she added, noting that that the system allows for constitutional amendments and legislation to address outcomes like Dred Scott.That is why “I truly believe in the magical words, ‘the arc of the universe bends towards justice,’” she said.Sotomayor’s comments come as the Supreme Court’s six-vote conservative supermajority is expected to overturn the 1973 precedent in Roe v. Wade enshrining abortion rights when it rules in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in the coming weeks.Justice Sonia Sotomayor told a gathering of liberal lawyers that she still believes "the arc of history bends toward justice."AP Photo/Jeff RobersonIn May, Politico released a leaked draft opinion showing that five conservative justices had already aligned themselves to overturn Roe.Since then, the court has been described as “in turmoil,” “imploding” and seething “with resentment.” Protesters appeared outside of the homes of the conservative justices who appear ready to overturn Roe. One man, outraged over Roe’s imminent demise, called the police on himself as he planned to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the marshal of the Supreme Court to launch an unprecedented leak investigation. Investigators have asked clerks to turn over their phones, and clerks, in turn, have hired lawyers.While Sotomayor made no comment on the turmoil within or surrounding the court, Justice Clarence Thomas was more forthright in a talk hosted by a conservative think tank in May.In pointed public comments, Thomas, now the longest-serving justice on the court, said he no longer trusted his fellow justices. “When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally,” Thomas said at a May 14 event hosted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s, like, kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it.”Thomas even said that the court has not been the same since former Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in 2005 and was replaced by current Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts, notably, was the lone conservative justice not to join the draft opinion that leaked.No one has yet taken responsibility for leaking the opinion. There have been a handful of theories about whether the leak came from progressives or conservatives.Sotomayor’s invocation of Dred Scott can only be seen as a call for the next generation of liberal lawyers to keep the faith as they see the progressive advances of the 20th century rolled back by the current court’s conservative supermajority.At the end of her remarks, as she walked around the conference room shaking hands with attendees, the justice explained how she deals with setbacks and losses.“There are days where I get discouraged,” she admitted. “There are moments where I am deeply, deeply disappointed. And, yes, there have been moments where I have stopped and said, ‘Is this worth it anymore?’” “And every time I do that, I lick my wounds for a while,” she added. “Sometimes I cry. And then I say, ‘OK, let’s fight.’” | Civil Rights Activism |
MPs and peers have accused ministers of creating a “hostile environment” for peaceful protests with its proposals for new policing powers.The draft public order bill includes a new offence of “locking on”, which relates to demonstrators attaching themselves to something so they cannot be removed. It carries a maximum sentence of up to 51 weeks in prison.The joint committee on human rights has said it is concerned the offence could encompass demonstrators who simply link arms with each other, and that it should be amended.It called for key measures in the legislation to be watered down or scrapped because the laws would have a “chilling effect” on people in England and Wales seeking to exercise their legitimate democratic rights.The committee said measures relating to the obstruction of major transport works covered actions that were not intended to cause significant disruption, while those related to interference with key national infrastructure covered those that were neither “key” nor “national”.The proposed serious disruption prevention orders could prevent people being able to exercise their right to protest, the committee said, and represented a “disproportionate response” to any resulting disruption.It also expressed concerns about the extension of stop and search powers, allowing police to carry out searches where there were no reasonable grounds for suspicion.The bill was drawn up in response to what ministers say is the disruption to motorists and public transport caused by environmental groups, such as Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.The committee, however, said the proposals go too far and “risk creating a hostile environment for peaceful protesters”.The latest measures follow on from the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which the committee had previously criticised for threatening the right to protest.The acting committee chair, Joanna Cherry, said: “The law must strike a careful balance between the right to protest and the prevention of disruption to the wider population.“This requires a nuanced approach, yet in reaction to what it perceives as overly disruptive protests the government has decided to take a blunderbuss to the problem.”Last month, Priti Patel said of the bill: “What we have seen in recent years is a rise in criminal, disruptive and self-defeating guerrilla tactics, carried out by a selfish few in the name of protest.“This bill backs the police to take proactive action and prevent such disruption happening in the first place,” the home secretary added. “These measures stand up for the responsible majority and it is time that parliament got behind them.” | Civil Rights Activism |
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A sharply divided Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police violated a robbery suspect's constitutional protections by accessing his cellphone without a warrant, calling use of the phone as a tracking device “profoundly invasive."In the 4-3 decision, the court’s majority said the robbery suspect was subjected to a warrantless search when police obtained his real-time cellphone location information. They ruled that the information was illegally acquired and should be excluded from evidence.At issue was whether there's a “reasonable expectation of privacy" regarding a person's real-time cell-site location information, also known as CSLI, under federal Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Such information can be used to determine a cellphone's location with “near perfect accuracy” when the phone is powered on, the court noted.“In obtaining an individual’s cell phone’s real-time CSLI, police commandeer the cell phone and its transmissions for the purpose of locating that individual,” Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said in writing for the majority. “We find this usurpation of an individual’s private property profoundly invasive, and we liken it to a technological trespass.”Related video: Cell phone tracking apps could be the newest tool to stop COVID-19The ruling stems from a case in Kentucky's Woodford County involving robbery suspect Dovontia Reed. One of his attorneys hailed it a far-reaching victory for civil liberties.“This is kind of a guarantee from the court saying that the government can’t search your real-time CSLI to get your location without a warrant," said Adam Meyer, a public defender representing Reed during his appeals. "And what that means is this will protect everybody who has a cell phone now.”The state attorney general's office didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.Reed had called an acquaintance on his cellphone, saying he had run out of gas and asked that they meet at a Versailles gas station. When the acquaintance arrived, Reed allegedly robbed him of $500 at gunpoint and fled in a vehicle, according to authorities. Police obtained the number of the cellphone used by Reed.The cell service provider located the phone and authorities used the information to track Reed's movements, the opinion noted. Reed was pulled over and arrested, and a grand jury indicted him on charges of robbery, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon and receiving stolen property.Reed claimed police unlawfully obtained the cellphone location information without a warrant. A judge denied his motion to suppress the information and evidence gained from the search. He entered a conditional guilty plea to charges including second-degree robbery, reserving his right to challenge the denial of his motion. He was sentenced to prison about five years ago but has since been released on parole, Meyer said.On appeal, the state Court of Appeals said the obtaining of Reed's real-time cellphone location information amounted to a warrantless, unreasonable search. The Supreme Court's majority agreed, sending the case back to trial court for further proceedings to suppress the cellphone data.“Today we hold that individuals have an objectively reasonable expectation that their cell phones will not be used as real-time tracking devices through the direct and active interference of law enforcement,” Minton wrote.He wrote that searching a cellphone's contents is an invasion of a person's “reasonable expectation of privacy sufficient to merit Fourth Amendment protection.” The Court of Appeals said the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant to search a person's cell-site location information.“We find no reason why such an expectation of privacy would not extend to data unwittingly, involuntarily transmitted by a person’s cell phone to their cell-service provider regarding their location,” Minton said. “Police may not subvert the warrant requirement merely by going directly to the cell-service provider.”As the case was argued, attorneys for the state said the consequences would be that police always have to obtain a warrant before getting a suspect's real-time cellphone location information.The Supreme Court's majority was unswayed. Minton noted “the ease with which technology allows police to obtain warrants and the invasive nature" of searching a person's cell location information.Joining Minton in the majority opinion were Deputy Chief Justice Lisabeth T. Hughes and Justices Michelle M. Keller and Christopher Shea Nickell.In his dissenting opinion, Justice Laurance B. VanMeter advocated another framework: that individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy involving their real-time cellphone location data while traveling on public roads, and when the information sought is limited in “scope and purpose.”The dissenting opinion said the trial court's denial of the suppression motion should be reinstated. Justices Robert B. Conley and Debra Hembree Lambert joined in the dissent. | Civil Rights Activism |
05:03 - Source: CNN 50 years of Title IX: The backlash and success of the law CNN — A community college in Salt Lake City, Utah, is being required to revise its practices after a pregnant student was encouraged to drop a class after asking for accommodations as she was dealing with morning sickness, education officials said. The student filed a complaint with the federal entity, which determined that Salt Lake Community College “violated both Title IX and Section 504 after investigating allegations that the college encouraged a pregnant student to drop a course because she was pregnant, did not engage in an interactive process to provide her with academic adjustments or necessary services during her pregnancy, and did not excuse her pregnancy-related absences or allow her later to submit work following those absences,” according to a media release from the US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. As a result, the school and the US Department of Education have reached an agreement, which requires the college to take steps to ensure it’s in compliance with Title IX and Section 504; both of which are civil rights laws that protect against discrimination. The resolution agreement requires the school to take actions including “revising its nondiscrimination notice and grievance procedures to comply with Title IX” and “publishing information on its website for pregnant students about their Title IX rights and how to seek academic adjustments, special services, or excused absences,” according to the release. The school will also be required to train its school employees about Title IX’s and Section 504’s protections for pregnant students, “and the academic adjustments and special services available to pregnant students,” the release said. In a letter addressed to the president of Salt Lake Community College, Deneece Huftalin, the US Department of Education explains that the student had informed her professor of her pregnancy and “that she was struggling with morning sickness and had missed or been late to some of the professor’s classes as a result.” The student requested adjustments from the professor “to allow additional absences and the ability to turn in assignments late without a grade penalty due to her nausea, which she told the professor often lasted all day and prohibited her from eating,” the letter said. “The Complainant explained to OCR that she asked the professor if she could modify the Program’s attendance policy and allow her to turn in assignments late because of her morning sickness, and that the professor responded that she would allow a few additional absences but would apply a grade penalty to late assignments. In addition, the Complainant told OCR that the professor advised her to drop,” the course because of her pregnancy, the letter said. In a statement to CNN, Salt Lake Community College said it is “dedicated to creating an inclusive, welcoming environment for all students and takes all complaints regarding discrimination seriously.” “We are working with the US Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to address this complaint and taking concrete steps to ensure reasonable accommodations are made moving forward,” the statement said. “These steps include strengthening internal processes related to investigating complaints, improving student access to Title IX information, and evaluating and fulfilling requests for accommodation. We will also ensure all staff and faculty are properly trained on the procedures that must be followed when working with students in need of accommodation due to pregnancy.” The college went on to say that it is “committed to strengthening” its processes and “working to ensure that students are treated respectfully, with understanding, and when necessary, offered reasonable accommodations to help them succeed.” | Civil Rights Activism |
Michelle Duster — great-granddaughter of civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells, who led a crusade against lynching during the early 20th century — with a portrait of Wells in her home. Duster will speak at the Field Museum on Monday in celebration of the Juneteenth holiday.AP This is only the second year Juneteenth has been marked as a federal holiday, with a three-day weekend and events across Chicago.But it’s nothing new to many Black Chicagoans, who have been celebrating the holiday for years.“Juneteenth is not a ‘let’s go take advantage of the latest sales at a retail outlet’ holiday,” said Michelle Duster, a Chicago professor, author and historian. “It’s more about sort of appreciation and reflection. It’s really family-centric or community-centric, with a sense of pride. It’s an acknowledgment that we actually built this country physically.”The holiday commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally were told they were free — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Duster and others say the holiday represents the continued struggle and fight for freedom for Black Americans.Duster is the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, the former Bronzeville resident who was an investigative journalist and crusader for the civil rights movement. Wells, born six months before the Emancipation Proclamation, died in 1931. In 2019, a major downtown Chicago thoroughfare was renamed in her honor.“So her life story is connected to slavery and to the end of slavery and the concept of freedom,” Duster said.
Duster lives on the South Side and frequently leads efforts to honor Wells’ legacy. On Monday, Duster will speak at the Field Museum about Ida B. Wells’ legacy connected to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Admission will be free Monday to commemorate the holiday.“It’s different from Black History Month,” Duster said. “That’s obviously a monthlong celebration of a lot of the achievements and everything. But Juneteenth is this specific day that is celebrating the actual freedom from chattel slavery.”To Bril Barrett, co-founder of the nonprofit M.A.D.D. Rhythms, today’s struggles of Black Americans are part of the reflection on Juneteenth. M.A.D.D. Rhythms celebrated Juneteenth 2021 with performances.Andrew Nadler “We have to honor our legacy, our history and our contributions,” Barrett said. “Most importantly, honor the struggle and the fight and the fight that still continues to this day. I think you’ll take it as just a reminder of that because, in reality, 1865 was not that long ago.”Duster said she always celebrated the holiday growing up, especially because one side of her family lived in Texas.“I think a lot of people in this country really don’t know the history, and, hopefully, by having this holiday, there will be more awareness and more education about what the experience was there,” she said. It’s important to mark the holiday, said Ted Williams III, a City Colleges of Chicago political science professor who created the stage production “1619,” a musical inspired by the arrival that year of enslaved Africans in America.
“That is what Juneteenth represents — the idea that, yes, there was freedom that was given through the Emancipation Proclamation,” Williams said. “And yet that was information that was denied to folks all across the country. So we have to celebrate a separate Independence Day because, on paper, we were free, but we never were. And this is really still true.” Asha Andrew-Hutchinson (left) and Tendaji Andrew-Hutchinson helped hoist the Juneteenth flag at Daley Plaza on Monday.Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Times He points to the economic inequality and disparate treatment by police that many Black Americans experience.Kim Dulaney, a DuSable Museum of African American History vice president, said it’s important to fight for the right to simply not be targeted because of race.“All of those things our ancestors paid for, for other people to benefit from, we deserve,” Dulaney said. “Freedom to jog freely, freedom to stand on the street corner and to go to the store to get some Skittles and wear a hoodie without being targeted. Freedom to exist without the stereotypes associated from the past placed on them and receiving punishments that don’t fit the crime.”Sara Furr, chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Field Museum, said the holiday spotlights the power of knowledge for the Black community.“I think of Juneteenth as this way in which information has been withheld,” Furr said. “Knowledge is a huge way that we can build resistance, where we can move ideas forward. So, for us in Chicago, we should be just as critical of what knowledge is being withheld from us as citizens.”Even as it’s a day to reflect, Juneteenth is also a time to celebrate, Barrett said.“With all of that fighting and all of that struggle, it can weigh you down,” Barrett said. “So moments of joy and moments of happiness are also very important to the survival of people.”Mariah Rush is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides. | Civil Rights Activism |
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces a dwindling number of options after the UK government approved his extradition to the United States on Friday. The decision is the latest chapter in a prolonged legal battle that started when former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked classified government documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which Assange published on WikiLeaks in 2010.Friday’s decision, approved by UK home secretary Priti Patel, is the latest in a series of legal battles to stay in the UK that Assange has lost. It’s a blow to Assange, who has spent the last decade either in hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy or in a UK prison. And his increasingly likely prosecution in US courts creates a precarious moment for First Amendment rights and the ability of news outlets to publish material deemed a threat to national security.“This is a dark day for Press freedom and for British democracy,” WikiLeaks said in a statement shared on Twitter. “Julian did nothing wrong. He has committed no crime and is not a criminal. He is a journalist and a publisher.” Wikileaks said Assange intends to appeal.“Assange may have at least one more avenue of appeal, so he may not be on a flight to the United States just yet,” Trevor Timm, executive director of the group Freedom of Press, said in a statement. “But this is one more troubling development in a case that could upend journalists’ rights in the 21st century.” The charges against Assange include 17 under the Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.Friday’s ruling overturns a December 2021 decision that declared Assange could not be extradited because subjecting him to US incarceration could increase the risk of suicide. The judge has accepted US assurances that Assange won’t face solitary confinement and will have access to psychological treatment.“The UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust, or an abuse of process to extradite Mr. Assange,” a spokesperson for the British Home Office told WIRED. “Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression, and that whilst in the US he will be treated appropriately, including in relation to his health.”Assange’s legal team has 14 days to appeal, according to the Home Office. His next step, now that the defense’s argument based on Assange’s suicide risk has been rejected, would likely be to focus on the other arguments his team has made against extradition, such as the threat it poses to press freedom and the political bias against Assange from United States law enforcement, given that Assange has been a thorn in the side of the US executive branch for over a decade.“I think there’s a lot of roads to run here,” says Naomi Colvin, UK/ Ireland director at the advocacy group Blueprint for Free Speech. She points out that even if these additional arguments fail to sway the UK judicial system, Assange can also appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, arguing that extradition would violate the UK’s commitment to human rights treaties. In yet another option, Assange’s team could demand a judicial review that would challenge the political side of Patel’s decision specifically, Colvin adds.Assange has faced charges in the United States since April of 2019, when the US Department of Justice indicted him for hacking crimes: He was accused of conspiring with Manning to steal Department of Defense secrets. That initial indictment centered on accusations that Assange had actively helped the young private to crack a password in order to gain access to a restricted part of a military network—a carefully crafted charge that seemed designed to distinguish Assange from traditional journalists and brand him instead as a cybercriminal.Just a month later, however, the Justice Department veered into a more aggressive strategy, unsealing a superseding indictment against Assange that accused him of violating the Espionage Act, a 100-year-old law against publishing classified information. That new charge had already been levied against leakers like Manning and Edward Snowden, but using it against a journalist like Assange—a recipient and publisher of classified leaks rather than a source of them—represented a new and highly controversial move for US law enforcement.“For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information,” Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told WIRED at the time. “This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on journalism and a direct assault on the First Amendment.”Manning did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.As it has evolved, Assange’s case has been buffeted by politics. His case was dropped by former US president Barack Obama’s administration before being resurrected under Donald Trump. The administration of President Joe Biden has continued the case against Assange, but Blue Print for Free Speech’s Colvin hopes that the Biden White House may be less committed than Trump’s to extradition. “It may well be that within the Biden administration, there are people who would quite like this to go away,” says Colvin. “I don’t think that’s impossible by any stretch of the imagination.”In the meantime, Assange’s avenues of escape from an American jail are narrowing. Unless the UK government or the US Department of Justice reverses course, his case may soon be moving across the Atlantic. And if it does, a journalistic publisher of information—however radical or controversial of a publisher Assange may be—will for the first time face spying charges in a US court.Update 9:38 am ET, June 17: Added additional context regarding the remaining options Assange’s legal team has to fight US extradition.More Great WIRED StoriesApple just killed the password—for real this timeWelcome to the Great ReinfectionStar Wars has a fandom problemThis is what flying car ports should look likeGoogle's Russian empire faces an uncertain futureHere are the best Netflix shows to binge-watch right now | Civil Rights Activism |
The Albanese government is under pressure to withdraw an appeal seeking to restore the commonwealth’s power to deport Aboriginal non-citizens.The Greens senator Lidia Thorpe has written to the attorney general and Indigenous affairs minister asking them to pull the case, started by the Morrison government, which Thorpe labelled an “insult to the oldest continuing culture of the world”.The request to withdraw the appeal has been echoed by legal academics and the lawyer for Brendan Thoms and Daniel Love, two men who won a landmark case in February 2020 establishing that Aboriginal people cannot be aliens.In October Guardian Australia revealed the Morrison government was attempting to use the case of Shayne Montgomery, a New Zealand citizen culturally adopted as Aboriginal, to overturn that precedent.In November, the federal court ordered Montgomery to be released from immigration detention, sparking a commonwealth appeal to the high court which was heard in April. The court reserved its decision.At least a dozen people have been released from immigration detention because they were found to be Aboriginal non-citizen non-aliens. If Love and Thoms is overturned, the Migration Act requires they be taken back into detention unless they are granted visas.Thorpe, a DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman and the Greens First Nations and justice spokesperson, wrote to Mark Dreyfus and Linda Burney on 6 June asking the new government to withdraw the appeal.Guardian Australia understands the Labor government has sought legal advice about the visa status of non-citizen non-aliens but it is not clear if it has asked for advice about withdrawing the case.In January, the then shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally said the Coalition “should abide by the high court’s ruling” in Love and Thoms, but Labor did not specifically commit to withdraw the Montgomery case. Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morningThe immigration minister, Andrew Giles, on Wednesday told Guardian Australia “of course the government should follow, well, of course the government should have regard to decisions of the high court” but referred queries about withdrawing the case to Dreyfus. Dreyfus declined to comment.Thorpe said “Aboriginal people cannot be aliens to this country, and Aboriginality must be self-determined by First Nations people, not by the colonial state”.“Our people are inherently connected to the land of this country,” she said. “Appealing the Love decision would deny that very connection and be an insult to the oldest continuing culture of the world and can indeed be regarded as an attempt to eradicate our history and culture, and thereby our people.”In her letter, Thorpe argued withdrawing the case would allow the government “to move forward with the best interest of First Nations people in this country at heart”.The original Love and Thoms decision was decided in a four-three split decision, with the chief justice Susan Kiefel in the minority.Since it was handed down, two judges in the majority retired and were replaced by the Morrison government.George Williams, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of New South Wales, said court judgements shouldn’t be overturned solely because of personnel changes on the bench. Williams said there was “likely” no bar to withdrawing the appeal “as parties are free to discontinue proceedings or to settle prior to judgement being delivered”.Eddie Cubillo, associate dean and senior research fellow of Indigenous programs at the University of Melbourne, said the case should be withdrawn.“Love and Thoms was a significant advance in the relationship between the commonwealth and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” Cubillo said.“I’s the first time the high court recognised the distinct legal status of Indigenous people under the constitution.“The ink hasn’t even dried on [a decision of] the highest court in the country and they’re already going back and trying to change the umpire’s decision. That’s not a model litigant, there.”Cubillo also questioned whether it was consistent with the rule of law for the government to seek to “take advantage of that fact that two of the majority judges” had retired.On 8 June the high court ruled that Thoms was not unlawfully detained in immigration detention in the two years prior to its landmark decision in February 2020, holding that the Migration Act can validly authorise detention of people who are “reasonably suspected of being unlawful non-citizens”.Thoms’s lawyer, Claire Gibbs, said she was “very disappointed” with the outcome.“[Thoms] spent more than 500 nights locked up in immigration detention. He deserves justice and accountability for the way he was treated and the ongoing harm it has caused.“The federal government now has an important opportunity to ensure that the findings of the historic Love Thoms case are upheld and followed, so that no First Australians will ever again be declared aliens and threatened with deportation.” | Civil Rights Activism |
The decision by Priti Patel, the home secretary, to extradite the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US ought to worry anyone who cares about journalism and democracy. Mr Assange, 50, has been charged under the US Espionage Act, including publishing classified material. He faces up to 175 years in jail if found guilty by a US court. This action potentially opens the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington.The case against Mr Assange relates to hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, which were made public by WikiLeaks, working with the Guardian and other media organisations. They revealed horrifying abuses by the US and other governments that would not otherwise have been disclosed. Despite claiming otherwise, US authorities could not find a single person, among the thousands of American sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the disclosures.Mr Assange, who has a reputation for being a brilliant but difficult character, has suffered enough. Until 2019 Met police had waited seven years for him to emerge from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Since then he has spent three years in Belmarsh high-security prison without being convicted of any crime. Mr Assange should have been given bail to be with his wife and their two young children. To keep track of him, the authorities could have insisted that he be electronically tagged and monitored.The use of the Espionage Act to prosecute him should be seen for what it is: an attack on the freedom of the press. As the Knight First Amendment Institute’s Carrie DeCell wrote in 2019, when the charge sheet was published, “soliciting, obtaining, and then publishing classified information ... [is] what good national security and investigative journalists do every day”.Ms Patel could have turned down the American request. Britain should be wary of extraditing a suspect to a country with such a political justice department. Her predecessor Theresa May halted the extradition proceedings of Gary McKinnon, who hacked the US Department of Defense. The UK could have decided that Mr Assange faces an unacceptably high risk of prolonged solitary confinement in a US maximum security prison. Instead, Ms Patel has dealt a blow to press freedom and against the public, who have a right to know what their governments are doing in their name. It’s not over. Mr Assange will appeal.The charges against him should never have been brought. As Mr Assange published classified documents and he did not leak them, Barack Obama’s administration was reluctant to bring charges. His legal officers correctly understood that this would threaten public interest journalism. It was Donald Trump’s team, which considered the press an “enemy of the people”, that took the step. It is not too late for the US to drop the charges. On World Press Freedom Day this year, the US president, Joe Biden, said: “The work of free and independent media matters now more than ever.” Giving Mr Assange his freedom back would give meaning to those words. | Civil Rights Activism |
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces a dwindling number of options after the UK government approved his extradition to the United States on Friday. The decision is the latest chapter in a prolonged legal battle that started when former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked classified government documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which Assange published on WikiLeaks in 2010.Friday’s decision, approved by UK home secretary Priti Patel, is the latest in a series of legal battles Assange has lost in his effort to remain in the UK. It’s a blow to Assange, who has spent the last decade either in hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy or in a UK prison. And his increasingly likely prosecution in US courts creates a precarious moment for First Amendment rights and the ability of news outlets to publish material deemed a threat to national security.“This is a dark day for Press freedom and for British democracy,” WikiLeaks said in a statement shared on Twitter. “Julian did nothing wrong. He has committed no crime and is not a criminal. He is a journalist and a publisher.” Wikileaks said Assange intends to appeal.“Assange may have at least one more avenue of appeal, so he may not be on a flight to the United States just yet,” Trevor Timm, executive director of the group Freedom of Press, said in a statement. “But this is one more troubling development in a case that could upend journalists’ rights in the 21st century.” The charges against Assange include 17 under the Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.Friday’s ruling overturns a December 2021 decision that declared Assange could not be extradited because subjecting him to US incarceration could increase the risk of suicide. The judge has accepted US assurances that Assange won’t face solitary confinement and will have access to psychological treatment.“The UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust, or an abuse of process to extradite Mr. Assange,” a spokesperson for the British Home Office told WIRED. “Nor have they found that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights, including his right to a fair trial and to freedom of expression, and that whilst in the US he will be treated appropriately, including in relation to his health.”Assange’s legal team has 14 days to appeal, according to the Home Office. His next step, now that the defense’s argument based on Assange’s suicide risk has been rejected, would likely be to focus on the other arguments his team has made against extradition, such as the threat it poses to press freedom and the political bias against Assange from United States law enforcement, given that Assange has been a thorn in the side of the US executive branch for over a decade.“I think there’s a lot of roads to run here,” says Naomi Colvin, UK/ Ireland director at the advocacy group Blueprint for Free Speech. She points out that even if these additional arguments fail to sway the UK judicial system, Assange can also appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, arguing that extradition would violate the UK’s commitment to human rights treaties. In yet another option, Assange’s team could demand a judicial review that would challenge the political side of Patel’s decision specifically, Colvin adds.Assange has faced charges in the United States since April of 2019, when the US Department of Justice indicted him for hacking crimes: He was accused of conspiring with Manning to steal Department of Defense secrets. That initial indictment centered on accusations that Assange had actively helped the young private crack a password in order to gain access to a restricted part of a military network—a carefully crafted charge that seemed designed to distinguish Assange from traditional journalists and brand him instead as a cybercriminal.Just a month later, however, the Justice Department veered into a more aggressive strategy, unsealing a superseding indictment against Assange that accused him of violating the Espionage Act, a 100-year-old law against publishing classified information. That new charge had already been levied against leakers like Manning and Edward Snowden, but using it against a journalist like Assange—a recipient and publisher of classified leaks rather than a source of them—represented a new and highly controversial move for US law enforcement.“For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information,” Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told WIRED at the time. “This is an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on journalism and a direct assault on the First Amendment.”Manning did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.As it has evolved, Assange’s case has been buffeted by politics. His case was dropped by former US president Barack Obama’s administration before being resurrected under Donald Trump. The administration of President Joe Biden has continued the case against Assange, but Blue Print for Free Speech’s Colvin hopes that the Biden White House may be less committed than Trump’s to extradition. “It may well be that within the Biden administration, there are people who would quite like this to go away,” says Colvin. “I don’t think that’s impossible by any stretch of the imagination.”In the meantime, Assange’s avenues of escape from an American jail are narrowing. Unless the UK government or the US Department of Justice reverses course, his case may soon be moving across the Atlantic. And if it does, a journalistic publisher of information—however radical or controversial of a publisher Assange may be—will for the first time face spying charges in a US court. | Civil Rights Activism |
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (AP) — Legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and three other men who were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after they launched the first of the “freedom rides” to challenge Jim Crow laws had their convictions posthumously vacated Friday, more than seven decades later.“We failed these men,” said Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour, who presided over the special session and at one point paused to gather himself after becoming emotional. “We failed their cause and we failed to deliver justice in our community,” Baddour said. “And for that, I apologize. So we’re doing this today to right a wrong, in public, and on the record.” Speaking to about 100 people in the gallery, Baddour noted they were gathered in the same second-story courtroom in the historic courthouse where the men were initially sentenced. On April 9, 1947, a group of eight white men and eight Black men began the first “freedom ride” to challenge laws that mandated segregation on buses in defiance of the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court Morgan v. Virginia ruling declaring segregation on interstate travel unconstitutional. The men boarded buses in Washington, D.C., setting out on a two-week route that included stops in Durham, Chapel Hill and Greensboro, North Carolina. As the riders attempted to board the bus in Chapel Hill, several of them were removed by force and attacked by a group of angry cab drivers. Four of the so-called Freedom Riders — Andrew Johnson, James Felmet, Bayard Rustin, and Igal Roodenko — were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to move from the front of the bus. After a trial in Orange County, the four men were convicted and sentenced to serve on a chain gang. Rustin later published writings about being imprisoned and subjected to hard labor for taking part in the first freedom ride, which was also known as the Journey of Reconciliation.Renee Price, chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, told the audience that the special session resulted from research by Baddour and his staff that was launched after a previous anniversary of the case.“We are here, 75 years later, to address an injustice and henceforth to correct the narrative regarding the Journey of Reconciliation and that segment of American history,” Price said.In 1942, five years before the Chapel Hill episode, Rustin was beaten by police officers in Nashville, Tennessee, and taken to jail after refusing to move to the back of a bus he had ridden from Louisville, Kentucky, author Raymond Arsenault wrote in the book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” A pioneer of the civil rights movement, Rustin was an adviser to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was instrumental in organizing the March on Washington in 1963. Dr. Adriane Lentz-Smith, an associate professor and associate chair in the department of history at Duke University, described Rustin as “a shepherd and a shaper of the 1960s movement.” But Lentz-Smith said his role in the struggle eventually diminished over concerns that his being gay and a former member of the Communist Party could hurt the movement. “He was deliberately moved out of the spotlight,” Lentz-Smith said. “The very things that make him remarkable and admirable to us ... in 2022 made him profoundly vulnerable” then, she said.Rustin’s partner, Walter Naegle, spoke by Zoom Friday and said Rustin and the three men “weren’t fighting for their own good will, but for all of us ... Their faith and their consciences compelled them to act.”Amy Zowniriw, Roodenko’s niece, told the courtroom that her uncle was “the epitome of a moral and righteous citizen, yet he was put in jail for sitting next to his dear friend, Bayard Rustin.”Last month, five District Court judges marked the 75th anniversary of the arrests of Rustin and the three other men in Chapel Hill by reading a statement of apology. “The Orange County Court was on the wrong side of the law in May 1947, and it was on the wrong side of history,” the statement read. “Today, we stand before our community on behalf of all five District Court Judges for Orange and Chatham Counties and accept the responsibility entrusted to us to do our part to eliminate racial disparities in our justice system.”___Foreman is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.___This story has been corrected to reflect that the court vacated their convictions, rather than their sentences. | Civil Rights Activism |
It's been more than a month since a dozen civil rights and religious groups say they sent a letter to the White House calling on President Joe Biden sign an executive order to study reparations by Juneteenth, or this Sunday, June 19, marking the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.So, this week, because Biden hasn't yet done so, activists began staging a first-of-its-kind visual installation on the Ellipse, near the White House, to get Biden's and the public's attention leading into America's newest federal holiday, being observed on Monday.Reparations activists outside new art installation calling on President Joe Biden to sign an executive order on reparations in Washington.Human Rights WatchThe study activists wants comes after a decades-long push to establish a 13-person reparations commission in Congress.The installation on the Ellipse includes a giant Pan-African flag, made of red, black, and green flowers alongside mulch provided by Black farmers -- what activists say is a visual reminder of the need for reparations.A art installation calling on President Joe Biden to sign an executive order on reparations stands in Washington.Human Rights WatchShortly after the end of the Civil War, Union leaders promised formerly enslaved families "40 acres and a mule" -- a promise never fulfilled.However, a reminder of the centuries-old promise has languished in Congress for decades. H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, has been introduced in every legislative session since 1989.The measure seeks to establish a commission to study "and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, legal and other racial and economic discrimination, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies ..."In recent years, the bill has gained some political traction.In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hundreds of members of Congress and over 350 organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, NAACP and ACLU publicly announced support for reparations.At the Tribeca Film Festival, "The Big Payback," a documentary examining reparations, directed by "Living Single" actress Erika Alexander, premiered at the legendary festival in early June.H.R. 40 passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 but has failed to come to a vote in the House or Senate.President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House, June 13, 2022, in Washington, DC.Win Mcnamee/Getty ImagesFormer White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated in 2021 that President Biden supported the study of reparations. However, when asked if he would support a bill on reparations Psaki said, "We'll see what happens through the legislative process."Asked if Biden supports an executive order on the study of reparations, Psaki said at the time, "it would be up to him, he has executive order authority, he would certainly support a study, and we'll see where Congress moves on that issue."A White House official told ABC News on Thursday, President Biden still "supports a study of reparations and the continued impacts of slavery but he is very clear that we don't need a study to advance racial equity."The official added, "he is taking comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today, including an executive order on his first day in office establishing a whole-of-government approach to addressing racial inequality and making sure equity is a part of his entire policy agenda."Nkechi Taifa, center, speaks at Vote For Justice: An Evening of Empowerment with activists and artists at the Newseum, May 9, 2018, in Washington.Paul Morigi/AP, FILENkechi Taifa is director of the Reparation Education Project, and has been calling for reparations for moire than 50 years. In 1987, she was one of the founders of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA), an organization that worked closely with Democratic Rep. John Conyers to draft the introduction of H.R. 40 in 1989. She says now is the time for Biden to sign an executive order so the commission can be up and running before the end of Biden's presidency.Taifa says she hopes the display at the ellipse sends a message that reparations advocates need to be paid attention to, and Black people should not be taken for granted.She told ABC News, "If they think they're gonna rest on Juneteenth because it's a holiday and a watered down policing reform bill -- that's not enough. Black people have been run roughshod over, you know, for centuries, and it just, it just cannot continue."Joan Neal, deputy executive director and chief equity officer at NETWORK, a social justice advocacy group founded by U.S. religious sisters tells ABC News, that "Slavery was a sin, that was the original sin of this country, and we believe that unless you acknowledge your sin and you make a firm determination to never do it again, and then make restitution for what was lost. You still have not been forgiven."She added, "All parties have to be willing to stand up and face the sin in order for the sin to be forgiven and in order for things to be whole again." | Civil Rights Activism |
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. -- Legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and three other men who were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after they launched the first of the “freedom rides” to challenge Jim Crow laws had their convictions posthumously vacated Friday, more than seven decades later.“We failed these men,” said Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour, who presided over the special session and at one point paused to gather himself after becoming emotional. “We failed their cause and we failed to deliver justice in our community,” Baddour said. “And for that, I apologize. So we're doing this today to right a wrong, in public, and on the record.”Speaking to about 100 people in the gallery, Baddour noted they were gathered in the same second-story courtroom in the historic courthouse where the men were initially sentenced. On April 9, 1947, a group of eight white men and eight Black men began the first “freedom ride” to challenge laws that mandated segregation on buses in defiance of the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court Morgan v. Virginia ruling declaring segregation on interstate travel unconstitutional. The men boarded buses in Washington, D.C., setting out on a two-week route that included stops in Durham, Chapel Hill and Greensboro, North Carolina. As the riders attempted to board the bus in Chapel Hill, several of them were removed by force and attacked by a group of angry cab drivers. Four of the so-called Freedom Riders — Andrew Johnson, James Felmet, Bayard Rustin, and Igal Roodenko — were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to move from the front of the bus. After a trial in Orange County, the four men were convicted and sentenced to serve on a chain gang. Rustin later published writings about being imprisoned and subjected to hard labor for taking part in the first freedom ride, which was also known as the Journey of Reconciliation.Renee Price, chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, told the audience that the special session resulted from research by Baddour and his staff that was launched after a previous anniversary of the case.“We are here, 75 years later, to address an injustice and henceforth to correct the narrative regarding the Journey of Reconciliation and that segment of American history,” Price said.In 1942, five years before the Chapel Hill episode, Rustin was beaten by police officers in Nashville, Tennessee, and taken to jail after refusing to move to the back of a bus he had ridden from Louisville, Kentucky, author Raymond Arsenault wrote in the book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” A pioneer of the civil rights movement, Rustin was an adviser to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was instrumental in organizing the March on Washington in 1963. Dr. Adriane Lentz-Smith, an associate professor and associate chair in the department of history at Duke University, described Rustin as “a shepherd and a shaper of the 1960s movement.” But Lentz-Smith said his role in the struggle eventually diminished over concerns that his being gay and a former member of the Communist Party could hurt the movement. “He was deliberately moved out of the spotlight,” Lentz-Smith said. “The very things that make him remarkable and admirable to us ... in 2022 made him profoundly vulnerable” then, she said.Rustin's partner, Walter Naegle, spoke by Zoom Friday and said Rustin and the three men “weren't fighting for their own good will, but for all of us ... Their faith and their consciences compelled them to act."Amy Zowniriw, Roodenko's niece, told the courtroom that her uncle was “the epitome of a moral and righteous citizen, yet he was put in jail for sitting next to his dear friend, Bayard Rustin.”Last month, five District Court judges marked the 75th anniversary of the arrests of Rustin and the three other men in Chapel Hill by reading a statement of apology. “The Orange County Court was on the wrong side of the law in May 1947, and it was on the wrong side of history,” the statement read. “Today, we stand before our community on behalf of all five District Court Judges for Orange and Chatham Counties and accept the responsibility entrusted to us to do our part to eliminate racial disparities in our justice system.”———Foreman is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.———This story has been corrected to reflect that the court vacated their convictions, rather than their sentences. | Civil Rights Activism |
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! During an interview on "Fox & Friends Weekend," Fox News host Dan Bongino slammed the corruption of the U.S. education system, citing it as the "biggest screw job" in the history of U.S. politics. Dan Bongino slams the U.S. education system (iStock)DAN BONGINO: We have people, and we are screwing them over. The corruption of our education system is the biggest screw job in the history of American politics. We have this wealth of human capital being flushed down the drain as we don't teach these kids to be engineers, doctors and scientists, but to be snowflake social justice warriors. And it is a national disgrace. Let me just tell you one statistic here. FAIRFAX PARENTS REACT AS BOARD VOTES ON PUNISHMENTS FOR STUDENT 'MISGENDERING': 'COMPELLING THEM TO SPEECH'You know what inspired me when I ran for office back in 2010, I read a piece by Jason Riley in The Wall Street Journal. Think about this number, I use it all the time. There are 20,000 high schools in this country. Just 2,000 of them produce half the dropouts. Now, if you happen to be black. To our listeners who are minorities out there, you have a 50% chance of sending your kid to one of those schools. That is a disgrace. That is a stain on our country. That is the civil rights issue of our time. That cannot be allowed to happen. And if we don't fix this, we're not going to have a country moving forward as China and other countries around the world laugh at us. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE: This article was written by Fox News staff. | Civil Rights Activism |
Four years ago this month, on June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court upheld Trump v. Hawaii. The court ruled, despite evidence to the contrary, that President Trump’s travel ban was neutral and that it was a matter of national security. For most, the election of Joe Biden and his repeal of the “Muslim ban” renders much of Trump v. Hawaii moot. But with four years of hindsight, the Supreme Court’s refusal to acknowledge that the policy was animated by Trump’s animus still lives with us. Trump v. Hawaii not only upheld the “Muslim ban,” but it set a dangerous precedent that may well impact Muslims – U.S. citizens and non-citizens – for years to come long after Donald Trump or Joe Biden are gone. Trump’s Proclamation No. 9645 was not written in a vacuum. Its purpose could not have been made clearer than by President Trump himself. He had promised a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims” from entering the country, proclaimed that “Islam hates us” advocated for closing mosques, wanted to create a Muslim database and even favorably compared his “Muslim ban” to Japanese internment in the 1940s. Yet Trump’s government argued that those comments were unrelated to the ban, which, it insisted, was based on national security. Despite hundreds of Republican and Democratic national security officials debunking the national security argument, the Roberts court ignored the religious animus of the law and instead focused on the letter of the law. “The text [of the ban] says nothing about religion” and therefore the courts had to accept the president’s rationale of “national security” being the reason behind the policy. This despite that Trump outlined how he would “assemble a commission together” to help draft a ban that would focus on national security to make his illegal “Muslim ban” legal. Not only did the ruling give a president maximum power and scope when “national security” is concerned but regrettably gives license to the next Trump – a future Trump or maybe even this Trump in 2024 – to take the original “Muslim ban” on five countries and expand it to 15, 20, 30 or even all Muslim-majority countries. A future president need not stop there. Africans and those of African descent, such as Haitians, could also be banned on national security grounds. This is not hyperbole. It already happened. In the wake of Trump v. Hawaii, Trump expanded the ban to 13 countries, targeted African countries, blocked refugee and asylum seekers and banned immigrants based on health care status and their alleged harm to the U.S. economy — all under the guise of protecting our nation. And when Trump demanded that “Christians [should] be given priority for entry as refugees to the United States” because it was “very unfair” that Muslims had historically enjoyed such privileges, it’s likely the next Trump-like president will put that into law behind some facially neutral policy. We could see the tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who escaped persecution by the Taliban being deported back to that persecution and probable death thanks to Trump v. Hawaii. Perhaps the next Trump can even separate out Christian refugees from those of the Islamic faith. Trump and his supporters have already targeted Afghan refugees and vowed to block their entry, so it may only be a matter of time. We could even see states and local governments getting in on the action. Already, several states have passed bills given to them by anti-Muslim hate groups, and those bills are rarely, if ever, challenged. We could see governors calling for registries or targeting mosques just as Trump demanded. Why could a state not set up “special identification tracking,” as Trump suggested they do, in the name of monitoring national security threats? Or perhaps they could be barred from entering Congress or government as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) suggested. Any such law would not say “Muslims need not apply,” but rather would hide behind any legalities to give the Roberts court yet another excuse for inaction. And the politicians who backed these things could be open and flagrant in their demonization and discriminatory intent in public because Trump v. Hawaii gave them the right to be so. In Trump v. Hawaii, the court held that Korematsu v. United States, the case that upheld the government’s right to place Japanese Americans in internment, was not analogous to the current situation. Yet Korematsu became an example for generations of a court turning a blind eye to prejudice; Trump v. Hawaii will have a similar legacy. Beyond its infamous place in the history books, Trump v. Hawaii will give rise to newer, more creative ways to demonize Muslims and other Americans so long as the discrimination is not in the text of the law. Christopher Richardson, an immigration lawyer, was a U.S. diplomat between 2011 and 2018 and served in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Spain. | Civil Rights Activism |
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (AP) — Legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and three other men who were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina after they launched the first of the “freedom rides” to challenge Jim Crow laws had their convictions posthumously vacated Friday, more than seven decades later.
“We failed these men,” said Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour, who presided over the special session and at one point paused to gather himself after becoming emotional.
“We failed their cause and we failed to deliver justice in our community,” Baddour said. “And for that, I apologize. So we’re doing this today to right a wrong, in public, and on the record.”
Speaking to about 100 people in the gallery, Baddour noted they were gathered in the same second-story courtroom in the historic courthouse where the men were initially sentenced.
READ MORE: Bruce Boynton, who inspired 1961 Freedom Rides, dies at 83
On April 9, 1947, a group of eight white men and eight Black men began the first “freedom ride” to challenge laws that mandated segregation on buses in defiance of the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court Morgan v. Virginia ruling declaring segregation on interstate travel unconstitutional.
The men boarded buses in Washington, D.C., setting out on a two-week route that included stops in Durham, Chapel Hill and Greensboro, North Carolina. As the riders attempted to board the bus in Chapel Hill, several of them were removed by force and attacked by a group of angry cab drivers. Four of the so-called Freedom Riders — Andrew Johnson, James Felmet, Bayard Rustin, and Igal Roodenko — were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to move from the front of the bus.
After a trial in Orange County, the four men were convicted and sentenced to serve on a chain gang. Rustin later published writings about being imprisoned and subjected to hard labor for taking part in the first freedom ride, which was also known as the Journey of Reconciliation.
Renee Price, chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners, told the audience that the special session resulted from research by Baddour and his staff that was launched after a previous anniversary of the case.
“We are here, 75 years later, to address an injustice and henceforth to correct the narrative regarding the Journey of Reconciliation and that segment of American history,” Price said.
In 1942, five years before the Chapel Hill episode, Rustin was beaten by police officers in Nashville, Tennessee, and taken to jail after refusing to move to the back of a bus he had ridden from Louisville, Kentucky, author Raymond Arsenault wrote in the book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” A pioneer of the civil rights movement, Rustin was an adviser to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was instrumental in organizing the March on Washington in 1963.
READ MORE: Lucille Bridges, mother of activist Ruby Bridges, dies at 86
Dr. Adriane Lentz-Smith, an associate professor and associate chair in the department of history at Duke University, described Rustin as “a shepherd and a shaper of the 1960s movement.” But Lentz-Smith said his role in the struggle eventually diminished over concerns that his being gay and a former member of the Communist Party could hurt the movement.
“He was deliberately moved out of the spotlight,” Lentz-Smith said. “The very things that make him remarkable and admirable to us … in 2022 made him profoundly vulnerable” then, she said.
Rustin’s partner, Walter Naegle, spoke by Zoom Friday and said Rustin and the three men “weren’t fighting for their own good will, but for all of us … Their faith and their consciences compelled them to act.”
Amy Zowniriw, Roodenko’s niece, told the courtroom that her uncle was “the epitome of a moral and righteous citizen, yet he was put in jail for sitting next to his dear friend, Bayard Rustin.”
Last month, five District Court judges marked the 75th anniversary of the arrests of Rustin and the three other men in Chapel Hill by reading a statement of apology.
“The Orange County Court was on the wrong side of the law in May 1947, and it was on the wrong side of history,” the statement read. “Today, we stand before our community on behalf of all five District Court Judges for Orange and Chatham Counties and accept the responsibility entrusted to us to do our part to eliminate racial disparities in our justice system.” | Civil Rights Activism |
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of both the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the HouseÕs Homeland Security Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 16, 2022. (AndrŽ Chung/The New York Times)BOLTON, Miss.— It was here, in this majority-Black town of 441 people, that Rep. Bennie Thompson attended a segregated junior high school. It was where his father spent a lifetime working as a mechanic and paying taxes, but never enjoying the right to vote. And it was where the future congressman, in the early 1970s, campaigned for mayor while packing a gun, after receiving threats from white people loath to give up their political power.So it came as little surprise, to those who know Thompson well, that he was quick to mention Bolton, Mississippi, after gaveling to order the first hearing of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.“I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching,” said Thompson, the committee chair. “I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021.”Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesMoments later, Thompson accused former President Donald Trump of having “spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.”Thompson, who is also chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has spent nearly 30 years on Capitol Hill, but his leadership of the Jan. 6 committee represents his most significant turn in the national spotlight. And it is thematically consistent with a public life that was forged in Mississippi when disenfranchisement was achieved by chicanery, intimidation and violence.“I think that he took Jan. 6 personally, based upon his body of work and what he’s stood for regarding making sure people have a voice through the ballot box,” said state Sen. Derrick Simmons, a fellow Democrat.In an interview Friday, Thompson said as much. For some people, he said, the slogan “Make America Great Again” seemed like a “dog whistle” evoking a world like the white-dominated Mississippi in which he grew up. He said he was disturbed by the gallows that protesters brought for Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 and by the Confederate flags in the crowd.“We are supposed to be a democracy,” he said. “And when we see people carrying Confederate battle flags in the group, that’s the symbol of slavery and absolute resistance to the rule of law. So for me, it was bringing back a part of our history that none of us should be proud of.”With his avuncular white beard and commanding voice, Thompson, 74, has established the committee’s serious, and almost solemn, tone. He has also ceded much of the spotlight to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., vice chair of the committee.Thompson and other Democrats surely recognize that a withering critique of Trump is more powerful coming from a Republican. At the same time, the close alliance that Thompson appears to have forged with Cheney has softened his reputation as a fierce partisan reluctant to work with Republicans.In Mississippi, this reluctance is often attributed to the emotional scars Thompson carries from his years battling for basic civil rights against white Mississippians who migrated to the Republican Party after former President Lyndon Johnson secured passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.Thompson “is all about partisanship,” reporter Adam Lynch wrote in 2006 in the Jackson Free Press, a liberal newspaper. “He’s very much a liberal Democrat with no predilection for smiling tolerantly at the other side.”When he was running for Congress for the first time, in 1993, Thompson told The New York Times that a strategy of confrontation, for Black people in Mississippi, “has been one of the main means of survival.”His activist record dates to his time in junior high, when he was arrested for participating in a demonstration in Jackson, Mississippi, after hearing speeches by Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963.“He was talking stuff that many people felt but didn’t have the nerve enough to talk,” Thompson recalled in a 1974 interview. “It was basically about why are Black folks the ones that don’t have good jobs; why are Black folks the ones that don’t have decent housing?”He enrolled at Tougaloo College, in Jackson, then a hotbed of anti-racist organizing, joining the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which was focused on registering Black voters. At Tougaloo, he also met Fannie Lou Hamer, the prominent civil rights activist, and volunteered on her unsuccessful congressional campaign.He worked briefly after college as a public school teacher but said his contract was not renewed after he assigned an essay on the topic, “What’s Wrong With Mississippi?” In 1969, he was elected alderman in Bolton, part of a wave of Black officials who were filling local elected offices across the South in the wake of the Voting Rights Act.Two other Black candidates had also won alderman races in Bolton that year. The town clerk, Thompson said, initially refused to work with them, addressing them with a racist slur. In 1973, white residents challenged Thompson’s election as mayor, accusing him of illegally registering out-of-town voters. The election, he said, generated eight lawsuits.Once in office, he inundated federal agencies with letters seeking funding and other support for programs that he hoped would transform the city. He helped found the state’s association of Black mayors, then co-founded its first association of Black county supervisors, building networks and helping others get elected to small local posts along the way.“He probably did more to bring about the election of Blacks to local political office than anybody,” said Danny Cupit, a trial lawyer and longtime friend of Thompson’s.Thompson became a Hinds County commissioner after challenging the makeup of the commission districts in court. In 1993 he won a special election to fill the congressional seat being vacated by Mike Espy, who was selected as agriculture secretary under former President Bill Clinton.The year before he went to Congress, an incident unfolded that recently prompted Rep. Matt Gaetz, the hard-right Trump supporter from Florida, to falsely claim that Thompson “actively cheer-led riots in the ’90s.”A few months after the riots that followed the 1992 acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King, the head of the Hinds County Bar Association, Harold Miller Jr., wrote to Thompson asking him to “take a stand in favor of the principle of law and against the philosophy that unwarranted criticism and riots are acceptable responses to displeasure with a judicial decision.” Miller was worried that riots would ensue if a jury acquitted Byron De La Beckwith, the white racist who had killed Evers and was facing a new murder trial after two juries in the 1960s failed to reach verdicts. (He was eventually convicted in 1994.)Thompson’s response letter contained no support for rioters, but it did give a taste of his uncompromising style. He wrote of the “unrestrained violence” that white people had inflicted on Black Americans during slavery and beyond. He mentioned the violence of the Ku Klux Klan and the white “murder mobs” that flared in cities like New Orleans and Vicksburg, Mississippi, during Reconstruction.“Before 1968 there were no African elected officials in Hinds County,” he wrote. “What did the Hinds County Bar do to address this injustice?”In Congress, Thompson has worked on higher education equity issues, opposed Trump’s border wall and successfully brought large federal spending projects to his district, which includes the poverty-stricken Mississippi Delta and the majority-Black city of Jackson.The congressman, an avid hunter, is back in his district most weekends, taking meetings in his storefront office in Bolton. It is decorated with images of civil rights heroes, photos of Thompson on hog and rabbit hunts, and the stuffed heads of animals he has shot.His governing philosophy is spelled out on a prominently displayed poster that shows a lifeless varmint on a stretch of asphalt. “The only thing middle of the road,” it says, “is yellow paint and a dead armadillo.”Willie Earl Robinson, the town’s volunteer fire chief and a longtime ally of the congressman, gave a tour of the town this week, pointing out the city hall, expanded fire station and 40-unit public housing complex that Thompson helped get built.“I don’t consider him being angry,” Robinson said. “The point is that he’s just trying to get things done.”A number of “Re-elect Bennie Thompson” signs were scattered around, but they are most likely a formality. Thompson’s district has been engineered to be safe for a Black Democrat, leaving Mississippi’s other three districts generally safe for Republicans.Thompson said that the committee’s work was among the most important he had engaged in as a politician.“I want it to benefit this country and the world,” he said. “Because we still, in my humble opinion, are still the greatest country in the world. We just had a hiccup on Jan. 6. And we have to fix it.”© 2022 The New York Times Company | Civil Rights Activism |
DALLAS -- Opal Lee, 95, spent years lobbying for federal recognition of Juneteenth, and her work finally paid off."I still pinch myself sometimes, to see if it really happened," said Lee, known as the "grandmother of Juneteenth."In 2021, President Joe Biden signed it into federal law, thanks in part to Lee."To be invited to the White House, to see Juneteenth signed into law? Oh, I was humbled. I wanted to do a holy dance, but the kids say I try, I'm twerking," she said.But, the win did not come easily.RELATED: New name, look for DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center ahead of JuneteenthLee organized dozens of 2.5-mile walks to bring awareness to the two and a half years it took for the Emancipation Proclamation to be enforced in Texas.She and her team also rallied hundreds of thousands of people to sign a petition."We took 1,500,000 signatures to Congress, and we were ready to take that many more when we got the call to go to the White House," Lee said.But, Lee said her work isn't finished, and equity is still something she fights for daily."We all want the same thing -- want a decent place to stay, a job that's going to pay us a decent wage. We want schools that actually teach our children what really happened or people don't know where to go, and if they don't know where they came from, if we can be taught to hate, we can be taught to love," she said. Copyright © 2022 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved. | Civil Rights Activism |
Today is Sunday, June 19, the 170th day of 2022. There are 195 days left in the year. This is Juneteenth. (The federal holiday will be observed on Monday, June 20.) This is Father’s Day.Today’s Highlight in History:On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster.On this date:In 1775, George Washington was commissioned by the Continental Congress as commander in chief of the Continental Army.In 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free — an event celebrated to this day as “Juneteenth.”In 1910, the first-ever Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. (The idea for the observance is credited to Sonora Louise Smart Dodd.)In 1911, Pennsylvania became the first state to establish a motion picture censorship board.In 1917, during World War I, King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames; the family took the name “Windsor.”In 1934, the Federal Communications Commission was created; it replaced the Federal Radio Commission.In 1944, during World War II, the two-day Battle of the Philippine Sea began, resulting in a decisive victory for the Americans over the Japanese.In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York.In 1975, former Chicago organized crime boss Sam Giancana was shot to death in the basement of his home in Oak Park, Illinois; the killing has never been solved.In 1986, University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, the first draft pick of the Boston Celtics, suffered a fatal cocaine-induced seizure.In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creation science as well.In 2014, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California won election as House majority leader as Republicans shuffled their leadership in the wake of Rep. Eric Cantor’s primary defeat in Virginia.RELATED: 6 books examining Chicago and its historyTen years ago: WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange took refuge at Ecuador’s Embassy in London, seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced questioning about alleged sex crimes. (Sweden dropped its inquiry in May 2017; Assange remains in custody in Britain, where a judge has approved a U.S. request to extradite him so he can stand trial on espionage charges.)Vintage Chicago TribuneWeeklyThe Vintage Tribune newsletter is a deep dive into the Chicago Tribune's archives featuring photos and stories about the people, places and events that shape the city's past, present and future.Five years ago: Otto Warmbier (WARM’-beer), a 22-year-old American college student released by North Korea in a coma after more than a year in captivity, died in a Cincinnati hospital.One year ago: Eight children in a van from a youth home for abused or neglected children were killed in a multi-vehicle crash on a wet interstate in Alabama; they were among the 13 killed in the state as a tropical depression caused flash floods and tornadoes that destroyed dozens of homes.Today’s birthdays: Actor Gena (JEH’-nuh) Rowlands is 92. Hall of Fame race car driver Shirley Muldowney is 82. Singer Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane (Spanky and Our Gang) is 80. Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi (soo chee) is 77. Author Sir Salman Rushdie is 75. Actor Phylicia Rashad is 74. Rock singer Ann Wilson (Heart) is 72. Musician Larry Dunn is 69. Actor Kathleen Turner is 68. Country singer Doug Stone is 66. Singer Mark “Marty” DeBarge is 63. Singer-dancer-choreographer Paula Abdul is 60. Actor Andy Lauer is 59. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is 58. Rock singer-musician Brian Vander Ark (Verve Pipe) is 58. Actor Samuel West is 56. Actor Mia Sara is 55. TV personality Lara Spencer is 53. Rock musician Brian “Head” Welch is 52. Actor Jean Dujardin is 50. Actor Robin Tunney is 50. Actor Bumper Robinson is 48. Actor Poppy Montgomery is 47. Alt-country singer-musician Scott Avett (AY’-veht) (The Avett Brothers) is 46. Actor Ryan Hurst is 46. Actor Zoe Saldana is 44. Former NBA star Dirk Nowitzki is 44. Actor Neil Brown Jr. is 42. Actor Lauren Lee Smith is 42. Rapper Macklemore (Macklemore and Ryan Lewis) is 40. Actor Paul Dano is 38. New York Mets pitcher Jacob DeGrom is 34. Actor Giacomo Gianniotti is 33. Actor Chuku Modu (TV: “The Good Doctor”) is 32. Actor Atticus Shaffer is 24.---Journalism, it’s often said, is the first-draft of history. Check back each day for what’s new … and old.---The first draft of history at your fingertips at newspapers.com. | Civil Rights Activism |
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) first landed in politics not to get votes but to get people registered to vote. It’s a mission that brought him from signing up voters across rural Mississippi, to serving as mayor of the 521-person town where he still lives and travels every weekend, to the halls of Congress. It has also stayed central to him as he leads the House investigation into the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 — an effort that fundamentally sought to reject the will of voters whose rights he’s fought to protect. At the first meeting of the Jan. 6 committee in prime time, Thompson’s opener was surprisingly personal, talking about life in Bolton, Miss. “I am from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6,” the 74-year-old lawmaker said. He went on to describe former President Trump’s actions as “aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans — your votes — your voice in our democracy — and replacing the will of the American people with his will to remain in power after his term ended.” It’s a lived experience that those who know Thompson well say is the foundation for how he approaches his role leading the committee. “Here is a person who was raised and still lives in what most people consider even today the cradle of the Confederacy, this man who is now trying to save a democracy from which he was excluded, and his people were excluded for so very long,” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge, a former House colleague of Thompson’s, told The Hill. “It is significant, especially when you think about the fact that this is probably the biggest set of hearings that have happened in the history of this country. It’s bigger than Watergate; it’s bigger than the Mueller Report. And here is a Black man trying to save the very democracy that tried for so long to exclude him.” After years of attending segregated schools, Thompson went to Tougaloo College, a historically Black college in Jackson, Miss. It was there that he became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which led sit-ins at lunch counters across the South, as well as voter drives to mobilize Black citizens. “His whole life has been in a little town of Mississippi, and he has worked very hard to open up this democracy not just for himself but his children and grandchildren. And he views so much of what’s going on, especially as it relates to Jan. 6, as an attempt on the part of people to turn the clock back,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told The Hill. Thompson first landed in Congress in 1993, eventually becoming the dean of the Mississippi delegation, where he is the only Democrat and the only African American among the four districts. “I think that this moment has lifted him into the public spotlight in a way that lifts him personally, but it lifts his experience,” Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), a friend of Thomspon’s, told The Hill. “He’s not one that craves the spotlight, but of course he will rise to the circumstances when it’s called for. I don’t think that he would have sought the notoriety and the publicity that has accompanied his leadership of the Jan. 6 committee.” The committee’s hearings have been for many viewers a first look at Thompson on a panel where Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has held center stage, taking on her party in a mission of conviction that has cost her her standing in the GOP and very possibly her seat as well. At the committee’s first hearing this year it was Cheney, not Thompson, who laid out the bulk of the evidence the panel has gathered against Trump in a move members hope will be meaningful to some independents and perhaps even some in the GOP. But in a town where egos and ambitions run large, colleagues say Thompson’s willingness to step aside for the sake of strategy speak to his commitment to the panel’s overall mission to show how the riot and Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud remain a grave threat to Democracy. “He understands how Liz Cheney is speaking to millions of people who might otherwise have turned a blind eye to our proceedings. So he’s been the soul of magnanimity and inclusion in terms of how our committee operates,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), one of the panel’s nine members, told The Hill. “I think he’s about the most low-ego politician I’ve met around here,” Raskin added, pausing. “John Lewis was like that.” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who played an elevated role in the panel’s second hearing, said Thompson has been part of setting that tone. “It’s more important that we be successful in laying out the truth that then anybody’s name gets attached to X, Y, or Z. And we all feel that way. And I think Bennie has done an excellent job chairing the committee and helping people move forward,” she said. Thompson has long been a major player in Congress, but now he can’t move through the hallways without being swarmed by reporters. Through that experience he’s been largely patient and unusually candid – setting him apart from other members of the committee who have kept details of the investigation closer to the vest while he’s made a few headlines along the way. “He’s true to who he is, and that’s a frank, honest, open person. And if you don’t want to know what he thinks, don’t ask him. If you don’t want the truth, don’t ask him. He’s not going to varnish it. He’s going to tell you just like it is,” Bishop said. In its first few hearings the committee has shown Trump pushed ahead with plans to claim there was widespread voter fraud and to get his vice president to reject the will of the voters, despite being told such plans were fraudulent and illegal. Future hearings — the next set for Tuesday — will look at how he sought to forward those claims at the Justice Department, and how they mobilized extremist groups. Beyond his commitment to voting rights, Thompson has spent years examining threats on U.S. soil. Most of his past leadership in Congress has been as either chair or ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee. That was part of the reason Clyburn insisted he chair the Jan. 6 committee — Thompson spent weeks working with Republicans to craft bipartisan legislation to establish an independent commission to review Jan. 6 only to have the Senate reject the idea. The Homeland Security role has left him concerned about domestic extremism, an alarm former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who led the department under President Obama, said Thompson has long been ringing. “At a time when I was focused on foreign terrorist-inspired attacks on the homeland, Bennie urged us to not overlook the threat presented by domestic-based violent extremism,” Johnson told The Hill in a statement. Thompson alluded to that as his opening speech tied together 100 years of history, stressing how the Civil War resulted in an update to the oath of office required for both politicians and civil servants, requiring “for the first time to swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies — foreign… and domestic.” It’s why many see his work leading the Jan. 6 committee as the culmination of his life’s work. “It will be the defining moment in my mind, of his great legacy of serving in the institution,” Fudge said. “Because what he’s trying to do is stop people from dismantling the very foundations of this nation.” | Civil Rights Activism |
On a special Juneteenth episode of The View Monday, host Joy Behar told viewers that the black community is losing its right to vote. "We should be aware on a day like this that voting rights are being systematically taken away from African Americans and other people too in this country," said Behar. "It's a good day to reflect on that, I think." Behar did not point to any policies, nor did she elaborate on how or why citizens are losing the right to vote. Host Whoopi Goldberg chimed in to claim that being black, Asian, Latino, or "anything other than what people are expecting to see in America" is "challenging." "I feel that we're seeing this sort of rollback of history," fellow host Sunny Hostin later said. TEENAGER KILLED, DC POLICE OFFICER AMONG THOSE SHOT AT JUNETEENTH EVENT "Be very vigilant when you're hearing about [critical race theory], alleged CRT in your schools. Fight that," she told the audience. "You have to make sure that past does not become prologue." When civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, known for representing the families of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Jacob Blake, was asked about the push against critical race theory, he said, “It is simply asinine” and “so scary.” According to Crump, those who are against the theory are “trying to stop the young people from learning.” Crump is now representing several families of victims from the racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store in May. The attorney said the shooter is not the only one he wants to hold accountable. “He had a lot of accomplices,” he said. Crump told viewers that America needs to “hold accountable those who curate the hate.” He added that television hosts, those who promote hate online, gun manufacturers, and gun retailers are all to blame as well. At one point, the hosts discussed online criticism, which Anna Navarro dismissed as being spread by "Russian bots" that she said were "particularly active during the Trump administration." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The hosts decried the criticism that has arisen with the rise of social media, in particular. | Civil Rights Activism |
Stonewall has been “high-handed and malicious” in its ongoing legal fight against a gender critical barrister, her lawyer has told the final day of an employment tribunal.The Garden Court Chambers barrister Allison Bailey is suing her firm and the leading LGBTQ+ charity. She claims she was offered lower-quality work after she voiced her opposition to the nationwide Stonewall diversity champion scheme, when it was announced at her chambers in December 2018. Stonewall’s programme provides advice and assessments for inclusive workplaces.Bailey said she was asked by her chambers to delete two tweets criticising the LGBTQ+ charity’s position on trans rights, which Stonewall had complained about. She refused to do so.In closing submissions on the final day of the four-week long tribunal on Monday, Bailey’s lawyer, Ben Cooper QC, said Stonewall had tried to get the tribunal to reject her claim.Cooper told the employment judge Sarah Goodman that GCC and Stonewall had attempted to frame Bailey as waging a “political campaign” against the charity, founded in 1989, rather than a legitimate complaint.“[They] mount an extraordinary attack on this tribunal for ‘indulging the claimant’s claim and the evidence she’s given to support this’, and do so in a way that implies a degree of pressure … to encourage this tribunal to reject the claim for fear of being seen to have assisted the claimant too much,” Cooper said.He told the tribunal that the alleged approach was “characteristic of the high-handed, malicious and oppressive way in which they have dealt with this litigation”, as well as “issues before the litigation”.Goodman replied: “We’re pretty thick-skinned, so we’re just going to look at the facts and the evidence.”Stonewall accused Bailey of being “literally the author of her own misfortune” and in written submissions said she gave “self-serving and evasive” evidence and “failed to take responsibility for her actions and the consequences which flowed from them”.“Her ignorant, inflammatory and ill-judged social media posts generated complaints which her chambers was obliged to investigate,” it said.In 2019 Bailey co-founded the LGB Alliance group – an organisation for lesbian, gay and bisexual people to provide an alternative to Stonewall and which opposes its policies on transgender issues – and tweeted in support of its launch.Bailey claims that the tweet attracted online abuse, including death threats, “memes with firearms” in them and messages accusing her of being a “terf” – an acronym of the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”.Within 48 hours, her chambers had posted a tweet saying Bailey was under investigation. The tribunal was told that this gave credence to internet “trolls” who accused her of being transphobic.Cooper argued on Monday that Bailey’s chambers “sought to downplay that abuse” and breached a confidentiality obligation by announcing she was under investigation.“Not only was the response tweet sent out in breach of the confidentiality obligation, but it was sent out without even the courtesy of a heads-up from heads of chambers,” he said.In response, GCC’s barrister, Andrew Hochhauser, said that any response from the chambers had not deterred Bailey in her tweeting. | Civil Rights Activism |
BOULDER, Colo. — Clela Rorex, a former Colorado county clerk who was the first public official to issue a same-sex marriage license, died Sunday in Longmont. She was 78.The cause was complications from recent surgery, the Daily Camera reported.Ms. Rorex was a newly elected Boulder County clerk when a gay couple denied a marriage license elsewhere sought her help in March 1975. She said nearly 40 years later that she saw a parallel with the women’s movement and found nothing in state law preventing it.The then-31-year-old agreed and, in the end, issued a total of six licenses to gay couples before Colorado’s attorney general ordered her to stop.State and federal law didn’t recognize gay marriage at the time. Ms. Rorex recalled that she had little public support and didn’t challenge the attorney general.A recall effort was launched against Ms. Rorex, a single mother and University of Colorado graduate student. Suffering from chronic migraines and dealing with hate mail, she resigned halfway through her term.Get Fast ForwardA look at the news and events shaping the day, delivered a couple times a week with a side of humor and a dash of attitude.Colorado legalized gay marriage in 2014 after a state court and a Denver federal court struck down a 2006 ban enacted by state voters. A 2015 Supreme Court decision recognized the fundamental right nationwide.Jared Polis, Colorado’s first openly gay governor, paid tribute to Ms. Rorex upon learning of her death.“Her certification of same-sex marriages … was a pivotal moment in the long struggle for marriage equality that led to Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which legalized marriage equality nationally,” Polis wrote on Facebook. “So many families, including First Gentleman Marlon Reis and I, are grateful for the visionary leadership of Clela Rorex, a woman ahead of her time.”Glenda Russell, a retired writer and LGTBQ community historian, told the Camera that Ms. Rorex faced significant backlash after issuing the first license.“Nationally at the time, most people didn’t take it too seriously because they didn’t worry about it happening again, but in Boulder, the reaction was forceful and mean-spirited. She got hit with all the homophobia and heterosexism that the LGBTQ community was facing,” Russell said.In later years, Ms. Rorex advocated for gay and lesbian rights, speaking in schools and expressing exasperation with the slow pace of change.According to Out Boulder County, an LGTBQ advocacy organization, Ms. Rorex was born in Denver on July 23, 1943. She earned a bachelor of arts degree at the University of Colorado before running for county clerk and recorder. After resigning as clerk in 1977 she obtained post-graduate degrees and served a legal administrator for the Native American Rights Fund.A celebration of life was planned for July 23, her birthday, Out Boulder County said.The county courthouse in Boulder where she issued the licenses has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. | Civil Rights Activism |
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The Supreme Court's term is drawing to a close in the coming weeks, and the most anticipated rulings will be handed down during this time. About 18 decisions are still pending before the Supreme Court, covering some of the most divisive and impactful issues facing the country. Here are the ones that are arguably the most significant.5. Kennedy v. Bremerton School DistrictHigh school football coach Joseph Kennedy lost his job after he insisted on reciting post-game prayers on the 50-year-line, despite his employer, the Bremerton School District, instructing him to stop. Kennedy is claiming this violated his First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion, while the school district claims that a prayer from a public school employee ran afoul of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.The school district told Kennedy to stop reciting prayers on the field after an opposing coach brought it to the principal's attention. He did, temporarily, then notified the school that he would resume the practice. The situation garnered media attention, and when Kennedy announced that he would go back to praying on the field, it raised security concerns. When he did pray after the game, a number of people stormed the field in support.CONSERVATIVE SCOTUS JUSTICES OFFER TACIT SUPPORT FOR FOOTBALL COACH'S ON-FIELD PRAYERThe school district then offered to let Kennedy pray in other locations before and after games, or for him to pray on the 50-yard line after everyone else had left the premises, but he refused, insisting that he would continue his regular practice. This eventually led to the school district taking action against him.At issue is whether Kennedy's prayer constituted government speech because he was a government employee, in which case it would not be protected. The court is also looking at whether, if the prayer is protected private speech, the school could still tell him to stop so that they would not be viewed as endorsing religion.During oral arguments, a number of justices appeared to lean toward Kennedy's side. Justice Clarence Thomas questioned whether Kennedy's prayer could be viewed as government speech if the school district strongly and publicly opposed it. Justice Elena Kagan raised the issue of possible coercion, as students had been joining Kennedy for the prayer. A lower court opinion noted that the principal had been contacted by a parent who said his son "felt compelled to participate" in the prayer despite being an atheist, "he felt he wouldn't get to play as much if he didn't participate."Kennedy's attorney countered that by arguing that the school district never mentioned that when they fired him, and that their only reason at the time was concern for endorsing religion.4. Biden v. TexasThis case centers on the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy under which migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. had to stay in Mexico as they awaited hearings. The Biden administration tried to repeal the policy but was blocked by a lower court.SUPREME COURT JUSTICES HEAR ARGUMENTS OVER ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO’ BORDER POLICYThe crux of the case is whether the federal government can use discretion in carrying out the program or if, as Texas and Missouri are arguing in their lawsuit, the policy is needed to comply with federal law that says migrants cannot be released into the U.S. because the country lacks resources to detain everyone.Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar claimed during oral arguments that if the policy was needed to comply with the law, then "every presidential administration in an unbroken line for the past quarter century has been in open violation[.]"Much of the argument was over statutory language. Prelogar pointed to a statute that said the attorney general "may return" aliens from contiguous territory back to that territory while they await a hearing. Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that the same statute says that if an immigration officer determines that a migrant "is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted" to the U.S., the migrant "shall be detained," which the other side was interpreting as a requirement.3. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. BruenIn possible the biggest Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court in more than a decade, the justices are poised to decide whether New York's process for obtaining a license to carry a concealed handgun is overly restrictive. The current rules require applicants to show "proper cause" for why they need to carry a firearm, and the government can exercise discretion in determining whether someone has satisfied that requirement. The result is that it is extremely difficult to obtain a license.SENATE GUN NEGOTIATORS COULD HAVE BILL TEXT MONDAY, AS TALKS PICK UP STEAM IN WAKE OF MASS SHOOTINGSDuring oral arguments, conservative justices appeared to challenge the state's position."Why isn’t it good enough to say I live in a violent area and I want to defend myself?" Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked.In an exchange with Justice Samuel Alito, New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood recognized that if an applicant stated that the leave work late at night and have to walk from a subway station through a high-crime neighborhood to get home, that person would be denied because they did not cite a specific threat."How is that consistent with the core right to self-defense?" Alito asked, stating that this is at the core of the Second Amendment.2. West Virginia v. Environmental Protection AgencyWhile this case – which is actually four cases consolidated to be decided together – is not centered on hot-button political issues but on the much dryer world of agency action, its outcome can perhaps have the greatest impact of all of these cases.At issue is whether the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to issue sweeping rules that could overhaul industry practices and the country's electricity grids to address climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) logo is displayed on a door at its headquarters on March 16, 2017 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed budget for 2018 seeks to cut the EPA's budget by 31 percent from $8.1 billion to $5.7 billion. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)In 2015, the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan aimed to reduce carbon emissions at power plants. The plan was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2016, and then repealed by the Trump administration and replaced by the less extreme Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) Rule. After President Biden took office, however, the ACE Rule became the subject of litigation that led to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacating that rule as well as the repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision. The Biden administration argues that the EPA has the authority to unilaterally enact broad requirements to improve the environment. West Virginia and other states argue that this runs afoul of the "major questions doctrine." This doctrine says that even though federal agencies generally have broad rule-making power as delegated by Congress through the statutes that create them, when it comes to issues of major economic and political significance to the country those statutes need to have clear language to support the agency’s action. The Biden administration is also claiming that the case does not even belong before the Supreme Court because the EPA has said that it will not reinstate the Clean Power Plan, opting instead to develop and implement its own rules. The government argued that without any EPA rule currently in place, the other side is merely litigating over a potential future rule, not any actual current harm.The case could determine the fate of President Biden's climate agenda, as well as set significant precedent for how other federal agencies can act.1. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health OrganizationThe anticipation for a ruling in this case has already led to protests outside the Supreme Court and the homes of several justices, as well as an attempted murder charge against a man who allegedly plotted to kill Justice Kavanaugh. This was all sparked by the publication of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that, if published as the court's opinion, will overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion.The case came about after Mississippi passed a law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, blatantly going against the standard set by Roe that prohibited bans prior to fetal viability – understood to be at about 23 weeks. The ensuing litigation now puts the Supreme Court in a position to review whether a pre-viability ban should be allowed.PRO-LIFERS TARGETS OVER 40 TIMES IN ATTACKS, VANDALISM, HARASSMENT SINCE SUPREME COURT LEAK, GROUP SAYSDuring oral arguments, some justices appeared interested in finding a way to uphold the 15-week ban without completely doing away with Roe. Chief Justice John Roberts spoke of possibly eliminating the viability standard while still ensuring that women have an opportunity to get an abortion. Both sides of the case expressed skepticism that this was a workable option.Alito, in his draft opinion, not only said Mississippi's law should stand, but eviscerated Roe and the case that upheld it, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He bluntly said the cases should be overruled, which would put abortion rights in the hands of individual states where elected officials can set their own standards.After Politico published Alito's draft, the Supreme Court issued a statement noting that it is normal practice for draft opinions to be circulated among the justices as part of the decision-making process, and that the draft does not indicate what the Court's final ruling will be. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPThe country will now wait and see if Alito's draft, or something similar to it, will do away with Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years, or if the Supreme Court ultimately decides to go in a different direction.Last week alone the court released opinions in 11 cases, so if they continue at that pace these cases will all be decided by the end of next week. The court's current term will end once all cases are decided, at which point Justice Stephen Breyer will retire. His replacement, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, will then be sworn in. | Civil Rights Activism |
U.S.|The Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2022 The leak in May of a draft opinion that would overrule Roe v. Wade seemed to expose new fault lines at the Supreme Court in the first full term in which it has been dominated by a 6-to-3 conservative supermajority, including three justices appointed by President Donald J. Trump. The court’s public approval ratings have been dropping, and its new configuration has raised questions about whether it is out of step with public opinion. According to a recent survey from researchers at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Texas, the public is closely divided on how the court should rule in several major cases. In many of them, though, respondents held starkly different views based on their partisan affiliations. Here is a look at the major cases this term. Separation of Church and State In Carson v. Makin, the court ruled that a Maine program that excludes religious schools from a state tuition program is a violation of the free exercise of religion. Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands Prohibiting state funds from being used at religious schools is a valid separation between church and state Prohibiting state funds from being used at religious schools is a violation of the free exercise of religion All ; 51% 49% Democrats ; 69% 32% Independents ; 50% 50% Republicans ; 32% 68% Question wording: The State of Maine pays private school tuition for students in rural areas that do not have public secondary schools. Maine prohibits students from using this public money to attend schools that are religious (or "sectarian"). Some people think that this is a violation of the First Amendment protections of the free exercise of religion. Other people think that this is a valid policy to maintain the separation between church and state. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll First Amendment and Public Forums In Shurtleff v. Boston, the court ruled that the City of Boston had violated the First Amendment when it refused to let a private group raise a Christian flag in front of its City Hall, although it had allowed many other organizations to use the flagpole to celebrate various causes. Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands Boston’s refusal to fly a private religious group's flag did not violate the group's First Amendment rights Boston’s refusal to fly a private religious group's flag violated the group's First Amendment rights All ; 56% 44% Democrats ; 69% 31% Independents ; 55% 45% Republicans ; 40% 60% Question wording: Upon request, the City of Boston often flies flags of different organizations in front of its City Hall. The city refused to fly a religious organization’s flag bearing a Christian cross. Some people say that Boston’s refusal to fly a religious organization’s flag violated the organization’s First Amendment rights. Other people believe that it did not violate the organization’s First Amendment rights. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands An elected body censuring the speech of a member does not violate the First Amendment An elected body censuring the speech of a member violates the First Amendment All ; 38% 62% Democrats ; 47% 53% Independents ; 39% 61% Republicans ; 27% 73% Question wording: An elected member of a community college board criticized other board members and was subsequently censured (given a formal reprimand). Some people think the board violated the First Amendment rights of the elected member. Other people believe that the board did not violate the member’s First Amendment rights. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Religion and the Death Penalty In Ramirez v. Collier, the court ruled that Texas would violate a federal law protecting religious freedom if it executed a death row inmate without allowing his pastor to touch him and pray aloud in the execution chamber. Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands Barring religious clergy from touching death row inmates in the execution chamber violates the First Amendment Barring religious clergy from touching death row inmates in the execution chamber does not violate the First Amendment All ; 58% 42% Democrats ; 56% 44% Independents ; 59% 41% Republicans ; 59% 41% Question wording: Texas law barred a death row inmate from having his pastor in the chamber during his execution and placing his hands on him while praying out loud. Some people think that barring religious clergy from entering the execution chamber and touching death row inmates violates the First Amendment protections of the free exercise of religion. Other people think that it does not. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll State Secrets In United States v. Zubaydah, the court ruled that the government was not required to disclose the location of a C.I.A. black site where a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba had been tortured. Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands The government must provide evidence in such situations The government has a right to protect state secrets in the name of national security and is not compelled to provide evidence All ; 45% 55% Democrats ; 52% 48% Independents ; 48% 52% Republicans ; 31% 69% Question wording: A terrorism suspect currently being held in Guantánamo Bay says the C.I.A. used enhanced interrogation techniques and wants it investigated. The government has declassified some information, but it claims it has a right to protect state secrets in the name of national security and is not compelled to provide evidence connected to the investigation. Some people think that the government has a right to protect state secrets in the name of national security and is not compelled to provide evidence. Other people think that the government must provide evidence in such situations. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Executive Privilege In Trump v. Thompson, the court ruled that former President Donald J. Trump could not block the release of White House records to a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands A former president cannot block the release of White House records A former president can block the release of White House records All ; 67% 33% Democrats ; 85% 15% Independents ; 68% 32% Republicans ; 43% 57% Question wording: Former President Donald Trump attempted to block the release of documents concerning his role in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, on the grounds that he has executive privilege. Some people think that executive privilege allows a former president to block the release of such records. Other people think that a former president does not have the authority to block the release of such records. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands OSHA’s vaccination or testing mandate is lawful OSHA’s vaccination or testing mandate is not lawful All ; 50% 50% Democrats ; 77% 23% Independents ; 44% 57% Republicans ; 28% 72% Question wording: The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has issued a rule mandating that all employers with at least 100 employees require that their employees either be vaccinated against Covid-19 or else be tested weekly and wear masks at work. Some people think this mandate is unlawful because it exceeds OSHA’s authority. Other people think this is a reasonable use of the agency’s authority to protect workplace safety and health. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Covid in Health Care Facilities In Biden v. Missouri, the court found that the Biden administration’s mandate to require health care workers at facilities receiving federal money to be vaccinated was lawful. Conservative bloc Roberts Kavanaugh Barrett Gorsuch Alito Thomas Where the public stands H.H.S.’s vaccination mandate is lawful H.H.S.’s vaccination mandate is not lawful All ; 53% 47% Democrats ; 76% 24% Independents ; 49% 51% Republicans ; 31% 69% Question wording: The federal Department of Health and Human Services (H.H.S.) has issued a rule mandating that health care workers at hospitals and other facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid be vaccinated against Covid-19 unless they qualify for religious or medical exemptions. Some people think this mandate is unlawful because it exceeds H.H.S.’s authority. Other people think this is a reasonable use of the agency’s authority to ensure the safety of patients. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Abortion Rights In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court will decide whether to uphold a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks and whether to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973. Where the public stands Banning nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional Banning nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy is constitutional All ; 51% 49% Democrats ; 73% 27% Independents ; 48% 52% Republicans ; 31% 69% Question wording: A new law in Mississippi bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Some people think that this law is unconstitutional. Others think it is constitutional. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll No, Roe v. Wade should not be overturned Yes, Roe v. Wade should be overturned All ; 62% 38% Democrats ; 79% 21% Independents ; 63% 37% Republicans ; 41% 59% Question wording: Should the Supreme Court overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion and prohibited states from banning abortion before the fetus can survive outside the womb, at around 23 weeks of pregnancy? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Where the public stands Requiring a person to show a need for self-protection to carry a concealed firearm does not violate the Second Amendment Requiring a person to show a need for self-protection to carry a concealed firearm does violate the Second Amendment All ; 47% 53% Democrats ; 68% 32% Independents ; 46% 54% Republicans ; 24% 77% Question wording: New York requires a person to show a need for self-protection in order to receive a license to carry a concealed firearm outside the home. Some people think that this law violates people’s Second Amendment rights. Others think it does not violate people’s Second Amendment rights. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Where the public stands The E.P.A. can set limits on individual power plants and can more broadly regulate emissions across the energy sector The E.P.A. can set limits on individual power plants but cannot more broadly regulate emissions across the energy sector All ; 59% 45% Democrats ; 73% 27% Independents ; 55% 45% Republicans ; 47% 53% Question wording: Under federal law, the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) has the authority to set emissions standards using "the best system of emission reduction." Some people think this means that the E.P.A. can set emissions limits on individual power plants and can also more broadly regulate emissions across the entire energy sector. Other people think that the E.P.A. can set limits on individual power plants but cannot more broadly regulate emissions across the entire energy sector. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll School Prayer In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court will decide whether a football coach at a public high school has a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games. Where the public stands The school district was right to suspend the coach The school district was not right to suspend the coach All ; 44% 56% Democrats ; 62% 38% Independents ; 41% 59% Republicans ; 26% 74% Question wording: The football coach at a public high school led prayers with players before and after games. The school district asked him to stop, and the coach refused. He was then suspended. Some people think the school district was right to suspend the coach because of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. Other people do not think the district was right to do so because of the coach’s right to free exercise of religion. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Immigration In Biden v. Texas, the court will decide whether the Biden administration can end a Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to await approval in Mexico. Where the public stands The Biden administration should be able to end the "Remain in Mexico" program The Biden administration should not be able to end the "Remain in Mexico" program All ; 49% 52% Democrats ; 77% 23% Independents ; 44% 56% Republicans ; 20% 80% Question wording: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security required noncitizens trying to reside in the U.S. to wait in Mexico while immigration officials process their cases. The Biden administration issued an order ending this "Remain in Mexico" program. In response, several states sued, saying that the administration did not have adequate justification in ending the program. Some people think that the Biden administration should be able to end this program. Other people think that the Biden administration should not be able to do so. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll Native Americans In Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, after ruling that much of Oklahoma falls within Indian reservations, the court will decide whether state authorities may prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes against Indians on those reservations. Where the public stands States should be able to prosecute non-Native Americans who commit crimes against Native Americans on Native American land States should not be able to prosecute non-Native Americans who commit crimes against Native Americans on Native American land All ; 66% 34% Democrats ; 68% 32% Independents ; 63% 37% Republicans ; 70% 30% Question wording: The defendant, a non-Native American, committed a crime against a Native American on Native American land. The State of Oklahoma would like to pursue criminal charges against the defendant. The defendant says that the state cannot prosecute him because the crime occurred on Native American land, and so only the federal government can prosecute him. Some people think that states cannot prosecute crimes that happen on Native American land, even if the perpetrator is non-Native American. Others think that states should be able to prosecute such cases. What do you think? | Source: SCOTUSPoll | Civil Rights Activism |
Protesters rally in front of the Supreme Court as it hears arguments on whether gay and transgender people are covered by a federal law barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority on Tuesday ordered Maine taxpayers to begin directly funding sectarian religious schools, including those that openly discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and require their teachers to be born-again Christians. Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in Carson v. Makin held that a Maine law requiring schools that receive public funds to be secular was unconstitutional, arguing that it violates the First Amendment’s free expression clause. Roberts was joined by the Court’s five other conservatives, while liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan dissented. “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. Maine’s system of public education allows rural communities that have no public secondary schools to either allow parents to send their kids to nearby school districts or pay tuition at private schools that, as the Maine law said, must be “nonsectarian school[s] in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”The two Maine schools in question, Bangor Christian Schools and Temple Academy, are explicitly religious schools. Temple Academy’s mission statement says the school “exists to know the Lord Jesus Christ and to make Him known through accredited academic excellence and programs presented through our thoroughly Christian Biblical world view.” Bangor Christian Schools began as a ministry of Bangor Baptist Church, according to the school’s website.Furthermore, as Breyer wrote in his dissent, the two schools “have admissions policies that allow them to deny enrollment to students based on gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religion, and both schools require their teachers to be Born Again Christians.”Roberts wrote in his opinion that Maine could solve the problem by building and operating public schools in those communities that currently have none. But as it stands, Roberts said, “the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.”The Carson decision fits neatly with the hard-line conservative majority’s previous rulings forcing taxpayers to subsidize private religious schools. In 2020’s Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, Roberts wrote an opinion overturning a regulation that barred Montana parents from using a state-funded scholarship to pay for religious schools. And in 2017, the Court ruled in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer that a Missouri religious preschool could use taxpayer funds for a kindergarten. In her dissent, Sotomayor referenced the court’s sharp right turn on this issue. “In just a few years [since Trinity], the Court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits States to decline to fund religious organizations to one that requires States in many circumstances to subsidize religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars,” Sotomayor wrote. Of the Supreme Court’s nine justices, six graduated from Catholic high schools. Amy Coney Barrett, the newest justice serving during the current term, not only went to a Catholic high school in New Orleans but later obtained her law degree from and taught at Notre Dame, the most prestigious Catholic university in the U.S. In his dissent, which was joined by Kagan and partially by Sotomayor, Breyer wrote that Roberts’ opinion “pays almost no attention to the words in the first Clause [of the First Amendment] while giving almost exclusive attention to the words in the second.” “Today, the Court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation,” Sotomayor concluded in her dissent.“If a state cannot offer subsidies to its citizens without being required to fund religious exercise, any state that values its historic antiestablishment interests more than this Court does will have to curtail the support it offers to its citizens,” Sotomayor added, noting her “growing concern for where this Court will lead us next.”Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.Get the latest from VICE News in your inbox. Sign up right here.By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. | Civil Rights Activism |
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! There are so many unfair things about what’s happening in women’s sports today. The unfair biological advantage that male athletes have when competing against female counterparts. The unfair destruction being done to women’s athletics. The loss of scholarships, of recruitment opportunities, of chances to compete at higher levels of sport. The unfair treatment by the media of girls and women who speak up against what’s happening.But none of those injustices, in some ways, compares with what may be the most unfair aspect of the whole issue: the fact that we’re placing all the responsibility for resolving it on teenage girls. Doug, Christy, and Chelsea Mitchell, taken at the NCCC Indoor Track Championship, New Haven, Conn. on Feb 1, 2020 (senior year). Chelsea's team won the conference championship, and she had three gold medals in the 55m, 300m, and long jump. This is not a problem teen girls should have to resolve, especially since they aren’t the ones who created it. Young women have their own instinctive sense of right and wrong. They may not grasp all the political and psychological intricacies of the transgender politics, but "fair?" Fair, they understand.FINA APPROVES 'GENDER INCLUSION POLICY' FOR TRANSGENDER SWIMMERSThe adults created this increasingly convoluted mess, but they have no intention of taking responsibility for it, even as we approach the 50th anniversary of Title IX—a law designed to protect fair competition for women—on June 23. No, instead, they’re hiding behind the athletes out on the track and in the pools. And it’s working. Chelsea Mitchell, age 14 (9th grade), at the Class S Connecticut State Championship on June 1, 2017. (Christy Mitchell)People who are angry at efforts to keep men out of women’s sports aren’t venting their fury at the coaches or schools or government officials. They’re venting it at the athletes—at people like my daughter.When two male athletes began running against her in high school meets a few years ago, I waded into the bureaucratic red tape with everything I had. I wrote letters to the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. Christy and Chelsea Mitchell, taken at CAA (Colonial Athletic Association) Championships, Harrisonburg, VA on May 1, 2021 (freshman year in college). Chelsea earned All-Conference for her second place finish in the long jump and set two school records (4x100m relay and long jump). I made appointments with the administrators at her school. I talked with the coach and athletic director. I stood in front of school boards. I made appointments with our congresswoman and our senator. I called our state’s civil rights office and talked to officials at the Department of Education.NCAA, LEADERS ARE DELIBERATELY TURNING A BLIND EYE TO INJUSTICES IN WOMEN'S SPORTSSome of them professed to be sympathetic, but none of them offered to do anything. One by one, they passed the buck, shrugged off the responsibility, and told me there was nothing they could do. Chelsea Mitchell, age 16 (11th grade), at the Connecticut State Open Championship on June 3, 2019. (Photo credit: Christy Mitchell) (Christy Mitchell)It was a school issue—but administrators said they were told to leave it to state athletic officials. It was a sports issue—but athletic officials said they were ordered to leave the matter to government authorities. It was a political issue—but our governor said the legislature would have to decide it…while legislators told me athletics groups would have to make the call.Everybody wanted it to be somebody else’s problem.POLL ON AMERICANS’ THOUGHTS ON TRANSGENDER ATHLETES DIVIDES TWITTER USERS: 'CONFIRMS WHAT WE ALL KNOW'"Somebody else" turned out to be a lot of teenage girls.I started keeping a list of all the girls on whom this mass indecision had an impact and how they were affected. Week after week, track meet by track meet, male athletes were outrunning them, pushed along by the political winds at their backs. Soon, the names of affected girls were running into the hundreds.PARENT GROUPS REACT TO BIDEN ADMIN'S UPCOMING TITLE IX CHANGES: 'BLURRING AND IN EFFECT ERASING WOMEN'Meanwhile, months drifted by. Track seasons came and went. My letters went unanswered, and my phone calls went unreturned. Girls were losing their best chance at scholarships, being ignored by recruiters, and being pushed off of platforms and out of the running for opportunities to participate at higher levels. Christy and Chelsea Mitchell, taken at Indoor Track All-State Banquet, Plantsville, CT on March 5, 2020 (senior year). Received All-State honors in the 55m, 300m, and long jump. Their fates lay in the hands of anonymous officials whose names no one, even now, knows or remembers. They come and go from their offices, move through their day, facing no serious consequences for the far-reaching decisions they’ve made behind the scenes. Google one of them, and you’ll see one, maybe two references that may or may not even relate to the issue.CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTERThen type in the name of my daughter or one of the other young women who filed suit through Alliance Defending Freedom against the Connecticut Interstate Athletic Conference (a nearly three-year-old matter now on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit). You’ll find pages and pages of op-eds and hit pieces and denunciations of their motives and character. Follow them around their college campuses, and you’ll see the daily pushback they endure from peers who’ve bought into the media push in support of this unfair competition. Chelsea Chelsea Mitchell is a college sophomore and track athlete. She is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. (ADF)These girls didn’t make the rules, upend the norms, or codify regulations that deny biological reality. They didn’t do anything to destroy women’s sports.They’re just taking the fall for those who did."Unfair" doesn’t begin to cover it. Christy Mitchell and her daughter Chelsea are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference. | Civil Rights Activism |
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 21 years in prison on federal civil rights charges Thursday in the death of George Floyd.He had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges but in December 2021, he pleaded guilty to violating Floyd's civil rights and admitted that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck even after he became unresponsive.Chauvin's plea agreement called for a 20- to 25-year sentence and for him to serve the federal sentence at the same time as the state one in federal prison, The Associated Press reported.Chauvin also pleaded guilty to depriving a then-14-year-old child of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by an officer, which resulted in bodily injury to the teen, according to the Justice Department.U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson made the final decision.In April 2021, Chauvin was also found guilty on three counts in Floyd's death -- second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter -- for pressing his knee against Floyd's neck for more than 9 minutes.He had already been sentenced to 270 months, minus time served, which equals about 22 1/2 years in prison.In a statement, Derrick Johnson, the president of civil rights organization NAACP, called for justice in other instances of police violence in the U.S."While today's federal sentence for George Floyd's murderer is a step toward accountability, America's policing crisis continues to crush and devastate Black families," Johnson said. "Holding police officers accountable is crucial. But meaningful justice, for the countless Black people murdered by police, is desperately needed. Police should serve and protect, not lynch. We need to reform policing in America."Former officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao were also charged for their roles in Floyd's death.The three of them had pleaded not guilty but were convicted by a jury.The four former officers were attempting to place Floyd under arrest on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store in 2020.Former police officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court during his sentencing in the murder of George Floyd at Hennepin County Government Center, June 25, 2021, in Minneapolis.Court TVDuring the encounter, Chauvin held his knee on the back of Floyd's neck for more than 9 minutes. Floyd, who was handcuffed and in a prone position on the pavement, repeatedly said he couldn't breathe before falling unconscious and losing a pulse, according to evidence presented at Chauvin's state trial. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital.Thao and Kueng now await a state trial for charges of aiding and abetting in murder and aiding and abetting in manslaughter in Floyd's death. The two have pleaded not guilty.The trial is set to start on Oct. 24.Lane pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in exchange for the dismissal of the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.Under the agreement, a sentence of 36 months, or three years in prison, will be recommended by both prosecutors and Lane's legal team. If he went to trial and was convicted on both counts, he could have faced a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to the plea agreement. | Civil Rights Activism |
The Department of Education Thursday released a long-anticipated proposal revising its regulations on the enforcement of Title IX, taking aim at former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos's signature policy achievement. The newly proposed regulation, which now enters a period of public comment, expands the definition of "sex" under the famous civil rights law to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under the law's nondiscrimination provisions. NEW EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PARENT COUNCIL DRAWS SKEPTICISM The proposal, which has been expected for months, significantly rolls back the department's regulatory policy enacted in 2020 under the Trump administration and then-Secretary DeVos. That regulation, which substantially overhauled procedural requirements for universities adjudicating sexual assault and harassment complaints under Title IX, is considered to be one of the crowning policy achievements of the Trump administration's Department of Education. That regulation, which went into effect in August 2020, was praised by due process advocates over its provisions mandating universities hold live hearings for sexual assault cases that included cross examination of both involved parties by a representative. The proposed regulation would also require schools to include transgender athletes in sports programs based on their gender identity, rather than their biological sex. With a flurry of state laws passed in recent years requiring athletes to compete based on their biological sex, the regulatory proposal sets up yet another conflict between the Biden administration and Republican led states. Shortly after taking office, the Biden administration announced that it intended to revise the DeVos-era rules and Thursday's regulatory proposal, in addition to the expanded definition of sex, significantly overhauls the due process requirements previously enacted. The proposed changes came on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Title IX law that paved the way for women's access in sports. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER "As we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of this landmark law, our proposed changes will allow us to continue that progress and ensure all our nation's students – no matter where they live, who they are, or whom they love – can learn, grow, and thrive in school," said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in a statement. "We welcome public comment on these critical regulations so we can further the Biden-Harris Administration's mission of creating educational environments free from sex discrimination and sexual violence." | Civil Rights Activism |
Published July 9, 2022 11:31AM A former East Texas chief deputy pleaded guilty Wednesday to violating a prisoner’s civil rights by using excessive force on him, according to court documents. Steven Craig Shelton was the second-ranked official in the Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office when the Sept. 21 incident happened at the county jail. During a plea hearing before a federal magistrate in Tyler, Shelton admitted that he struck a handcuffed and compliant suspect twice with his forearm. He said his action was born of frustration and was unjustified, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, Shelton faces up to almost four years in federal prison. Sheriff Steve Hendrix resigned in April after indictments accused him and two deputies of lying about Shelton’s actions. Hendrix, whose attorneys contend is not guilty, still awaits trial. | Civil Rights Activism |
By Jocelyn Noveck | Associated Press
At 88, Gloria Steinem has long been the nation’s most visible feminist and advocate for women’s rights. But at 22, she was a frightened American in London getting an illegal abortion of a pregnancy so unwanted, she actually tried to throw herself down the stairs to end it.
Her response to the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade is succinct: “Obviously,” she wrote in an email message, “without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.”
Steinem’s blunt remark cuts to the heart of the despair some opponents are feeling about Friday’s historic rollback of the 1973 case legalizing abortion. If a right so central to the overall fight for women’s equality can be revoked, they ask, what does it mean for the progress women have made in public life in the intervening 50 years? “One of the things that I keep hearing from women is, ‘My daughter’s going to have fewer rights than I did. And how can that be?’” says Debbie Walsh, of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “If this goes, what else can go? It makes everything feel precarious.”
Reproductive freedom was not the only demand of second-wave feminism, as the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s is known, but it was surely one of the most galvanizing issues, along with workplace equality.
The women who fought for those rights recall an astonishing decade of progress from about 1963 to 1973 including the right to equal pay, the right to use birth control, and Title IX in 1972 which bans discrimination in education. Capping it off was Roe v. Wade a year later, granting a constitutional right to abortion.
Many of the women who identified as feminists at the time had an illegal abortion or knew someone who did. Steinem, in fact, credits a “speak-out” meeting she attended on abortion in her 30s as the moment she pivoted from journalism to activism — and finally felt enabled to speak about her own secret abortion.
“Abortion is so tied to the women’s movement in this country,” says Carole Joffe, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco medical school who studies and teaches the history of abortion. “Along with improved birth control, what legal abortion meant was that women who were heterosexually active could still take part in public life. It enabled the huge change we’ve seen in women’s status over the last 50 years.” Joffe says many women, like her, now feel that the right to contraception could be at risk — something she calls “unthinkable.” One of them is Heather Booth. When she was 20 and a student in Chicago, a male friend asked if she could help his sister obtain an abortion. It was 1965, and through contacts in the civil rights movement, she found a way to connect the young woman, nearly suicidal at the prospect of being pregnant, to a doctor willing to help. She thought it would be a one-off, but Booth ended up co-founding the Jane Collective, an underground group of women who provided safe abortions to those in need. In all, the group performed some 11,000 abortions over about seven years — a story recounted in the new documentary “The Janes.”
Booth, now 76, sees the Roe v. Wade upheaval as a chilling challenge to the triumphs of the women’s movement.
“I think we are on a knife’s edge,” she says. “On the one hand, there’s been 50 years of a change in women’s condition in this society,” she adds, recalling that when she was growing up, women could only respond to employment ads in the “women’s section,” to list just one example.
“So there’s been an advance toward greater equality, but … if you ask about where we stand, I think we are on a knife’s edge in a contest really between democracy and freedom, and tyranny, a dismantling of freedoms that have been long fought for.”
Of course, not every woman feels that abortion is a right worth preserving.
Linda Sloan, who has volunteered the last five years, along with her husband, for the anti-abortion organization A Moment of Hope in Columbia, South Carolina, says she values women’s rights.
“I strongly believe and support women being treated as equals to men … (in) job opportunities, salary, respect, and many other areas,” she says. She says she has tried to instill those values in her two daughters and two sons, and upholds them with her work at two women’s shelters, trying to empower women to make the right choices.
But when it comes to Roe v. Wade, she says, “I believe that the rights of the child in the mother’s womb are equally important. To quote Psalm 139, I believe that God ‘formed my inner parts’ and ‘knitted me together in my mother’s womb.’”
Elizabeth Kilmartin, like Sloan, volunteers at A Moment of Hope and is deeply pleased by the court’s decision.
In her younger years she considered herself a feminist and studied women’s history in college. Then, over the years she came to deeply oppose abortion, and no longer considers herself a feminist because she believes the word has been co-opted by those on the left. “No women’s rights have been harmed in the decision to stop killing babies in the womb,” Kilmartin says. “We have all kinds of women in power. Women aren’t being oppressed in the workplace anymore. We have a woman vice president … It’s just ridiculous to think that we’re so oppressed.”
Cheryl Lambert falls squarely in the opposing camp. The former Wall Street executive, now 65, immediately thought back to the gains she made earlier in her banking career, becoming the first woman to be named an officer at the institution she worked for. She calls the court decision “a sucker punch.”
“My thought was, what era are we living in?” Lambert says. “We are moving backwards. I’m just furious on behalf of our children and our grandchildren.”
Lambert herself needed an abortion as a young mother when the fetus was found to carry a genetic disease. “I thought it would get easier, not harder, to have an abortion in this country,” she says.
Now, she and many other women fear a return to dangerous, illegal abortions of the past — and a disproportionate impact on women without the means to travel to abortion-friendly states. Still, many are trying to see a positive side: that as bleak as the moment may seem, change could come via new energy at the ballot box.
“We’re in it for the long haul,” says Carol Tracy, of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia.
Steinem, too, issued a note of resolve.
“Women have always taken power over our own bodies, and we will keep right on,” she wrote in her email message. “An unjust court can’t stop abortion, but it guarantees civil disobedience and disrespect for the court.” AP Reporter Maryclaire Dale contributed to this report.
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For AP’s full coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, go to https://apnews.com/hub/abortion. | Civil Rights Activism |
ACLU taking Florida to court over abortion restrictionsThe American Civil Liberties Union and other reproductive health advocates are set to ask a Florida judge on Monday to issue an emergency injunction against a new law that would severely limit abortion. Florida's House Bill 5, which would take effect Friday and bars abortions beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy except to save the pregnant woman’s life, violates privacy protections as set in the state constitution, according to plaintiffs, which include the ALCU and Planned Parenthood."The ban is blatantly unconstitutional under the state constitution," the ACLU of Florida said in a statement.A rep for the Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody could not be immediately reached for comment on Sunday.Some Pride attendees express frustration, exhaustion after Roe decisionAt the Pride parade in New York City on Sunday some shared how they they felt dejected and exhausted after the Roe v. Wade decision despite years of protests and casting votes in support of progressive values.A sentiment shared by many was a frustration with a perceived limp response of the Democratic Party and progressive institutions, such as Planned Parenthood, that have historically supported and advocated for abortion rights but have not provided an actionable path forward.Violet Martinez, 22, said at the parade on Sunday that it kept feeling as though the U.S. would “take a few steps forward and then 10 steps backs” in creating a more inclusive country.“It feels like we’re just yelling at these higher-ups that are all older people who are in charge and they’re just like, ‘OK, well, you’re not changing my mind,’” she said.Martinez said she had regularly attended protests to push for progressive values but was now exhausted after the Supreme Court’s decisions regarding not only abortion rights but the open carrying of guns and a weakened version of Miranda rights. As a queer woman of color, she said she felt as if politicians and others hadn’t kept promises made in recent years to protect her and others.“I want to stay motivated, I want to keep attending marches, keep activating, keep doing everything but there’s only so much energy to keep going out,” she said as colorful parade floats rolled by. “If the world doesn’t want to change with me, why am I going to keep doing it? I want to keep going but I’m so tired.”Abortion rights supporters protest outside U.S. Embassy in IrelandActivists marched to the U.S. Embassy in Dublin on Sunday in a show of support for abortion rights. Kate Foley, 33, an American who has been living in Ireland for 10 years, was among those activists who marched a mile and a half across the Irish capital to protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.Foley, who attended the protest with a group of American expat friends, said she was inspired to see the diversity of people who participated in the protest. “We were so surprised to see the numbers of Irish and international people [who came] out to support what many could dismiss as an American issue,” Foley said about the protest, which was organized by ROSA Ireland. Abortion rights supporters march to the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, Ireland. Kate FoleyDespite living abroad for a decade, Foley said she still has strong connections to her home country and is scared for her loved ones in the U.S. after the court’s overturning of the 1973 ruling on Friday. “If such an established law of nearly 50 years can be changed, what’s to say our elected officials can’t do the same — on abortion, or any other human rights issue,” Foley told NBC News via Instagram direct message. “I’ve always been taught to stand up for my beliefs, and I think it’s my responsibility to exercise that right regardless of whether I’m at home or abroad.”Ireland voted in 2018 to remove a ban on abortion from its constitution. The procedure is now permitted until the 12th week of pregnancy, when the health of the mother is at risk or when the fetus has a congenital defect. Supreme Court abortion decision casts shadow over Pride marches across U.S.Pride marches across the United States took on new gravity Sunday as progressives worried that the conservative justices on the Supreme Court who voted to reverse Roe v. Wade could now overrule protections for other rights, including same-sex marriage and same-sex intimacy.The annual parades and rallies in major cities such as New York and San Francisco came two days after Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion to the court’s ruling that tossed out Roe, called on the court to revisit the landmark decisions that established those very rights.Sunday’s events also took place as the LGBTQ movement reels from recent legislative setbacks, including laws that curb classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, for example, turned into a national flashpoint.Read the full story here.Poll: Americans, especially women, largely disapprove of Roe decisionFifty-nine percent of Americans and 67% of women in the U.S disapprove of the Supreme Court’s precedent-shattering decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a new poll released Sunday by CBS News.The poll found that 41% of Americans and 33% of women in the U.S approved of the ruling.Approval levels were divided largely along political lines. Among Democrats, 17% said they approved, while 83% said they disapproved. Among Republicans, 78% said they approved, while 22% said they disapproved. In a sign that the decision could spell trouble for Republican candidates in the midterm elections this fall, 38% of independents said they approved, while 62 percent said they disapproved.Half of Democrats polled said the decision would make them more likely to vote this fall, while 28 percent of independents said it would. Twenty percent of Republicans said the decision would make them more likely to vote this fall.More than half (52%) of respondents said the decision marked a step backward for the nation, while 31% said it marked a step forward. Another 17% said it did neither.Fifty-six percent of respondents said the decision would make the lives of women worse, 16% said it would make the lives of women better and 28% said it would not make a difference.Overturn of Roe v. Wade could have dire implications for transgender rightsWASHINGTON — Advocates for transgender rights fear the overturn of Roe v. Wade will trigger the loss of civil rights safeguards for their community.Jude Barnhart, an 18-year-old from Maryland who identifies as transgender and nonbinary, reminded fellow protesters outside the Supreme Court on Sunday that Justice Clarence Thomas has already said rights to marriage equality, contraception and same-sex intimacy should be revisited.“I was talking to my girlfriend, like, ‘What if we can’t get married?’" said Barnhart. "They’re not going to stop regulating our bodies. They are going to regulate who’s in our beds. They are going to regulate who we marry. They are going to regulate what we can put in our body to prevent ourselves from getting pregnant.”Planned Parenthood of Utah sues to block state's trigger banZachary Schermele3h ago / 5:28 PM UTCThe Planned Parenthood Association of Utah filed a lawsuit in District Court Saturday seeking to block the state’s trigger law criminalizing abortion in the state. The suit requests a temporary restraining order on Utah’s trigger law, which was passed by the state Legislature in 2020 and criminalizes abortion at any point in pregnancy. The ban took effect late Friday. Planned Parenthood argues that the right to an abortion is permitted under the state’s constitution. More than 50 patients had abortion appointments scheduled at Planned Parenthood for the coming week, the suit says. Doctors who violate the ban could face up to 15 years in prison, fines and the loss of their professional licenses. According to an NBC News analysis, people seeking abortion services in Utah’s biggest cities must now drive an average of five hours to reach the nearest clinic. Utah is one of nine states whose so-called trigger laws nearly immediately criminalized abortion Friday, following the Supreme Court decision overturning nearly 50 years of precedent. “In one terrible moment, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Utahns’ power to control their own bodies, lives, and personal medical decisions was threatened,” Karrie Galloway, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, said in a statement. Planned Parenthood helped lead NYC Pride paradeNew York City’s Pride parade recalls the marches and riots in which activists fought for gay rights decades ago, echoing some of the protests the country has seen in recent days, but Sunday’s event focused on a celebration of identities and rights gained so far.Planned Parenthood helped lead the parade, and many waved flags or held signs in support of reproductive rights, but many remarked that the energy of the crowd remained light, hopeful and joyous rather than angry.Planned Parenthood leads the New York City Pride Parade on June 26.Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty ImagesSunny Zalewski, 20, said she drove two and a half hours from Connecticut with a friend to find an extremely supportive crowd.“It’s really nice to see how many people can agree on one thing, and I haven’t seen any disagreements or violence except one guy yelling about traffic, but that’s New York for you, like, nothing new there,” she said.Warren, nodding to Roe overturn, repeats calls to expand court, gut filibusterSen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Sunday reiterated calls to expand the size of the Supreme Court and end the Senate filibuster, saying that doing both would allow for the restoration of abortion rights for women across the country.“We need to help the women who are pregnant right now,” Warren said on ABC’s “This Week.” That means Democrats must be “focused like a laser on the election in November” so they can pick up seats in states with competitive races, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where there's candidates “who are willing to protect access to abortion and get rid of the filibuster so we can pass it.”“John Fetterman, I’m looking at you in Pennsylvania, Mandela Barnes, I’m looking at you in Wisconsin,” Warren said. “We bring them in, then we got the votes, and we can protect every woman no matter where she lives.”Warren also slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for having "lost legitimacy.""They have burned whatever legitimacy they still may have,” she said. “They just took the last of it and set a torch to it with the Roe v. Wade opinion. I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court.”Roe overturn marks a 'crisis of our democracy,' says AOC The overturn of Roe v. Wade struck at the heart of American democracy and raised questions about the high court's legitimacy, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday."But also what I believe that the president and the Democratic Party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe, this is a crisis of our democracy," she told NBC's "Meet The Press." "The Supreme Court has dramatically overreached its authority." The New York Democratic lawmaker cited comments from Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who provided critical votes in the confirmation of justices who proved instrumental in the overturn of Roe, as evidence of what she called the Supreme Court's "crisis of legitimacy." "We had two conservative senators in the United States Senate, Sen. Manchin and Sen. Collins, come out with a very explosive allegation that these — that several Supreme Court justices misled them ... during their confirmation hearings and in the lead-up to their confirmation. This is a crisis of legitimacy," Ocasio-Cortez said."If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue, without basis — if you read these opinions, issue without basis rulings that deeply undermine the human and civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through," said Ocasio-Cortez. "There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions." Gov. Noem says South Dakota will restrict access to abortion pills Gov. Kristi Noem, whose state was among several where a "trigger law" was set to take effect after Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court, said Sunday that South Dakota would also enforce its ban on telemedicine abortions, putting the state on a legal warpath with the federal government.Medications that can induce an abortion in pregnant people — so-called abortion pills — are available to many via telehealth and telemedicine appointments. The medications are federally approved and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday that “states may not ban” the drug, mifepristone, which is one of the drugs used in medication abortion, “based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”That is likely to set off a legal battle in states like South Dakota, where trigger laws barred abortion outright and where separate laws are in place applying to telemedicine and telehealth. In an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Noem, a Republican, was asked how state officials would “stop women from receiving this federally approved medication” and whether officials were “going to actually seize mail.”Noem responded by referring to the state's bill that bans “telemedicine abortions,” adding that such measures “should be under the supervision of a medical doctor” and that decisions to make such measures legal “are at the state level.”She also said she would not support creating exceptions in her state’s law for women who become pregnant through rape or incest (the law does not currently include such exceptions). “Having a tragedy or tragic situation happen to someone isn't a reason to have another tragedy occur,” she said.Noem indicated the state had no current plan to draft legislation that helps women who are now forced to carry their pregnancies to term.Asked “What exactly are you doing to keep [women] alive during their pregnancy,” Noem replied, “That will be a lot of the debate that will go on now in every different state.”Arkansas Gov. Hutchinson says contraception ban not on table, despite Thomas opinion Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, whose state has banned abortions in almost all circumstances, insisted Sunday that access to contraception was "not going to be touched."U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote in a concurring opinion that the court should reconsider other rulings decided on the same legal grounds as Roe v. Wade, including the right to contraception, same-sex marriage and same-sex sexual intimacy. Hutchinson, a Republican, told NBC's "Meet The Press" that Thomas' opinion on cases other than abortion was not joined by any other justice."So this is not about contraception. This is not about same-sex marriage, a very limited decision on this particular issue of abortion," Hutchinson said. "And so in Arkansas, the right to contraception is important. It's recognized. It's not going to be touched." The governor didn't give a clear answer on his view of Plan B, which works to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex or a contraceptive failure, and whether he considered it a contraceptive, saying, "every state ... will make that determination."Health and Human Services considering transportation for women in need of abortionThe federal government might offer transportation to women who live in states that ban abortion, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Saturday."We are looking into everything, including assisting in transportation (to states that allow abortions), something that HHS doesn't typically do," Becerra told a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.When the panel moderator, NBC News senior correspondent Kate Snow, asked if this federal intervention would pass legal muster, Becerra said: "Talk to me later. "I always tell my team at HHS if you've done your homework, then we have no right to do mild," he said. "So we're going to be aggressive and go all the way." Police announce 10 arrested following unrest in Eugene, OregonProtesters took to the streets of Eugene, Oregon, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leading to the arrests of 10 people, police said Saturday. Crowds were responding Friday night to a "group publicizing on social media for people to come to a 'Night of Rage,'" and initially met at a family planning clinic blocks away the University of Oregon, Eugene police said in a statement.Some protesters "threw smoke bombs at officers along with several filled water bottles," and police fired pepper balls into the crowd, officials said.The 10 arrested were all between the ages of 18 and 29, with eight booked for disorderly conduct, one for harassment and one for disorderly conduct, escape in the third degree and resisting arrest, police said. Prohibition of abortions a ‘dark move,’ Israel's health minister saysThe “prohibition of abortions is a dark move,” Israel's health minister tweeted Saturday. “Denial of a woman’s right to her body, oppression of women is going back a hundred years,” Nitzan Horowitz wrote. “This is one of the consequences of the historic mishap named ‘Trump,’” he added, referring to former President Donald Trump. Abortion is legal in Israel, but women have to seek special permission from a medical committee.NBC News9h ago / 11:00 AM UTC6 arrested at rally in Greenville, South CarolinaSix people were arrested Saturday as protesters from both sides of the divide gathered in Greenville, South Carolina, police said. Around 400 to 500 people gathered in the downtown area, Greenville Police Department said in a statement. “Officers separated the opposing sides per our picketing ordinance,” the statement said. “On several occasions, officers had to address people in the roadway and parties from one side trying to go over to another.”After multiple warnings, one person violating the order to stay apart was arrested, the statement said. After this arrest, other protesters interfered and were arrested as well, according to the statement. In the end, the rally was deemed “an unlawful assembly,” and officers dispersed both sides, the statement said. NBC News11h ago / 9:00 AM UTCFire at Colorado Christian pregnancy services center investigated as arsonA fire early Saturday at a Longmont, Colorado, Christian organization that provides pregnancy services is being investigated as arson and the FBI has joined the probe, officials said.The fire shortly after 3 a.m. at Life Choices, which calls itself a Christ-centered ministry, caused fire and heavy smoke damage, Longmont Public Safety said in a statement.Photos posted by the department showed a spray-painted message: “if abortions aren’t safe neither are you.”Life Choices did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Its website advertises support for people facing unplanned pregnancies.The public safety department said Saturday that the FBI hads joined the investigation. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday night.The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had guaranteed the right to abortion in the U.S. Abortion is legal in Colorado. State law legalized it in 1967, and earlier this year Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed a law that codified the right to have an abortion in the state.Rep. Miller thanks Trump for ‘victory for white life,’ campaign says she misread remarksNatasha Korecki12h ago / 8:20 AM UTCU.S. Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, immediately drew fierce backlash on social media and elsewhere at a Saturday night rally with former President Donald Trump when she credited him for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, calling it a “victory for white life.”But Miller’s campaign said Saturday night that the congresswoman misread prepared remarks at a rally that Trump held for her in Mendon, Illinois.“You can clearly see she is reading off a piece of paper, she meant to say ‘right to life,’” Miller spokesman Isaiah Wartman said.Miller later tweeted: “I will always defend the RIGHT TO LIFE!”Read the full story here.Rhode Island officer arrested in alleged assault of Senate opponent at abortion rallyAn off-duty Rhode Island police officer who was running for state Senate was arrested on an assault charge after allegedly attacking his female opponent during an abortion rights protest Friday night.Providence police patrolman Jeann Lugo, 35, was arrested on charges of simple assault and disorderly conduct, state police said Saturday. Lugo turned himself in, was arraigned and released, it said.Jennifer Rourke, who is running for the state’s 29th District, said she had finished speaking at a rally outside the state house in Providence on Friday when she was attacked by Lugo.Read the full story here. | Civil Rights Activism |
The Tesla factory is seen in Fremont, California, U.S. June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Stephen Lam//File PhotoRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comJune 27 (Reuters) - A federal judge in California on Monday ordered a new trial on the damages Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) owes to a Black former factory worker who accused the company of race discrimination, after he turned down a $15 million award.U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco granted Tesla's motion for a new trial a week after the former elevator operator, Owen Diaz, said he would not accept the judge's award. read more Tesla and lawyers for Diaz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comA jury last October had awarded Diaz $137 million, one of the largest verdicts ever in a discrimination case involving a single worker. Orrick in April said Tesla was liable to Diaz for discrimination, but he said the award was excessive and lowered it to $15 million. read more Diaz's lawyers said last week that the lower award was unjust and undermined his constitutional rights.Orrick did not set a date for the new trial, but scheduled a conference for July 12.In his 2017 lawsuit, Diaz alleged that his colleagues and a supervisor at Tesla's Fremont, California, assembly plant subjected him to a hostile work environment that included racist slurs, caricatures and swastikas.Tesla is facing a series of lawsuits involving alleged widespread race discrimination and sexual harassment at the Fremont factory, including one by a California civil rights agency. read more This month, a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit accusing the company's chief executive, Elon Musk, and board of directors of neglecting worker complaints and fostering a toxic workplace culture. read more Tesla has denied wrongdoing and says it has policies in place to prevent and address workplace misconduct.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Leslie AdlerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Civil Rights Activism |
Members of the Gay Liberation Front hold a rally in Grant Park on April 16, 1970. Barely a year earlier on June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Riots in New York City marked the beginning of the modern-day push for LGBTQ equality.From the Sun-Times archives As published in the Chicago Daily News and its sister publication, the Chicago Sun-Times:Few people could have guessed the impact that a raid at a New York City gay bar would come to have on U.S. history. On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, but instead of complying quietly, the patrons, mostly gay and transgender people of color, fought back. The event became known as the Stonewall Riots, which lasted until July 3, and it launched the modern-day campaign for LGBTQ rights.“The resulting street melee drew national attention,” Chicago Daily News reporter Susan Root wrote on March 10, 1970, months before the first anniversary of the riots.In Chicago, a group supporting LGBTQ rights sprouted up on Illinois college campuses in the months following the Stonewall Riots, and Root became one of the first Daily News reporters to track the growing movement. Her March 1970 article delved into how Gay Liberation, the new activist group eventually known as Chicago Gay Liberation, spread from campus to campus.“Gay Liberation is a new and growing campus phenomenon — a coalition of student groups that aims to foster self-acceptance among homosexuals and understanding by the ‘straight’ majority,” Root wrote.Thus far, only one university had recognized the Gay Liberation group on campus: the University of Chicago. The organization held bi-weekly lunches at the Blue Gargoyle, a well-known student cafeteria run out of the basement of a Hyde Park church. Though the Gargoyle has undergone some changes and closings over the years, it still exists today as a “hub for community services in order to provide positive opportunities for youth and families on the Southside of Chicago,” according to its website.The Gay Liberation men and women at the Gargoyle in 1970 looked “no different from the ‘straight’ students around them,” Root observed. There were no differences in the way straight and gay students talked, dressed or acted. “The girls range from plain to delicate to pretty; the men, from hirsute revolutionary to clean-cut fraternity types.” But there was something setting the gay students apart from others: they had “come out” as gay to family, friends and acquaintances. The UC chapter had 15 active members, 15 “fringe” members and about 100 people on its mailing list, organizer Henry Weimhoff told Root.“I was very active in civil rights,” Weimhoff said, “and then it dawned on me that I was fighting for the rights of other oppressed minorities when I was a member of an oppressed minority myself.”At Northwestern University, another group awaited recognition, and informal ones at Southern Illinois, Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan universities had written to the University of Chicago’s Gay Liberation, hoping to become chapters of their organization.“I think our movement is one aspect of a larger sexual freedom movement in general,” one UC student explained to Root, “and the fact that we’re not ashamed will bright other people out of their closet.” | Civil Rights Activism |
When Brittany Ferrell earned her pediatric nursing degree from the University of Missouri St. Louis in May of 2014, she’d already had lots of experience as a community activist.During two years as president of the Black Students’ Nursing Association, Ferrell helped develop community outreach programs and workshops about sexual, mental and nutritional health, and used social media to publicize them widely.Ferrell’s desire to link activism with neighborhoods came to an explosive head in August of 2014, after an unarmed 18-year-old black youth named Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri.During nationally-televised protests, advocacy moved from the academic to the neighborhoods for Ferrell. She says she participated in the outcry about Brown’s death for 100 straight nights. Her vocal, prominent presence led to her being one of the central subjects of the 2017 Netflix documentary about the Ferguson uprising entitled “Whose Streets?”Ferrell is known throughout Missouri and the Midwest for her community organizing and activism. She’s most passionate about the challenges for pregnant women of color in St. Louis and beyond.“There’s absolutely no reason why black women should be dying at the rate we’re dying,” Ferrell says. “Just like state violence is allowing black folks to be shot dead in the street, and no one’s being held accountable or even having to atone for the death of black bodies, the same thing is happening in these medical institutions.”That Ferrell’s reproductive health activism is unfolding in a town that made international headlines for social justice is no coincidence.Missouri’s status as the state with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the U.S. makes it a prime stage for America’s burgeoning “birth equity movement,” which suggest that factors like poverty, racism, social and economic policy impact African American mothers and babies from the moment they’re born.More than 700 women die each year in the U.S. from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. Black women have a maternal mortality rate three times higher than that of white women. At least 60 percent of maternal deaths are preventable.The House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill this week, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act, to fund state committees to review and investigate deaths of expectant and new mothers, to train providers to improve the quality of care and to make a summary of each maternal death available to the public. The bipartisan legislation, which authorizes $12 million a year in new funds for five years, would pay for research that would yield more accurate data and identify the specific factors fueling the death of mothers, enabling states local and state governments to develop more effective strategies to address the issue. The bill still must be approved by the U.S. Senate.In fact, the past few years have yielded an unprecedented focus on the issue of maternal health—and death—for black American women. At the forefront of this movement are organizations like the National Birth Equity Collaborative, and the group Black Mamas Matter, both comprised of academicians, medical professionals and community health activists who have collaborated to develop compelling personal stories, research and policy strategies to reinforce the message that black women face serious, quantifiable risk of death or major disability related to pregnancy. The crisis is so real that a coalition of black women mayors from across the nation have formed a coalition intended to direct policies and resources to address the problem, without waiting for federal intervention.“We can’t just talk about our reproductive health and rights from a single issue lens. Our lives are much more complex than that,” says Monica Simpson, executive director of the Sister Song Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective based in Atlanta, GA. “The way that the multiple layers of oppression show up in our world is not the same way that privileged communities get to experience these issues. This is why black women came up with the term ‘reproductive justice,’ which is looking at connection between the very real social justice issues that come into our lives every single day.”The irrefutable data around black women and maternal death is so negative, that black women are far from the only stakeholders who are alarmed by the issue.“What we see in maternal mortality is what we see everywhere else,” says Dr. William Callaghan, Chief of the Maternal and Infant Health Branch in the Division of Reproductive Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as white men. There’s a litany of that type of disparity. It’s certainly highlighted in maternal mortality, because you’re talking in most instances about otherwise healthy people with families, and oftentimes orphaned babies. "Callaghan agrees with reproductive health activists that the ways race and ethnicity are encountered and processed in the medical setting directly impacts the issue."There’s all kinds of implicit bias, racial and unconscious bias about somebody who presents with a condition or symptoms that look a lot like something ordinary but isn’t. These judgement calls can occur around race. What they say is judged in a way that is based on their racial background.“The other layer of fragmentation is the experience of being a black woman in America, and the intergenerational effects of racism and segregation. It all plays out through biology."Pamela Merritt wasn’t raised to be a reproductive justice activist. Though her solid middle class upbringing in St. Louis, Missouri was fueled by parents who helped register neighbors to vote and espoused civil rights, they also worked hard to ensure that their children attended the best schools, wore the best clothes, spoke with clear, precise English.The “payoff for respectability,” as Merritt put it, came in the form of a six-figure job selling radio advertising in Dallas. While there, two things happened to spark her activism. The first occurred when a high-end retail client submitted a written request that their product not be advertised on “urban radio.” Merritt knew what that meant—they had no interest in black customers.The next epiphany occurred when, at age 28, Merritt developed a severe case of uterine fibroids, along with endometriosis. She sought recommendations for an OB/GYN from her white work colleagues.“There I sat with my perfect English, wearing my expensive suits and my expensive handbag, and I walked into that office and got treated like shit.,” Merritt says. “I was told that I needed to have a baby as soon as possible, because ‘most of you have had kids by now.’ I was spoken to like a piece of meat by specialists who never once asked me if I was in pain.”When Merritt shared her story with her African American female friends, she discovered she wasn’t alone. “So many of them had experiences like mine and worse. And we were all what you would consider upper middle class. That’s when I drew the line from where I stood to where a young, lower-income black woman would probably go through in that same setting. And that’s when I couldn’t just turn my back.”Today, Merritt is to co-founder and executive director of Reproaction, self-described as an advocacy group “upholding abortion rights and advancing reproductive justice as a matter of human dignity.” The group also monitors reproductive health spending in the Missouri, organizes rallies and demonstrations against “fake clinics,” and liaises with state legislators to make sure that reproductive health issues stay on the radar.Reproaction seeks to amplify the work of activists like 31-year-old Brittany “Tru” Kellman, who’s on track to become the one of the first fully-licensed African American professional midwives in Missouri’s history in 2019. Kellman founded the Jamaa Birth Village, a support group in Ferguson.Raised in Ferguson from the age of five, Kellman was pregnant by age 13 and in an abusive relationship. By age 17, Kellman was pregnant again, with no support and in yet another abusive relationship. So she saved up for an abortion.Just days before the scheduled procedure, Kellman says she was contacted by the Ferguson police department about some past due traffic tickets. To avoid jail, she used her abortion money.“I tried to kill myself multiple times after I had my second son,” Kellman explains. “I spiraled so far down, I just didn’t see any reason to keep going.” Three books helped save her life: “Sacred Pampering Principles: An African American Woman’s Guide to Self-Care and Inner Renewal,” a book about yoga, and another about spiritual midwifery.“I went on a path of self-discovery starting in 2007. I realized I deserved to be treated with respect. I needed to treat myself with respect. It really laid the foundation for my midwifery training.” Kellman even traveled to Ghana to study traditional midwifery and birth support.Kellman founded Jamaa in October of 2015, and began her formal midwifery apprenticeship in January of 2016, offering pregnancy support from her home at the same time.That training also helped her realize how far too many women in North St. Louis are often completely isolated and lacking information, guidance and support as they consider getting pregnant, during those nine months and after birth.Which is ironic, many birth equity advocates say, considering the role African American women have played in America’s reproductive health history. Throughout the slavery era and into the early 20th century, African American “granny midwives,” were unofficially charged with overseeing the majority of births in many southern and rural settings, for black and white women alike. Only the advent of modern medical organizations and policies that outlawed non-hospital based deliveries fueled the demise of home deliveries—and with it the reverence for granny midwives.But in the 21st century, African American women are once again taking the lead in the effort to ensure equitable access to care and support for women of color. In September of 2018, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser convened a Maternal and Infant Health summit featuring African American female mayors of Flint Michigan, Gary Indiana, Baltimore, Maryland and Hartford, Connecticut. An audience of nearly 1,500 gleaned information about the latest research, policies and community health initiatives aimed at supporting better maternal and reproductive health for black women.And in August of 2018, Bowser signed an agreement with George Washington University Hospital that would create a state of the art hospital and trauma center--and a full-fledged maternity ward—in Ward 8, one of the poorest, mostly minority areas of Washington, DC. Construction is slated to begin in 2020, with a goal of opening in 2023.“Big city mayors recognize this problem, and we are acting on what we know works to solve it,” Bowser says. “Too often, any maternal death in our communities is outsized, in terms of the impact it has on families. Mayors are being forced to extend our reach to do things we used to rely on the federal government to provide. With this issue, we have to call on the knowledge, and the voices and the energy of our communities to save lives. We can’t wait for the next study or report.” | Civil Rights Activism |
The POWER House in Montgomery, AlabamaBecca Andrews Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.The Monday morning after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, decimating the near-50-year-old constitutional right to abortion, a red pickup truck pulled into the near-empty parking lot at Reproductive Health Services, Montgomery, Alabama’s abortion clinic. The driver, a woman from Birmingham, an hour-and-a-half away, rolled down her window as a petite white woman with a pink ponytail, wearing a bright rainbow vest, strode across the cracked asphalt to meet her. When she reached the truck, Mia Raven began to gently explain that her appointment was canceled, that the unthinkable had happened, that abortion was now illegal in Alabama. The woman inside the truck was dumbfounded. She told Raven that she had called the clinic in Montgomery that morning before she left and had been assured that the doors were open, that she should come on down. It didn’t take long for Raven to piece together what had happened. She pointed across the street to a building with a sign out front: First Choice Women’s Medical Center.
A man had also walked up to the truck from that direction, but he stayed on the sidewalk, looking at the duo and loudly droning a sermon he had clearly given many times.
“You spoke to the crisis pregnancy center over there,” Raven said flatly. “They won’t help you get an abortion.”
“But they have the word ‘choice’ in the name!” the woman explained.
Raven nodded sympathetically. “I know, baby, that’s how they confuse you.”
She pulled a sheet of paper off the clipboard she’d been clutching and handed it through the window of the truck. At the top of the paper, it read: As of June 24, 2022, abortion is now illegal in Alabama. We hope you find this list of resources & information helpful. Below, there was a list of resources for continuing a pregnancy, the information for a pro-choice adoption agency, and a list of states where abortion is legal (with caveats about gestational bans and that the landscape is shifting quickly). Within moments, the window was rolled back up, and the truck slowly pulled out of the parking lot and out of sight. Clinic escorts are here. When patients arrive, they give them this sheet of paper, which was vetted by lawyers, to inform them abortion is no longer legal here. They cannot even recommend specific clinics that are still open. pic.twitter.com/TWTNOtaCRF
— Becca Andrews (@kbeccaandrews) June 27, 2022 In the next half-hour or so, this basic series of events repeated twice more. Then, by around 10 a.m., there were no more cars.
After the cars stopped, Raven headed next door to the clinic, to the POWER House, a gray Craftsman with a spacious porch where clinic escorts and, in days past, patients sit and smoke and visit, box fans exhaling hard into the thick, sticky air. It’s an organizing hub of sorts among the social-justice-minded folks in this blue city in a red state. (POWER is an acronym, standing for People Organizing for Women’s Empowerment and Rights.) Raven settled into a teal green wicker bench and lit a cigarette.
Today, only four people were there. Raven was frustrated, feeling stifled by her inability to give patients real, concrete information, on top of overwhelming grief. “I knew this was coming, and I planned for it,” she said. “But I didn’t plan for—and that’s on me—the criminalization of speech.” Raven and her cohort of clinic escorts are acting on the advice of a lawyer to not refer patients to specific abortion clinics, lest they be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime. “I have criminal attorneys,” she said, exasperated. “I’ve never had criminal attorneys in my life.” In 2019, the state passed a law that banned all abortions, known as the Alabama Human Life Protection Act. It was overturned in court that October, but on Friday, when the Supreme Court nullified Roe, the precedent that underpinned the 2019 ruling, state Attorney General Steve Marshall filed an emergency motion to reinstate the law. The motion was granted and the ban took effect the same day.
By now, most people know what has happened. On Saturday, Kari Crowe, an administrative assistant with the clinic, one of three in the state, sent out roughly 80 text messages to patients with upcoming appointments to let them know that they could no longer access abortion care at Reproductive Health Services, nor in the state more generally. “We deeply apologize that we are no longer able to help you access the reproductive care you DESERVE and are entitled to,” the messages said. “We have served the people in the Montgomery area with compassion and care since 1978. Reproductive justice is a value held deeply by all of us at Reproductive Health Services and this blow may very well mean the end of our clinic, but it is not the end of the fight.” She called the patients she couldn’t reach by text message, and cried with them over the phone. Patients who had come in for their first appointment but had not had their second appointment, during which they would have received abortion care, were refunded their money.
Crowe, too, was on the porch Monday afternoon, following the conclusion of a what-to-do-next meeting at the clinic next door. She wore her fine brown hair pulled back into a severe bun, accented with two silver spikes, one topped with a tyrannosaurus rex, the other with a stegosaurus. She wondered aloud about a father who called the clinic on Thursday, desperate to get help for his 14-year-old daughter who was pregnant. The Montgomery clinic was booked, but she urged him to act fast—maybe try Atlanta, call the National Abortion Federation; she knew the ruling was coming soon, and she told him as much. “I hope they were able to get in somewhere, or at least communicate with someone who is able to get them better info,” she said, words falling heavily.
Around back, in the clinic parking lot, Travis Jackson was keeping watch for anyone who came to the clinic seeking care (or seeking trouble). Jackson is a Black Army veteran who has been working as an escort at Reproductive Health Services for seven years—his anniversary was a week ago. The day was scorching, more akin to August than June, but he was prepared with a cooler full of ice water and cold towels, a gallon of Gatorade at the foot of his shaded lawn chair. After he returned from Iraq in 2008, he spent time with texts written by Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, and others, and he began reckoning with some of his long-held views about religion and gender.
Through POWER House, “I found my continuous service to my country, which is to be on the battlefield for reproductive rights of abortion and birth control,” he told me. “And this is the best way that I can utilize my male privilege for the good of the cause.” The work, which he does in addition to other LGBT+ and civil rights activism, has sustained him. Today, the soft crunch of his footsteps across an empty lot was unsettling. He went to rallies over the weekend, surrounded by like-minded, angry, grieving Alabamians, but in that moment, it was just him and the women on the porch. Meet Travis, a clinic escort here. He wanted me to show y’all his sign. 🖤 pic.twitter.com/WSfaE09VRU
— Becca Andrews (@kbeccaandrews) June 27, 2022 Still, he was holding tightly to hope. “Once we stop erasing Black, Indigenous voices of color, we will fully recover,” he said. Here, in the heart of the historic civil rights movement, he drew power from the activists who came before him, and their dedication to freedom and equality keeps him going, especially on days like this one. “They may take my microphone, but they’ll never take my message,” he pledged. | Civil Rights Activism |
'People will die because of this decision,' says Ocasio-CortezAntonio Planas1m ago / 5:07 PM UTCRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Friday the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will make abortions more dangerous and result in deaths.“Overturning Roe and outlawing abortions will never make them go away. It only makes them more dangerous, especially for the poor + marginalized," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "People will die because of this decision. And we will never stop until abortion rights are restored in the United States of America.”Anti-abortion Democratic Rep. Cuellar says Roe decision leaves issues up to the statesTexas Rep. Henry Cuellar, the lone anti-abortion Democrat in the House, said Friday his position has not changed."We'll let the states make this decision now," he said. Asked by NBC News about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's reaction to the Supreme Court's decision, which she said was "cruel," Cuellar said, "Everybody has their opinion, including the speaker."Cuellar said that while he was in the minority in his caucus, he is not in his district.WHO’s Tedros disappointed by Roe v. Wade decisionReuters9m ago / 4:59 PM UTCThe head of the World Health Organization said on Friday he was very disappointed by the overturning of Roe v Wade.“I am very disappointed, because women’s rights must be protected. And I would have expected America to protect such rights,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Reuters on the sidelines of a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda.Sanders says it is time to end the Senate filibusterTat Bellamy-Walker11m ago / 4:57 PM UTCSen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called on Democrats to end the filibuster in the Senate and solidify protections for abortion rights. "Overturning Roe v. Wade and denying women the right to control their own bodies is an outrage and in defiance of what the American people want," Sen. Sanders wrote in a tweet Friday. "Democrats must now end the filibuster in the Senate, codify Roe v. Wade, and once again make abortion legal and safe." Biden says Roe is 'on the ballot' in NovemberIn remarks from the White House on Friday, President Joe Biden said that "voters need to make their voices heard" at the ballot box in November's midterm elections because he is unable to restore abortion protections and Congress lacks the votes to take that action. "We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that. This fall, Roe is on the ballot," Biden said. Until November, Biden said he will do everything in his power to protect a woman's right to choose in states where they will face the consequences of the court's decision. He said, for example, that his administration will protect women's access to medications that allow them to self-manage an abortion at home. He acknowledged that a number of Republican-controlled states have already banned or restricted access to these medications. Biden expressed anger at the Supreme Court's ruling, saying that "the court has done what it has never done before — expressly take away a constitutional right." "This decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is — far removed they are from the majority of this country," he said. "You can act. You can have the final word."He blamed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, for the reversal of Roe because of his nomination of three justices at the "core of today's decision." Plaintiff in same-sex marriage Supreme Court case says decision is moving country 'backward'Christopher Cicchiello14m ago / 4:54 PM UTCJim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges that established the right to same-sex marriages across the nation, called today's verdict "a sad day for women's rights.""This Supreme Court continues to erode the rights of citizens at an alarming rate," Obergefell said in a tweet. "Women deserve responsive leaders who support reproductive justice. Leaders who respect their fundamental right to have control over their own bodies."In a separate statement reacting to Justice Clarence Thomas’ call to reconsider the holding in Obergefell v. Hodges in his concurring opinion, Obergefell said that "the millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them."U.S. Capitol public tours halted after Roe decision Public tours of the U.S. Capitol were abruptly halted Friday after the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, allowing Capitol Police to shift some of their resources to the court complex, a source familiar with the decision said.Capitol Police were also concerned about members of the public lining up at the entrance of the Capitol Visitors Center (CVC), which is close to where thousands of protesters were assembling in front of the court building."It's because of the CVC entrance's proximity to activity at SCOTUS and the general need to shift U.S. Capitol Police manpower to respond to SCOTUS activity," the source said.So far, the protests have been peaceful.Scotland's leader calls out Roe decisionScotland's leader on Friday warned that the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would "embolden anti-abortion and anti-women forces" beyond the United States."One of the darkest days for women’s rights in my lifetime," Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said in a tweet. "Obviously the immediate consequences will be suffered by women in the US — but this will embolden anti-abortion & anti-women forces in other countries too. Solidarity doesn’t feel enough right now — but it is necessary."McCarthy praises court's decisionHouse Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy praised the decision of the court during a Friday press conference. "By a vote of 6-3, the court affirmed that the power to protect unborn life is returned to the people by their elected representatives," he said. "This great nation can now live up to its core principle that all people are created equal — not born equal, created equal."He added that the decision would "save the lives of millions of children" and "give families hope."Sharpton says court's decision brings us 'back to the dark ages' Tat Bellamy-Walker21m ago / 4:46 PM UTCThe Rev. Al Sharpton, the head of the National Action Network and an MSNBC host, said Friday that Black women and poor women will be disproportionately affected by the court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. British doctors union calls Roe decision 'deeply worrying'A senior official at the British Medical Association, the United Kingdom's doctors union, on Friday said the Supreme Court's decision overturning abortion rights could have an impact beyond the United States. “The news that restrictions to abortions could be made law in some U.S. states ... is deeply worrying for the future of women’s reproductive health," Zoe Greaves, chair of the group's medical ethics committee, said in a written statement. "The BMA, along with multiple other health organizations, is concerned that this will remove women’s access to essential medical care, a fundamental human right as stated by the U.N., both in the U.S. and potentially more widely," she said. The organization added in a statement that it would be weighing the decision's implications to determine how best to support the American Medical Association in its opposition to the "criminalization of reproductive health."First lady Jill Biden was with DeSantis when Roe decision came downJosh Lederman28m ago / 4:40 PM UTCFirst lady Jill Biden was with Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis when she learned of the Supreme Court ruling, a White House official told NBC News.The first lady was preparing to go onstage at the memorial for the one year anniversary of the Champlain Tower collapse in Surfside, Florida, along with DeSantis and his wife in a holding room. Moments before the first lady walked on stage, the news alerts popped up on everyone’s phones.In April, DeSantis signed a Florida law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.Democratic governors in the West pledge to stand up for abortion rightsDemocratic governors in California, Oregon and Washington said Friday they will continue to "protect" patients seeking reproductive care, including those from other states seeking abortions.California's Gavin Newsom, Oregon's Kate Brown and Washington's Jay Inslee made the announcement in a video message released after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, presenting themselves as a counterweight to "red states and Republican-stacked courts.""California, Oregon and Washington are building the West Coast offense to protect patients' access to reproductive care," Newsom said.Inslee said: "We're going to work with our legislators, with our providers, with our patient advocates."Brown said: "We will not stand on the sidelines."'With sorrow...we dissent': Court's liberal wing says majority decided women not deserving of equal protectionIn a blistering dissent to the court's decision reversing abortion rights, the justices on the bench’s liberal wing slammed the majority opinion as one that would curtail women's rights.“It says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,” Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote in the lengthy dissent."With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent," they added.Read the full story here.Planned Parenthood Wisconsin temporarily suspends abortion servicesAntonio Planas32m ago / 4:35 PM UTCPlanned Parenthood Wisconsin announced Friday it was “temporarily suspending” abortion services in response to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.In a video statement on the organization’s website, the group's president, Tanya Atkinson, lamented the Supreme Court’s decision because it has taken away a constitutional right from women and instead placed health care decisions in the hands of politicians.“Because Wisconsin’s criminal abortion ban remains in effect, Planned Parenthood Wisconsin is temporarily suspending abortion services,” she said. “Please know that we are looking at all legal options available. This news is so incredibly devastating. The decision of whether or not to become a parent can be one of the most life-changing decisions a person can make,” she said. “You should be able to make the very personal, very needed health care decisions.”Atkinson added that although abortion services are not available in Wisconsin, the organization is still there for people who need abortions and will counsel them on finding options where abortions are safe and legal. The group, she said, will also be available for “after-care” services. Other services provided by the organization are also available at its centers or through telehealth, she said.“Planned Parenthood Wisconsin stands for health care, and we will not give up, not now, not ever,” she said.Anger and joy outside Supreme CourtTears flowed and voices bellowed outside the Supreme Court early Friday, as activists on both sides of the abortion issue gathered to bear witness to the end of the Roe era. "It's really a visceral issue," said Mai El-Sadany, a human rights lawyer who opposes Friday's decision. "The people who showed up here are really angry and they didn’t want to be alone." Paige Nelson, 20, cried tears of joy on the street in front of the Supreme Court, where the grounds long used for demonstrations have been closed off for weeks as a security precaution."I’m just so happy that no matter who you are and whatever extra chromosomes or whatever disability you might have, you get the chance to live this amazing life, and I will continue advocating until abortion is completely gone," said Nelson, a Washington state resident who is participating in a summer program with the conservative Concerned Women of America.Canadian PM Justin Trudeau calls Roe decision 'horrific'Reuters37m ago / 4:30 PM UTCCanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday called the Supreme Court decision "horrific."“The news coming out of the United States is horrific. My heart goes out to the millions of American women who are now set to lose their legal right to an abortion,” Trudeau said on Twitter.“No government, politician, or man should tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body,” he said.GOP Sen. Mitt Romney says he supports Roe's reversalSen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, praised the Supreme Court's ruling Friday in a brief statement. "The sanctity of human life is a foundational American principle, and the lives of our children—both born and unborn—deserve our protection," Romney said. "I support the Court’s decision, which means that laws regarding abortion will now rightfully be returned to the people and their elected representatives," he added.AG Merrick Garland says states cannot ban access to medications for abortionsAttorney General Merrick Garland vowed to protect access to Mifepristone, which is used along with another medication to end early pregnancies.“In particular, the FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy," he wrote in a statement.The Food and Drug Administration approved in 2016 the use of the medications in terminating abortions.The "Department will continue to protect healthcare providers and individuals seeking reproductive health services in states where those services remain legal," his statement added. "This law prohibits anyone from obstructing access to reproductive health services through violence, threats of violence, or property damage."Decision a 'dark moment,' British rights group says The Supreme Court’s decision is a “dark moment for the struggle for women’s liberation and the fight to control our own bodies,” the chair of a British rights group said Friday. ‘This is a hugely significant set back for abortion rights. Not just in the U.S. but it will embolden anti-abortion activists here and in Poland, Malta and other places where the struggle for access is already desperate,” Kerry Abel of Abortion Rights said in a statement. “Any chink in the legislative armour that undermines the right to privacy, makes access more difficult or puts abortion funding out of reach will impact poorer and marginalised women and pregnantpeople and will encourage yet more anti-abortion legislation and action,” she said. “This is a dark moment for the struggle for women’s liberation and the fight to control our own bodies,” she added.Rep. Jamie Raskin knocks Thomas, says they are not 'like real judges at this point'Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., knocked Justice Clarence Thomas, saying he is trying to "demolish the constitutional right to privacy" while blasting the high court's justices as an "instrument of the right-wing Republican agenda." "Roe versus Wade was built on Griswold versus Connecticut, which asserted a constitutional right to privacy for women and men to obtain contraception and birth control," Raskin said Friday. "They might like to pretend as if this is some kind of singular strike against just women's right to abortion, but it has implications for contraception. It has implications for the right of gay people to get married under the Obergefell decision. It has implications for the right of people not to be sterilized by the government against their will."Raskin added that the justices are "not like real judges at this point." "I mean, they’ve got the power of it, but they basically have turned themselves into partisans," he said.Sen. Susan Collins calls ruling 'not conservative' Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who voted to confirm Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh who were part of Friday's majority opinion, said in a statement that the ruling was an "ill-considered action" and "not conservative." "The Supreme Court has abandoned a fifty-year precedent at a time that the country is desperate for stability. This ill-considered action will further divide the country at a moment when, more than ever in modern times, we need the Court to show both consistency and restraint," Collins said. "Throwing out a precedent overnight that the country has relied upon for half a century is not conservative. It is a sudden and radical jolt to the country that will lead to political chaos, anger, and a further loss of confidence in our government."Collins said that the ruling was "inconsistent" with what Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their congressional testimony and in meetings with her where, she said, "they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon."Collins said she is working on a bill with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that would codify Roe, Casey, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, and Griswold v. Connecticut."Our legislation would enshrine important abortion protections into law without undercutting statutes that have been in place for decades and without eliminating basic conscience protections that are relied upon by health care providers who have religious objections to performing abortions," she said.U.K.'s Boris Johnson calls Roe decision 'a big step backward'British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday said the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade would have a "massive" impact around the world. “This is not our court, it’s another jurisdiction, but it clearly has massive impacts on people’s thinking around the world," he said during a press conference in Kigali, Rwanda. "It’s a very important decision." "I think it’s a big step backwards," Johnson, who leads the Conservative Party, added. "I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose and I stick to that view and that is why the U.K. has the laws that it does.”Missouri governor signs state proclamation banning most abortionsChristopher Cicchiello49m ago / 4:19 PM UTCMissouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a proclamation Friday to activate its trigger law, banning most abortions.“Nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the United States Constitution gave un-elected federal judges authority to regulate abortion. We are happy that the U.S. Supreme Court has corrected this error and returned power to the people and the states to make these decisions,” Parson, a Republican, said in a news release.This law makes it illegal for doctors to perform abortions and also makes anyone who knowingly induces an abortion guilty of a class B felony. Doctors can have their licenses revoked for their involvement. However, a woman who has an abortion will not be prosecuted "for a conspiracy to violate the provisions" of this act. No mention of an exception for a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest was provided in the act.Upon Parson’s signature, the act takes effect immediately.Texas GOP AG Ken Paxton says abortions are 'now illegal in Texas'Texas' GOP attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced Friday that abortion is now illegal in Texas as a result of the Supreme Court's ruling. "SCOTUS just overruled Roe & Casey, ending one of the most morally & legally corrupt eras in US history. Praise the Lord. Abortion is now illegal in Texas," he said in a tweet. Texas had on the books a trigger law, which immediately banned abortion once Roe came down.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed into law one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans last year, which took effect in September. It had banned abortions as early as six weeks, which effectively banned all abortions because most women don't know they're pregnant that early in the process. Whole Women's Health, an organization that has operated four clinics providing reproductive health services in Texas and other states, said it has stopped providing abortion procedures as a result of Friday's ruling, according to the Texas Tribune. In guidance posted on the organization's website Friday, it said that its clinics "are still operating in Baltimore, MD; Bloomington, MN; Alexandria, VA; and Charlottesville, VA." It also said that it offers medication abortion pills by mail to patients in Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia.It also said Whole Women's Health "is exploring plans to expand both our in-clinic and mail services into additional states where abortion is legally protected."Democratic lawmakers march to Supreme Court in support of abortion rightsAt least 150 Democratic lawmakers marched to the Supreme Court on Friday to protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., told NBC News the decision marked "a sad day for American jurisprudence.""Never did I envision that this court would reverse 40 or 50 years of precedence, but they did it," he said. "And they did it in utter disregard for the 60% of the American people who support Roe and did not want it overturned."Conservative Hispanic group lauds court decisionBienvenido, a conservative Hispanic group, said the court's decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision was "correct as both a legal and a moral matter.""Today we join millions of Americans — including the majority of Hispanics who value human life — in celebrating the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling overturning 'Roe' and 'Casey,'" a statement from the group said. "It was always a lie that the Constitution guaranteed the right to kill unborn children and this Court has just exposed this lie for the shameful farce that it always has been," the statement continued. "As we commemorate this historic decision, let us remember these children who were denied the right to live, pray for forgiveness, and give thanks to God." According to Pew Research Center, 60% of Hispanics in 2022 said abortion should be legal. Transgender Law Center denounces Supreme Court decision as "despicable" Tat Bellamy-Walker1h ago / 3:51 PM UTCThe Transgender Law Center, one of the nation's largest transgender rights groups, slammed the court's decision, calling it "despicable" and a "politically-motivated" attack.In a statement, the organization stressed that the majority opinion will have an outsize impact on historically marginalized groups, including Black women, disabled people, migrant women, poor people and individuals living in rural communities.“Today we loudly affirm and pledge our solidarity with all people working for Reproductive Justice in this country,” the group's executive director, Kris Hayashi, said. “Whether it is a right to an abortion, the right to affirming medical care, or the right to learn about your own history in schools, our collective rights to self-determination and bodily autonomy are inexorably entwined.”'God made the decision': Trump praises the ruling overturning RoeFormer President Donald Trump praised the Supreme Court's ruling in a statement to Fox News on Friday, saying that it's "following the Constitution, and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago."Trump was asked if he played a role in the decision because he nominated three of the conservative justices who overturned Roe v. Wade — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett."God made the decision," Trump told Fox. Asked to address any of his supporters who support abortion rights, Trump said, "I think, in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody ... This brings everything back to the states where it has always belonged."Trump had previously supported abortion rights years ago, telling NBC News' "Meet the Press" in 1999 that he was "very pro-choice" at the time.Susan B. Anthony List celebrates overturning of Roe v. WadeThe anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List celebrated news Friday of the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, calling it a "historic victory for human rights." Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the group, said in a video message outside the Supreme Court that it was a moment of "great gratitude and resolve." "This Court has just overturned the wrongly decided Roe versus Wade decision. Let those words sink in," she said. "Roe versus Wade is overturned after 50 years of lobbying, building centers of hope to serve pregnant women, on our knees praying, off our knees marching and ensuring the powerful pro-life voice could be heard in our elections. We have arrived at this day, a culminating day of so much and the first day of a bright pro-life future for our nation."She said the decision allows the "will of the people to make its way into the law through our elected officials" and declared that "our best days are ahead."Attorney General Merrick Garland vows to 'use every tool' to protect abortion rightsAttorney General Merrick Garland, who as Barack Obama's 2016 Supreme Court nominee was denied a confirmation vote by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, vowed to put the full weight of the Department of Justice behind protecting abortion rights."The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision," he said. "This decision deals a devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States. It will have an immediate and irreversible impact on the lives of people across the country. And it will be greatly disproportionate in its effect — with the greatest burdens felt by people of color and those of limited financial means."“The Justice Department will use every tool at our disposal to protect reproductive freedom. And we will not waver from this Department’s founding responsibility to protect the civil rights of all Americans," he added.Mayor Eric Adams says people around the country 'welcome' to access abortion care in New York City New York City Mayor Eric Adams lashed out at the Supreme Court on Friday, saying that "politics came before people at the highest court in the land." "What the court has done today ignores the opinions of the majority of Americans, as it helps states control women’s bodies, their choices, and their freedoms," the Democrat said in a statement, adding that the decision puts lives at risk."There is nothing to call this Supreme Court opinion but an affront to basic human rights and one that aims to shackle women and others in reproductive bondage."Adams sought to reassure New Yorkers, saying that they can still access safe, legal abortions in the city. He also said that people around the country seeking the procedure are "welcome here" to access those services.Massachusetts Gov. Baker signs executive order protecting abortion providersAntonio Planas1h ago / 3:39 PM UTCIn response to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican who is not running for re-election, signed an executive order Friday protecting health care providers performing abortions from losing their licenses or receiving other discipline based on potential charges from out of state, he said in a statement.“Under the executive order, the Commonwealth will not cooperate with extradition requests from other states pursuing criminal charges against individuals who received, assisted with, or performed reproductive health services that are legal in Massachusetts,” the statement said.The order, he said, also prohibits any “Executive Department agencies” from assisting another state’s investigation into a person or entity for receiving or delivering reproductive health care services that are legal in Massachusetts.“This executive order will further preserve that right and protect reproductive health care providers who serve out of state residents. In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v Wade, it is especially important to ensure that Massachusetts providers can continue to provide reproductive health care services without concern that the laws of other states may be used to interfere with those services or sanction them for providing services that are lawful in the Commonwealth,” Baker said.Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito said: “We are proud of the Commonwealth’s history of ensuring access to reproductive health care, and will continue to do so, despite today’s ruling from the Supreme Court.”Michigan Gov. Whitmer says ruling means her state's 1931 law banning abortion takes effect Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement Friday it was a "sad day for America" and that her state's "antiquated" 1931 law banning abortion without exceptions for rape or incest will take effect. The law also criminalizes doctors and nurses who provide reproductive care, she said. "For now, a Michigan court has put a temporary hold on the law, but that decision is not final and has already been challenged. The 1931 law would punish women and strip away their right to make decisions about their own bodies," Whitmer said. "I want every Michigander to know that I am more determined than ever to protect access to safe, legal abortion."She said she filed a lawsuit in April to urge her state's Supreme Court to determine whether the Michigan Constitution protects the right to an abortion. "We need to clarify that under Michigan law, access to abortion is not only legal, but constitutionally protected," she said. Barack Obama calls Roe v. Wade reversal an attack on millionsTat Bellamy-Walker2h ago / 3:33 PM UTCFormer President Barack Obama said the court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade targets the freedom of millions of Americans in the U.S. "Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans," he wrote in a tweet. He noted that states across the country have already passed bills restricting abortion rights, and pointed people who want to fight against these restrictions toward Planned Parenthood and the United State of Women.In a statement, former first lady Michelle Obama said she was "heartbroken for people around this country who just lost the fundamental right to make informed decisions about their own bodies."Recent NBC News poll showed a majority of people in U.S. didn't want Roe v. Wade overturnedA majority of people in the U.S. — 63 percent — said in a recent NBC News poll in May that they didn't believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned, compared to 30% of people who wanted the abortion rights ruling to be reversed.Additionally, a combined 60% of Americans across the country said abortion should be either always legal (37%) or legal most of the time (23%) — the highest share believing it should be legal on this question, which dates back to 2003. By party, 84 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Independents want abortion to be legal, versus just 33 percent of Republicans. The poll was conducted after the draft opinion of Alito's Roe opinion leaked.NAACP calls decision 'egregious assault on basic human rights'NAACP General Counsel Janette McCarthy Wallace said in a statement Friday the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as "marks a significant regression of our country.""As a legal professional, I am horrified by this decision. As a Black woman, I am outraged to my core," Wallace said. "There is no denying the fact that this is a direct attack on all women, and Black women stand to be disproportionately impacted by the court's egregious assault on basic human rights. We must all stand up to have our voices heard in order to protect our nation from the further degradation of civil rights protections we have worked so hard to secure."Separately, Portia White, the NAACP vice president of policy and legislative affairs, said: "This Supreme Court is turning back the clock to a dangerous era where basic constitutional rights only exist for a select few. They've stripped away our right to vote, and now women have lost their right to their own body. What’s next?"White added: "We cannot allow our future to rest in the hands of those determined to crush every bit of it. We need to fight back."Biden to address Supreme Court ruling in remarks at 12:30 p.m. ETPresident Joe Biden will address the Supreme Court's ruling in remarks at approximately 12:30 p.m. ET, according to the White House.The guidance said that Biden will deliver his response in the Cross Hall.Durbin announces Judiciary hearing to explore "grim reality of a post-Roe America"Christopher Cicchiello2h ago / 3:20 PM UTCSenate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing next month to "explore the grim reality of a post-Roe America."Durbin, who chairs the committee, made the announcement in a serie | Civil Rights Activism |
NEW YORK -- Kevin Jennings is CEO of the Lambda Legal organization, a prominent advocate for LGBTQ rights. He sees his mission in part as fulfilling that hallowed American principle: “All men are created equal.” “Those words say to me, ‘Do better, America.’ And what I mean by that is we have never been a country where people were truly equal,” Jennings says. “It's an aspiration to continue to work towards, and we're not there yet.” Ryan T. Anderson is president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. He, too, believes that “all men are created equal.” For him, the words mean we all have “the same dignity, we all count equally, no one is disposable, no one a second-class citizen." At the same time, he says, not everyone has an equal right to marry — what he and other conservatives regard as the legal union of a man and woman."I don't think human equality requires redefining what marriage is," he says. Few words in American history are invoked as often as those from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, published nearly 250 years ago. And few are more difficult to define. The music, and the economy, of “all men are created equal” make it both universal and elusive, adaptable to viewpoints — social, racial, economic — otherwise with little or no common ground. How we use them often depends less on how we came into this world than on what kind world we want to live in.It’s as if “All men are created equal” leads us to ask: “And then what?”“We say ‘All men are created equal’ but does that mean we need to make everyone entirely equal at all times, or does it mean everyone gets a fair shot?” says Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, which promotes expanded voting rights, public financing of political campaigns and other progressive causes. “Individualism is baked into that phrase, but also a broader, more egalitarian vision. There's a lot there.”Thomas Jefferson helped immortalize the expression, but he didn't invent it. The words in some form date back centuries before the Declaration and were even preceded in 1776 by Virginia's Declaration of Rights, which stated that “all men are by nature equally free and independent.” Peter Onuf, a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia whose books include “The Mind of Thomas Jefferson,” notes that Jefferson himself did not claim to have said something radically new and wrote in 1825 that the Declaration lacked “originality of principle or sentiment.” The Declaration was an indictment of the British monarchy, but not a statement of justice for all. For the slave owning Jefferson “and most of his fellow patriots, enslaved people were property and therefore not included in these new polities, leaving their status unchanged,” Onuf says. He added that “did not mean he did not recognize his enslaved people to be people, just that they could only enjoy those universal, natural rights elsewhere, in a country of their own: emancipation and expatriation.”Hannah Spahn, a professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin and author of the upcoming “Black Reason, White Feeling: The Jeffersonian Enlightenment in the African American Tradition,” says that a draft version of the Declaration made clear that Jefferson meant “all humans” were created equal but not necessarily that that all humans were equal under the law. Spahn, like such leading Revolutionary War scholars as Jack Rakove, believes that “all men are created equal” originally referred less to individual equality than to the rights of a people as a whole to self-government.Once the Declaration had been issued, perceptions began to change. Black Americans were among the first to change them, notably the New England-based clergyman Lemuel Haynes. Soon after July 4, Haynes wrote “Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-Keeping,” an essay not published until 1983 but seen as reflecting the feelings of many in the Black community, with its call to “affirm, that Even an affrican, has Equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen.”Spahn finds Haynes’ response “philosophically innovative," because he isolated the passage containing the famous phrase from the rest of the Declaration and made it express “timeless, universally binding norms."“He deliberately downplayed Jefferson’s original emphasis on problems of collective assent and consent,” she says.The words have since been endlessly adapted and reinterpreted. By feminists at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 who stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.” By civil rights leaders from Frederick Douglass to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in his “I Have a Dream” speech held up the phrase as a sacred promise to Black Americans. By Abraham Lincoln, who invoked them in the Gettysburg Address and elsewhere, but with a narrower scope than what King imagined a century later.In Lincoln's time, according to historian Eric Foner, “they made a careful distinction between natural, civil, political and social rights. One could enjoy equality in one but not another.”“Lincoln spoke of equality in natural rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” says Foner, whose books include the Pulitzer Prize winning “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.” “That’s why slavery is wrong and why people have an equal right to the fruits of their labor. Political rights were determined by the majority and could be limited by them."The words have been denied entirely. John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina senator and vehement defender of slavery, found “not a word of truth” in them as he attacked the phrase during a speech in 1848. Vice President Alexander H. Stephens of the Confederate States contended in 1861 that “the great truth" is "the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”The overturning of Roe v. Wade and other recent Supreme Court decisions has led some activists to wonder if “All men are created equal” still has any meaning. Robin Marty, author of “Handbook for a Post-Roe America,” calls the phrase a “bromide” for those “who ignore how unequal our lives truly are.”Marty added that the upending of abortion rights has given the unborn “greater protection than most,” a contention echoed in part by Roe opponents who have said that “All men are created equal” includes the unborn. Among contemporary politicians and other public figures, the words are applied to very different ends.— President Donald Trump cited them in October 2020 (“The divine truth our Founders enshrined in the fabric of our Nation: that all people are created equal”) in a statement forbidding federal agencies from teaching “Critical Race Theory.” President Joe Biden echoed the language of Seneca Falls (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal”) while praising labor unions last month as he addressed an AFL-CIO gathering in Philadelphia.— Morse Tan, dean of Liberty University, the evangelical school co-founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., says the words uphold a “classic, longstanding” Judeo-Christian notion: "The irreducible worth and value that all human beings have because they (are) created in the image of God.” Secular humanists note Jefferson's own religious skepticism and fit his words and worldview within 18th century Enlightenment thinking, emphasizing human reason over faith.— Conservative organizations from the Claremont Institute to the Heritage Foundation regard “all men are created equal” as proof that affirmative action and other government programs addressing racism are unnecessary and contrary to the ideal of a “color-blind” system. Ibram X. Kendi, the award-winning author and director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, says the words can serve what he calls both “antiracist” and “assimilationist” perspectives. “The anti-racist idea suggests that all racial groups are biologically, inherently equal. The assimilationist idea is that all racial groups are created equal, but it leaves open the idea some racial groups become inferior by nurture, meaning some racial groups are inferior culturally or behaviorally,” says Kendi, whose books include ”Stamped from the Beginning" and “How to Be an Antiracist.”“To be an anti-racist is to recognize that it’s not just that we are created equal, or biologically equal. It’s that all racial groups are equals. And if there are disparities between those equal racial groups, then it is the result of racist policy or structural racism and not the inferiority or superiority of a racial group.” | Civil Rights Activism |
The US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v Wade after nearly 50 years has been met with a range of emotions in America, from outrage to celebration.To try to understand the feelings at play, Sky News spoke to a number of women who were among those gathered in Washington DC after the historic verdict came down.
'One of America's darkest days' - live reaction and analysis as Roe v Wade overturnedAnsa Edim, 34 Ansa said she feels "incredibly angry and disgusted with this nation". "Abortion is a human right," she added. "Women are not incubators. And I live in a country that told me that the value of my body is in giving birth.
"What does that say about people who cannot? What does that say about people who will not? I'm horrified." More on Abortion Roe v Wade: 'I wish they understood the trauma' - rape survivor considered taking her own life after getting pregnant President Biden warns 'health and life of women at risk' - US leaders react to Roe v Wade ruling Roe v Wade: Who are the US Supreme Court justices and what did they say about abortion and other civil rights? Asked who her horror and concern is for, she said: "It's for everyone with a uterus who has any chance of getting pregnant, wanted or unwanted."It's for anyone who's walking around saying: What if I have an ectopic pregnancy? What if I get pregnant? What if I get raped? What if I get assaulted? What if I don't have the means?"She added: "When I briefly considered maybe getting pregnant, I had to research which hospital was least likely to kill me, because as a black, fat woman of colour, I am most likely to die in childbirth."I don't want children because it's dangerous to give birth."Melanie Salazar, 23 "I am overjoyed," said Melanie, from San Antonio, Texas. "On cloud nine, almost in disbelief that this has been a moment the pro-life movement has been working for since the outrageous ruling of Roe v Wade. And now we're here."She said she's "happy and relieved" at the verdict, as she believes "all human life from the moment of fertilisation is equal and worthy of protection under the law".Read more:Biden condemns court's 'extreme ideology and tragic error'Who are the Supreme Court justices, and what did they say about abortion?"I am a Christian," she said, "but I believe even if I grew up never hearing the name Jesus Christ, I would still logically come to this same belief."Because I'm not saying I believe that life begins at fertilisation. I'm saying I recognise what science says, that life begins at fertilisation. And I believe that all humans are equal, worthy of dignity. And you don't need religion to come to that conclusion."Paige Brasington, 26 Paige said she's "really relieved" at the overturning of Roe, as she had been unsure what would happen."And I think it's a really big step forward in advancing human rights in the United States," she added."But there's still a long way to go and a lot more support that we need to do for women, a lot more support we need to do to help advance a culture of life here in the United States."Because I feel like this is a human rights abuse issue. So really, without the right to life, you can't have the right to any other human rights if you aren't alive."Asked if her faith plays a role in her views, she said "not really" and added that she considers herself "somewhere between agnostic and religious".Michelle Peterson, 40 Michelle said she was "very deflated and defeated" at something she knew was coming."The anger is there, and it still hasn't fully hit me yet," she said."I think because I was so angry after the leak. And we've been prepping so hard for today because we knew it was going to fall anyway, it's not 100% real yet."Read more:Roe v Wade: How did we get here?Why the Supreme Court may not stop at abortion rightsShe said she views the decision as religious infringement, referencing Jewish law, which holds that life begins at the first breath."This totally denies anybody that's Jewish or follows a different faith their right to seek the type of healthcare that they wish."Therrisa Bukovinac, 41 "I've been here every single day leading up to this decision," Therissa said as she stood in front of the Supreme Court building."I launched my organisation, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, on the steps of the Supreme Court in October 2021."I have been out here for every single decision day in any major abortion case for the last five years."And so I am here today to celebrate that we have overturned Roe v Wade."She said today's ruling was "just the first step"."We are going to every blue city in America. We are going to every abortion stronghold."And we are going to end the destructive relationship that the Democratic Party has with the abortion industrial complex."Mary Cortina, 58 Mary was on her way to a museum when she heard the "stunning" decision."And I'm not in favour of abortions… but it's their choice," she said."It is not my choice to limit somebody else's liberty. And that's every woman's liberty, every woman's rights have just been taken away. And that's what I find so shocking.""It feels personal," she added. "It feels like a personal stomach punch against women."She said her biggest concern is that women won't have access to abortion and will "do it anyway and take us back to a time when women died.""In my state of Virginia, we will fight at a state level to protect our own liberties, which we from the US fought for." | Civil Rights Activism |
| July 31, 2022 01:21 PM | Updated Jul 31, 2022, 02:14 PM Bill Russell, one of basketball's greatest legends that won an unprecedented 11 NBA titles during his career, died "peacefully" Sunday with his wife Jeannine by his side. He was 88 years old. Arrangements for Russell's memorial service will be announced at a later date, according to the post from his Twitter account. 'WHATEVER THE VOTERS CHOOSE': MANCHIN REFUSES TO ENDORSE DEMOCRATS KEEPING CONTROL OF CONGRESS "But for all the winning, Bill's understanding of the struggle is what illuminated his life. From boycotting a 1961 exhibition game to unmask too-long-tolerated discrimination, to leading Mississippi's first integrated basketball camp in the combustible wake of Medgar Evans' assassination, to decades of activism ultimately recognized by his receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010, Bill called out injustice with an unforgiving candor that he intended would disrupt the status quo, and with a powerful example that, though never his humble intention, will forever inspire teamwork, selflessness and thoughtful change," the statement read. The five-time MVP and 12-time All Star spent his 13-year professional career with the Boston Celtics, bringing them to the NBA Finals 12 times and winning 11 championships. He also won a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics. Russell later became the league's first black coach, taking command of the Celtics in 1966. Above all, he was a staunch advocate for civil rights and social justice. Russell was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2010, the highest civilian honor, for his athletic accomplishments and his advocacy work. NBA great Bill Russell. (AP Photo/Matt York, File) CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER NBA Commissioner Adam Silver hailed Russell as the "greatest champion in all team sports." "Bill stood for something much bigger than sports: the values of equality, respect and inclusion that he stamped into the DNA of our league," Silver said in a statement. "Through the taunts, threats and unthinkable adversity, Bill rose above it all and remained true to his belief that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity." | Civil Rights Activism |
“I’m on it,” says civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump as he takes a phone call from the family of another Black victim of police violence. In this scene from Nadia Hallgren’s “Civil: Ben Crump,” he is shown at his family home in Tallahassee, Fla., in a rare private moment. Moments later, he falls into a characteristic pose on the living room sofa while his mother looks concerned: His head is in his hand, his face wearing both weariness and determination.For Crump, nicknamed “Black America’s attorney general,” such calls are dispiritingly frequent. His cases include the police killings of Breonna Taylor and Andre Hill, among others. The film, which follows him from 2020 through 2021, focuses primarily on Crump’s campaign to win a settlement from the city of Minneapolis for the family of George Floyd, whose murder by police officer Derek Chauvin was caught on camera and had already shocked millions worldwide into outrage and protests. Crump takes on the cause of another grieving Black family after a police officer fatally shoots Daunte Wright around 10 miles away from where Chauvin is on trial.Ben Crump, at right, with the family of Andre Hill in "Civil: Ben Crump." Courtesy of NetflixGet The Big To-DoYour guide to staying entertained, from live shows and outdoor fun to the newest in museums, movies, TV, books, dining, and more.Inevitably, the big settlements have brought on criticism of Crump — that he is exploiting Black victims for personal fame and gain. Fox News pushes this line of attack, claiming that he “plays the race card for profit,” as do more mainstream outlets. While interviewing Crump, Ted Koppel asks if his efforts to seek justice for victims of police violence would seem more cogent if he did it for free. Crump points out these cases are the least profitable among those his firm takes on; other cases involve environmental justice or “banking while Black,” for instance.Despite his nonstop schedule — Crump insists he must maintain a breakneck pace to keep up with the demand and not lose an opportunity to achieve progress — he manages to spend time with his wife, daughter, and extended family. But even then, he is often interrupted by another plaintive inquiry and an account of gross inequity. Hallgren tries to keep up, though the film feels at times a bit breathless and cursory, even hagiographic. But what “Civil” lacks in depth it makes up for in its overwhelming breadth of evidence of injustice and in its telling details: “Handle with extreme care” printed on the shipping crate containing George Floyd’s body; Crump dejected and exhausted at his desk, his phone in one hand, his head in the other.“Civil: Ben Crump” is available on Netflix.Go to www.netflix.com/title/81316543.Peter Keough can be reached at [email protected]. | Civil Rights Activism |
Director and writer Curtis Chin grew up in Detroit’s small, close-knit Chinatown. His family owned Chung’s, a long popular Chinese restaurant and local landmark, which was sold in 2006 after his father died. There were only a handful of Chins in the Detroit area, he recalled — “It was mostly Yees” — so those who shared the same family association were close. In the summer of 1982, when he was 14, he and his family were planning to attend the wedding of family friend Vincent Chin, where Curtis’ uncle was serving as best man. They attended his funeral instead. “Vincent Chin’s death was very personal to me,” said Curtis Chin, who is writing a memoir about growing up in Detroit Chinatown. “He was one of our own, and there weren’t many of us to begin with. It was only after the case started garnering outside attention that I realized his death had a greater significance.” READ MORE: How violence against Asian Americans has grown and how to stop it, according to activists
Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American man, had been beaten to death with a baseball bat by two white autoworkers in Highland Park, a Metro Detroit suburb. Chin had been celebrating his bachelor party with friends at the Fancy Pants Club when he encountered the men, who were angry at the U.S. auto industry’s struggles and massive layoffs at a time when the number of Japanese cars in America was growing. The men confronted Chin inside a bar, one saying “It’s because of you little m-f-s that we are out of work,” according to witnesses. After both groups were thrown out of the club, the fight continued in the parking lot and then the groups separated. After searching for thirty minutes, the men found Chin sitting outside of a McDonald’s and attacked him until stopped by two off-duty police officers. Chin died four days later. Justice for Vincent Chin demonstration in Kennedy Square, Downtown Detroit, May 9, 1983, organized by American Citizens for Justice. Courtesy of Helen Zia.
The men entered a plea bargain to bring second degree murder charges down to manslaughter. They were each sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $3,000 plus $780 in court costs. Vincent Chin’s mother, Lily Chin, asked, “What kind of justice is this? What kind of law?”
At the time, such a light sentence for such a brutal killing brought together Asian Americans across ethnic lines to form multiethnic and multiracial alliances, to organize for civil rights, and to advocate for change in the Metro Detroit area and across the country. Some formed American Citizens for Justice (ACJ), an Asian American civil rights nonprofit, to rally and advocate for justice for Vincent Chin. A federal civil rights trial was held in Detroit, and one of the men was found guilty of violating Vincent Chin’s civil rights and sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, that ruling was overturned on appeal after a change of venue to Cinncinati. After that, a civil suit for wrongful death followed, and one of the men was ordered to pay $1.5 million, an amount which has now grown to about $10 million, according to ACJ. The younger man was ordered to pay $65,600 which he paid. To this day, neither man has spent a full day in jail. Forty years after Chin’s death, however, even amid a rise of anti-Asian American attacks in the past two years, his legacy is largely unfamiliar outside of – and sometimes even within – Asian American circles. Detroit Public Television’s One Detroit spoke to filmmakers Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña, alongside Detroit Public TV’s Juanita Anderson about the making of the documentary, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” Video by One Detroit.
Vincent Chin’s story is taught in Asian American Studies programs across the country, and the 1987 Academy Award nominated documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” by filmmakers Renee Tajima-Pena and Christine Choy has become a mainstay of these courses and was recently restored and added to the prestigious National Film Registry. Yet even in Michigan, students are still largely encountering the Vincent Chin case for the first time only if they happen to take an Asian American Studies course in college.
“Occasionally, some students already know about Vincent Chin from high school history courses, but the majority, I’d say, come across the story for the first time in our courses,” said University of Michigan professor Manan Desai, who directs the school’s Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies program. Despite growing up in Michigan, he did not learn about the Vincent Chin case until he was in college. “[Students] express shock that they were not made aware of it, as well as dismay about the failure of the justice system.”
Curtis Chin encountered the same lack of familiarity when he made “Vincent Who?”, a 2009 documentary film about the legacy of the Vincent Chin case. “Even in our community, I am not sure how many people know about the case,” Curtis Chin said. “I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that his death was over 40 years ago when most current Asian Americans weren’t born or living in this country yet. For non-Asians, I think it’s just their inexperience with centering Asian Americans in their stories.”
Vincent Chin, 1955-1982, Courtesy of The Estate of Vincent and Lily Chin.
Part of a larger history
The killing of Vincent Chin is part of a long history of how Asian Americans have been treated in America. “Vincent’s death didn’t happen in a vacuum,” Curtis Chin said. “That’s why it’s so important to include Asian American history in the classroom. We have to connect this to a larger pattern,” which includes dispelling stereotypes.
WATCH MORE: Examining Asian American civil rights 40 years after Vincent Chin’s murder
Learning about the Vincent Chin case can be deeply personal for some Asian Americans while navigating their own identity issues. “I didn’t know who I truly was until I found my identity as an Asian American,” said Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, chairperson of the Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission and former executive director of ACJ, was born in London, grew up in Ann Arbor, and is now running for Ann Arbor City Council. A key piece of understanding and processing her own story as a South Asian American immigrant woman was learning about the Vincent Chin case and how she fit into the arc of Asian American history.
WATCH MORE: WATCH: Biden approves steps toward an Asian American and Pacific Islander museum
Michigan State Senator Stephanie Chang grew up in the Metro Detroit area and first learned about the Vincent Chin case when she joined Canton High School’s Asian Pacific American Club (APAC). The teacher who advised the club gave her a copy of “Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People” by Helen Zia, the first chapter of which is about Zia’s role in fighting for justice for Vincent Chin.
“Learning about Vincent Chin and about the pan-Asian American activism that was sparked by his death was a critical moment for me,” Sen. Chang told the NewsHour. “I became interested in working in civil rights and social justice — and that led me to being a student activist in college and later a community organizer, and then a state legislator grounded in fighting injustice.” State Senator Stephanie Chang at May 2, 2022 Vincent Chin 40th commemoration launch event, Detroit. Photo by Joyce Xi.
Once they’re aware of the case, students are quick to make connections to the present day. “More recently,” Desai said, “They have connected to other instances of anti-Asian violence, including the anti-Asian harassment and violence that has coincided with the pandemic. Students often make the connection between the speed at how Asian bodies are perceived ‘foreign threats’ — as ‘viral agents,’ ‘economic threats,’ or ‘enemies within’ — as in the case of World War II or post-9/11.”
Anti-Asian American hate incidents and hate crimes and discrimination reach back centuries. Laws have prohibited Asians from becoming naturalized citizens, owning land, testifying against white people in court, marrying white people, and entering the U.S. The largest lynching in American history was the 1871 retaliatory killing of 18 Chinese people in Los Angeles. At the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, at least 28 Chinese miners were killed and 15 others wounded after a labor dispute. In 1907, a mob of 500 white men in Bellingham, Washington attacked and forced out several hundred mostly Sikh men over fears of labor competition at lumber mills. During World War II, about 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, were incarcerated in concentration camps. After 9/11, there was a 1600 percent increase in discrimination, hate incidents, and hate crimes against Sikh, Muslim, South Asian and Arab Americans and others mistaken for stereotypes of terrorists reported to the FBI. READ MORE: Sikh Americans push for greater visibility, awareness against years of hate crimes, misunderstanding
More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has also been a surge of hate incidents and hate crimes against the Asian American population. A study by AAPI Data and Momentive indicates that 15 percent of Asian Americans and 12 percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders experienced a hate incident or hate crime in 2021.
But, “the Vincent Chin case was significant for all of the shortcomings it exposed in the criminal justice system,” said Roland Hwang, attorney and board president of ACJ. American Citizens for Justice’s Jim Shimoura, Roland Hwang, Helen Zia, Rebeka Islam (l-r) at the Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance and Rededication Official Kickoff, June 15, 2022, Detroit. Photo by Joyce Xi.
Some of the legal changes that came about in Michigan because of the Vincent Chin case, according to Hwang, include mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and requiring judges to articulate reasons for deviating from the mandatory minimum sentence. The case also brought added significance to victim’s impact statements – in which victims or their family talk about the importance of the victim and the impact of the crime – which was not common practice then. On a local level, the case brought a change in the way the Wayne County prosecutor’s office treated sentencing, sending prosecutors to the sentencing phase of trials and treating sentencing as an important part of the judicial process, which was not the practice then.
In addition, Hwang said, “The Vincent Chin case illustrated that an immigrant, a Chinese American victim and Asian American victims generally were and were entitled to be covered by the provisions of the Civil Rights Act, not just African Americans.”
READ MORE: For Detroit’s Japanese Americans, oral histories key to preservation of history, future solidarity
The community organizing spurred by the case was noteworthy at the time because the concept of “Asian American” was still new, except for on college campuses where the term had been coined by student activists Emma Gee and Yuri Ichioka in the late sixties. What Asian Americans share across differences of ethnicity, language, religion, class, and culture can be taken for granted today, but at the time those commonalities of experience in America were not so readily recognized. “The Vincent Chin case is important because it brought Asian American communities together across ethnic lines to stand up against injustice and to stand for equal rights for all people,” Sen. Chang said. WATCH MORE: WATCH: Vice President Harris gives remarks at Asian American and Pacific Islander celebration
Younger activists want to build upon this activism and find broader and structural solutions in addition to those within the legal system.
“Forty years later, we know that anti-Asian hate incidents, hate crimes and discrimination are still happening across the country due to scapegoating during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have so much more work to do to ensure that all people are welcome in our communities and can live without fear of being targeted because of their race,” Sen. Chang said. Detroit Public Television’s One Detroit spoke to Michigan activists about how the rise of anti-Asian American hate revives the Asian American civil rights movement 40 years after the killing of Vincent Chin. Video by One Detroit.
Rachel Koelzer, communications manager at NAKASEC, a national Korean American and Asian American social justice nonprofit, said that while people often point to hate crime legislation as a solution, “the reality is, it falls far short.” “It doesn’t address the root causes of violence and harm, and it increases the harm upon marginalized communities,” said Koelzer, who grew up in the Metro Detroit area.”
“We’re seeing history repeat itself. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Great Replacement Theory, the blaming of Asians and marginalized communities for various social, structural, and systemic issues is not new. Nor is the violence that is emboldened by these claims,” Koelzer said. “Real solutions include addressing the root causes of violence: Access to vital resources; stopping hate speech, especially by people in power; data collection with language access and disaggregation for our diverse communities; and taking action on immigration.”
Ceena Vang leading march protesting anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander violence in Troy, Michigan, after Atlanta spa shootings in 2021. Photograph by Marc Klockow Looking forward
As anti-Asian American hate crimes and hate incidents continue to happen, the Vincent Chin case has new relevance.
“The racial animus and hatred at the time of the Vincent Chin case during the auto industry recession of the early ‘80s is much the same as what you see during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Hwang said. “Coalition building and community organizing was important for the Vincent Chin case to move forward. And [American Citizens for Justice] and other community organizations continue coalition building work today.”
Activist and writer Helen Zia introduces “The Vincent Chin Legacy Guide: Asian Americans Building the Movement” at the Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance and Rededication Official Kickoff, June 15, 2022, Detroit. Photo by Joyce Xi.
As part of the Vincent Chin 40th commemoration in Detroit, ACJ has created a free workbook for secondary students to learn about the case, “The Vincent Chin Legacy Guide: Asian Americans Building the Movement,” by Helen Zia. One way to create the basis for that kind of solidarity lies in education so that people know each others’ histories, Sen. Chang said. Sen. Chang along with four of her legislative colleagues has introduced bills to mandate all Michigan students learn Asian American, Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Arab and Chaldean history in Michigan’s K-12 schools. “Over the past year and a half, I’ve talked with so many parents, teachers, and community members all asking, ‘Why are our children not learning Asian American history in our schools?’” Sen. Chang said. “If our children can learn about the contributions of people of color and the struggles and triumphs our communities have faced, perhaps there will be better cultural understanding, more welcoming and inclusion, less hate, and a future filled with more opportunities for all people.”
READ MORE: The only Arab American museum in the nation is ‘much more than a building’
In Washington D.C., dozens of Asian American nonprofit groups — including Asian Americans Advancing Justice AAJC, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, APIAVote, NAKASEC, National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and many more — are coming together on June 25 for an Asian American led Unity March onto the National Mall. “The Unity March is a multi-issue, multicultural mobilization that aims to bring new people into the movement for racial and economic justice; demonstrate our collective strength as Asian Americans and allies; and reiterate our commitment to building cross-racial, intersectional people power,” Tiffany Chang, lead organizer for the Unity March, told the NewsHour. “The message is that if we are demanding an end to violence against Asian American communities, then we need to stand together with communities that have been targeted with hate historically: Black, Indigenous, Arab, Muslim, and LGBTQIA+ communities, and so many more.”
READ MORE: ‘You don’t teach prejudice by discussing its existence.’ How to talk to children about race and discrimination.
Tiffany Chang notes that there is renewed attention to anti-Asian American violence, but also growing concern among young Asian Americans about police violence against Black and brown people. “Many Asian Americans are asking ourselves, ‘What is our responsibility as Asian Americans in combating racism and xenophobia in this country? How can we meaningfully show up for our neighbors who have been dealing with this violence for decades?’” Tiffany Chang said. “Forty years ago, after the murder of Vincent Chin, we saw the formation of a pan-Asian identity, and other communities of color stood by us in those moments. Today, we have to ask ourselves those questions again: who are we now as Asian Americans, and what is the work that lies before us in order to achieve a fair, multiracial democracy?” READ MORE: As Afghan refugees arrive in the U.S., Southeast Asian American advocates urge more support
The fear of anti-Asian American violence is an effective motivator for many Asian Americans to become more politically involved right now, Tiffany Chang said. But she warns that relying on the issue of anti-Asian American violence alone is not enough to build power. “The Stop Asian Hate Movement is not sustainable in and of itself without a broader commitment towards collective liberation and solutions that go beyond the Asian American community. What happens when the media moves on from these lurid images of Asians being kicked, spat on, and pushed to the ground?” “We have to get to work organizing our people, and creating relationships with other communities. We can’t do this alone. No community can. We have to show up even when we’re not the ones being targeted, because we can’t predict when public sentiment will turn,” Tiffany Chang said. | Civil Rights Activism |
Sweetin said nothing will deter her from fighting for women's reproductive rights in the post-Roe v. Wade era. The LAPD encounter is currently being "evaluated" by the department. Jodie Sweetin was pushed to the ground by members of the Los Angeles Police Department during a peaceful pro-choice protest following the SCOTUS overturn of Roe v. Wade.
The protest occurred on Saturday, June 25, with “Full House” alum Sweetin shown in a video using a megaphone from the side of a freeway ramp before officers shoved her to the ground.
“I’m extremely proud of the hundreds of people who showed up yesterday to exercise their First Amendment rights and take immediate action to peacefully protest the giant injustices that have been delivered from our Supreme Court,” Sweetin said in a press statement. “Our activism will continue until our voices are heard and action is taken. This will not deter us, we will continue fighting for our rights. We are not free until ALL of us are free.” Photographer Michael Ade shared the video of the LAPD shoving Sweetin and other protesters as Sweetin was “trying to lead a group of peaceful protestors away from the freeway” before the assault occurred. “It pained me to see @JodieSweetin thrown to the ground by members of the LAPD as she was trying to lead a group of peaceful protestors away from the freeway,” Ade captioned. “Jodi is the definition of a real one and fortunately she’s okay! But for others who choose to protest today move with caution and keep your head on swivel. It’s going to be a very long summer.”
The Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement the department is “aware of a video clip of a woman being pushed to the ground by officers not allowing the group to enter on foot and overtake the 101 freeway.”
The LAPD statement added: “The force used will be evaluated against the LAPD’s policy and procedure. As the nation continues to wrestle with the latest Supreme Court decision, the Los Angeles Police Department will continue to facilitate 1st Amendment rights, while protecting life and property.”
The reversal of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling threw the nation into uproar on Friday, June 24. Since the decision, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and South Dakota have already banned abortion in their states due to the “trigger bans” enacted prior to the SCOTUS ruling.
Celebrities have used their platforms to voice pro-choice stances and share their support for people’s bodily autonomy and numerous companies like Disney, UTA, Neon, Paramount, Amazon, and more have vowed to reimburse employees’ travel costs to access healthcare across state lines.
President Joe Biden said in an address to the nation following the Supreme Court ruling that the “health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” adding, “It stuns me.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. | Civil Rights Activism |
Pride marches across the United States took on new gravity Sunday as progressives worried that the conservative justices on the Supreme Court who voted to reverse Roe v. Wade could now overrule protections for other rights, including same-sex marriage and same-sex intimacy.The annual parades and rallies in major cities such as New York and San Francisco came two days after Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion to the court's ruling that tossed out Roe, called on the court to overturn the landmark decisions that established those very rights.Sunday's events also took place as the LGBTQ movement reels from recent legislative setbacks, including laws that curb classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, for example, turned into a national flashpoint.Planned Parenthood, one of the leading providers of reproductive health care in the country, kicked off this year’s New York City Pride march. People clad in rainbow colors and waving Planned Parenthood flags lined Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, cheering as the first wave of marchers made their way down the street."Today feels monumental, especially considering what happened over Roe v. Wade," said Jonathan Dago, who attended New York City Pride with a friend. "We’re seeing a lot of signs. Women’s rights are at risk, and it's going to be a trickle down to LGBT people."It feels like they're going to come for same-sex marriage, intimacy and everything — adoption, even," Dago added. "That's why it's really important to come back in person, to be together and supporting each other right now."Sunny Zelewski, 20, from Pennsylvania who was in the crowd, said she was heartened that several states in the Northeast have laws on the books that allow for abortions, but she worries about the future of reproductive freedom in her home state, which she described as "completely unknown."The upcoming gubernatorial race there adds more uncertainty. In a statement Friday, the firebrand Republican candidate Doug Mastriano celebrated that Roe had been "rightly relegated to the ash heap of history." "We have no idea which way it's going to lean," Zelewski said of Pennsylvania, which went for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election and then for Joe Biden in 2020. "I might be a mom one day, and it's super terrifying to know that if something bad happened to me, and I didn't want to or couldn't afford to take care of a child, I'd be forced to now."Tere Martínez, 56, a playwright and educator who attended Sunday’s parade with her partner, said the festivities were "bittersweet," reminding her that political gains won by the progressive movement over decades are now threatened by a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.Martínez said she has faith in young people and the rising generation of progressive political advocates, adding in part: "I don't know if marching is as powerful as it once was, but that's why we have to constantly work and think of new ways to engage politicians and change their minds."In his concurring opinion, Thomas asked the court to "reconsider" the rulings in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges, writing that his colleagues should reject the doctrine of "substantive due process" and arguing that they have "a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents."The three cases were civil rights milestones. Griswold established the right for married couples to buy and use contraceptives, Lawrence established the right for consenting adults to engage in same-sex intimacy and Obergefell established the right for same-sex couples to marry.In the court's majority opinion, however, Justice Samuel Alito appeared to suggest that other protections were not necessarily imperiled, writing that "we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right."Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion," Alito wrote. Justice Brett Kavanaugh echoed that reasoning, writing in his concurring opinion that the decision to overturn Roe "does not threaten or cast doubt" on precedents such as Griswold and Obergefell.The court's liberal bloc — Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — expressed deep skepticism over that assertion, though, writing bluntly in their dissenting opinion: "No one should be confident that this majority is done with its work."Jude Barnhart, an 18-year-old from Maryland who identifies as transgender and nonbinary, protested outside the Supreme Court early Sunday. Barnhart, who uses they/them pronouns, said in an interview that they believe the conservative justices on the high court will now seek to erode the judicial ground that supports same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ rights. "I have a wonderful girlfriend," Barnhart said. "I was talking to my girlfriend, like, 'What if we can't get married?' ... They're not going to stop regulating our bodies. They are going to regulate who's in our beds. They are going to regulate who we marry. They are going to regulate what we can put in our body to prevent ourselves from getting pregnant.""Things probably won’t get better," Barnhart said, "but I can at least hold on to the hope that it will."Kiara Wright, 16, is a high school student who lives in Virginia and attended Sunday's demonstration outside the Supreme Court, said she was "deeply afraid and disappointed with what American society has become." Wright, who was born in South Africa and whose mother came of age under racial apartheid, said she feared what the court's dramatic rightward shift might mean for her life as a "bisexual, multiracial woman in America today." She said that while she is still under the legal voting age in the U.S., she felt motivated to "do my piece." She plans to canvass voters and do phone-banking ahead of November's midterm elections.Wright — standing amid a crowd of protesters chanting slogans such as "My body, my choice" — added that she believes this tumultuous moment could be a national "turning point." "[In] 30 years, when my children look back on the face of America, this is going to be that turning point where people really realize, hey, America fell apart," she said. "It's really frightening."Daniel Arkin reported from Atlanta, Phil McCausland from New York, Doha Madani from Washington. | Civil Rights Activism |
WARSAW, Poland – The woman said she needed an abortion. She said she had already tried to leave Poland to get one, but her abusive husband had stopped her, threatening to go to the police. Across the world, a new virus was closing borders, restricting travel and trapping people inside their homes, and Justyna Wydrzyńska, sensing a chilling desperation, decided to send the woman a packet of abortion pills that she’d been keeping for her own personal use. A year passed. Then out of nowhere, police arrived at Wydrzyńska’s door to search her home – some officers finding more than they anticipated. “He opened one drawer and there was underwear, and then he closed it…I have a bunch of vibrators,” Wydrzyńska says with a laugh. “It was really funny. Now I know where to hide things.”Wydrzyńska, 47, hasn’t lost her sense of humour, but her situation is serious. In July, she will be the first activist in Europe to face a criminal trial under Poland’s incredibly strict abortion laws, which permit the termination of a pregnancy only in the case of rape and incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger, though both can be hard to prove. Wydrzyńska is charged with “helping with an abortion” and “possession of medicines without authorisation for the purpose of introducing them into the market” for sending another woman abortion pills. If she is found guilty, she faces up to three years in prison. Her trial comes at a time when abortion rights are facing a renewed threat: Any day now, the US Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that gave women in the US the right to abortion care nearly 50 years ago. Without Roe v. Wade, 26 US states are certain or likely to ban abortion. In the last 25 years, more than 50 countries have increased access to abortion, while just three – Poland, the US, and Nicaragua – have scaled it back. Observers and activists are keenly watching the outcome of Wydrzyńska’s case as another indication of the growing attack on abortion.Poland is ground zero in the battle for abortion rights in Europe, where abortion is largely legal apart from the island nation of Malta and Poland. Activists here have been working within the confines of Poland's extremely restrictive abortion laws for the past three decades, but in 2020 things became particularly bad after a court removed one of the most significant exceptions allowing abortion to legally take place. It was a move that sparked massive protests and created a hugely different reality for activists like Wydrzyńska. As a consequence of Poland’s recent restriction of abortion laws, at least two women have died. Last November, a woman named Izabela lost her life after doctors refused to remove a foetus without enough amniotic fluid to survive, eventually leading to fatal sepsis. The day before she died, Izabela texted her mother saying, “Because of the abortion law, I have to stay in bed and they can’t do anything.” In January, a woman known as Agnieszka T died from suspected sepsis after doctors refused to remove a foetus after its heartbeat had stopped and a twin foetus was still alive.A notice board in Abortion Dream Team's office in Warsaw. The dangers facing women at almost every stage of pregnancy in Poland’s anti-abortion climate – and the strong tactics of its ultra-Catholic anti-abortion groups – has bolstered the important work carried out by Wydrzyńska and the organisation she co-founded and volunteers for, Aborcyjny Dream Team (Abortion Dream Team in English, or ADT). While their work is vast and wide-reaching, Wydrzyńska and other volunteers occupy a simple office space – one small room, to help thousands and thousands of women coming forward every year for help. “THANK GOD FOR ABORTION”, reads one sign inside the ADT's office, on the top floor of an unassuming building in Warsaw. “Abortion rights are human rights,” reads another.It’s here that Wydrzyńska has volunteered since 2016 to raise awareness about abortion, provide emotional support, and help coordinate access to abortion via other charities. Through ADT’s helpline, Wydrzyńska and the other volunteers help around 1,000 people a month with advice and around 20 people a day with info on how to get medical abortions. With a large social media presence, they are often bombarded with messages on Facebook and Instagram, where they also provide advice. “We mostly focus on destigmatising abortion,” says Wydrzyńska, speaking from ADT’s offices on a sunny June day. “But ADT is very popular on social media, so we receive a lot of messages and questions about how to do abortion and what is happening when you take pills. Sometimes people just need information on how to order pills, and they manage everything by themselves. Sometimes they want to be supported through the whole process. Some of them want to travel to the Czech Republic or Slovakia or Germany and really need our help with organising everything, even financial support.”Justina Wydrzyńska smiles at ADT's office in Warsaw. ADT’s comprehensive support is a necessity. There has been limited access to abortion in Poland throughout the 20th and 21st century as a result of a strong Roman Catholic tradition and little separation between church and state. In the 1970s and 80s during Communist rule, access to abortion was at its highest, with women sometimes travelling from more-restrictive European countries to Poland for an abortion. In the 1990s, however, after the fall of the Communist government, abortion was once again banned, with some exceptions. Since 2015, the ruling, right-wing populist party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice in English, or PiS) has endeavoured to restrict abortion further, along with other limitations to reproductive rights, like reducing access to contraception.Up until 2020, abortion was only legal in three cases: when the pregancy was from incest or rape; when there is a risk to the mother’s life; and when there was a foetal abnormality – the latter of which made up over 95 percent of legal Polish abortions. In October 2020, foetal abnormality was removed as an exemption following a ruling by a Polish court, sparking massive street protests and a huge surge in calls to abortion helplines. This month, the Polish government announced it will track those who are pregnant to further police people’s fertility. There’s been an explosive and powerful response to Poland’s erosion of reproductive rights both nationally and internationally, with organisations carefully skirting the edges of legality. While Polish women who access abortions are not criminalised – such as in countries like El Salvador, where women have been sentenced to 30 years – anyone “providing” abortion outside the exceptions is breaking the law. ADT has managed to avoid breaking Polish law for years by coordinating with an international network of abortion activists, such as Netherlands-based Women Help Women, which will send abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol from outside the country to those in need. When Wydrzyńska directly sent pills from her own house to the woman, who has not publicly been named, she crossed for the first time into grey legal territory now being exploited by authorities seemingly hoping to make an example of her. Wydrzyńska's mistake, she jokes, was leaving her contact details on the package, which was eventually found by the woman’s husband and reported to the police. Despite never being able to take the pills, the woman eventually miscarried from the stress of the situation, Wydrzyńska says. Wydrzyńska’s trial is scheduled to begin on the 14th of July in Warsaw. The hearing was meant to take place in April, but it was delayed after the husband, who has also not been named, did not show up to court.Irrespective of the risks, Wydrzyńska sees her actions as a no-brainer. An embroidery in the ADT offices that reads "We help each other with abortion."“She was really begging [and] was telling me that she would do everything that to stop the pregnancy,” says Wydrzyńska. “This is why I decided to send the pills, because I also have experience with domestic violence. My husband was also an abuser and a very controlling person.”“I knew exactly what she was feeling, and what probably she had in her mind,” she adds. “I knew that she is so desperate that she will do even unsafe things, so I really had no choice, no other choice than just share the pills.”Despite the looming trial, Wydrzyńska is relaxed: At her office, she cuddles her dog, chuckles about the situation, and says she wants to face the woman’s husband in court. “It doesn't affect the way I work,” she says. “I am much calmer. I really want to look at the face of him. I hope the media and everybody will ask him, ‘Why did you call the police for your own wife?’”Justina Wydrzyńska with her dog in the ADT offices. Wydrzyńska's case is rare in Europe, and due to the unprecedented nature of the trial, it’s hard to predict what the outcome will be. While ADT’s team expects a probationary sentence of six months, Wydrzyńska’s lawyers are cautious. Technically she could be handed a three-year prison sentence. “I wouldn't be so quick about what we are expecting,” says Katarzyna Szwed, one of Wydrzyńska’s lawyers. “The six-month probation thing is the most common sentence in criminal cases like this, but this case is special as Justyna is an activist and human rights defender. We also have a lot of media attention, including international media, so this is something that might affect the case both ways.”“It is hard to predict because it is the first case when someone who has helped with abortion is an activist,” says Sabrina Mana-Walasek, another lawyer for ADT. “We are afraid that the judge could use Justyna as an example and punish her because of activism.” Although Wydrzyńska has admitted to police that she did send the pills to the woman, her lawyers argue that this does not mean she aided an abortion – wording meant to restrict medical professionals from giving abortions. If she is found not guilty, it could set a positive legal precedent for those fighting for legal abortions. “We want this case to show three things,” says Szwed. “One, if you decide to stop the pregnancy, you are not prosecuted. The second thing is that we should really support each other and we shouldn't be afraid. The third thing is that [abortion] shouldn't be a crime.”In a coffee shop in Warsaw, Natalia Broniarczyk – another ADT activist – sips a juice. She is one of the three faces of ADT, and is primarily responsible for their TikTok page, where she makes videos that show people how to safely take abortion pills. Broniarczyk became involved in abortion activism after working in sexual health, During this time, she needed an abortion and – despite working in the industry – barely knew how to get help. Broniarczyk is primarily involved in the communication and social media side of ADT, working to destigmatise abortion. “After my abortion, I decided to help people,” says Broniarczyk. “I did it in secret for three or four years. I was even meeting people here in this very coffee shop.”ADT’s original aim was to change the narrative around abortion in Poland. “We decided to be open about our experience,” she says. “It's not about other women. Like, look, this is me, I had an abortion. I have one head, two legs. I'm a normal person and I go to work every day. You can speak to me.”Natalia Broniarczyk, a member of ADT in a coffee shop in Warsaw.For Broniarczyk, she feels it could have been herself or any of the other activists getting charged with these offences – Wydrzyńska just was the unlucky one. But, there’s something meaningful and effective in having Wydrzyńska’s story at the front of this debate, says Broniarczyk, when those who seek abortions or help others with them are often painted as outsiders. “I think that Justyna is the best person to be in front of the court because she's had a normal life,” says Broniarczyk. “She’s a mother, she has had this experience of violence. She's a normal woman. You can imagine her perspective – her life experiences are very common.”“But it could have been me,” she says. “It was a decision of the group to take this risk, and Justyna just had bad luck.”If Wydrzyńska is sentenced to prison, it could send shockwaves through Poland, where huge protests and collective actions have defined reactions to the country’s clampdown on abortion rights. With a prison sentence looming over Wydrzyńska, what motivates her to keep helping women in Poland, and to keep taking risks like that one she took in February 2020?“There is so much support coming from individuals, and that is a big thing for me because it makes me think that we are doing a really good job,” says Wydrzyńska. “We shouldn't be afraid of what could happen even if I really do go to jail. We should do our work no matter what. Because if we don't, who will?” | Civil Rights Activism |
WILLOWBROOK, Staten Island (WABC) -- The new Willowbrook Mile on the College of Staten Island campus is a place to learn from an ugly history and to build on the progress.50 years ago, the world got a glimpse inside the walls of an institution that was called a school. It was anything but that. Children and adults with disabilities were warehoused without the education or care they needed and living in horrific conditions. Some of the doctors there realized what they were seeing needed to be exposed on television.In 1972, Geraldo Rivera, reporting for Channel Seven Eyewitness News had gotten word of how bad it was, but after he saw, heard and they described it in a heartbreaking report, both he and the public would understand that so much was horribly wrong and had to change."Of course I had no idea that 50 years later, 35 years after the closing of this terrible institution, we'd be gathered here celebrating the progress. The world has changed for the developmentally disabled. They have to come out of the shadows. Their lives, their rights, their futures - are now part of all of our lives," said Rivera.35 years to the day it closed - the Willowbrook Mile - where the facility once was, is an educational tool for the students at the college of Staten Island and the public. Both are a grim reminder that human beings with developmental disabilities once suffered these indignities."And how to make sure that things like this never happen again. So there's no more institutionalism for people with disabilities. We want people to live in group homes where they can be part of society," said Nora Santiago of the Willowbrook Legacy Committee.There are 12 stations along the trail, which is actually about two miles - each with a theme representing a milestone, and filled with information. For those who have been making the change happen - hope."The fact that folks with disabilities are part of everyday life as they, again, always should have been. It's just a welcoming and wonderful thing to experience," said Joseph Panceri of CP Unlimited.On Saturday, Geraldo Rivera and at least one former resident who has been advocating for change, cut a ribbon, welcoming visitors to an outdoor memorial, curated by a committee dedicated to helping understand that history and how it can serve the future."Keep fighting - if you keep fighting, if you get enough people, we'll get better funding and history won't repeat itself," said Eric Goldberg of the Willowbrook Legacy Committee.Rivera and Channel 7's activism reporting on Willowbrook led to more reporting and to activism, lawsuits and eventually legislation, including the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.RELATED | Revisiting Willowbrook 50 years later with Geraldo Rivera----------* More Staten Island news* Send us a news tip* Download the abc7NY app for breaking news alerts * Follow us on YouTube Submit a tip or story idea to Eyewitness NewsHave a breaking news tip or an idea for a story we should cover? Send it to Eyewitness News using the form below. If attaching a video or photo, terms of use apply.Copyright © 2022 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved. | Civil Rights Activism |
Arts Sep 6, 2022 11:43 AM EDT Ruby Bridges was a 6-year-old first-grader when she walked past jeering crowds of white people to become one of the first Black students at racially segregated schools in New Orleans more than six decades ago. Now, with teaching about race in America more complicated than it’s ever been, she’s authored a picture book about her experience for the youngest of readers.
WATCH: Civil rights pioneer Ruby Bridges on activism in the modern era
Bridges, along with three other Black students at a different school, were the first to integrate what had been all-white schools in New Orleans in 1960.
“I Am Ruby Bridges,” featuring illustrations by Nikkolas Smith, goes on sale Tuesday. Published by Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., it’s aimed at readers as young as 4.
Complete with a glossary that includes the words “Supreme Court” and “law,” the book is an uplifting story about opportunities and kids being able to make a difference, Bridges said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“It’s a true reflection of what happened through my own eyes,” she said.
But books by or about Bridges have been challenged by conservatives in several school districts amid complaints over race-related teaching. Bridges said she hopes the new book winds up in elementary school libraries.
READ MORE: Coalition of librarians, teachers and publishers forms to fight book bans
“I’ve been very, very fortunate because of the way I tell my story that my babies come in all shapes and colors, and my books are bestsellers, and maybe banned in schools,” she said. “But I think parents really want to get past our racial differences. They’re going to seek out those books.”
Bridges was born in 1954, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Southern school districts, including New Orleans, continued resisting integration for years.
But on Nov. 14, 1960, Bridges — carrying a plaid book satchel and wearing a white sweater — was escorted by four federal marshals past a taunting white crowd into segregated William Frantz Elementary School. The scene was made famous in the Norman Rockwell painting “The Problem We All Live With,” which hung in the White House near the Oval Office during the tenure of former President Barack Obama.
The book’s theme plays off the author’s name: “Ruby” is a precious stone, and “Bridges” are meant to bring people together. Told with a touch of humor from the vantage point of a first-grader, the book captures the wonder of Bridges’ experience — rather than just the scariness of that raucous first day at the school.
“It really looks like Mardi Gras to me, but they aren’t throwing any beads. What’s Mardi Gras without beads?” Bridges writes.
The only parade that day was out of the school. White parents immediately began withdrawing their children, so Bridges spent the entire year by herself with white teacher Barbara Henry, who is still alive and a “very best friend,” Bridges said. Henry’s acceptance and kindness during a fraught time taught her an important lesson, she said.
“That shaped me into a person that is not prejudiced at all. And I feel like that little girl is still inside of me, and that’s it’s my calling to make sure kids understand that you can’t look at someone and judge them,” Bridges said.
Elsewhere in New Orleans on the same day Bridges went to school, Gail Etienne, Leona Tate and Tessie Prevost entered the previously all-white McDonogh No. 19 elementary school. Last year, New Orleans held a weekend of events to remember Bridges and other women.
Bridges, a Mississippi native, still lives in metro New Orleans and has authored or co-authored five books. Two years she published “This Is Your Time,” which is intended for older children than her new book.
Reeves is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity Team. Left: Ruby Nell Bridges at age 6, was the first African American child to attend William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans after Federal courts ordered the desegregation of public schools. | Civil Rights Activism |
Advocates and some relatives of Emmett Till are pushing for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham after finding an unserved arrest warrant for kidnapping, an attached affidavit from Moses Wright, and court minutes from 1955 in the basement of a Leflore County courthouse.Keith Beauchamp, director of the movie, "Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till," told ABC News that he and a team from the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, including co-founder and Till's cousin Deborah Watts, went to Mississippi to check if the warrant had ever been rescinded, but came across the documents in an unmarked box, seemingly untouched for over sixty years.After their acquittal in the Emmett Till trial, defendant Roy Bryant (R), smokes a cigar as his wife happily embraces him and his half brother, J.W. Milam and his wife show jubilation. Bryant and Milam were cleared by an all white, male jury of the charge of having murdered Till. The jury was out just one hour and 7 minutes.Bettmann Archive via Getty ImagesBeauchamp said he is looking to state law enforcement for prosecution on the kidnapping charge in an effort to hold Bryant Donham, 88, accountable for her alleged role in the lynching of 14-year-old Till. The Department of Justice first opened an investigation into Till's murder under its Cold Case Initiative in 2004, but stated it lacked jurisdiction to raise federal charges."This is only the tip of the iceberg," Beauchamp said. "I want people to understand that this is not a complicated case…I thought it was impossible to get the case reopened in 2004. But it happened.""Let's follow the law and make sure that justice is done in this case," he added.In 1955, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant accused the teenager, who was visiting from Chicago, of whistling at her after leaving a store, Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market. Till was later abducted from his great-uncle Moses Wright's home by Carolyn Bryant's husband Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam.Till's brutalized remains were found days later in the Tallahatchie River. Mamie Till Mobley's decision to have photos from her son's open casket funeral published in Jet magazine catalyzed the civil rights movement.The two men were indicted on kidnapping and murder charges, but later acquitted by an all-white jury. Rev. Wheeler Parker, Till's cousin, was there the night he was kidnapped. He has worked for years to see justice for Till For him, the rediscovery of the warrant "is only a headline, not evidence."Half-brothers J.W. Milam (center) and Roy Bryant (right) confer with attorney Sidney Carlton on murder and kidnapping charges facing them in the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till.Bettmann Archive via Getty Images"For nearly 67 years, I have sought justice in the brutal lynching of my cousin and best friend, Emmett Till. We accepted the determination of the government that there was not sufficient evidence to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham," he said in a statement to ABC News.Chicago native Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with a white woman.Bettmann Archive via Getty ImagesThe Department of Justice closed its 2017 re-investigation of Till's murder in December 2021. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division declined ABC News' request for comment on this recent development."I would be overjoyed if that woman could be held accountable for this horrible crime. If she can be compelled merely to tell the truth, I would even support that," Parker said. "To me, there is a measure of justice in that, too."In this May 24, 2002, file photo, Emmett Till's photo is seen on his grave marker in Alsip, Ill.Robert A. Davis/Chicago Sun-Times via AP"We need to send a message that it doesn't matter how long you live, if you commit a hate crime, eventually the law will catch up to you. But we don't want to keep raising our hopes just to have them dashed again—if it's not going to lead to justice."ABC News' Fatima Curry contributed to this report. | Civil Rights Activism |
Human rights attorney Paula Avila-Guillen never thought she'd be fighting to decriminalize abortions in the U.S. until now, as nearly two dozen states move to ban the procedure following Roe v. Wade's official repeal Friday.A leader of Latin America's "green wave" movement for reproductive rights, earlier this year Avila-Guillen helped legalize abortions for women up to 24 weeks-pregnant in her native Colombia, which now joins Argentina and parts of Mexico in the short list of places in Latin America where terminating a pregnancy is no longer a crime.But it took time and arduous work: at least 15 years of civil and legal advocacy and mobilization.“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” said Avila-Guillen, executive director of the New York-based Women’s Equality Center. “We need to be here for the long fight."In the U.S., she said, focusing on advances on how abortion is provided — including the ability to receive abortion pills by mail — as well as pushing for congressional legislation to codify abortion rights could help restore sooner some of the rights lost.International legal and human rights organizations have been helping women for decades in El Salvador, which has a total abortion ban. Women who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths have been wrongfully sentenced to years in prison.“Imagine, in that profound moment of trauma — women are being criminalized and sent to jail. That’s what’s happening to lots of women in El Salvador,” said Yanira Arias, a Salvadoran American who is a national campaign manager at Alianza Americas, a group that works with migrant communities in the U.S. and Latin America. Over the past two decades, El Salvador has prosecuted at least 180 women who experienced obstetric emergencies, according to the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, which has been working to free those women since 2009.Sixty-five imprisoned women have been released with the help of the organization as well as international groups and legal advocates like Avila-Guillen, who said that criminalizing abortions disproportionately impacts low-income women of color, LGBTQ people and immigrants — particularly those who are undocumented.Arias, who is currently based in Puerto Rico, is fighting efforts by local lawmakers in the U.S. territory to restrict abortions as she points to what has taken place in her native country.'We have to think 30, 40 years out'The Supreme Court removed the constitutional right to an abortion in a 5-4 vote — a move that essentially represents the culmination of a decadeslong push by conservatives, religious activists and advocates who oppose abortion.“Change doesn’t happen in a day, in a year, or in one election cycle. We got here over decades of carving away access to birth control, sex education, abortion access,” said Kierra Johnson, deputy executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, which has been advocating for abortion rights. “We have to think 30 or 40 years out. That’s going to require us to be active locally, federally, and across issues.”Johnson said it’s not enough to have the majority of the American public “on our side.”“Public opinion means very little without grassroots power,” she said. “It’s not enough to be mad.” In Latin America, there have been steady gains as women and rights groups have continued to exert pressure over the last decades. Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that an underage girl can get an abortion without parental consent if she has been raped. And in May, the southwestern state of Guerrero voted to allow abortions, the ninth of the country’s 32 federal entities where women can legally end pregnancies.In the U.S., abortion rights advocates look to the mobilization that has taken place among women and abortion rights supporters in Latin America as a template, as they stress the need for political mobilization.“This could have absolutely been prevented. Elections do matter,” said Laura Esquivel, a director of national advocacy at the Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit involved in Latino-focused policy and community activism. Esquivel was referring to how former President Donald Trump and a Republican Senate were able to appoint three conservative Supreme Court justices who ultimately helped break the nearly 50-year-old legal precedent of Roe v. Wade.It remains unclear whether abortion could become a deciding issue among Latino voters — including those who have come from countries with much more restrictive abortion laws. Latinos in the U.S. have long been stamped as being anti-abortion, but polls have found that such a sweeping label doesn’t apply.According to the Public Religion Research Institute, “Hispanic Americans are the most divided“ on the issue of abortion, expressing slightly more opposition (48%) than support (45%) in 2019. Place of birth and religious affiliation are the two factors that most influence Latinos’ views on abortion, as well as age, the Public Religion Research Institute found.But a Pew Research Center survey last year found that 58% of Hispanics believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases, about the same as white people, 57%. Forty-two percent of Hispanics and 40% of white people thought it should always be illegal.Abortion rights advocates hope mobilization such as that seen in Latin America will provide tangible results down the line. “Historically, the fact that Roe v. Wade happened in 1973, it was the result of an organizing effort,” Arias said. “So now, we need to get back to the drawing board and understand that this is an opportunity to continue to fight.”Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.Nicole Acevedo is a reporter for NBC News Digital. She reports, writes and produces stories for NBC Latino and NBCNews.com. | Civil Rights Activism |
During a landmark week in 1970, lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol bore witness to the ugliest realities of an educational system that was anything but equal. They listened to testimony from undergraduate and graduate students, professors, and professional women who had been discouraged from participating in school activities, laughed out of degree programs, and dissuaded from pursuing their academic and professional passions. As the women’s testimonies made clear, sex discrimination in higher education was a pernicious reality.Ann Sutherland Harris, an assistant art history professor at Columbia University at the time, was one of the women who testified at the hearings hosted by the Congressional subcommittee tasked with investigating gender equality in higher education. She explained that male faculty members told her female students things like “You’re so cute. I can’t see you as a professor or anything,” “We expect women who come here to be competent, good students, but we don’t expect them to be brilliant or original,” and “Why don’t you find a rich husband and give this all up?” It was all part and parcel of a reality Harris called “psychological warfare.”(In this episode of our podcast Overheard, in collaboration with ESPN and The Walt Disney Company, we examine how Title IX continues to ripple across American society. Listen now on Apple Podcasts.)The hearings were the first step toward Title IX, a watershed law enacted 50 years ago that outlawed gender discrimination in federally funded education and opened up new opportunities for women in the decades that followed. Here’s how the law was passed in June 1972—and why it was so urgently needed to protect women who endured harassment, discouragement, and discriminatory treatment at all levels of education.Incomplete civil rights protectionsTitle IX has its roots in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation and banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Those protections applied to private employment and public accommodations, but Title VI of the law, which applied to federally funded entities like public schools, colleges, and universities, lacked protections based on sex. This left women unprotected in most educational contexts.It showed: Women were regularly discriminated against in education. In primary schools, girls were forbidden from being crossing guards and were excluded from tasks like running projectors. Middle and high schools made home economics classes compulsory for female students. Women were underrepresented both as students and faculty members at institutes of higher education, comprising just 21 percent of college students in the mid-1950s. Some schools banned women from applying or put restrictive quotas on how many they would accept.When colleges did accept women, some had separate entrances for women and gender-specific hallways. Girls’ sports teams were either nonexistent or poorly funded—fewer than 300,000 girls participated in school sports nationwide. Schools funneled women away from elite professions like medicine and law.In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which extended civil rights protections to government employees and federal contractors. But that order didn’t include sex as a protected class—and women’s groups took note.“We maintain that this country no longer can afford to waste the resources of its women citizens,” wrote a representative of the newly formed National Organization of Women in a 1966 letter to Johnson. It was just one of a flood of letters asking the president to rectify the omission.The push for Title IX beginsJohnson finally added sex to the executive order in 1967. But it didn’t go far enough for many activists. One of them was Bernice Sandler, a university lecturer who was denied a promotion to one of her department’s full-time positions at the University of Maryland in 1969 despite her qualifications. A coworker told her why: “You come on too strong for a woman.”Sandler was furious. Like many colleges and universities, the university held federal contracts. She started investigating sex discrimination at the university level and filed more than 250 comprehensive complaints with the federal government against universities that had violated the executive order.The sudden flurry of enforcement requests piqued the interest of Edith Green, an educational policy expert and Democratic Congresswoman from Oregon. In 1970, she launched hearings on sex discrimination at federally funded universities.Persuaded by the testimonies put forth during the hearings, Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii joined Green in drafting legislation that would prohibit sex discrimination in education. Their bill was introduced in the Senate by Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh and passed as Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.Resistance to Title IXBut the law met with fierce public resistance, even after its passage. Among the critiques was the misconception that the law would impose quotas on the number of women universities must admit. Another concern was that requiring universities to create equal opportunities for women in sports would force them to eliminate male-dominated sports like football or cancel existing programs if universities failed to find enough interested, qualified female players for a women’s team. This was not the case, however. The law itself made no mention of sports, and its enforcement guidelines allow single-sex sports and do not require defunding male-dominated sports to support opportunities for women.But during the three-year gap between the law’s passage and the finalization of enforcement guidelines, little was done to level the playing field for women—and the most egregious examples of resistance to the law were often found in university sports.Eventually, though, the resistance by Canham and others only resulted in more specific, and stringent, definitions of the law. The enforcement guidelines were clarified in the wake of his opposition. They involve a test that requires schools to follow at least one of three criteria: Either they have to have an equal proportion between male and female students and student-athletes; have a history of expanding protections to underrepresented students; or be “fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.”Yet the University of Michigan continued to delay. It was the last university to meet the law’s standards—and only did so in 1982, after a variety of complaints of sex discrimination and an investigation that forced the university to admit it was noncompliant.Title IX’s legacyDespite opposition over the years—and ongoing attempts to gut the law—Title IX persisted. Along the way, it transformed women’s educational experiences. Today, women outnumber men in college admissions and, armed with advanced degrees in every conceivable field, participate in careers once considered out of their reach. Girls and women’s athletics have ballooned, and women are employed at all levels in schools and universities.But there’s still inequity in education. Men hold a disproportionate number of faculty positions, and second-class treatment is still standard in school sports. In 2021, an external gender equity review of the NCAA found “significant” gender disparities in college athletics, in part due to the organization’s prioritization of revenue-producing sports like college football. (Why women’s basketball still fights for equal recognition.)Meanwhile, thousands of enforcement actions are still requested each year, most of which relate to claims of sexual harassment, different treatment based on sex, retaliation, and sexual violence. Title IX may be a fixture in civil rights law, but there’s still progress to be made.Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 3, 2022. It has been updated. | Civil Rights Activism |
Protesters hold images of Chinese rights advocate Xu Zhiyong, during a demonstration calling for his release, outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong, China January 27, 2014. Words above a picture of Xu read, "Release Xu Zhiyong immediately". REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File PhotoRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comBEIJING, June 22 (Reuters) - Two prominent Chinese rights lawyers are set to go on trial behind closed doors this week on charges of state subversion, campaign groups said, part of a clampdown on dissent and rights activism under President Xi Jinping.Hearings for Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi were scheduled in Linshu county court in the northeastern province of Shandong on Wednesday and Friday, respectively, relatives and friends told Reuters.The two have been permitted legal representation but other visitors including relatives and diplomats would not be able to attend the trials, two people in touch with their lawyers told Reuters, adding that the lawyers were strictly warned by authorities against speaking to media.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comThe court's social media pages did not include notices of the upcoming trials, which is not unusual in sensitive cases. The court did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment and further details on the trials.China's justice ministry also did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.Xu, 49, and Ding, 54, are prominent figures within the New Citizens Movement, which called for greater transparency into the wealth of officials and for Chinese citizens to be able to exercise their civil rights as written in the country's constitution.Xu and Ding, who have both previously been convicted and served jail terms, were targeted after attending an informal gathering in the southeastern city of Xiamen in late 2019 with other activists and friends, Amnesty International said in a statement.On Feb 4, 2020, Xu wrote an open letter calling for Xi to resign, citing his handling of crises including the Hong Kong protests to the start of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.Ding went missing in December 2019, and Xu disappeared the following February, shortly after he wrote the open letter.Both were formally arrested on June 19, 2020, Luo Shengchun, Ding's wife and longtime campaigner for his and Xu's freedom, told Reuters."Our families are of course upset and angry" Luo said. "This is a naked case of injustice and persecution."Chinese courts have a conviction rate of well over 99 percent and on such charges both Xu and Ding could face years behind bars.Rights groups have called the trials a "sham"."The reason that the men are being locked up and charged with ridiculous 'subversion' crimes is because they dare to envision a different China and to demand the country to be free and just," said Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.China rejects criticism of its human rights record, saying it is a country with rule of law and that jailed rights lawyers and activists are criminals who have broken the law.China has dramatically clamped down on dissent since Xi came to power in 2012. Hundreds of rights lawyers were detained and dozens jailed in a series of arrests commonly known as “709” cases, referring to a countrywide crackdown on July 9, 2015.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Martin Quin Pollard
Editing by Tony MunroeOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Civil Rights Activism |
NEW YORK -- Parades celebrating LGBTQ pride kick off in some of America's biggest cities Sunday amid new fears about the potential erosion of freedoms won through decades of activism.The annual marches in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere take place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signaled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognized in 2015.That warning shot came after a year of legislative defeats for the LGBTQ community, including the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children.As anti-gay sentiments resurface, some are pushing for pride parades to return to their roots — less as blocks-long street parties but overtly civil rights marches.“It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life,” Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City's annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius's, one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders.“As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream,” Clarkin said, “there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.”Dan Dimant, a spokesman for Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that organizes New York City's parade, said this year's march will still be festive, with floats and “people dancing and celebrating.”“Pride is many things to many people. And for many people, it’s a protest. And to many people, it’s a celebration. We create experiences for members of our community to experience pride and the way that resonates with them,” Dimant said.New York's first Pride March, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a spontaneous street uprising triggered by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.San Francisco's first march was in 1972 and had been held every year since, except during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.Celebrations are now global, taking place throughout the year in multiple countries, with many of the biggest parades taking place in June. One of the world's largest, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was held June 19.In the United States, this year's celebrations take place amid a potential crisis.In a Supreme Court ruling Friday striking down the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage and a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalizing gay sex.More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ+ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas.Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify.According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment. Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation.In recent years, schisms over how to commemorate Stonewall have opened, spawning splinter groups, including in New York City, holding their own events intended to be more protest-oriented.In New York City, the Queer Liberation March takes place at the same time as the traditional parade, billing itself as the “antidote to the corporate-infused, police-entangled, politician-heavy Parades that now dominate Pride celebrations."More of that spirit could rub off on the major parades this year, though many fans of the marches see them as a combination of activism and celebration.New Yorker Vincent Maniscalco, 40, who has been married to his husband for five years, said he thought the marches are an opportunity to both spotlight civil rights issues and bring "individuals together of all walks of life to celebrate their authentic self. And I think the New York City Pride Parade does a very excellent job of that.” | Civil Rights Activism |
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will be sentenced this week for federal civil rights violations in the killing of George Floyd.U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson has set Chauvin's sentencing hearing for 2 p.m. Thursday in St. Paul. Derek Chauvin mugshot (Minnesota Department of Corrections)Chauvin's plea agreement calls for a sentence of 20 to 25 years in prison. Federal prosecutors last month asked for 25 years, on the high end of that range, saying his actions were cold-blooded and needless.The defense asked for 20 years, saying Chauvin accepts responsibility and is remorseful for what he did, and has already gotten a long sentence from another court for his murder conviction.GEORGE FLOYD DEATH: FORMER MINNEAPOLIS OFFICER THOMAS LANE PLEADS GUILTY TO MANSLAUGHTER CHARGEChauvin, who is White, pleaded guilty in December to violating Floyd's rights, admitting for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck — even as the Black man said he couldn't breathe and after he became unresponsive — resulting in Floyd's death. Chauvin admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer, during the May 2020 arrest. FILE: The family of Daunte Wright gathers on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's death, May 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa, File)Chauvin was also convicted in a separate case on state charges of murder and manslaughter and is already serving a 22 1/2-year state sentence. The plea agreement calls for Chauvin to serve the federal sentence at the same time as the state sentence, and to serve it in federal prison. The deal means he's expected to serve more time behind bars than he would have faced on the state sentence alone.Three other former Minneapolis police officers — Tou Thao, J. Alexander Keung, and Thomas Lane — were convicted in February of federal civil rights charges in Floyd's death. Magnuson has not set sentencing dates for them.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPFloyd's killing sparked protests nationwide and around the world in what many described as a reckoning over racial injustice and police brutality. The Associated Press contributed to this report. | Civil Rights Activism |
US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, called the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling that gave federal protections for abortion, a “crisis of our democracy” on “Meet The Press” Sunday.She also questioned if impeachment should be considered for justices if they lied about their stance on Roe during their confirmation hearings.“The Supreme Court has dramatically overreached its authority,” Ocasio-Cortez said.WATCH: @repaoc says if Supreme Court nominees lied under oath, impeachment “should be very seriously considered.”Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: "There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and hostile takeover of our Democratic institutions." pic.twitter.com/D4hpLleInv— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) June 26, 2022 Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the court has a legitimacy issue on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday. She said more justices should be added to the Supreme Court and was one of 34 Senate Democrats to send a letter to President Biden on Saturday asking for more “immediate action” on protecting abortion access.“This court has lost legitimacy. They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had after their gun decision, after their voting decision, after their union decision. They just took the last of it and set a torch to it with Roe v. Wade,” Warren said.The Supreme Court has a legitimacy crisis. Six radical justices are imposing their extremist views on the entire country — against the will of the American people. Congress must protect our democracy from this rogue Court.pic.twitter.com/qZSWallE4T— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 26, 2022 Senators Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, have said they were led astray by some of the justices’ stances on Roe during the lead-up to their confirmations to the Supreme Court.Manchin in a press release said Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh testified under oath “that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent.” Both justices were in the majority opinion to overturn the landmark abortion decision.Collins also said in a statement that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh’s opinion was “inconsistent” with what they said in their testimony and meetings with her.Ocasio-Cortez targeted those inconsistencies. “If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and issue without basis, if you read these opinions, rulings that deeply undermine the human and civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “There must be consequences.”She advocated for several changes, including restraining judicial review, expanding the court, and using federal land for abortion clinics.She also called for a House floor vote to codify several cases mentioned in Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion — he wrote that the court “should reconsider” cases on the right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and same-sex sexual activity.- Restrain judicial review- Expand the court- Clinics on federal lands- Expand education and access to Plan C- Repeal Hyde- Hold floor votes codifying Griswold, Obergefell, Lawrence, Loving, etc- Vote on Escobar’s bill protecting clinicsWe can do it!We can at least TRY— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 26, 2022 Lauren Booker can be reached at [email protected]. | Civil Rights Activism |
Derek Chauvin was sentenced to just more than 20 years in prison Thursday, nearly seven months after he pleaded guilty to federal charges that he violated George Floyd's civil rights when he knelt on Floyd's neck for 9½ minutes as he was detaining him in May 2020.Before handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson called Chauvin's treatment of Floyd "offensive" and "unconscionable.""I really don’t know why you did what you did. But to put your knee on another person’s neck until they expire is simply wrong and for that conduct you must be substantially punished," the judge said.Federal prosecutors had asked Magnuson to sentence Chauvin to 25 years, on the high end of the 20- to 25-year range of the plea agreement, saying Chauvin abused his authority as a police officer and acted callously.The defense had asked for 20 years, saying Chauvin was remorseful for what he did and that he has accepted responsibility.Magnuson sentenced Chauvin to 21 years in prison, with credit for the time he has already served, bringing his sentence to 20 years and five months.Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court at his sentencing on state charges at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis on June 25, 2021.Court TVChauvin is already serving a 22½-year sentence after he was found guilty of second- and third-degree murder, as well as second-degree manslaughter, in April 2021 in a state case for the death of Floyd. His federal sentence will be served concurrently.Chauvin initially pleaded not guilty to the federal charges, but he changed his plea in December. At the time, he also admitted guilt in a separate federal indictment in connection with allegations that he deprived a 14-year-old boy of his civil rights in an encounter in September 2017.The guilty plea allowed Chauvin to avoid another high-profile trial. The sentence reflects 20 years for the charges related to Floyd and five months for the other case.Chauvin spoke briefly before he was sentenced, telling the Floyd family that he wished them “all the best in their life,” but did not apologize.Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, was among several people to speak in court before the sentencing. He called for Chauvin to receive the maximum sentence, saying he has not had a real night of sleep since his brother was “murdered in broad daylight.”He said his family has been given “a life sentence” as they will never be able to get his brother back.John Pope, the boy at the center of the 2017 incident, also spoke during the sentencing and said he feared for his life during his encounter with Chauvin, which “changed my life forever.”Pope, 19, said he was a “bright kid with dreams,” but those dreams started to slip away after he experienced police brutality at Chauvin's hands.Chauvin’s mother Carolyn Pawlenty, who called her son a "caring man," asked the judge to send Chauvin to a federal prison near family members."I believe it is God's will for all of us to forgive," Pawlenty said. "Everyone in the state of Minnesota needs to heal and remember all lives matter. No matter the color of your skin, every life matters."Three other former officers at the scene of Floyd’s death — Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao — were convicted in February on federal charges of depriving Floyd of his civil rights. Kueng and Thao were also convicted of not intervening to stop Chauvin from using excessive force. Their sentencing dates have not been scheduled.Magnuson said during sentencing Thursday that Chauvin “absolutely destroyed the lives” of those officers.Kueng and Thao also face a state trial set for October on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. Lane pleaded guilty to the state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, avoiding a trial. A charge of aiding and abetting second-degree murder was dismissed as part of the plea deal.The four officers' encounter with Floyd in May 2020 was captured on video recorded by a bystander, a traffic camera and the officers' bodycams. On the recordings, Thao is seen standing between onlookers as his fellow officers pin Floyd to the pavement. Lane and Kueng are on top of Floyd as Chauvin applies pressure to Floyd’s neck. The officers had been responding to a call from a convenience store about a counterfeit bill. Floyd’s killing at the hands of police spurred protests against systemic racism and police brutality around the world.Minneapolis Attorney General Keith Ellison, who led the case resulting in Chauvin's conviction on state charges, called the federal sentencing "another step of accountability on the road to justice.""Federal prosecutors took this case because it was not a typical crime: it was an intentional deprivation of life and liberty that is criminal under federal law, so it was appropriate and right that they stepped in," Ellison said in a statement. "In obtaining this conviction and sentence, they sent a message to Minnesotans, all Americans, and law-enforcement agencies around the country that crime like this will not be tolerated and that we must do better."Daniella Silva is a reporter for NBC News, focusing on education and how laws, policies and practices affect students and teachers. She also writes about immigration. | Civil Rights Activism |
The actress famously shared one of the first significant interracial kisses on American television with William Shatner in 1968. Nichelle NicholsBarry Brecheisen/Invision/AP Nichelle Nichols, who famously played communications officer Nyota Uhura on the original “Star Trek” series and in many subsequent films, died Saturday night at the age of 89. The news was confirmed by her longtime manager Gilbert Bell.
Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois in 1932 and began her entertainment career as a singer with Duke Ellington’s band. She eventually began pursuing musical theatre work in New York and Los Angeles before being cast in her most iconic role. Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” debuted in 1966, featuring Nichols in one of the first major roles for a Black woman in the history of network television.
Near the end of the first season, Nichols contemplated leaving the show after receiving an offer to star in a Broadway musical. Fortunately, she was convinced to remain on the U.S.S. Enterprise by an unlikely Trekkie: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights icon introduced himself to her at an NAACP banquet, where he told her that he loved watching “Star Trek” with his wife and children. When she mentioned her plans to leave, Dr. King told her how important it was to have a smart, competent Black woman in a leadership role on a major television show. He argued that she could have a much bigger impact on American culture if she stayed on “Star Trek,” advice that Nichols ultimately took. Nichols remained a cast member on the show for its entire three season run, and also starred in six “Star Trek” films, beginning with “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and ending with “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.” She continued to push racial boundaries on the show, famously sharing one of the earliest televised interracial kisses with co-star William Shatner in 1968.
She continued to use the platform that “Star Trek” gave her for good causes, frequently volunteering her time to promote the NASA space program. Her activism was often focused on increasing diversity in NASA, inspiring young Black people and women to pursue careers in the space program and promoting the work of those who already had.
Nichols is survived by her son, Kyle Johnson. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. | Civil Rights Activism |
COP27: Egypt attacks HRW after watchdog criticises government treatment of environmentalists Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid said it was 'unfortunate to find such allegations and inaccuracies' in Human Rights Watch's report which slammed the government's human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch criticised Egypt ahead of the COP27 climate conference [JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images-file photo] Egypt slammed a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Tuesday after the watchdog criticised the government over its treatment of NGOs ahead of an upcoming environmental conference. Egypt's hosting of the UN climate change conference COP27 at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in November has been criticised by human rights groups, due to Cairos's massive crackdown on activists in the country since a 2013 military coup. HRW said tough restrictions on civil society in Egypt have prevented a number of environmental NGOs from registering for the conference due to not being recognised by the government. Cairo has rejected the claims. Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid told AP it was "unfortunate to find such allegations and inaccuracies" in HRW's report and alleged it was based on "testimonies of unknown sources" and "unidentified groups" who said they are banned from attending the conference. "It is deplorable and counterproductive to issue such a misleading report, at a time where all efforts should be consolidated to ensure the convening of a successful COP that guarantees the implementation of global climate commitments," Abu Zeid said. Abu Zeid later posted his remarks to Twitter, saying they were "regrettably not quoted in [their] entirety". Egypt's government is known to massively curtail free press and civil society in the country. HRW issued a press release on Monday accusing Cairo of having "severely curtailed environmental groups' ability to carry out independent policy, advocacy, and field work essential to protecting the country's natural environment". HRW environment director Richard Pearshouse said the government has "imposed arbitrary funding, research, and registration obstacles". These have "debilitated local environmental groups, forcing some activists into exile and others to steer clear of important work", he added. HRW said the Egyptian government's restrictions amount to a serious violation of human rights and throw into question its ability to meet basic climate commitments. The human rights group's report was based on interviews with more than a dozen academics, scientists, and activists. HRW's website, along with dozens of others, is blocked in Egypt. The Egyptian foreign ministry statement did not address allegations of intimidation and obstruction faced by environment workers and other activists. Rather, it responded to accounts that some local groups have faced difficulty in registering with the government due to strict laws on how NGOs should be established and registered. Only groups registered with the government can apply for accreditation to participate in the COP27 summit. My comments to @AP on the recent @HRW report on environmental groups work in 🇪🇬 , regrettably not quoted in its entirety in their article today “Egypt rejects reports of stifling environment activism. Objectivism & professionalism necessitate honest presentation of all opinions. pic.twitter.com/0xX5dGE6et
— Egypt MFA Spokesperson (@MfaEgypt) September 13, 2022 Egypt's government has engaged in a widespread crackdown on dissent in recent years, detaining tens of thousands of people, many without trial, according to rights groups. Under President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi authorities have also repeatedly intimidated activists and journalists. New laws have effectively barred civil society from operating in Egypt and effectively prevent free media from operating. Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a UK-Egyptian dual national, has been on hunger strike since April to protest against his imprisonment and inhumane prison conditions. He has told his family he could die in jail, saying he doesn't "believe there's any chance of individual salvation". Abdel-Fattah was handed a five-year sentence in December on charges of "broadcasting false news" after he shared a Facebook post. His detention has been slammed as "unjust" by Amnesty International. | Civil Rights Activism |
An Akron Police officer points his weapon at Black man Jayland Walker, who was shot to death by up to eight officers after running from his vehicle, in Akron, Ohio, U.S. June 27, 2022 in a still image from police body camera video. City of Akron/Handout via REUTERS Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comJuly 4 (Reuters) - The Ohio city of Akron declared a state of emergency on Monday, setting a curfew and canceling Independence Day fireworks, after protests over the police killing of an unarmed Black man turned unruly on Sunday night.The protests broke out after police released body camera video that showed eight officers shooting at Jayland Walker, 25, as he fled a traffic stop last week. Walker's body was found to have some 60 gunshot wounds. read more Daytime protests on Sunday were peaceful but, despite pleas from the Walker family that demonstrations remain peaceful, Akron police declared an unlawful assembly once property was damaged. Officers in riot gear fired about a dozen canisters of tear gas to scatter protesters, WKYC-TV said.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comAkron Mayor Dan Horrigan said a curfew for downtown Akron was in effect from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. until further notice, and a pair of Fourth of July fireworks displays also were canceled."There was significant property damage done to downtown Akron. Small businesses up and down Main Street have had their windows broken. We cannot and will not tolerate the destruction of property or violence," Horrigan said in a statement.The Jayland Walker shooting marks the latest in a series of police killings of unarmed Black men, raising questions about police use of force and equal justice for African Americans, and contributing to increased polarization in the United States. read more White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Reuters the Justice Department, including the Civil Rights Division and the FBI field office in Akron, is closely monitoring and evaluating the situation surrounding Walker’s death."This footage is disturbing," Bates said. "And no family should ever have to endure the horrific pain and loss of a loved one that the Walker family is experiencing right now."Police said Walker had a gun in his car but left it on the front seat as he fled on foot. Officers believed he fired a round from inside the car before fleeing, police said, and that Walker was "moving into firing position" when he got out of his car, prompting them to react to him as a potential threat, Akron Police Chief Stephen Mylett said.VOW OF 'FAIR' INVESTIGATIONThe mayor praised the peaceful protests, which were led by the Akron chapter of the NAACP. Hundreds of demonstrators marched in the streets of the city of about 200,000 people, waving "Black Lives Matter" flags and chanting, "We are done dying," and "Justice for Jayland."Horrigan said the trouble began after nightfall, a pattern that was seen in the turbulent summer of 2020, when protests spread across the United States over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died when a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. Officers were later convicted of various charges including murder and civil rights violations in the Floyd case.On Sunday, the attorney for the Walker family, Bobby DiCello, told reporters he was "very concerned" about the police accusation that Walker had fired at officers from his car, adding that there was no justification for his violent death."I ask you, as he's running away, what is reasonable? To gun him down? No, that's not reasonable," DiCello said.The Ohio attorney general and Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation are investigating, and the file will be made public at the conclusion of the case, Attorney General Dave Yost said on Sunday."People want and deserve answers, and they shall have them. BCI will conduct a complete, fair and expert investigation," Yost said in a statementThe eight officers directly involved in the shooting have been placed on paid administrative leave, the Akron police chief said.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Daniel Trotta; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason.
Editing by Mary Milliken and Bill BerkrotOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Civil Rights Activism |
A federal judge recently agreed to dissolve a 42-year-old court mandate on minority hiring within the Chicago Fire Department, finding that minority representation had increased substantially since its implementation in early 1980.While federal officials looked at the increase in “minority” employees, some current and retired Black firefighters cried foul, saying their manpower numbers continued to dwindle due to slow hiring of Black recruits and high black retirement among its commanding officers.Last Thursday, Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved a joint request between federal prosecutors overseeing the long-running Albrecht decree and city attorneys ending the March 1980 decree named for former commissioner Richard Albrecht.“This Court finds that minority representation in each promotional rank of the city of Chicago Fire Department has increased substantially since entry of the Albrecht Decree,” Pallmeyer wrote in a short ruling.“The Court also finds that city of Chicago has made good-faith efforts to comply with the decree, and dissolution of the decree will not limit or hamper future challenges to alleged employment discrimination in the CFD.”The ruling ends the decree that focused on minority hiring in ranking positions. Pallmeyer’s ruling came six days after prosecutors filed an 18-page motion seeking dissolution, pointing to increased minority representation and cooperation with the Fire Department. The city soon joined the motion. Authorities said they used an outside consultant “as needed” to provide expertise in helping them review technical materials provided by the city.Federal authorities argued that the dissolution of Albrecht wouldn’t lessen the city’s obligations to provide equal employment opportunity under a congressional discrimination protection known as Title VII.In a statement to the Tribune, the city’s Law Department lauded the end of the decree. “The dismissal of the decree will enable the city to efficiently retire current eligibility lists when appropriate and adopt new lists expeditiously. The city remains committed to ongoing progress.” The Chicago Fire Department did not respond to a request for comment.A spokesman with the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois referred comments to the Department of Justice’s D.C.-based Civil Rights Division, which handled the case, but a DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment.The ruling came as bitter news to Black retirees who had long fought a system weighed against minority firefighters, particularly African-Americans, whose numbers have dropped in certain ranks.In April, an analysis of Fire Department personnel records by the Tribune found that Black firefighters had slipped to third place with only 422 in the 4,800 uniformed member department, or about 15%. This was a dip from the 16.5% in 2016. Firefighter-EMT is the department’s most common rank. Hispanic firefighters, who were 13.5% of firefighters in 2016 are now the second largest group at 18%.“Oh my gosh,” said Ezra McCann, a retired Black fire captain, upon hearing Tuesday that the decree had been dissolved. McCann, who joined the department in 1977, discounted the government’s findings, saying they hadn’t interviewed or spoken with any Black members who have long championed the cause of increased Black hiring and promotions. “It’s a bad move.”Ezra McCann, retired Chicago Fire Department captain, on June 21, 2022. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)McCann is among a number of vocal Black retirees who keep close watch on the number of Black recruits in every fire academy class. They have called the department’s hiring moves window dressing, claiming the department has placed some Blacks in prominent positions while keeping the number of rank-and-file Black personnel down. They have also maintained the hiring is tilted toward applicants from politically influential wards.“Right now we’ve got a Black female fire commissioner. A lot of her support in the top echelon are Blacks,” McCann said. “When people see that, they say ‘Oh man, the Fire Department’s doing well.’ But when you look at the entry level, our numbers have never been where we can say we’re fair players in this game.”The news was particularly upsetting for James Winbush, a retired Black fire captain and a founding member of the African-American Firefighters & Paramedics League of Chicago, who had been an outspoken voice for increased hiring since 1967. “When I got on the job in October 1967, there were only 225 Blacks and five Hispanics” on the department,” he said. He blamed the mayor’s office and other black elected officials for not backing the fight to get more Black firefighters in the department.“If your highest elected official, who is also African-American, will not defend you ... and they take away your protection from the federal government — what can we do when leadership abandons us?” Winbush asked.Both McCann and Winbush complained that the numbers of Black recruits in each fire academy class generally lags behind white and Hispanic candidates. In the past, the Fire Department has acknowledged troubles with recruiting Black candidates and have pointed to public pushes for young candidates.While the department is far more diverse than any time in its past, Black firefighters complained that their numbers lagged at the department’s most common rank and that new hires couldn’t keep pace with the number of retirements of higher ranking Black personnel.Minority representation among the battalion chief rank increased from 2% in 1980 to nearly 26% by 2020, according to numbers cited by prosecutors from the DOJ’s Employment Litigation Section. Similarly, captains grew from 5% to about 28%, lieutenants from nearly 6% to 26% and engineers from 8.5% to 29%.The government motion used what appeared to be dated personnel material in evaluating the effectiveness of the city’s diversity push.For example, the memo cites 30 Black battalion chiefs in the department in 2020. But as of Feb. 28, 2022, there were only 14, according to numbers given to the Tribune through an open records request. In another instance, the memo cited 2017 numbers that listed 42 Black fire captains, but the February total was 12 — 10 captain-EMTs and two captain-paramedics.The decree was the result of a 1980 lawsuit filed by the federal government, challenging the CFD’s promotional practices. On March 31, 1980, federal Judge Frank McGarr entered the decree that mandated the city “shall seek to promote black and Hispanic persons in sufficient numbers so as to increase substantially the minority composition in each of the promotional ranks” and make each rank more representative.In 1973, the federal government found that the Fire Department under former Commissioner Robert Quinn had engaged in unlawful hiring and promotion practices against African Americans and Hispanics, keeping both their combined numbers under 5%.Winbush, a third-generation firefighter, said the fight lives on though the direction is unknown. He can easily recall the old days, when he had racial slurs written on his locker. But he said he and others would continue to push for Black neighborhood residents to join the department.Retired firefighter James Winbush, a founding member of the African-American Firefighters & Paramedics League of Chicago, at a news conference on Jan. 7, 2016. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)In addition to the inherent prestige that comes with being a firefighter, it is also one of the most lucrative of all city service jobs.“The job’s a permanent job. You have to fire yourself from the Fire Department,” said Winbush, who retired in 1998. “Since the firefighter strike of 1980, the benefits have been unbelievable. The overtime benefits. The hospitalization. The pension. The retirement. All of it. It is absolutely the best job that I ever knew about or ever had. It is the best-kept secret in the world. The Chicago Fire Department.”[email protected]@Midnoircowboy | Civil Rights Activism |
NAACP calls decision 'egregious assault on basic human rights'NAACP General Counsel Janette McCarthy Wallace said in a statement Friday the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as "marks a significant regression of our country.""As a legal professional, I am horrified by this decision. As a Black woman, I am outraged to my core," Wallace said. "There is no denying the fact that this is a direct attack on all women, and Black women stand to be disproportionately impacted by the court's egregious assault on basic human rights. We must all stand up to have our voices heard in order to protect our nation from the further degradation of civil rights protections we have worked so hard to secure."Separately, Portia White, the NAACP vice president of policy and legislative affairs, said: "This Supreme Court is turning back the clock to a dangerous era where basic constitutional rights only exist for a select few. They've stripped away our right to vote, and now women have lost their right to their own body. What’s next?"White added: "We cannot allow our future to rest in the hands of those determined to crush every bit of it. We need to fight back."Biden to address Supreme Court ruling in remarks at 12:30 p.m. ETPresident Joe Biden will address the Supreme Court's ruling in remarks at approximately 12:30 p.m. ET, according to the White House.The guidance said that Biden will deliver his response in the Cross Hall.Durbin announces Judiciary hearing to explore "grim reality of a post-Roe America"Christopher Cicchiello4m ago / 3:20 PM UTCSenate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing next month to "explore the grim reality of a post-Roe America."Durbin, who chairs the committee, made the announcement in a series of tweets in which he vowed to keep "fighting to enshrine into law a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices.” "The Court’s decision to erase the right to an abortion will not only lead to the denial of critical health care services, but also criminal consequences for women & health care providers in states eager to embrace draconian restrictions," Durbin wrote. "We cannot let our children inherit a nation that is less free and more dangerous than the one their parents grew up in."He also urged voters to elect "pro-choice Democrats who will write abortion protections into law" in the midterm elections.LGBTQ rights could be at risk post-Roe, advocates warned before rulingJulie Moreau6m ago / 3:18 PM UTCThe leaked initial draft of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade had advocates worried about what the precedent’s reversal could mean for the LGBTQ community’s recently gained rights. Cathryn Oakley, an attorney with the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group, stressed that the high court’s decision would have a direct impact on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. “The LGBTQ community relies on reproductive health care. LGBTQ people seek and receive abortions, they seek and receive and use contraception,” she said. The willingness of the court to overturn precedent could, some advocates fear, signal that other federally protected rights of minorities may be in jeopardy, such as same-sex marriage, which became the law of the land with the Obergefell v. Hodges case. Read more about what LGBTQ rights advocates warned before Friday's ruling.Virginia Gov. Youngkin says Supreme Court ruling 'rightfully returned power to the people'Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade "has rightfully returned power to the people" and the elected officials of each state. "I’m proud to be a pro-life Governor and plan to take every action I can to protect life," he said in a statement Friday. "The truth is, Virginians want fewer abortions, not more abortions. We can build a bipartisan consensus on protecting the life of unborn children, especially when they begin to feel pain in the womb, and importantly supporting mothers and families who choose life."Youngkin, a Republican, said he has called on several lawmakers, including state Sens. Siobhan Dunnavant and Steve Newman, to help "find areas where we can agree and chart the most successful path forward."The Virginia Assembly is controlled by Republicans and the Senate has a narrow 19-21 Democratic majority. Manchin says he's 'alarmed,' had trusted Gorsuch and Kavanaugh when they said Roe was settled precedentSen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said in a statement that he is "deeply disappointed" by the Supreme Court's decision and "alarmed" that the two Trump-appointed justices that he voted to confirm supported it."I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans," he said.Manchin said he was raised "pro-life" as a Catholic and still maintains that view. "But I have come to accept that my definition of pro-life may not be someone else’s definition of pro-life. I believe that exceptions should be made in instances of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is in jeopardy," he said. Manchin said that he supports legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law, saying, "I am hopeful Democrats and Republicans will come together to put forward a piece of legislation that would do just that."Thomas calls on court to reconsider contraception, same-sex marriage casesJustice Clarence Thomas, concurring with the majority ruling, explicitly called on the Supreme Court to overrule the rulings in Griswold v. Connecticut, which protects the right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, the right to same-sex intimacy; and Obergefell v. Hodges, the right to same-sex marriage.“As I have previously explained, 'substantive due process' is an oxymoron that 'lack[s] any basis in the Constitution,'” he wrote.Chief Justice Roberts warns Dobbs ruling goes too farChief Justice John Roberts voted with the other conservative justices to uphold the Mississippi law in today's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, but urged against going further.“Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here, where the broader path the Court chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have not only previously recognized, but also expressly reaffirmed applying the doctrine of stare decisis,” he wrote.ACLU slams court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as "shameful"Tat Bellamy-Walker17m ago / 3:07 PM UTCThe American Civil Liberties Union called the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade "shameful."“Second-class status for women has once again become the law because of today’s decision," Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement. "We can wave away any pretense that this is the United States of America when it comes to the fundamental right to decide when and if to become a parent." Romero warned that the decision will have far-reaching consequences.“The Supreme Court has just plunged this country and itself into a historic crisis, one that will reverberate far beyond the ability to get an abortion."Alito says Constitution 'makes no reference to abortion'Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that the Constitution "makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision" including the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives," wrote Alito, who then quoted from an opinion written by then-Justice Antonin Scalia from the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case: "The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting."In emotional remarks, Nancy Pelosi denounces Supreme Court, Trump, GOPIn searing and emotional remarks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi excoriated the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade and blamed former President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for laying the groundwork for the decision."Because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party and their supermajority on the Supreme Court, American women today have less freedom than their mothers," Pelosi told reporters at a news conference.She described the top court's ruling as "dangerous" and urged people who support abortion rights and access to vote in the November midterm elections."In the Congress, be aware of this, Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have a majority in the Congress to do that," Pelosi said.'Today, Life Won,' Pence saysFormer Vice President Mike Pence, who has long been opposed to abortion, celebrated the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, saying "Today, Life Won.""By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court of the United States has given the American people a new beginning for life and I commend the Justices in the majority for having the courage of their convictions," he wrote in a series of tweets."Now that Roe v. Wade has been consigned to the ash heap of history," he continued, "a new arena in the cause of life has emerged and it is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn and support for women in crisis pregnancies to every state Capitol in America."He added, "Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land."March for Life president praises decision to overturn Roe v. WadeAntonio Planas24m ago / 3:00 PM UTCMarch for Life President Jeanne Mancini praised the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn an “unpopular and extreme abortion policy on our nation.”March for Life is an annual rally held in the nation’s capital condemning the 1973 decision by the nation’s highest court that legalized abortion nationwide.“Today, the ability to determine whether and when to limit abortion was returned to the American people who have every right to enact laws like Mississippi’s which protect mothers and unborn babies after 15 weeks — when they have fully formed noses, can suck their thumb, and feel pain,” Mancini said in a statement. “We will continue to march until abortion is unthinkable because equality begins in the womb.”In concurrence, Kavanaugh says states can't bar residents from traveling elsewhere for abortionIn a concurrence to the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that states cannot block people from traveling to other states to seek an abortion because of the "constitutional right to interstate travel."But many legal observers and political analysts expect that exact issue will be at the center of the next chapter of this fight.'One of the darkest days our country has ever seen,' Schumer saysSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said a fundamental right was "stolen" from American women Friday when the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion. He called it "one of the darkest days our country has ever seen." "Millions upon millions of American women are having their rights taken from them by five unelected Justices on the extremist MAGA court," he said in a statement. "These justices, appointed by Republicans and presiding without any accountability, have stolen a fundamental right to have an abortion away from American women in this country. These justices were intentionally appointed by Republicans to overturn Roe v. Wade and every Republican Senator knew this would happen if they voted to confirm these radical justices." Schumer, D-N.Y., condemned Republicans for their "complicit" decision in the ruling, saying it will have "consequences for women and families in this country.""Today’s decision makes crystal clear the contrast as we approach the November elections: elect more MAGA Republicans if you want nationwide abortion bans, the jailing of women and doctors and no exemptions for rape or incest," he continued. "Or, elect more pro-choice Democrats to save Roe and protect a woman’s right to make their own decisions about their body, not politicians."Rep. Dean blasts court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as 'horrifying'Tat Bellamy-Walker34m ago / 2:50 PM UTCRep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., condemned the court's decision."Absolutely horrifying," Dean said. "It's taking us back more than 50 years." She urged people to fight back against the opinion."People need to be out protesting," she said. "Peacefully protesting and voting.” INTERACTIVE: Live in a state set to ban abortions? See how far you’d have to travel for careWithout Roe v. Wade, women and girls seeking an abortion in states where the procedure will be banned will face long treks, often by multiple means of transportation, in order to get care.NBC News analyzed the distance to the nearest open abortion clinic from major cities in 21 states that either have pre-existing or pending state-level abortion bans that will go into effect following the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday to overturn Roe. Women and girls there will have to drive 4 hours on average in order to receive care in bordering states where abortion remains legal.View the graphic here. Mississippi AG: 'Roe v. Wade is finally behind us'Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican who advocated for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, celebrated what she characterized as a "new era in American history."Pelosi says Supreme Court achieved Republicans' 'dark and extreme goal' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the Supreme Court has "achieved the GOP's dark and extreme goal of ripping away women's right to make their own reproductive health decisions." "Because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party and their supermajority on the Supreme Court, American women today have less freedom than their mothers," she wrote in a statement.Pelosi said that congressional Republicans are "plotting a nationwide abortion ban," and vowed that "Democrats will keep fighting ferociously to enshrine Roe v. Wade into law.""This cruel ruling is outrageous and heart-wrenching," she added. "But make no mistake: the rights of women and all Americans are on the ballot this November."Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene celebrates decision overturning RoeMarjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Republican congresswoman from Georgia, told reporters Friday that the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade is a "blessing" and an "answered prayer.""I've prayed for this my whole life," Greene said.Democratic PACs say voters must 'fight like hell' this November Two major Democratic political action committees, the Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, criticized the high court in a joint statement Friday for taking away a woman's constitutional right to an abortion. Senate Majority PAC President JB Poersch and House Majority PAC Executive Director Abby Curran Horrell said the ruling "flies in the face of decades of precedent and is a direct assault on the constitutional right to a safe, legal abortion that’s been guaranteed for nearly a half-century."They said that abortion rights will be a top issue in the current midterm elections cycle, saying they "will determine whether Republicans can place cruel new restrictions on reproductive rights, ban abortion nationwide with no exceptions, criminalize abortion providers, and punish women. The stakes of defending our Democratic Senate and House majorities have never been higher.""Come November, we must elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives who will fight like hell to ensure that our constitutional rights are enshrined into law and serve as the last line of defense against Republicans’ extremist attacks on our fundamental freedoms," they said. Planned Parenthood: 'The court has failed us all'Planned Parenthood, one of the leading providers of reproductive health care in the U.S., said in a tweet that the Supreme Court has "failed us all" but added "this is far from over."Key abortion rights group blasts Supreme Court decisionThe Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, excoriated the "anti-abortion ideologues on the U.S. Supreme Court" who overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday."The U.S. Supreme Court has taken the radical step of overturning Roe v. Wade outright, thus unleashing uncertainty and harm onto people asking for nothing more than to exercise their fundamental right to bodily autonomy," Guttmacher Institute President and CEO Dr. Herminia Palacio said."While much has been lost today, the fight is far from over," she added. "The anti-abortion movement is already pushing for a national abortion ban. All of us seeking to defend policies that support bodily autonomy must be ready to meet them with all we have."We must protect abortion rights and access in as many states as possible and achieve federal legislation to ensure that anyone, anywhere who needs an abortion can get one freely and with dignity."House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy says ruling will 'save countless innocent lives'House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., applauded the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, saying that the ruling will "save countless innocent lives." "The Supreme Court is right to return the power to protect the unborn to the people’s elected representatives in Congress and the states," he said in a statement.McCarthy added, "In the days and weeks following this decision, we must work to continue to reject extreme policies that seek to allow late-term abortions and taxpayer dollars to fund these elective procedures."The GOP leader also said that "much work remains to protect the most vulnerable among us."Supreme Court overturns Roe v. WadeThe Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion in a 6-3 vote, a momentous break from a half-century of rulings on one of the nation’s most controversial issues. About half the states have already indicated they would move to ban the procedure.Supporters of abortion rights were bracing for the loss after an early draft of the opinion was leaked in May, touching off several days of demonstrations in more than two dozen cities. Protesters even showed up outside the homes of some members of the court.Read more here. | Civil Rights Activism |
Ambivalence about abortion is beside the pointIn “Roe ruling turns back the clock” (Opinion, June 25), columnist Joan Vennochi bemoans the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade but admits to her own personal ambivalence about abortion. However, the ruling is not about one’s own personal feelings. It’s about civil rights — specifically, a woman’s civil rights and her autonomy as a person. It’s about not being told by the government what to do with your own body and your own life. For many, it’s about the ability to pursue educational and economic advancement. For many single mothers without adequate financial or emotional support, it’s about being able to eat. And for many others, it’s a medical decision required for saving their own life; or moving on from sexual assault trauma; or terminating a hopelessly sick fetus that has no chance of survival outside the womb.As put forth by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, adoption is not a practical or realistic solution and can come with its own trauma. Babies, after short hospital stays, might then be placed in foster care at state expense. Babies quickly become toddlers and school-age kids. There are not enough adoptive parents, let alone foster parents, to accommodate current needs, and states struggle with resources needed to accommodate the many children currently in the system. So, are red states planning to construct Dickensian orphanages at taxpayer expense to house all these additional children?Get Today in OpinionGlobe Opinion's must-reads, delivered to you every Sunday-Friday. Cynthia JaquithBoltonPence says, ‘Life won.’ Whose life? What life?Former vice president Mike Pence, responding to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, stated, “Life won.” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously stated, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”Pence’s statement reveals the excruciating simplicity of his thinking, dismissing the complex circumstances affecting the “life” of a pregnant woman. For example, did the woman intend to become pregnant; was she raped or a victim of incest; is she able to support a child; is she healthy enough to sustain a pregnancy; will she have access to pre- and postnatal care, paid family leave, and child care; if she does not want or cannot support a child, how will she endure the physical and emotional effects of pregnancy, childbirth, and giving up her child for adoption?Pence and others who think “life won” deny the complexities of life. Simplicity on the other side of the complex question of pregnancy is that a woman must be free to make her own choices for her life and her future. Only then does “life win.”Diane LandeBrooklineCourt’s decision affects people of all gender identitiesI am disappointed in how so many members of the media, organizations, and individuals erroneously describe the devastating effects of the decision to strike down Roe v. Wade as a woman’s issue. This decision affects the right to abortion for people of all gender identities, not just women. Excluding those who have a uterus and menstruate but do not identify as women, such as trans masculine and nonbinary people, sends a message that they don’t count, that they are not affected, and that they have no right to their fear and anger.At a time when our country is specifically attacking trans and nonbinary bodies and communities, we cannot afford to be careless with language that further alienates and endangers our community members. Our trans and nonbinary communities are moving through their own layered experiences, and this is the time to show support and inclusion. We must call each other in and unite as we fight for our own and one another’s lives.Elizabeth DrayArlington | Civil Rights Activism |
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! The father of 14-year-old Tyre Sampson, who died in March from falling from the Orlando FreeFall attraction, called for the ride to be permanently closed and taken down at a press conference Monday. During a press conference at ICON Park organized by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, the boy’s father, Yarnell Sampson, described the ride as a "death trap" and claimed race played a factor in executives allegedly attempting to sweep the incident under the rug in removing the memorial at the attraction."That’s why I got on the wall ‘Death Trap,’" Sampson said, referring to the wall behind him. "Because you get on that ride again, and someone else is gonna die. It may not be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be a year from now, but I guarantee if you open that ride again someone else is gonna die.""That’s the goal to get it discontinued for good," he said.ORLANDO FREEFALL AUTOPSY SAYS TEEN DIED OF BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA, WEIGHED NEARLY 100 POUNDS OVER RIDE LIMITSampson called for a public apology and said his family's goal is to get between 25,000 and 30,000 signatures in a petition to have the ride replaced with a statue and a permanent memorial. Visitors stand next to a memorial while a family member lights candles for Tyre Sampson, 14, who was killed when he fell from the Orlando Free Fall ride at ICON Park in Orlando, Florida, on March 26, 2022. ((Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))He and other speakers lamented that the ride operator, The Slingshot Group, was granted a new lease from the theme park to put up a second ride while the Orlando FreeFall death investigation continues."I feel like it’s a cover-up sham going on. I feel like personally that they don’t want the world to know the truth because – I hate to say this, I don’t want to use the race thing – but I believe because my son is a Black young man, that he is being treated like this. And I believe if it was a European child, it would have been something different," the elder Sampson said. "There wouldn’t be no sweeping under the rug, they would have been more cooperative. I think there would have been more respect for it as well." "He deserves to be respected more than they’re giving him," he said of his son. The father addressed the media a week after the results of the autopsy for 14-year-old Sampson were released showing he died of blunt force trauma and the manner of death was ruled an accident. The medical examiner also noted the child was obese, weighing 383 pounds at the time of death. The Orlando Free Fall drop tower in ICON Park in Orlando, Florida, is pictured on March 28, 2022. Tyre Sampson, 14, was killed when he fell from the ride last week. (Orlando Sentinel via Getty)That is nearly 100 pounds over the ride’s weight limit. "Tyre was too big to have been on the ride," Crump said Monday. "The weight limit was 286 pounds, but they did not follow their own restrictions."An initial report by outside engineers hired by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said sensors on the ride had been adjusted manually to double the size of the opening for restraints on two seats, resulting in Sampson not being properly secured."These companies cannot be allowed to get away with this putting profit over safety," Crump said. "To Slingshot Group, to ICON Park executives, you all cannot simply sweep this under the rug as if Tyre Sampson’s death doesn’t matter. Because Tyre Sampson matters, his life matters, his legacy matters." So far, it has not been revealed who made those manual adjustments. Family members and friends of Tyre Sampson leave items during a vigil in front of the Orlando Free Fall drop tower in ICON Park in Orlando on Monday, March 28, 2022. Sampson, 14, was killed when he fell from the ride late Thursday evening. ( (Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))But Democratic state Rep. Geraldine Thompson, who also spoke at the press conference, suggested that it was someone "further up in terms of the chain of the command," and not an entry-level teen worker manning the ride, to have authorized the change. The elder Sampson also called for drug tests for ride operators who are routinely younger workers. "They need to drug test some of these operators," he said. "These little young teenage operators been going to 30 days of training, how are they responsible for someone’s life? It’s really crazy to me." Thompson accused The Slingshot Group of being "tone-deaf" for both removing the memorial placed at the foot of the Orlando FreeFall attraction and for obtaining a second lease. She said she is working on the Tyre Sampson bill, to be introduced at the start of the next legislative session, that will require a ride operator’s experience and safety history be considered in applications for leases for a new ride. Thompson said her goal to have The Slingshot Group’s new lease taken away.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP"Behind you, there used to be a memorial that people in the community made and put together. This particular operator has removed everything, all of the evidence, that this is the location where a 14-year-old boy died," Thompson said. "They don’t want people to know that."Thompson said she is not convinced proper signage was posted for the ride’s weight and height limits. Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @danimwallace. | Civil Rights Activism |
Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump said Tuesday he will lead the legal fight on behalf of Randy Cox, a Black man who was seriously injured in the back of a police van in Connecticut when the driver braked suddenly.Crump also called for a federal civil rights investigation into the treatment of Cox, 36, who was being taken June 19 to a police station in New Haven, Connecticut, for processing on a weapons charge when his head struck the back wall of the van.Crump said police mocked Cox’s cries for help and later dragged him by his feet from the van and placed him in a holding cell before he was taken to a hospital. Cox, whose legal first name is Richard, is in intensive care, paralyzed from the chest down, Crump said.At a news conference Tuesday in front of New Haven Superior Court, Crump, who has been called Black America’s attorney general for his work on civil rights cases, led a crowd in chants of “Justice for Randy Cox.”His co-counsel, Jack O’Donnell, said the legal team expects to file a federal lawsuit within 60 days, once it has reviewed all the evidence, including more than two hours of video.Some of that, including footage from a camera that recorded the moments when Cox was injured, has been released publicly.“I am here because when I looked at that video, it shocked my conscience,” Crump said. “And I believe when you all see that video, it’s going to shock your conscience. The only question is, why, when the police look at Randy Cox saying, ‘I can’t move,’ why doesn’t it shock their conscience?”Five members of the New Haven police department who were involved in the transport have been put on leave while the episode is investigated. New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and acting Police Chief Regina Rush-Kittle said they are committed to being transparent with the facts. They have released all videos to the public and have given all evidence to state police, who have been called in to conduct an independent investigation, they said. “I’ve watched the videos many times,” Elicker said. “I, in my own view, did not see malice on the part of the officers. I saw some bad decisions, an extreme lack of compassion. I think what we focus on, what we can control here in New Haven, that is ensuring that we have accountability in our city.”Cox was handcuffed when he was in the back of the New Haven police van, which was not equipped with seat belts. He flew headfirst into a wall when Officer Oscar Diaz braked hard; he said it was to avoid a collision, police said. Diaz resumed driving to the police department, despite Cox calling for help and saying he was injured and couldn’t move, according to the video and officials. A few minutes later, Diaz stopped the van to check on Cox, who was lying motionless on the floor.Diaz then called paramedics but told them to meet him at the station instead of waiting for them where he was, police said.At the station, officers dragged Cox out of the van by his feet and put him in a wheelchair, video shows. Police then booked Cox, took him out of the wheelchair and dragged him into a cell, where he was left on the floor, video shows.Paramedics arrived minutes later and took Cox to a hospital, officials said.Crump said Cox was accused of lying and told to get up several times by police.“Where’s the first aid training? Where’s the on the job training? Where’s the accountability?” said Latoya Boomer, Crump’s sister, who attended the news conference with several other family members. “I want to know, where’s the person who sees what’s going on and says, ’Maybe he’s not joking. Maybe he’s not drunk. Maybe he is in distress.”Scot Esdaile, the president of the Connecticut branch of the NAACP, said he is not convinced the hard braking of the van was an accident.“People from the community have been coming to us for years talking about how they torture people in the back of paddy wagons,” he said. “They put people in the back of the paddy wagon; they go real fast and then they slam the brakes.”Elicker said last week that prisoner transport vans not equipped with seatbelts have been taken out of service and that the police department is working to install seatbelts in them. He said Tuesday that department will be also be implementing more training for officers in response to the incident. | Civil Rights Activism |
A fleet of 52 yellow school buses formed a mile-long procession to Sen. Ted Cruz’s house in Houston on Thursday morning — 4,368 empty seats to honor the number of children killed by gun violence since 2020.The first bus carried items from school shooting victims, including a pair of worn-out checkered Vans from 15-year-old Gracie Muehlberger, killed at her Santa Clarita high school in 2019; a kindergarten graduation card with a smiling teddy bear on it, awarded to Sandy Hook victim Chase Kowalski; and a LeBron James Miami Heat jersey adored by Joaquin Oliver, who died in the Parkland school shooting in 2018.Named “The NRA Children’s Museum,” this project is the latest by artist Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquin.“It’s partially with the intention that some people will think this is truly an NRA museum,” Oliver told BuzzFeed News.Since his son's death, Oliver has channeled his advocacy for gun control into works of public art and activism. On Monday, he interrupted President Joe Biden during a Rose Garden speech, calling on the White House to open an office specifically for gun violence. Last year, he orchestrated a fake graduation where a former National Rifle Association president spoke to over 3,000 empty seats, representing the teen victims of gun violence. Now he wants people to look at which government officials accept NRA donations.“We’re going after the money,” Oliver said. “These leaders are not loyal to the Second Amendment. They’re loyal to the gun industry and manufacturers, who protect them. And there’s lots of messages that supporting gun control is not patriotic. It’s corrupt, and I wanted to find a graphic way of showing them what the impact really is.”Oliver hand-delivered a letter from his late son Thursday to the home of Cruz, who has received a total of $749,000 from the pro-gun group. The note, which had been written by a 12-year-old Joaquin, spoke to gun owners about his thoughts on gun control in the country. When the buses arrived, a security guard came out and accepted the letter. Oliver did not receive an immediate response from Cruz. The procession left shortly after due to encircling police presence.Speaking to BuzzFeed News from Cruz’s offices on Thursday, Oliver said he was asked to leave the senator’s property by security, where he asked them a few questions from the sidewalk. “I asked if they wanted to know who I am, if they were a little curious,” he said. “I left the letter, and [the guard] took some pictures and made some calls. I don’t know who he called.”Oliver said that his wife Patricia found the letter a month after Joaquin was killed. “It was from a school project,” he said. “He was a kid writing this letter. I was really impressed when I read it. We’ve been keeping it, our little letter to remind us about what we’re fighting for. My son knew, at 12 years old, what to do better than Ted Cruz. I want [Cruz] to read that with his own eyes.”“I am writing this letter to talk to you about how were going to solve this gun law movement,” Joaquin said in the note, written five years before his death. “Most of you have a problem with the idea of universal back round check. Why are you mad that there’s a back round check it’s for your own good maybe you are fond of having crazy people with death machines. You shouldn’t have anything against back round checks if you’re innocent.”Oliver said that he was hoping Cruz would be at his offices, but he instead met someone who identified themself as one of the senator's staff advisers, who told him that the lawmaker was currently at the Capitol.Recently the nation has seen a renewed surge of mass shootings throughout the country, from the horrifying elementary school shooting in Uvalde to the recent 4th of July shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Part of Oliver’s goal was to put pressure on officials like Cruz and Marco Rubio to renounce funding from the NRA and to enact legislation for universal background checks.“It’s a shame on us as a nation,” Oliver said. “We are at a point where any option is a miracle. The latest gun measures, we all know it was not enough. The guys that wrote it knew it was not enough. We think of ourselves as the most powerful nation in the world — and I hate that we’re OK with solutions that are clearly not enough.”Gun violence is the leading cause of death for American children; there have already been over 300 mass shootings this year alone. The bus fleet, which traveled to Cruz’s home and Houston office today, hopes to highlight the scale of loss, and the emphasis on how young and innocent their lives were.“I believe young people will make sure gun violence will not be part of their futures,” Oliver said. “But we need to help them build a foundation to get there.”Speaking to the press outside of Cruz’s offices, Oliver revealed that this will be the first of many stops at various pro-gun government leaders’ spaces. “If you’re a senator and you believe the things that are happening are OK, look out for a yellow school bus that will be outside your office,” he said. ●Jul. 14, 2022, at 17:51 PM | Civil Rights Activism |
The attorney general for Washington, D.C., is suing the city’s housing agency for discrimination against tenants with disabilities, alleging the government office forces residents to wait years to receive accessible housing. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed a civil rights lawsuit against the D.C. Housing Authority on Thursday for failing to address concerns from tenants who filed complaints about the lack of accessibility in public housing units. Instead, the agency forces residents to wait years — “sometimes even more than a decade,” he said — for requests to be filled. STREET OUTSIDE DC’S SAUDI EMBASSY DEDICATED TO SLAIN JOURNALIST KHASHOGGI “This complaint makes clear that DCHA has repeatedly failed to fulfill its legal responsibility to accommodate District residents who have physical disabilities with housing units that are safe and accessible,” Racine said. “After seeking to persuade DCHA to address these safety and quality of life issues, we had no choice but to file this case to ensure that the disabled tenants receive the accommodation that the law requires.” The DCHA operates under a pattern of discrimination against those with disabilities and fails to provide accommodations, such as transfers to wheelchair-accessible units, according to the lawsuit. Under the Human Rights Act, landlords in Washington, D.C., are prohibited from discriminating against residents based on disabilities, and they must provide accommodations if requested. The agency is an independent government agency that acts as the city’s largest landlord, managing more than 8,300 public housing units across the district. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Racine has previously sued the DCHA over its mismanagement of public housing units, filing a suit in 2020 alleging the agency endangers its tenants by failing to provide safe units for low-income renters. The attorney general later settled with the agency, requiring the DCHA to implement security measures such as light fixtures, daily inspections, and security cameras. The lawsuit comes as Racine’s tenure is coming to an end, with the attorney general being replaced after the midterm election in November. The DCHA did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner. | Civil Rights Activism |
History & CultureBefore Nazism, a German institute cemented itself as gay liberation’s epicenter. For 40 years, activists have been searching for its legendary collection.In the early 1990s, a Canadian student named Adam Smith opened a dumpster in the basement of his apartment building in Vancouver, Canada, and discovered a stack of old leather suitcases. In one of them was a plaster “death mask” cast from the face of a man with a thick mustache. In others were journals, papers, and photographs. Smith deduced the trove belonged to an elderly Chinese resident of his building who’d recently passed away. Unable to bear seeing them tossed, he moved them into his apartment and posted a short note on a forum on the then-young internet with the names he’d come across. “WANTED: anyone familiar with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld or Li Shiu Tong.” He was wondering, he wrote, “if they are of any significance or interest.” A decade later, he’d learn the answer.In the 1930s, the world knew Hirschfeld as the “Einstein of sex.” The famed German Jewish physician and sexologist ran the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science), a library, research center, and clinic in Berlin. In it, he oversaw the first modern gender confirmation surgeries, conducted large-scale studies on homosexuality, and lobbied the government for LGBTQ rights. His library held thousands of books on same-sex relationships, erotica, and gender. Then the Nazis came to power, and the institute was looted, its library burned, and Hirschfeld, who’d been on a world lecture tour, exiled to France.When Hirschfeld died there, just two years later, he left his belongings in part to Li, a young Chinese medical student who had been his assistant and boyfriend.To Smith, Li was a quiet neighbor seen only in passing in the elevators of their shared building. One night, a decade after Li’s death, a German researcher named Ralf Dose was poking around online message boards when he came across Smith’s old posting. Since the 1980s, Dose, who is the secretary general and co-founder of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society, has been hunting the surviving scraps from Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. It took more sleuthing to track down Smith, and though he’d since moved to Toronto, he had never thrown out the suitcase of Li’s belongings. In 2003, Dose flew from Germany to collect it.Piecing together a global archiveFor the past 40 years, Dose and other volunteer researchers have hunted Hirschfeld’s archive across the globe, tracing names of his associates and their descendants, scouring libraries, archives, and antiquarian bookstores. So far, they have found 35 items from the institute’s original 10,000 volumes, and 25 more from Hirschfeld’s other collections. Occasionally, these come directly to the society: voicemails left on the society’s answering machine by descendants of Hirschfeld’s siblings, emails from inheritors of books with the institute’s distinctive stamp, surprise visitors with long-lost donations. But more often, it is left to insatiable researchers like Dose, following a trail of microscopic clues.There’s no shortage of memorable moments in this line of detective work, says Dose, an affable 72-year-old with a shock of white hair who has dedicated his life to unearthing the roots of the gay liberation movement: There was the meeting with the refined elderly daughter of a physician who worked with Hirschfeld, who, after coffee and cake, presented Dose with a box of antique Japanese sex toys. “My father got that from Magnus Hirschfeld,” he recalls her saying. “I like them very much but I cannot put them out on the piano, people would talk.” There was the fortuitous meeting with the institute’s housekeeper, who described her tenure as the happiest time of her life, and regaled them with tales of getting a massive Indonesian stone phallus statue through German customs.In 1897, Hirschfeld helped found the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, partially in outraged response to the trial of author Oscar Wilde, two years earlier in England, on 25 charges of “gross indecency” related to his homosexual relationships. It’s now thought to be the first-ever advocacy group for LGBTQ rights. In the years after World War I, the relatively progressive Weimar Republic laid a foundation for Berlin’s liberated gay scene, replete with raucous cabarets, high-level advocates, and increased freedom. According to Hirschfeld, there were 43,046,721 different types of human sexuality. “Love is as varied as people are,” he once said.The world’s first sex instituteIn 1919, Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science, the first of its kind in the world, in a lavish villa on the edge of Tiergarten Park in Berlin. Its library held the largest collection of books on sexuality at the time, lectures were hosted in a grand hall, and visitors could peruse a sex museum filled with a global collection of artifacts. In the clinic, doctors were performing early male-to-female surgeries on trans women.As the Nazis rose to power, Hirschfeld was on a multi-year world tour. In New York, in 1930, he mingled with poet Langston Hughes, civil rights lawyer Clarence Darrow, and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. With a public persona tied to gay rights and his Jewish heritage, Hirschfeld couldn’t go home. In 1932, he relocated to Switzerland, and then to France, where he saw, on a newsreel, his institute being looted by a group of Nazi youth and, days later, a massive book burning of his library’s holdings overseen by Nazi paramilitary officers.“When Magnus Hirschfeld had to leave Germany, he was convinced progress would have been made in a few years,” Dose says now. “He was full of hope there was an international movement to further the cause of sexual minorities. And then everything was stopped…Not only here, but in other countries as well.” Hirschfeld died of a heart attack on his 67th birthday while in France in 1935. His closest successor wouldn’t emerge until more than a decade later, with Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research in America.Mass killings of LGBTQ peopleUnder Nazi rule, LGBTQ people, along with Jews, Roma, political dissidents, and others deemed undesirable, were sent to extermination camps. It took a long time for Germany’s gay rights movement to regain the footing and momentum it had held in in the 1930s. An antiquated section of the penal code, paragraph 175, made homosexuality punishable by imprisonment. Hirschfeld had lobbied for its removal—collecting signatures from notable figures like Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann—but even after World War II, the West German government pursued 100,000 cases using this 19th century law. (It wasn’t deleted from the books until 1994.)When the gay rights movement emerged again, in the ‘70s, it was student-run, not filled with the bourgeois and professionals of Hirschfeld’s day. Among them was a small group, including Dose, who brought forth the Magnus Hirschfeld Society.In 1982, Germany was preparing to mark 50 years since the Nazi takeover, and young gay rights activists including Dose hoped to shed light on LGBTQ persecution and activism. He and others were eager to learn about their predecessors in the 1920s, figures like Hirschfeld who’d made great strides in liberation before being exiled or killed by the Nazis.With the help of the Jewish community in Berlin, Dose and his friends launched a lecture series to mark 50 years since the destruction of the Institute for Sexual Science. Then they grew curious about the library’s holdings. “Everyone told us there was nothing left,” says Dose. “The institute was raided, then bombed, and the people are dead. Everything was lost. But, on the other hand, no one had searched for it.”Reconstructing the pastThey began to gather leads: They knew Hirschfeld had been traveling with a large collection on his world tour and ended up in France. They knew that someone had negotiated with the Nazis on his behalf to purchase 20 boxes of materials from the library before it was burned. He’d hoped to reopen his institute in Paris, but the material ended up in storage, likely in Nice or Paris. When he died, his personal items were left to two heirs—among them, Li Shiu Tong.This year, a grant from the newly formed German Lost Art Foundation, which seeks to recover looted art and cultural heritage from World War II, will allow two researchers to construct a catalog of what the Institute for Sexual Science held, what’s been found, and what is still missing. Some of it is guesswork: they can be fairly certain that the leading sexology research of the day would have been owned by the institute, from medical texts to novels. But the Nazis’ seized holdings had first been distributed to other libraries, and then redistributed by British and American forces, scattering the books across Europe’s cultural centers.The titles they’ve uncovered so far include the 1904 The women's clothing and its natural development (found in Berlin), a 1920 copy of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Sigmund Freud (found in Prague), and Vita homosexualis, a 1902 collection by gay activist August Fleischmann (found in a Polish bookstore with a note saying it had been slated for destruction in 1933). This catalog will be distributed to museums and collections across the world, with the hopes that they use it to interrogate their own holdings for the trademark stamp of the Institute for Sexual Science.On Dose’s wish list is an alluring collection of lost material that he’s found mentioned in diaries and catalogs. One collection was of particular interest to the Nazis: the institute’s patient files. These records detailed visits to the physicians who worked within the institute, from gynecology exams to gender reassignment counseling to treatments for venereal diseases.It’s possible that someone at the institute saw the writing on the wall as the Nazis rose to power and knew that thousands would be in danger if their names fell into the wrong hands. In one diary entry Dose found, a young worker described being asked to haul a cart of papers to a hiding spot. En route, the writer recalled, the cart tipped over in front of a Nazi officer who helped them regroup, unaware of the contraband it held. According to lore, those files were smuggled to Moscow by communist party members of the institute. No trace of them has been found.Another item on Dose’s wish list: the “psycho-biological questionnaire.” Each person who visited the institute was asked to fill out this form, detailing their sexual preferences, lifestyle, and personality. Only one filled-in copy has been found, in the Berlin State Library, but an estimated 40,000 were once held at the institute for research purposes.Beyond gay liberationAs he pieced together these findings, Dose realized how much broader Hirschfeld’s focus was than gay liberation. “For us he was a hero of the gay movement—one of the few ancestors we knew about,” he says. But as lost holdings surfaced, it became clear that the institute’s work dipped into reproductive rights, sexual health, women’s rights, and, later, transgender rights. “And so,” he says, “the scope of our research broadened and the scope of our ideas of the institute broadened very much.”The Magnus Hirschfeld Society had once hoped that the German government would help rebuild the Institute for Sexual Science, but the political will never materialized. For decades, politicians didn’t want to be associated with the topic, Dose says. Not until the 1990s did the LGBTQ movement regain the power it once held under Hirschfeld.“There was a whole gay and lesbian infrastructure in Germany—bars, clubs, the institute and organizations—that was destroyed. People were sent to prison and concentration camps. We wanted some compensation from German authorities,” Dose says. When that wasn’t forthcoming, “we reconstructed it ourselves.”Today, their small library attracts researchers, students, and others interested in LBGTQ history, but it’s a far cry from the buzzing international research hub Hirschfeld had built. A half dozen volunteers donate their time to keep it running and the society receives a small stipend from the Berlin government to help pay the rent. It’s open just four hours per week.The society hopes to soon merge with Berlin’s lesbian and feminist library and archives to form an umbrella queer archive with broad research access and communal spaces. They’re looking for 10 million euros to reconstruct a building and hire a professional staff.The hunt for Hirschfeld’s lost papers, for now, remains a passion project of volunteers. Two years ago, on vacation in the south of France, Dose carved out time to visit a few ethnographic collections, bringing with him photos of artifacts that likely went with Hirschfeld into exile. He popped into antiquarian bookstores in search of German-language books. He didn’t find anything, but on the same trip, he met up with Hirschfeld’s great niece, who grew up in Australia, and was visiting France for work. She asked Dose to take her to visit the tomb of her great uncle.At the time Hirschfeld was buried, the cemetery in Nice overlooked the sea. Now, it is surrounded by buildings and an airport. Hirschfeld’s flat headstone, inlaid with his portrait, was covered in pebbles left by visitors in the Jewish mourning tradition.They lingered at the grave, glad to see it was being tended to. Dose would return to Germany without new materials for the archive, but he knew more would turn up through the blend of sleuthing and luck that has slowly filled the Magnus Hirschfeld Society’s shelves over the past 40 years. “We’ve learned to be patient,” Dose says. “Wait for things, and they will come.” | Civil Rights Activism |
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) on Sunday said conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who “misled” Americans during their confirmation hearings about whether or not they supported overturning Roe v. Wade should be impeached and face “consequences” for lying under oath. Ocasio-Cortez told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd the Supreme Court “dramatically overreached its authority” and created a “crisis of legitimacy” that President Biden should address. “If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue — without basis, if you read these opinions — rulings that deeply undermine the human civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” the lawmaker said. “There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and the hostile takeover of our democratic institutions,” she added. The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the 1973 precedent Roe v. Wade, giving states the ability to decide abortion laws for the first time in roughly 50 years. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who each voted in the majority to overturn Roe — were criticized for dodging the question of overturning the precedent during their respective confirmation hearings or saying they would not support overturning the case. Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said lying under oath is an impeachable offense and there should be consequences to deter it from happening again. “What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure a Supreme Court confirmation,” she said. | Civil Rights Activism |
Chauvin pleaded guilty in December to violating Floyd’s rights, admitting for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck, even after he became unresponsive.Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on June 25, 2021, at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis.Court TVJune 23, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC / Source: Associated PressMINNEAPOLIS — Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Wednesday to sentence a former Minneapolis officer to 25 years for violating the rights of George Floyd, saying Derek Chauvin’s actions were cold-blooded and needless as he knelt on the Black man’s neck while Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe.Chauvin pleaded guilty in December to violating Floyd’s rights, admitting for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck — even after he became unresponsive — resulting in Floyd’s death. Chauvin, who is white, admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer, during the May 2020 arrest.Floyd’s killing sparked immediate protests in Minneapolis that spread around the U.S. and beyond in a reckoning over police brutality and discrimination involving people of color.As part of his plea agreement, Chauvin also pleaded guilty to violating the rights of a then-14-year-old Black boy who he restrained in an unrelated case in 2017.U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson has accepted the plea deal, in which both sides agreed Chauvin should face 20 to 25 years, with prosecutors seeking the high end of the range.In a court filing Wednesday, prosecutors reiterated their request for a 25-year sentence, saying it would reflect the serious nature of the offense, provide just punishment and deter other officers from “imposing punishment” on others. They also said Chauvin’s history should be taken into account, noting he “used his law enforcement career to engage in abusive conduct” more than once.A federal sentencing date has not been set.Chauvin was also convicted on state charges of murder and manslaughter and is already serving a 22 1/2-year state sentence. He would serve the federal sentence at the same time as the state sentence.Magnuson also presided over the trial of three other ex-officers who were convicted of related federal civil rights charges in Floyd’s death. Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng remain free remain free while they await their sentencing dates, which have not been scheduled.Lane has also pleaded guilty to a state count of aiding and abetting manslaughter, while Thao and Kueng face an October trial on state charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. | Civil Rights Activism |
The House on Wednesday passed a package that addresses racial disparities in employment, income and access to affordable credit. The package intends to combat inequities by increasing access to federal credit unions in underserved communities and promote access to fair housing. It will also provide funding for minority-owned financial institutions and community development financial institutions “whose work is critical to serving low-income communities,” said co-sponsor Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) tweeted that the package “builds on ongoing work” and is “long overdue.” One of the bills in the package, the Expanding Financial Access for Communities Act, was previously introduced by Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) during her time on the Financial Services Committee. “Growing up during the Civil Rights movement, I saw Black Americans gain access to civil rights long denied to them and finally receive basic accommodations,” Moore said in a release. “But even after gaining these freedoms, Black people had to and continue to play catch up financially.” In 2017, the Federal Reserve found that more than half of Black-owned firms that applied for loans were turned down. And during the pandemic, many Black-owned firms were denied Paycheck Protection Program loans from banks, forcing them instead to turn to financial tech loans. Similar trends follow applicants of color when it comes to applying for personal loans, like mortgages. The Associated Press reported last August that lenders were 80 percent more likely to reject Black applicants than white applicants. The issue leads not only to a potential lack of homeownership, but an inability to build generational wealth. “The people who have been sidelined are disproportionately Black and brown people,” said co-sponsor Nikema Williams (D-Ga.) in a statement to The Hill. “Nearly 14 percent of all Black households are unbanked. … We are taking a step to end these financial injustices and ensure that everyone can share in the promise of America — no matter their bank account, no matter their ZIP Code.” In addition to providing funding, the package will also track data on banks’ diversity and inclusion, assess how they serve LGBTQ+ communities and ensure mortgage lenders are working with non-English speaking borrowers in their native languages. Other parts of the package, like the amendments introduced by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), address inclusivity for Americans with disabilities. Speaking before the House on Wednesday, Pressley said policies and financial systems have forced Americans with disabilities into a “second class standard of living.” Pressley’s amendments to the act prohibit financial creditors from discriminating against consumers who are disabled, increase access to interpretation services including American Sign Language and require corporations to disclose the self-identification disability statuses of their board of directors and executive officers. “Numerous studies have shown that simply disclosing this information can have a positive outcome on corporate board diversity, which in turn positively impacts corporate financial performance,” Maloney said in a statement. Sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and also co-sponsored by Democratic Reps. Jesús García (Ill.), Joyce Beatty (Ohio) and Brad Sherman (Calif.), the act passed 215-207 along party lines. | Civil Rights Activism |
WASHINGTON -- Dr. Judette Louis recalls a time when she treated a patient who was hemorrhaging from her pregnancy - and how she had to wait to obtain permission before she was allowed to terminate the pregnancy for the health of the mother."I was standing there watching her hemorrhage out, waiting for permission to do the termination. It is a disgusting feeling. It is a sad feeling. And you're sitting there literally watching her blood pressure going down while you're waiting for permission," the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of South Florida told CNN. "It's just sad to now know ... that that will be happening all over across the country where [terminating a pregnancy] won't even be a possibility for a lot of states."Dr. Louis and other health care experts fear that with Roe v. Wade overturned, potential widespread abortion bans will deepen the United States' maternal mortality crisis. Health care experts told CNN they worry that reducing access to abortion - by closing clinics, setting early gestational limits or outlawing the procedure altogether - may lead to more pregnancy-related deaths in the United States.Rates of pregnancy-related deaths in the US are the highest in the developed world and have risen steadily over time, with Black women three times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than White women. The CDC recently reported that the rate of pregnancy-related deaths increased from 20.1 in 2019 to 23.8 in 2020, continuing a worrying trend of worsening maternal health outcomes for people in the United States.Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, 26 states are poised to ban abortion through pre-existing bans or "trigger laws" that will now go into effect without the landmark ruling is no longer in place. As a result, more than 10 million people of reproductive age would have to cross state lines to access the procedure in the nearest state where it is legal, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy institute that supports legal abortion rights.VIDEO: How overturning Roe could apply to IVF, marriage between same-sex couples, other civil rights issues"[People] may seek unsafe ways of terminating a pregnancy and could have harmful consequences," said Whitney Rice, the director of the Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast at Emory University. "You also have people who may sort of be forced to continue pregnancies to term and could have a risk of infant health outcomes that include low birth weight, preterm birth, or may have a risk of maternal mortality."Maternal mortality rates are already high in those states certain or likely to ban abortion - 47% higher than the national rate, according to a CNN analysis of 2018 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most recent available.Overall, states with the most restrictive abortion laws had a 7% higher maternal mortality rate than states with fewer restrictions, according to a 2021 study in the American Journal of Public Health.States that restricted abortion based on gestational limits saw a steep rise in the maternal mortality rate by 38%, according to a 2020 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. A 20% reduction in Planned Parenthood clinics in a state between 2007-2015 resulted, on average, in an increase in the state's maternal mortality rates by 8%.Maternal mortality risks are felt unequallyBlack people are three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than non-Hispanic White and Hispanic people, according to the CDC. With reduced access to abortion and other forms of reproductive healthcare, experts worry that these rates could rise in a post-Roe landscape.These disparities are rooted in decades of structural disadvantages and well-documented discrimination in medical care, leading to persisting gaps across socioeconomic and educational levels."[Marginalized groups] really face barriers in every sense of the way," said Dr. Louis. "They face barriers in terms of getting care in a timely fashion, barriers in being able to see a health care provider, and then barriers to getting the appropriate treatment. And that's even if they're offered appropriate treatment."SEE ALSO: How 2 dads are using storytelling to combat health care inequity, maternal mortality crisisAccess to maternal care is harder to come by in states likely to ban abortionAccess to maternal care is also worse in the 26 states that the Guttmacher Institute expects will be certain or likely to ban abortion. More than half of all counties in these states are classified as having low access to maternal care or are maternity-care deserts, according to a CNN analysis of data from the March of Dimes, compared to 39% of counties in states that are not likely to ban abortion if Roe is overturned.Nationwide, approximately 5.1 million women aged 15-44 live in areas with low access to maternal care - or "maternity care deserts," according to a 2020 report from the March of Dimes, a nonprofit that advocates for better health care outcomes for mothers and babies. The organization defines a maternity care desert as any county where there is no hospital offering obstetric care, no birth center and no obstetric provider. In these counties, people carrying a pregnancy to term may face significant barriers in receiving quality care for both the parent and child. The 2020 average annual median household income for these counties was $49,518, below the national median household income of $67,521."Those sorts of structural environments tend to go hand in hand," Rice said. "States with highly restrictive abortion environments also generally have fewer policies supporting health and well being of pregnant people, as well as their children and their families."Legal abortions are low-risk and safe - but lack of access to the procedure puts women at riskNegative health outcomes from receiving a legal abortion are rare - according to the CDC, the national death rate from 2013-2018 was 0.41 deaths per 100,000 abortions. In 2018, the CDC identified only two patients who died as a result of a legal abortion. The rate of abortion-related fatalities has remained stable over the past several decades, even as maternal mortality rates have crept upwards.But people who seek to terminate their pregnancies and are unable to do so are more likely to face negative health outcomes, according to the Turnaway Study, a multi-year endeavor based at the University of California-San Francisco that tracked the health of people who were - and were not - able to receive a wanted abortion. The study found that women who were denied an abortion and gave birth reported more life-threatening conditions like eclampsia and postpartum hemorrhaging, in addition to higher levels of chronic conditions such as migraines and persistent joint pain, than women who were able to access the abortion. Two of the women in the study who were denied an abortion died from complications related to their pregnancy. Lauren Ralph, an epidemiologist who worked on the study at the University of California-San Francisco, described the deaths as "sobering.""I think we can say with certainty that those deaths could have been avoided had these people had access to the abortion care that they had sought," Ralph added.With Roe v. Wade overturned, Ralph and other experts have warned that the maternal mortality rate will likely continue to rise in the United States if pregnant people are unable to access the care they need."It's a wake up call that we should stop being so complacent and that we need to look at more proactive strategies," said Dr. Louis of the medical community's role in providing safe access to abortion.The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. | Civil Rights Activism |
Local civil rights leaders on Sunday denounced the white supremacist group Patriot Front a day after about 100 members marched through Boston carrying shields, flags, and a banner reading, “Reclaim America.”Tanisha Sullivan, director of the NAACP’s Boston chapter, said she is concerned about the growing presence of white supremacist groups across Massachusetts and demonstrating in Boston. She first learned about their demonstration Saturday through posts on social media as it was already happening, Sullivan said.“My reaction was and still is deep concern, because this is now the third demonstration we’ve had within the city limits [this year],” said Sullivan, who has mounted a primary challenge against longtime Secretary of State William F. Galvin, a Democrat, in a telephone interview Sunday night, referring to previous demonstrations by white supremacist groups in Boston in January and on St. Patrick’s Day.“That is unusual,” she continued. “And it’s an indication that there is something happening where these groups are feeling more empowered about being here in Boston.”The demonstration Saturday turned violent when members of the group allegedly assaulted a 34-year-old Black man near the corner of Stuart and Dartmouth streets as they marched through Copley Square. The assault is under investigation by the Boston Police Department’s Civil Rights Unit. No arrests had been made as of Sunday evening, according to police.The Rev. Kevin Peterson, founder and director of the New Democracy Coalition, will gather Black leaders for a news conference Monday near the Starbucks on the corner of Dartmouth and Stuart streets to denounce white supremacists and call on city leaders to do more to bring about racial reconciliation.“It is imperative that we in the city of Boston respond to this demonstration with a commitment to focus on creating a Boston where everyone feels welcome and where the legacy of racism is finally erased,” Peterson said in an interview.Peterson identified the victim in the alleged assault as artist and activist Charles Murrell and said he is helping Murrell as an advisor.Murrell was taken to Tufts Medical Center on Saturday and told police that he was surrounded by Patriot Front members holding shields and was knocked to the ground as others joined in and continued assaulting him, police said.“He is deeply distressed upon being attacked by a mob of racists,” Peterson said. “He was an innocent Black man traveling through the city of Boston, whereupon he was attacked and treated as if he was not human.”The group made its way into Boston via the Orange Line from Malden. After the march, members of the group took the train back to Oak Grove and piled into a couple of dozen cars parked along the street and drove off.No incidents on the T were reported, according to Transit Police.Mayor Gary Christenson of Malden said he contacted Malden police Chief Glenn Cronin when he learned that the group had used the Oak Grove MBTA station to get into the city and would be returning. Malden police, State Police, and Transit Police were at the station when the group arrived.“Fortunately, they all returned to their cars and left the area without incident,” Christenson and Cronin said in a joint statement Sunday. “We condemn the actions of this group, and their hate goes against everything our city stands for.”Sullivan said she has questions about how the group made its way to Boston seemingly undetected.“The fact they were able to ... move through Massachusetts and there was not any type of alert to local law enforcement, that’s a concern too,” she said. “This is a highly organized group, so how is it they were able to organize coming to Boston, getting to Massachusetts, parking their cars, and making their way to downtown Boston, and nobody knew? We’ve got questions that need to be answered.”Peterson said he also has questions about how police responded to the situation.“It is particularly appalling for Black people to know this group was largely unmonitored and for the most part allowed to roam freely,” he said. “This was a racist gang [that] appeared to be prepared to foment violence at any moment. The fact that our law enforcement agents were not present in a more substantive way raises deep concerns about how the city monitors racist elements that come into our city.“Black people who are aware of what happened have to feel deeply concerned that their citizenship is undervalued and not protected in equal ways compared to whites,” he continued. “That’s clear and that’s problematic.”Material from previous Globe stories was used in this report.Nick Stoico can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @NickStoico. | Civil Rights Activism |
The Biden administration proposed sweeping changes Thursday to federal rules under the gender equity law Title IX that would revoke Trump administration mandates surrounding sexual misconduct that advocates for assault survivors said discriminated against victims.The new regulation would also extend Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination based on sex to sexual orientation and gender identity, giving landmark protections to transgender students. The current Title IX regulation does not address the rights of transgender students.The proposed rules are likely to kick off a heated battle over the obligations of schools to address sexual misconduct, the balance between the rights of victims and accused students, and the rights of transgender students. "Our proposed changes would fully protect students from all forms of sex discrimination, instead of limiting some protections to sexual harassment alone, and make clear those protections include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters Thursday.The proposed rules would keep some Trump-era mandates, such as provisions ordering schools to presume accused students to be innocent until grievance procedures end and to continue to permit informal resolutions of sexual misconduct complaints if both accuser and the accused agree.They would also allow schools to use a clear-and-convincing-evidence standard of proof — which generally means about 75 percent certain — to determine whether accused students violated sexual misconduct rules, but only if the schools also use it in other discrimination cases, like those involving racial harassment. Otherwise, schools must use the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, or about 51 percent certain, the same threshold used in most civil lawsuits.The proposal departs from the current regulation in a number of ways, however, including that live hearings would no longer be required in college sexual misconduct cases, cross-examination would not be required in hearings, and schools would be allowed to investigate and punish assaults that take place off-campus. The proposed rules would also allow investigators to decide the outcomes of cases but require that all Title IX coordinators, investigators and decision-makers not have conflicts of interest or biases for or against complainants or respondents.The Biden administration’s proposal would also allow schools to investigate and sanction sexual misconduct without formal complaints.The public will be able to submit comments on the proposal for the next 60 days. The Education Department will then need to address each point in writing before the regulation can be finalized. The process is likely to take several months, if not longer, to finalize.But if Republicans retake majorities in the House and the Senate, lawmakers could use the Congressional Review Act to vote within 60 legislative days to overturn major regulations issued by federal agencies.“We’re always concerned that students rights are fully protected in school every day, and so we are moving as quickly as we can to make sure that those rights are fully protected,” a senior department official said.Title IX, an element of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibits discrimination based on sex in any school that takes federal funding — which is nearly all of them. Federal courts have held that the law requires schools to address sexual misconduct allegations.The Obama administration ramped up enforcement of Title IX in response to an increase in activism from college sexual assault survivors who said schools were giving slap-on-the-wrist punishments to assailants and failing to support victims.Conservative organizations, civil liberties groups and some law professors objected to the policies, complaining that they failed to safeguard due process in campus investigations. The Trump administration subsequently spent much of its tenure building a Title IX regulation, implemented in 2020, that prescribed steps schools must take in responding to sexual assault allegations and tightened the definition of sexual harassment. The regulation said schools were not allowed to open Title IX cases if alleged assaults happened off-campus, required colleges to hold hearings to determine the guilt of accused students and limited what could be considered in tribunals, among many other provisions. The rules were overwhelmingly opposed by sexual assault survivor advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and trade groups for K-12 schools and colleges.During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Joe Biden vowed to overturn the regulation. The Biden administration has said it is using the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that employees cannot be discriminated against in workplaces because they are gay or transgender, to guide its approach to LGBTQ rights in education settings. Cementing discrimination against transgender students as a violation of Title IX has drawn in a host of new activist groups, many of which sprouted up over the past two years in a wave of battles within K-12 schools over race and gender.The Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for LGBTQ people, said including sexual orientation and gender identity in Thursday’s proposed regulation is a “good first step” toward protecting a “vulnerable population that is all too often preyed upon.”“It is especially important, given the attacks on transgender youth across the country,” Sarah Warbelow, the Human Rights Campaign’s legal director, said in a statement.In April, 27 conservative activist groups sent a letter to Cardona expressing concern that the Education Department's plans for new Title IX regulations would erode due process protections for accused students and that extending protections for gender identity “would rob girls and women of equal athletic opportunities.” The proposed regulation would not address who is allowed to join male or female athletic teams. A senior Education Department official said the department expects to propose separate rules regarding athletics, but the official could not say when.Cardona said, "The department recognizes that standards for students participating in male and female athletic teams are evolving in real time." Over 200 civil rights groups sent their own letter this month urging the Education Department to make good on the administration’s promise to issue new Title IX rules, arguing that sexual assault survivors and LGBTQ and pregnant students are in dire need of protection and that the current regulation has deterred students from reporting abuse allegations.“There are students who won’t go through the process, who are too afraid to go through the process, who don’t trust the process,” said Adele Kimmel, a victims’ rights attorney for the nonprofit group Public Justice, one of the groups to sign the letter.The existing regulation imposed by the Trump administration has been a “nightmare” for schools to adhere to, as well, said Jackie Wernz, an Illinois-based attorney who advises schools on civil rights laws and federal mandates. The requirements for misconduct investigations are overly prescriptive, she said, and they often conflict with state laws and union agreements.“It puts schools in a Catch-22, in that they have to figure out which law they want to violate,” Wernz said. The Trump administration also scrapped a requirement that Title IX cases be resolved within 60 days, mandating instead that they be completed in a reasonable amount of time. The new proposal would keep the same standard but add that schools must establish reasonably prompt time frames for major stages of grievance procedures.Elizabeth Abdnour, a Michigan-based attorney who represents students in Title IX cases, said she has had many instances in which schools took more than a year to resolve investigations.“There’s no way to challenge that when the rule just says the timeline has to be reasonable,” Abdnour said. | Civil Rights Activism |
The FBI has declassified its file on Aretha Franklin, the late “Queen of Soul” who died in 2018 at age 76. The 270-page document, which includes reports from over a dozen states, shows the bureau extensively tracked the singer’s civil rights activism and her friendships with Martin Luther King Jr and Angela Davis.The file also includes several credible death threats against Franklin and a potential copyright infringement lawsuit stemming from a Yahoo! Groups message board in 2005. The case, involving a self-proclaimed “anti-fanatic” who sold pirated CDs and DVDs of her performances, never made it to trial.The file, requested via the Freedom of Information Act by journalist Jenn Dize, who posted excerpts in a lengthy Twitter thread, and reported by Pitchfork, includes close documentation of Franklin’s performances for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), of which King was president.The FBI labeled these shows, held in Memphis and Atlanta in 1967 and 1968, as “communist infiltration” events. The FBI also noted that Franklin was alleged to be involved in a “huge memorial concert” following King’s assassination in 1968 that a source claimed “would provide emotional spark which could ignite racial disturbance this area”.The SCLC ultimately scrapped the memorial concert and held a procession to Atlanta’s Morehouse College instead.The FBI also tracked a performance by Franklin at a 1972 fundraiser for Davis in Los Angeles. The file noted that Davis was “facing murder-kidnapping charges in California” and that the concert’s sponsors, the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, was “an organization founded by the Communist party, United States of America”.On several occasions, the FBI identified Franklin as a potential performer at events deemed suspicious that she did not actually attend, including a 1971 benefit event for Davis held by the Boston chapter of the Young Workers Liberation League and a Black Panther Party event in Los Angeles.A 1976 document linked Franklin to the Coordinating Council for the Liberation of Dominica (CCLD), which a source characterized as “a black extremist group bent on disturbing the tranquility of the Island of Dominica” that “may have established a base of operation in the New York City area”.The source identified Franklin as a friend of Roosevelt Bernard Douglas, a “black extremist of international note” who went on to become the prime minister of the Dominica. It appears the bureau found no further evidence of an association between Franklin and the CCLD.The three documented death threats against Franklin included a Cook county jail inmate in Chicago who posed as an FBI agent to extort her for $1m, threatening serious consequences if she did not pay. The file also records harassment at home, by letter and by phone by one person in 1979.The news comes after Micky Dolenz, the last surviving member of the Monkees, revealed he is suing the FBI over a dossier he believes the agency holds on him and his former bandmates. | Civil Rights Activism |
Juneteenth may be the country’s newest federal holiday, but for many Black Americans, June 19 has long been associated with homegrown community celebrations, if not at least understood as a day to symbolize freedom. “For Black folks, there has been a long tradition of commemorating Juneteenth,” said Amara Enyia, policy and research coordinator at Movement for Black Lives. But now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, complete with offices and schools closing in recognition of it, the inevitable has also taken shape: commercialism. Box stores from coast to coast are lining shelves with Juneteenth products. Walmart caught the most flack recently for stocking a Juneteenth Great Value brand ice cream flavor, the label touting a trademark symbol. The move prompted questions about who can even own the idea of Juneteenth, and the appropriateness of corporations cashing in on what could be considered a bittersweet holiday, commemorating the end of enslavement and the beginning of a generations-long struggle for civil rights. ‘We cannot, at this stage, afford symbolism’ In Galveston, Texas, the home of Juneteenth, residents began marking the day when members of the Union Army arrived upon the southern reaches of Texas in 1865 to both inform enslaved people that they were henceforth entitled to a wage for their labor, and to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation among slaveholders. Black people have led their own celebrations for the holiday since its inception. Their celebrations have since reached everywhere the Black diaspora has spread. Juneteenth’s popularity has waxed and waned over the decades, but was thrust back into the public interest with racial justice movements demanding more political capital, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Last year, President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, answering the calls from Black activists. This year, some attempts to celebrate the day have gone sour, very publicly. Many were angry to see the trademarked Juneteenth ice cream on shelves, developed with the help of a corporation that creates artificial flavors, and a children’s museum apologized after its Juneteenth menu included a watermelon salad. A Juneteenth soul food celebration in Alabama was canceled after a leaked poster for the event revealed none of its featured hosts were Black. “Companies that are having these picnics for their employees and feeding them fried chicken and watermelon — who made that call?” Torrina Harris of Galveston quipped.Ultimately, said Enyia, “it is a testament to this country and the way our systems are set up to where the automatic knee-jerk default or response is profit-making or profit-seeking.” The impulse, when it comes to many holidays, is to focus more on the “bright side” — in this case, emancipation, freedom — which lends itself to digestible celebrations and commemorative products. Doing so brushes aside the thing Black people were being emancipated from: centuries of slavery. But, Enyia said, the inherent nature of the holiday is also “a reminder of how this country has treated Black people. It’s a reminder of the history of this country.”Angela Tate, a curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, points out that throughout all the generations of Juneteenth community-led celebrations, which have taken place in big cities, small towns and rural communities, Black people have tended to pair the bitter and the sweet. “African Americans have always used these moments of memory to think about where the community has come from and what we’re pursuing and striving toward, as well as taking the time to pass down history and culture,” she said last year. “Juneteenth is a moment to think about freedom being conditional freedom and it is something that we must continuously strive and fight for.”But major companies looking for a way to participate in Juneteenth celebrations “do not understand or are not interested in addressing the substantive issues that these holidays — this holiday in particular — can shed light on,” Enyia said. Harris, a board member of Vision Galveston, which sponsors the city’s Juneteenth festivities, agreed that celebrating Juneteenth should go much deeper than ticking off a box. Getting involved in organizing a Juneteenth celebration or presenting a product should also prompt questions like, “Are you actually giving decision-making power that also influences how funds are distributed? Are you giving decision making power to people who are representative of the community that this holiday is meant to honor?”In the same way that LGBTQ Pride Month has become synonymous with rainbow flags throughout the month of June as advocates continue to demand equity and action for queer people, Enyia draws similar parallels for companies eyeing Juneteenth. “We cannot, at this stage, afford symbolism,” she said. Celebrating Juneteenth, past and presentHistorically, local communities created their own stages for celebrating Juneteenth. In some places, afternoon-long festivals with food and music would be paired with readings of African American poetry, and readings of seminal speeches from Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass. The 2020 documentary “Miss Juneteenth” illustrated the joyous ways Black communities celebrate themselves each year. Now that it's a federal holiday, part of figuring out how to mark the day as a nation comes with educating the public about it. More Americans say they have at least some knowledge about Juneteenth than they did last year, according to a Gallup poll published Thursday. Eleven percent of respondents said they knew nothing at all about Juneteenth this year compared with 28% last year, despite 45 states and Washington, D.C., having had some formal recognition of Juneteenth before Biden signed the bill into law. With greater understanding has also come more support for recognition: This year, 45% of respondents said they thought Juneteenth should be a federal holiday, and 25% said they were not sure or were unfamiliar with Juneteenth. That’s compared with 35% who last year said it should be a federal holiday, and 40% who said they were not sure or unfamiliar with the holiday. And despite many of the laws that have swept through states restricting race-conscious education, 63% said they supported making Juneteenth part of history curriculums in public schools, up from 49% last year. The shifting tide is exactly what Opal Lee, who has long lobbied for federal recognition of Juneteenth as a holiday, has been working toward for decades. Still, she warned against resting “on our laurels,” she told D magazine. “There is still work to be done. Our educational system doesn’t tell the truth and we need the truth told.”Lee is one of many activists and organizers who say Juneteenth is not only for celebration but for action. A coalition of organizations are demanding that Biden create a federal commission by executive order to study reparations and the long-term effects of slavery. Enyia, of the Movement for Black Lives, said that action is especially important for bolstering policies that will benefit Black people and contribute toward their liberation — whether it’s overhauling policing and public safety on a local and federal level or policies that would expand economic opportunities like student loan forgiveness. For Lee, who has spent much of her 95 years marching on roads across the country to advocate for Juneteenth as its own federal holiday, Juneteenth is a moment for work, but it’s also a moment for all Americans to celebrate their liberties. “It’s important that people recognize it is not a Black thing, that it’s not just a Texas thing, but that it’s about freedom for everybody — and we’re not free yet.” Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. | Civil Rights Activism |
Civil rights attorneys are planning new approaches to advancing racial justice after the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and recent rulings that have eroded civil rights victories.Over its long history, the court has been viewed as a friend and a foe of racial progress. Last week’s decision to overturn a 50-year precedent in the landmark abortion case, signaled another turning point, said ReNika Moore, the director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. She immediately saw how the decision would disproportionately imperil the lives of low-income and women of color, particularly Black women. She also saw the implications of the decision for cases where race is at the heart of the matter.“It doesn’t bode well for how the court will treat those civil rights cases,” Moore said.Overturning Roe v Wade opens the door for reconsidering precedents that have advanced civil rights over the past century, from school desegregation to voting rights to affirmative action, legal scholars and civil rights advocates say. The decision also underscores that the court, which hears about 1% of cases petitioned annually, has thwarted as much as it has supported civil rights over the decades.“The epicenter of action is shifting,” said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Civil rights groups cannot solely rely on the courts and must instead renew a focus on building coalitions with other groups and lobbying, in addition to pursuing litigation, he said.In many ways, that has always been the strategy, said H Timothy Lovelace Jr, professor of law and history at Duke University School of Law. Prominent civil rights attorneys like Thurgood Marshall, who became the first Black justice in 1967, saw the supreme court as a “beacon of hope” for the advancement of civil rights. They saw the political process largely as closed off to Black Americans and turned to the courts to get a “fair shot at advancing racial justice”, Lovelace said.By the 1960s, as the student-led protests swept the nation, an uneasy marriage between civil rights attorneys and some activists occurred. Julian Bond and John Lewis, then members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), were critical of the slow pace of litigation. They were part of a generation of civil rights activists who came after Marshall and put their bodies on the line through protest, voter registration drives and other direct action in the south.The rise of movement-oriented lawyers like Howard Moore Jr, who worked as a counsel for SNCC, emboldened activists who saw lawsuits as supporting, rather than supplanting, grassroots organizing, says Lovelace, who is also the John Hope Franklin research scholar at Duke law school. Beyond representing jailed activists, including Angela Davis, Moore helped with voter organizing drives and, in the supreme court case Bond v Floyd, represented Bond, who was blocked by Georgia lawmakers from taking office in the legislature for supporting SNCC’s stance against the war in Vietnam.Today’s civil rights attorneys draw more from SNCC’s school of thought, viewing litigation as a tool in the arsenal. “[They] are students of these past struggles,” Lovelace said. “They understand that courts are limited at ensuring racial justice.”Hewitt agrees. “We got here through the sweat, tears, and sometimes blood of people who were putting their lives on the line in peaceful protest. We got here from the blood of civil rights martyrs who were killed for doing nothing except for exercising their constitutional rights. We got here because of political pressure as well.”For most of its history after Reconstruction, the federal court has been hostile toward civil rights, attorneys say. In 1896, in Plessy v Ferguson, the supreme court upheld racial segregation, a decision that stood for decades. Even then, Lovelace says, civil rights activists focused on “racial uplift within Black communities” and didn’t see litigation as the agent for social change given the court’s “antagonism to the struggle of racial justice”.Then, the NAACP, under its first general counsel Charles Hamilton Houston, who worked with his protege Thurgood Marshall, pursued test cases to chip away at racial segregation, which eventually led to eliminating white primaries in Smith v Allwright in 1944 and racial desegregation in public schools in Brown v Board of Education in 1954. Still, the pursuit of racial progress in the courts has often led to backlash from white Americans and the court itself.By 1973, after Richard Nixon appointed four justices to the supreme court, they decided in Milliken v Bradley to curtail federal authority to enforce desegregation, leaving it to cities and counties to ensure that schools were integrated. “The very evil that Brown was aimed at will not be cured but will be perpetuated,” then Justice Marshall wrote in a dissenting opinion.“That history painfully shows that while the court had an important role in checking some of the worst abuses, the court was never in and of itself going to be able to heal the wounds of white supremacy,” says Samuel Spital, director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “That requires a much deeper and sustained level of organizing and collective action by people as a whole.”Hewitt notes that the court has grown increasingly conservative in the last three decades he has worked as an attorney. What’s unique now is that the conservative justices’ opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a “disturbing” reversal of previously upheld constitutional rights. “It’s just stunning and shakes the foundation of everything that we’ve been led to believe about the constitution and about this country,” Hewitt said.Following the Dobbs decision, he and his staff have discussed how to work with reproductive rights organizations, though no firm plans are underway. “We have a lot of organizations but not enough movement in this country,” Hewitt said. “This calls for us to come together with shared goals.”Lovelace notes that the court under Chief Justice John Roberts has undermined racial justice progress. “If activists wait for the court to act, it may be decades before it responds in a way that advances racial justice,” Lovelace said, pointing to its decision to gut the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v Holder.In October, the court will hear arguments in an Alabama redistricting case that will determine whether Black voting power will be diluted. On Thursday, the court announced that it would hear a North Carolina case that could give states wide latitude in setting election rules and potentially leave gerrymandering unchecked.And the court has also agreed to hear affirmative action cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that could upend the use of race in college admissions. Hewitt, whose group represents Black and Latino students who intervened in the University of North Carolina case, cautions the conservative majority’s actions gives a sense that “no precedent is safe”.Moore of the ACLU says the supreme court’s relationship with civil rights is defined by ebbs and flows – and regression.“When we think about Brown v Board of Education, that case was decided in 1954, and schools are more segregated than at any other time,” Moore said. “There have been huge gains and opportunities for Black children and children of color. But we’re still seeing stark divisions about the kinds of education that a child accesses because of race. That tells us there’s undeniably progress and undeniably still work to be done.” | Civil Rights Activism |
Politics July 25, 2022 / 10:02 AM / CBS News Looking ahead to midterm elections Looking ahead to 2022 midterm elections 05:00 Washington — More than 40 organizations are joining forces as a coalition to mobilize African American voters for November's midterm elections, with the announcement of a multi-state voter engagement and organizing effort expected Monday, officials familiar with the campaign told CBS News.The National Unity 2022 Black Voting and Power Building Campaign, or Unity 22, will focus on building a broad intergenerational coalition to maximize resources, providing tools to Black voters and fighting back against historic attacks on various rights, according to press releases from the groups."It's not just talking about, this is what's on the ballot and this is why you should vote, but really literally organizing as we have been doing for the past year," said Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. The organization is leading the campaign along with national and state-based partners like the NAACP, National Urban League, National Action Network, Black Voters Matter, NARAL, Emily's List and Building Back Together. Campbell said the groups aim to match or exceed Black voter turnout levels from the 2018 midterms. More than 122 million people cast ballots in 2018's races, with a 51.4% turnout rate among African Americans, according to the Pew Research Center. The coalition will kick off a summer of activism in 11 states with community events and a call to action on issues ranging from gun safety to voting rights and reproductive rights. It will also include a social media campaign called #RUVoteReady to register and educate voters and a recruitment drive for poll workers and monitors. "We're combining our advocacy, if you will, in a real tangible way, because you're having these attacks that are falling to the states," Campbell said, citing the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. "The impact is real because on the ground where people are having to deal with this. It plays out when you can't go to that Planned Parenthood clinic because you go in there for more than an abortion. There are other medical needs."She said the campaign is starting with upcoming primaries in MIchigan and Ohio. It will also target other key battlegrounds, including Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Aides say the group hopes to make more than 1 million Black voter contacts and train more than 500 youth organizers. "We have to work together to educate our community on how to protect their vote because you have all these voter suppression laws on the books," Campbell explained, referring to the 19 states that passed restrictions last year. "So this will be the first really national election where we're going to see the results." As President Biden's approval rating has dropped in recent months, support has also softened among Black voters. A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found 7 in 10 approve of the president's job performance, down 8 percentage points from the previous year. Sixty percent of those surveyed said the Mr. Biden is keeping most of his campaign promises, while 37% said he has not. "Biden and Harris are not on the ballot," Campbell countered. "Who's on the ballot are Congress people ... the governors and state legislatures." She said the coalition would target key demographics, especially young people, where support for Mr. Biden has also eroded. "So really trying to educate and motivate and do a peer-to-peer model of young people really encouraging their peers," Campbell said. "And yes, there's disappointment, and yes, we have to keep pushing this administration to do, you know, what they promised, and things like that, and that won't stop." Nikole Killion Nikole Killion is a congressional correspondent for CBS News based in Washington D.C. Twitter Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue | Civil Rights Activism |
Disgraced ex-police officer Derek Chauvin will be sentenced in federal court Thursday for charges surrounding the death of George Floyd that sparked a nationwide outcry and a summer of protests in 2020. The former Minneapolis police officer will receive his sentence for violating Floyd's civil rights after he agreed to a sentence of 20 to 25 years in his December plea to a federal charge in Floyd's killing. A May plea agreement, accepted by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, would extend Chauvin's sentence while potentially relocating him to more favorable conditions in federal prison. Chauvin's lawyers asked for 20 years in prison, saying their client accepts responsibility for his actions coupled with already receiving a sentence of 22.5 years in prison from a state court for the murder of Floyd. However, prosecutors want a full 25 years, arguing Chauvin's actions were cruel and unnecessary. FEDERAL JUDGE ACCEPTS PLEA DEAL FOR DEREK CHAUVIN IN CIVIL RIGHTS CASE In this screen grab from a video, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is seen during victim impact statements as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presides over the sentencing on June 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. (Court TV, via AP, Pool) The former officer's "remorse will be made apparent to this Court," defense attorney Eric Nelson wrote on behalf of his client, suggesting Chauvin may speak during the hearing Thursday. Magnuson will make the final decision and could sentence above or below the 20- to 25-year range. The sentencing is set to begin Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. Chauvin, 46, made an address to Floyd's family at his state sentencing hearing in May 2021. An attorney for the Floyd family told a local CBS affiliate that family members would be in court for the sentencing Thursday. By entering his federal plea, the former officer admitted for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck despite Floyd repeating the statement "I can't breathe" several times before he became unresponsive during the May 2020 arrest. Chauvin, a white man, pleaded guilty to federal charges in December that he abused his power to violate the civil rights of Floyd, a black man, thereby avoiding a possible life sentence in prison. During the hearing last year, he addressed the Floyd family and said: "I want to give my condolences to the Floyd family. There is going to be some other information in the future that would be of interest, and I hope things will give you some peace of mind." While Chauvin's plea calls for him to serve the federal sentence at the same time as the state one, rendering him a longer stay behind bars than he would have faced with the state sentence alone, experts say the deal could mean safer conditions in the federal system. The ex-officer may risk encountering inmates in Minnesota state prison whom he previously arrested or investigated. Although he may be viewed as a former law enforcement officer, a sentence in federal prison may reduce the risk of running into inmates he directly encountered during his career. Chauvin would also have more allowances to work and participate in programming and chances to move about the facility. By maintaining good credit for time in federal prison, he could serve anywhere from 17 years to 21 1/4 years behind bars if Magnuson upholds the range of the plea agreement. This undated file photo provided by Christopher Harris shows George Floyd. Floyd died on May 25 after he was pinned to the pavement by a police officer who put his knee on the handcuffed black man's neck until he stopped breathing. (Christopher Harris via AP, File) CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The video showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest in Minneapolis in May 2020. Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe before losing consciousness and was later pronounced dead. The events of that day spurred a wave of protests in Minneapolis and around the country against police brutality and racial inequalities. The three other former officers present during the arrest, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, were convicted of violating Floyd's civil rights in February and are awaiting sentencing. | Civil Rights Activism |
Players thought taking a knee no longer carried the same weight. The Premier League believes performing it less often can still make an impact.Even though every match day will no longer see a moment to highlight the racism that continues to blight footballers in their workplace, the legacy of the gesture will linger for the good of the game.
Delaying kick-off for two years to allow players to drop to their knees has ushered in a new era of in-stadium activism by players.Football officials renowned for their timidity have been playing catch-up with the desire of the stars to use their status to take on the authorities to change society for the better, sparked by the global outrage at the murder of George Floyd in the US in 2020.Players are no longer punished - if FIFA's plea for common sense is followed - for revealing T-shirts promoting society causes and injustice. But the make-up of the group of individuals who decided players would only take a knee on four Premier League match rounds next season highlighted one of the reasons for continuing to do so. Of the 20 captains who participated in the Premier League talks, 18 were white.
The lack of diversity is highlighted across stadiums. More on Racism In Football Footballers to no longer take the knee before every Premier League game Brentford player Rico Henry says racism against mum at Everton's Goodison Park ' brought fire to my stomach' Crawley Town FC manager John Yems sacked after allegations of racism towards his own players Patrick Vieira, whose Crystal Palace kicks off the season against Arsenal on Friday night, is the only black manager.Those reporting on the matches can also still mainly be white men.The Premier League and Football Association top leaders are all white.English football is yet to see stadium closures for racism. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player How did 'take the knee' movement start? Read more: Racism against my mum 'brought fire to my stomach', footballer saysThe players' union, the PFA, said players are still determined to use their platform and voice to draw attention to racial injustice and discrimination.The need to do so in football was underscored just as the decision dropped from the Premier League that teams will no longer take the knee every week.Kick It Out, the anti-discrimination organisation, announced that in 2021-22 there had been a 41% rise in discriminatory incidents reported in grassroots football compared to the last full season of games before the pandemic.Players will no longer be seen taking a knee every week, but the abuse they face will take longer to remove from the game. | Civil Rights Activism |
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israel raided the offices of several Palestinian advocacy groups it had previously blacklisted as terrorist organizations early Thursday, sealing entrances and declaring them closed. Western diplomats visited one of the offices hours later in a show of support for the outlawed groups.
The raids marked a major escalation against the civil society organizations, which Israel has outlawed over claims that they have ties to a militant group, a charge they deny. Israel has provided little evidence to back up its accusations. Nine European countries have rejected Israel’s charges against the groups, citing a lack of evidence.
Israel claims the groups are linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, left-wing movement with a political party as well as an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. Israel outlawed the groups last year.
READ MORE: Report says ‘perpetual’ Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas is the root of tensions
Shawan Jabarin, director of al-Haq, one of the targeted groups, said he and his staffers are still examining whether any documents were confiscated.
Israeli troops “came, blew up the door, got inside, and messed with the files,” he told The Associated Press. They then sealed the entrance to the office, he said.
Another of the groups, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, circulated video showing soldiers in full battle gear searching their office and moving equipment.
Rights defenders have described Israel’s moves against the groups as part of a decades-long crackdown on political activism in the occupied territories. Last month, nine EU member states said Israel hasn’t backed up its allegations and that they will continue working with the groups.
A delegation of mostly European diplomats visited al-Haq’s office hours after the raid in a show of support.
“We express our solidarity with our partners, which we have been supporting for many, many years,” said Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, the EU representative to the Palestinian territories, who led the delegation. He said their work in supporting human rights was “indispensable.”
The Israeli military said it closed seven institutions and seized their property in Thursday’s raids. The military did not immediately explain the discrepancy in the numbers, between groups designated and groups raided.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz‘s office reiterated its claim that the groups “operate under the guise of performing humanitarian activities to further the goals of the PFLP terrorist organization, to strengthen the organization and to recruit operatives.”
Most of the targeted organizations document alleged human rights violations by Israel as well as the Palestinian Authority, both of which routinely detain Palestinian activists.
The groups reportedly raided include al-Haq, a veteran, internationally respected Palestinian rights group; Addameer, which advocates for Palestinian prisoners; the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Bisan Center for Research and Development.
Jabarin said “neighbors and strangers” who were nearby during Thursday’s raid had opened the office in Ramallah as soo as the Israeli forces left, and that al-Haq’s staff were inside and resuming their work.
“We don’t take permission from any Israeli military or political official. We are proceeding, encouraged by our belief in accountability and the international law,” he said.
READ MORE: Israel carried out Gaza strike that killed 5 children, report says
Troops raiding al-Haq’s office broke through a door leading to the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church compound, which rents the office space to the group, according to the church rector, Rev. Fadi Diab. The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem condemned what it said was a “flagrant attack” on the compound, saying the al-Haq office had its own separate entrance.
The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the church statement.
Thursday’s raids come seven months after Israel outlawed Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan and others.
The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank described the closure of the organizations as a “dangerous escalation and an attempt to silence the voice of truth and justice.” Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official, said the PA will appeal to the international community to reopen the institutions.
Israel and Western countries consider the PFLP a terrorist organization.
A Defense Ministry statement last year said some of the outlawed groups are “controlled by senior leaders” of the PFLP and employ its members, including some who have “participated in terror activity.”
It said the groups serve as a “central source” of financing for the PFLP and had received “large sums of money from European countries and international organizations,” without elaborating.
Israel has long accused human rights groups and international bodies of being biased against it and of singling it out while ignoring graver violations by other countries.
Also Thursday, the Israeli military said Palestinian gunmen fired at soldiers who were escorting Jewish worshippers to a shrine in the West Bank city of Nablus and that the soldiers returned fire. The army was referring to an incident in the early hours in which Palestinians said an 18-year-old Palestinian, Waseem Khalifa, was killed.
Joseph’s Tomb is a flashpoint prayer site. Some Jews believe the biblical Joseph is buried in the tomb, while Muslims say a local sheikh is buried there. The army escorts Jewish worshippers to the site several times a year, in coordination with Palestinian security forces. Clashes sometimes break out at the site.
Akram reported from Gaza City. Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Ottawa, Ontario contributed to this report. | Civil Rights Activism |
This family handout photograph taken in Chicago, date unknown, shows Mamie Till Mobley and her son, Emmett Till, whose lynching in 1955 became a catalyst for the civil rights movement.AP Finally, an Aug. 29, 1955, arrest warrant in the Emmett Till case has been discovered, issued for the arrest of “J.W. Milam, Roy Bryant and Mrs. Roy Bryant” and alleging they “did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously and without lawful authority, forcibly seize and confine and kidnap” 14-year-old Till.Not surprisingly, there were calls last week for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — Mrs. Roy Bryant — the only one of the three still alive. But this fresh demand raises two immediate questions. First, can the warrant be executed against Donham nearly 67 years later? Second, should it be?Under Mississippi law, the answer to the first question is yes, since the warrant has never been served or vacated. The call to do that is understandable. After all, no one ever has answered for the brutal 1955 lynching of Emmett, a crime set in motion when Roy Bryant learned that Emmett had whistled at his wife at the Bryant Grocery and Meat Market in tiny Money, Mississippi.Between 2 and 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 28, following a night of drinking, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam forced their way at gunpoint into the home of Emmett’s relatives, terrorized the family and marched the Chicago teen out to a truck parked in front. Emmett’s great-uncle, Moses Wright, stood helplessly on the front porch and heard a brief conversation at that truck.First, one of the kidnappers. “Is this the one?” Then a woman’s voice.“Yes.”In the interest of justiceIt long has been believed that Carolyn Bryant was that woman, a reasonable conclusion. However, there is no legal proof. This has been a source of great frustration for Till family members, especially the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., Emmett’s cousin and best friend, who was at the house that night. John W. Milam, left; his half-brother Roy Bryant, center; Bryant’s wife Carolyn, right. AP Photos That frustration has been made worse because of how the case unfolded. Despite an admission by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam that they kidnapped Emmett, they were never indicted for that crime and were acquitted of Emmett’s murder by an all-white, all-male jury.That is why, in the interest of accountability and justice, there has been interest in investigating, charging and potentially convicting Carolyn Bryant Donham. She was the focus of an investigation by the FBI and the state of Mississippi between 2004 and 2006, a probe that produced a reported 8,000 pages of documents but no indictment.No charges were filed following a second phase of the investigation either, following a January 2017 report that Donham had admitted she lied when she said in sworn courtroom testimony that Emmett had accosted her. The FBI determined that there was no credible evidence to support that claim that Donham admitted she lied — Donham later denied it — which was published in the book “The Blood of Emmett Till” by Timothy Tyson. The FBI investigation was closed on Dec. 6, 2021.The question for a prosecutor would be whether anything more than headlines would result from arresting Donham. The value in arresting the 88-year-old Donham would be partly to send a message: No matter how long you live, you will have to answer for a hate crime. But it’s more than symbolic. While Donham was questioned several times during the FBI investigations, being interrogated subject to an arrest warrant certainly raises the threat level and might prompt her to tell the truth, something she appears to have avoided so far. There would be some measure of justice in such a revelation, since Rev. Parker and I already have seen evidence suggesting her lack of honesty. Clearing the record is at least one purpose of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act.Yet the prosecutor would have to bring charges against her within a reasonable time or set her free. What if, once again, there are no charges? What would be the take-away message? She already has described herself as a victim.It would seem that the last thing advocates for an arrest would want is for the person who is believed — with good reason — to have taken part in a horrific crime to be arrested, only to escape judgment and claim to have been exonerated. That would add another tragic layer to this story.Ironically, then, serving the newly discovered warrant might not serve justice. Maybe just the opposite.Perhaps, at the end of the day, an enduring, unchallenged belief in her guilt is the better outcome.Christopher D. Benson is an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and co-author with the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. of the upcoming book “A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on The Journey to Justice For My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till.” Benson is also president of the Board of Directors of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley Institute.The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds from our readers. See our guidelines. | Civil Rights Activism |
If a person can somehow be widely adored while being simultaneously underappreciated, they must be truly great. The late NBA legend Bill Russell was a truly great person.In the time since Russell’s death was announced by his family on Sunday, tributes have poured in from around the world. Among them was an eloquent eulogy from former US president Barack Obama in which he writes, “As tall as Bill Russell stood, his legacy rises far higher –both as a player and as a person.” Obama would know: he presented Russell with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. And yet, despite the outpouring of kind words in his memory, Russell may still be the most underappreciated icon in NBA history.Before recognizing his wider impact, it’s worth laying out Russell’s basketball credentials. To begin with, Russell is the winningest player in NBA history and it’s not even really close. During his 13 seasons in the league, he led the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA championships, including eight consecutive titles from 1959 to 1966. No other team has ever won more than three consecutively. Russell, of course, would never claim that he won those championships – the Celtics won them. He was the consummate team player who took pride in performing the glamourless but productive duties which ultimately won games. Russell once wrote, “The most important measure of how good a game I played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.” Even opponents seemed to notice how nice it looked to play with Russell: he was named the regular-season MVP five times during the era in which the award was determined by players’ votes.Russell’s fortes were his rebounding and (especially) his defense. He played in an era before Defensive Player of the Year awards –they didn’t even record blocks and steals when Russell played – but it’s safe to say he would’ve won several. Hall of Fame point guard Bob Cousy won six championships with Russell and said he played with “animal intensity”. Russell also understood that the mental component of basketball (and of defense, in particular) can be as important as the game’s physical aspects. “Remember that basketball is a game of habits,” he observed. “If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you’ve got him.”Bill Russell speaks during a DNC fundraiser attended by then-US president Barack Obama at the Boston Center for the Arts in 2011. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty ImagesRussell also had a knack for playing at his best when it mattered most. During his first championship run in 1957, Russell blocked Jack Coleman in the final minute of regulation in the deciding Game 7 to keep the Celtics in the game and allow them to eventually win the title. In another Game 7 that also went to overtime, in 1962, Russell scored 30 points and grabbed 40 rebounds, leading his team in both categories. In fact, Russell seemed to keep a secret gear just for Game 7s: his teams were 10-0 in such games throughout his career, an NBA record. Russell never won an NBA finals MVP (the award was only introduced in his final season), but the fact that the NBA eventually named that trophy after him demonstrates how inextricably linked Russell’s play was with championship excellence.However, while the on-court accolades establish Russell has one of the greatest players to ever touch hardwood, it was his activism off the court that made him a legend. Russell was the NBA’s first Black superstar at a time when legalized racial segregation still existed in much of the country. The Civil Rights Act wouldn’t be passed until Russell’s eighth year in the NBA. Russell’s celebrity didn’t insulate him from the issues facing the rest of the country. He was subjected to racism throughout his career, even in Boston, the city he represented for 13 years: vandals once broke into his Massachusetts home and covered the walls with racist graffiti. Such bigotry and intimidation tactics, however, never prevented Russell from taking a stand against the injustices around him. In 1961, he boycotted a game in Kentucky after a white waitress refused to serve two of his Black teammates at a coffee shop. In 1967, Russell appeared alongside boxer Muhammad Ali to express his support for Ali’s refusal to serve in the Vietnam War. Russell’s record of civil rights advocacy is substantial.And so, despite his countless athletic achievements, that is probably Russell’s most significant legacy: his commitment to using his platform as basketball star to amplify his political actions. The NBA outperforms other sports leagues when it comes to addressing social issues in a head-on way, and that is a consequence of Russell’s early example. Every time LeBron James combats election misinformation or Steve Kerr advocates for gun control, their following a trail blazed by Russell. Russell’s on-court accomplishments may never be touched, but his off-court legacy is in good hands. | Civil Rights Activism |
These booking images provided by the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office show the 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front who were arrested after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear near an LGBTQ pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Saturday, June 11, 2022. (Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office via AP)Extremely online neo-Nazis are big mad at the cops for figuratively and literally unmasking 31 members of white supremacist group Patriot Front this weekend in Idaho.For many in the neo-Nazi and extreme-right communities, few punishments carry as much weight as being identified and held accountable for their online activities and racist activism. So many took it as an attack when cops arrested 31 members of Patriot Front, a group of khaki-clad white supremacists known for their propaganda videos, from the back of a U-Haul truck in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The men had come from over 11 separate states with a smoke bomb and shields to crash an LGBTQ Pride event. No firearms were found on the men or in the U-Haul. Members of the group, who typically obscure their identities with white face coverings, were arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy, a misdemeanor, and had their masks pulled off before being loaded into a police car. Later the members’ names and mugshots were also released in public documents. Among those who were arrested and charged was Thomas Rousseau, the group's founder and leader.Since then, activists and journalists have been scouring leaked chats and videos to connect the men with their racist and anti-LGBTQ activities. Now, some are attempting to dox the local police officers in Coeur d'Alene and are urging others to help in the effort, as first reported by Nick Martin of the Informant.“An attack on one member of the white race is an attack on us all. I'm not going to tolerate it. I'm going to find out who those officers are,” one outraged Patriot Front fan said in a video posted on Gab, “and I'm going to dox every single one of them.” “Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. You'll be hearing from me soon. Fuck you,” he continued. The video was shared within a network of neo-Nazi activists who all praised the man and said they would aid in the effort.“Pigs pissed off the exact demographic you DON'T actually want mad at you,” one of them wrote. “These people have names,” another wrote. Hating the police is pretty common among the extreme-right who typically considers traditional authority a barrier to their goals. In a press conference Monday morning, Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said that he and his fellow officers were being “screamed and yelled at” by anonymous people calling. Some officers were even getting death threats from as far away as Norway, according to Lee. On Telegram, several neo-Nazi and white supremacist accounts shared addresses and phone numbers they’ve found online associated with Coeur d'Alene police officers. A few have posted about how they’ve called the numbers and found them disconnected. Police officer numbers and addresses are typically unlisted due to this exact reason. What is listed online, however, are the phone numbers and addresses of the police stations where the officers are based. Other accounts on Telegram have posted that they’re giving the police and sheriff's offices bad reviews online and calling and leaving rude messages. “I just left the police chief a scathing voice mail in Idaho for arresting Patriot Front,” one Nazi wrote. One well known neo-Nazi terror group, which has had former members arrested by the FBI for a myriad of crimes, also posted in favor of attempting to release the names of the police officers. “Our enemies have names, addresses, and loved ones too. We have no moral obligation to subject them to equal retribution for their crimes,” reads a statement they released. “They deserve to be tortured and humiliated in the most egregious fashion possible.”The group, however, has a spotty record of being able to conduct proper research of who they are targeting and once accidentally staged a propaganda photo at the wrong home. While conducting other research on the Patriot Front arrests this weekend, extremely online members of the extreme-right also found that the Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris’ work biography says he once trained with Mossad in the early 2000s following 911. This, of course, makes Norris a “Mossad asset” and the arrests, a part of an elaborate Israeli-planned operation to target the Patriot Front, according to multiple online racists.“How many other TRAITORS to the United States have been trained and paid by Israeli intelligence to deprive Americans of their rights here at home?” one white nationalist writer wrote. “This is the most pressing foreign policy issue of our times.” Patriot Front’s was born in 2017 after splintering off from the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America in the wake of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The group publicly attempts to eschew outright racism in favor of a focus on nationalism. A recent leak, however, shows the group is rife with white supremacy and its members have a fascination with neo-Nazism as well as shaming fellow members for their porn and junk food habits. Patriot Front has long worked as a recruitment funnel for harder and more openly violent neo-Nazi groups. The group regularly organizes flash counter-protests meant to create propaganda videos and puts up posters and stickers. The Anti-Defamation League found in 2021 that the group was responsible for a sizable portion of white supremacist propaganda posted publicly in the United States. The embrace of Patriot Front hasn’t extended to all avenues of the far-right. Those who exist in a more conspiratorial corner of the far-right, unsurprisingly, have begun to weave elaborate stories in which the Patriot Front is a "honey pot”, the members are mostly are federal agents (a conspiracy that’s been around for some time and endorsed by the likes of Joe Rogan) and that the arrests were a plot to discredit the other activists. Accusations of the men who were arrested being cops themselves left many in the neo-Nazi and white supremacist sphere of the extreme-right rather agitated. “Brave young men take enormous risks, expense, self-sacrifice and what do conservatives do,” one wrote indigently. “STAB THEM IN THE BACK.” Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White also seemed to be a little annoyed by the conspiracy when a “concerned citizen” asked him about it at the Monday press conference. “Let me be very clear here: These were not law enforcement officers that we arrested,'' he said. “These were members of the hate group Patriot Front. These were not antifa in disguise, nor were they FBI members in disguise."Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Get the latest from VICE News in your inbox. Sign up right here.By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. | Civil Rights Activism |
UVALDE, Texas -- In some ways, 17-year-old high school senior Jazmin Cazares is like so many other teenagers. She can get bored easily, loves to sleep in and dotes on her attention-seeking dog.But since June, she’s been spending 30 to 40 hours a week pushing for gun reform in her red home state.Jazmin Cazares holds a photo of her sister, Jackie, who was killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.Kat Caulderwood/ABC NewsUvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.Cazares' 9-year-old sister, Jackie, and 10-year-old cousin, Annabell Rodriguez, were two of the 19 children shot and killed with an AR-15-style rifle at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Two teachers were also slain in the May 24 massacre.Like the Parkland high schoolers who came before her, Cazares is channeling her anger and heartbreak into advocacy."I didn't really plan on activism," Cazares told ABC News from her Uvalde bedroom, which is filled with her original artwork and an extensive collection of crystals."I would've waited a little longer, honestly," to get involved in advocacy following the May 24 massacre, she said. But at a June rally, a March for Our Lives official encouraged her to take the mic. Cazares was apprehensive, but once she started speaking, the nerves dissipated.She told the crowd about the morning of the shooting: she usually bumped into her baby sister in the bathroom before school, but on May 24, the 17-year-old woke up late. She told the supporters she felt guilty for not remembering the last thing she ever said to her Jackie the day before.The dedication in Uvalde's town square for 9-year-old victim Jackie Cazares, Sept. 6, 2022.Emily Shapiro/ABC NewsJackie loved gymnastics and Starbucks and dreamed of going to Paris when she graduated, her sister says. The sisters planned to save up and go on a trip."She was getting to that age where she wanted to be grown up, so she was taking my clothes," Cazares said. "With that age gap especially, there’s things that we couldn’t really connect on...In hindsight, [that] makes me feel really guilty, makes my parents feel really guilty, that we could have done more together."Fourth-grader Jacklyn Jaylen Cazares, 9, in an undated family photo. Cazares was killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.Courtesy the family of Jackie CazaresCazares, who keeps a photo of her little sister on her bedroom mirror, said she's finding activism helpful for her grieving process.For about one week after the shooting, she said her family "didn’t really do anything, and it was really hard, because we're left alone with our thoughts, stuck at home. It was a lot harder whenever you can’t focus on anything else but what happened."Cazares testified before Texas lawmakers in Austin in June, pleading with them to pass gun safety legislation. She returned to Austin in August to demand that Gov. Greg Abbott call a special session to raise the minimum age to 21 to buy an assault weapon.The 17-year-old hopes to see a ban on assault weapons, but she added, "Being realistic in Texas, I think raising the age to 21 is the absolute bare minimum."Abbott's press secretary, Renae Eze, said in a statement to ABC News that "federal courts have made clear that the Second Amendment prohibits raising the age to buy a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21."Eze cited a ruling by the California federal court of appeals in May that said the state's law raising the age to purchase semiautomatic rifles was unconstitutional. A month later, she noted, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York gun law and a Texas federal court, following the Supreme Court standard, struck down a state law in August that restricted gun rights for adults under 21.The press secretary said the governor "continues to work on solutions focused on the root of the problem: mental health." She added, "Governor Abbott and First Lady Abbott join all Texans in mourning every single innocent life lost that tragic day, and we pray for the families."Cazares said another school shooting is "inevitable -- it’s gonna happen again no matter what.""And as much as we’re trying to prevent this from happening … without the help of our government, we’re not really gonna get anywhere," she said."We’re not trying to take away your guns," she explained. "If you are a responsible gun owner, you would support bare minimum things."Cazares has joined forces with March for Our Lives, a nationwide group founded by student survivors of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students and teachers.Parkland survivor David Hogg, an outspoken March for Our Lives leader, turned his Twitter account with 1.2 million followers over to Cazares to share her story. Cazares never expected to be fighting alongside the well-known Parkland activist she'd seen so many times on TV.Her parents, Gloria Hernandez Cazares and Javier Cazares, are taking action, too, traveling with their daughter and advocating for change on social media. Javier Cazares is now running for a county commissioner seat, the family told ABC News.The 17-year-old says she is still getting used to being a "public figure."She said she feels like it's easy to forget "we are real people. I grieve, I cry, I have panic attacks."Jazmin Cazares said she and other siblings of victims are also battling survivors' guilt."Everybody keeps saying, 'Oh, it would never happen here.' It happened everywhere else, of course it can happen here. No one just expected it to be the elementary kids," she said. "We thought if this was ever to happen, it would be us high schoolers.""People don’t understand the genuine guilt we feel for even waking up in the morning, let alone having fun," she said.Devoting up to 40 hours a week to advocacy is "rough and it’s extremely exhausting," Jazmin Cazares said. But she said, "If it would have been the other way around, I think my sister would have done the same thing. She would be in the spotlight the way I am...that’s really what keeps me going."ABC News' Kat Caulderwood and Ismael Estrada contributed to this report. | Civil Rights Activism |
DALLAS — A little more than a year after former Trump adviser Steve Bannon declared that conservatives needed to win seats on local school boards to “save the nation,” he used his conspiracy theory-fueled TV program to spotlight Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based cellphone company that had answered his call to action.“The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Bannon said during an interview with Patriot Mobile’s president, Glenn Story, from the floor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Dallas on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”Story turned to the camera and said, “We went out and found 11 candidates last cycle and we supported them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”“Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Bannon shouted as a crowd of CPAC attendees erupted in applause.It was a moment of celebration for an upstart company whose leaders say they are on a mission from God to restore conservative Christian values at all levels of government — especially in public schools. To carry out that calling, the Grapevine-based company this year created a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on nonpartisan school board races in the Fort Worth suburbs.Patriot Mobile-backed members of the GCISD board of trustees helped usher through a sweeping 36-page policy revision on Monday touching on virtually every aspect of the culture wars over race, gender and sexuality that have dominated school politics since last year.Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsThis spring, the PAC blanketed the communities of Southlake, Keller, Grapevine and Mansfield with thousands of political mailers warning that sitting school board members were endangering students with critical race theory and other “woke” ideologies. Patriot Mobile presented its candidates as patriots who would “keep political agendas out of the classroom.”Their candidates won every race, and nearly four months later, those Patriot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliver results.The Keller Independent School District made national headlines this month after the school board passed a new policy that led the district to abruptly pull more than 40 previously challenged library books off shelves for further review, including a graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” as well as several LGBTQ-themed novels. In the neighboring city of Southlake, Patriot Mobile donated framed posters that read “In God We Trust” to the Carroll Independent School District during a special presentation before the school board. Under a new Texas law, the district is now required to display the posters prominently in each of its school buildings. Afterward, Patriot Mobile celebrated the donation in a blog post titled “Putting God Back Into Our Schools.”And this week at a tense, eight-hour school board meeting, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District’s board of trustees voted 4-3 to implement a far-reaching set of policies that restrict how teachers can discuss race and gender. The new policies also limit the rights of transgender and nonbinary students to use bathrooms and pronouns that correspond with their genders. And the board made it easier for parents to ban library books dealing with sexuality.Nearly 200 people signed up to speak during public comments prior to the board vote at the school board meeting in Grapevine, Texas. Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsTo protest the changes, some parents came to the meeting wearing T-shirts with the school district’s name, GCISD, crossed out and replaced with the words “Patriot Mobile Action ISD.”“They bought four school boards, and now they’re pulling the strings,” said Rachel Wall, the mother of a Grapevine-Colleyville student and vice president of the Texas Bipartisan Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting school board candidates who do not have partisan agendas. “I’m a Christian by faith, but if I wanted my son to be in a religious school, I would pay for him to go to a private school.”Rachel Wall, the mother of a GCISD student, calls on the board of trustees to reject its "atrocious policy" dictating sweeping revisions on how the school system deals with issues of race, gender and sexuality. Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsPatriot Mobile officials didn’t respond to messages requesting comment. Leigh Wambsganss, executive director of Patriot Mobile Action and vice president of government and media affairs at Patriot Mobile, declined to speak with a reporter at CPAC, saying she did not trust NBC News to accurately report on the company’s political activism. In a social media post days later, she called the journalist’s interview request harassment, adding, “I don’t interview with reporters I don’t trust.”In recent interviews with conservative media outlets, Wambsganss has said that Patriot Mobile’s goal is to install school board members who will oppose the teaching of “LGBTQ ideologies,” fight to remove “pornographic books,” and stand against school anti-racism initiatives, which she and her supporters have argued indoctrinate children with anti-white and anti-American views.“You know, the sad thing is there is real racism, and that is really a terrible thing,” Wambsganss said in a June appearance on the Mark Davis Show, a conservative talk radio program that broadcasts in the Dallas region. “But they’re watering down and devaluing that word so bad that it’s become meaningless.”In that same interview, Wambsganss made clear that Patriot Mobile views its political activism as a religious calling — and that the group’s electoral success this spring was just the beginning. “We’re not here on this earth to please man — we’re here to please God,” Wambsganss said, adding later in the interview, “Ultimately we want to expand to other counties, other states and be in every state across the nation.”‘Make America Christian Again’Founded about a decade ago, Patriot Mobile markets itself as “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider,” which includes a pledge to donate a portion of users’ monthly bills to conservative causes.Initially, Patriot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to support groups and politicians who promised to oppose abortion, defend religious freedom, protect gun rights and support the military.After the 2016 presidential election, the company’s branding shifted further to the right and embraced Trump’s style of politics. One of Patriot Mobile’s most famous advertisements includes the slogan “Making Wireless Great Again,” alongside an image of Trump’s face photoshopped onto a tanned, muscled body holding a machine gun.After the 2016 presidential election, Patriot Mobile embraced Trump’s brand of politics.Mike Hixenbaugh / NBC NewsThat approach has drawn the support of some big names on the right.“You can give your money to AT&T, the parent company of CNN, and you can pay the salary of Don Lemon, or you can support someone like a Patriot Mobile and give back to causes that they believe in,” Donald Trump Jr. said from the stage at a CPAC gathering in February. “That’s not cancel culture, folks. That’s using your damn brain.”Patriot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with political and religious leaders who promote a once-fringe strand of Christian theology that experts say has grown more popular on the right in recent years. Dominionism, sometimes referred to as the Seven Mountains Mandate, is the belief that Christians are called on to dominate the seven key “mountains” of American life, including business, media, government and education.John Fea, a professor of American history at the private, Christian Messiah University in Pennsylvania, has spent years studying Seven Mountains theology. Fea said the idea that Christians are called on to assert biblical values across all aspects of American society has been around for decades on the right, but “largely on the fringe.”Trump’s election changed that.“It fits very well with the ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make America Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make America Christian Again,’ restore America to its Christian roots.”Patriot Mobile appears to have embraced that shift, Fea said.Beginning a year ago, one of the leading proponents of the Seven Mountains worldview, Rafael Cruz, a pastor, began leading weekly Bible studies for employees at Patriot Mobile’s corporate office, which the company films and posts on YouTube.In a recent Patriot Mobile sermon, Cruz — the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas — dismissed the concept of separation of church and state as a myth, arguing that America’s founders meant that ideal as a “one-way wall” preventing the government from interfering with the church, not preventing the church from influencing the government.He then called on people who “are rooted in the righteousness of the word of God” to run for public office.“If those people are not running for office, if they are not even voting, then what’s left?” Cruz said. “The wicked electing the wicked.”Cruz didn’t respond to a message requesting an interview.Beginning last year, after opposition to “critical race theory” emerged as a political attack on the right, Fea said he began to observe another shift in the Christian Dominionism movement. Myra Brown tells GCISD trustees that critical race theory is "divisive, hateful, anti-American, anti-free market, anti-freedom and anti-peace."Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsRather than focusing primarily on winning federal elections, these groups started talking about the need to take control of public schools — “the ideal battleground,” Fea said, “if you’re looking to fight this battle.”“This is a spiritual war, they believe, against demonic forces that undermine a godly nation by teaching kids in school that America is not great, America is not a city on the hill or that America has flaws,” Fea said. “If you can get in and teach the right side of history, and social studies and civics lessons about what America is, you can win the next generation and save America for Christ.”‘Saving our public schools’Patriot Mobile’s unconventional business strategy appears to be paying off. Without providing specific numbers, the company said it doubled its subscriber base in 2021, and as a result, it planned to give more than $1.5 million to conservative causes in 2022, triple the amount from the year prior. In January, the company filed documents to establish Patriot Mobile Action and brought on Wambsganss to lead it — a strong signal that the company was planning to get involved in school board politics.Wambsganss, a long-time political activist, had earned national acclaim among conservatives in 2021 for her work as one of the co-founders of Southlake Families PAC, another group that promotes itself as “unapologetically rooted in Judeo-Christian values.” When the Carroll school system in Southlake unveiled a diversity plan to crack down on racism and anti-LGBTQ bullying in the majority white school district, Southlake Families, under Wambsganss’ leadership, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support a slate of school board candidates who promised to kill the plan.After winning every race by a landslide, the PAC’s success was celebrated on Fox News and in The Wall Street Journal, prompting former Texas GOP Chairman Allan West to urge Southlake Families leaders to “export this to every single major suburban area in the United States of America.”At the helm of the newly established Patriot Mobile Action, Wambsganss got to work achieving that goal this spring, starting first with some suburban school systems close to home. In interviews with conservative outlets, Wambsganss has said she and her team zeroed in on four North Texas independent school districts — Keller, Grapevine-Colleyville, Mansfield and Carroll — that had implemented or considered policies dealing with race, sexuality and gender that she and other Christian conservatives found objectionable.Leigh Wambsganss interviews pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec at the Patriot Mobile booth at CPAC in Dallas on Aug. 4.Mike Hixenbaugh / NBC NewsAfter interviewing candidates in each district, Patriot Mobile Action settled on a slate of 11 who pledged to support conservative causes. Following the playbook from Southlake, the PAC hired a pair of heavy-hitter GOP consulting firms that had worked on campaigns for Ted Cruz and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin — bringing sophisticated national-level political strategies to local school board races.Patriot Mobile paid Vanguard Field Strategies nearly $150,000 to run get-out-the-vote canvassing operations across the four school districts, according to financial disclosures. The PAC paid another $240,000 to Axiom Strategies to produce and send tens of thousands of political mailers to homes across North Texas.Patriot Mobile Action sent thousands of political mailers warning residents in Southlake, Keller, Grapevine and Mansfield that critical race theory was endangering their children.Zerb Mellish for NBC NewsOne flyer sent to Mansfield residents baselessly blamed a recent classroom shooting at a local high school on critical race theory-inspired disciplinary policies and accused the district of putting “woke” politics ahead of the safety of children.A Patriot Mobile mailer sent in Grapevine and Colleyville endorsed two board candidates who the PAC said would oppose critical race theory, an academic study of systemic racism that, according to the flyer, “violates everything patriots believe in.”And Patriot Mobile sent flyers endorsing three candidates in Keller under the slogan, “Saving America starts with saving our public schools.”After all of Patriot Mobile’s candidates won, the company celebrated the victories in a blog post that also included a justification for its decision to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on nonpartisan local elections.“While the media today wishes to demonize conservative activism in local races, the truth is that liberal activists have been pouring countless dollars into local politics for many years,” the post said, citing past school board candidate donations from a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for equity in education, as well as one $35,000 donation to a candidate in the Dallas suburbs from a Democratic political action committee in 2021. “Conservative activism at the local level is long overdue.”At CPAC in August, Bannon asked Wambsganss and Story on his “War Room” TV show whether they had started to see changes in the four school districts.“Oh, tremendous,” Wambsganss said. “Those 11 seats in four ISDs means that now North Texas has over 100,000 students who, before May, had leftist leadership. Now they have conservative leadership.”Bannon replied, “Amen.”Christian music star Natasha Owens wears a Patriot Mobile-themed dress while performing at CPAC in Dallas. Lev Radin / Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images‘This is not love’On Monday night, North Texas residents got a front-row seat for what it looks like when Patriot Mobile takes over a school board. Just 72-hours before the meeting, the Grapevine-Colleyville school district had unveiled a sweeping 36-page policy touching on virtually every aspect of the culture wars over race, gender and sexuality that have dominated school politics since last year.Under the policy, teachers are prohibited from discussing any concepts related to or inspired by critical race theory or what the policy refers to as “systemic discrimination ideologies.” The policy gives school employees the right to refer to trans and nonbinary students by pronouns and names matching the ones they were assigned at birth — a practice known as misgendering or deadnaming — even if the student’s parents support their child’s gender expression. And the policy prohibits any reading materials and classroom discussions dealing with “gender fluidity,” which the document defines as any belief that “espouses the view that biological sex is merely a social construct.”Tammy Nakamura, one of the board members backed by Patriot Mobile, said the board’s 4-3 vote to adopt the policy fulfilled her campaign promise “to put an end to adults pushing their worldviews, whims and fantasies onto unsuspecting children.”GCISD trustee Tammy Nakamura voted to approve sweeping new district policies on race, gender and sexuality.Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsAlthough some members of the board majority and their supporters argued that the policy merely brought the district in line with state and federal laws, Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the plan goes well beyond the state’s anti-CRT law and appears to be in violation of federal civil rights statutes that protect students from discrimination on the basis of their gender and sexuality.“This is the most extreme board policy that we have seen related to classroom censorship,” Huddleston said.Debate over the policy turned Monday’s school board meeting into a political circus.The Patriot Mobile-aligned True Texas Project, which has been labeled as an anti-government extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, called on its supporters to pack the meeting and turn it into a party celebrating the new policy. The group set up tents hours beforehand and tailgated in the parking lot, along with an anti-trans activist group whose leader was suspended from Twitter this year after she wrote, “Let’s start rounding up people who participate in pride events,” referring to LGBTQ rights celebrations.Nearly 200 people signed up to speak during public comments prior to the board vote. One man who spoke in support of the new policy urged the board majority to “fight like hell” and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia and their dang pedo fans” — echoing false claims by some Christian conservatives in recent months that queer educators have been trying to sexually groom children.“And guess what,” the man shouted into the microphone, “teachers shouldn’t be forced to use your freakin’ made up fantasy pronouns!”Scott Western calls on GCISD trustees to approve its new policy on gender and “hold the ground against the LGBT mafia."Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsAnother resident who spoke in support of the policy said one of the things that made America great was “schools that taught kids to read and know the Bible, and recite the Constitution.” She commended the school board for working to restore those ideals. “Our kids have to be taught our foundation,” she said. “Our foundation of God-given inalienable rights, religious freedoms, individualism, democracy and a free market.”Later, a mom told the board she supported banning classroom discussions of “gender fluidity” because, she said, when her child started identifying as a girl, Grapevine-Colleyville teachers provided the student with information affirming that gender expression. As a result, the mother said, choking up as a beeper signaled that her time had expired, “I lost my son.”Nobody from Patriot Mobile spoke at the meeting. In a recent talk radio interview, Wambsganss said she and her team were busy mapping out their plans for replicating what they achieved in districts like Grapevine-Colleyville in communities across Texas.A majority of those who did comment during Monday’s meeting said they opposed the policy changes, including one father who accused Grapevine-Colleyville board members of being beholden to Patriot Mobile. “The result,” he said, “is our kids are being forced to act as pawns in their political game.”A high school student who identified as LGBTQ told the board she feared that the new policy would make queer students — who are four times as likely to contemplate suicide — feel even more alienated. “Help my friends,” she said. “Don’t tell them that they should be erased.”Caroline Critz tells GCISD trustees that she's worried about how their new policies restricting classroom discussions on gender will affect her fellow LGBTQ classmates. Emil T. Lippe for NBC NewsOne mother, a former teacher, turned to scripture to explain her opposition to the school district’s new direction under Patriot Mobile’s influence. She said she was worried about LGBTQ students and children from other marginalized groups.Paraphrasing Jesus, she said, “They will know us by our love.”“When I read about the policies and I watch and attend school board meetings,” the woman said, “I keep thinking, ‘This is not love.’” | Civil Rights Activism |
At 88, Gloria Steinem has long been the nation’s most visible feminist and advocate for women’s rights. But at 22, she was a frightened American in London getting an illegal abortion of a pregnancy so unwanted, she actually tried to throw herself down the stairs to end it.Her response to the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade is succinct: “Obviously,” she wrote in an email message, “without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.”Steinem’s blunt remark cuts to the heart of the despair some opponents are feeling about Friday’s historic rollback of the 1973 case legalizing abortion. If a right so central to the overall fight for women’s equality can be revoked, they ask, what does it mean for the progress women have made in public life in the intervening 50 years?“One of the things that I keep hearing from women is, ‘My daughter’s going to have fewer rights than I did. And how can that be?’” says Debbie Walsh, of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “If this goes, what else can go? It makes everything feel precarious.” Reproductive freedom was not the only demand of second-wave feminism, as the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s is known, but it was surely one of the most galvanizing issues, along with workplace equality. The women who fought for those rights recall an astonishing decade of progress from about 1963 to 1973 including the right to equal pay, the right to use birth control, and Title IX in 1972 which bans discrimination in education. Capping it off was Roe v. Wade a year later, granting a constitutional right to abortion. Many of the women who identified as feminists at the time had an illegal abortion or knew someone who did. Steinem, in fact, credits a “speak-out” meeting she attended on abortion in her 30s as the moment she pivoted from journalism to activism — and finally felt enabled to speak about her own secret abortion.“Abortion is so tied to the women’s movement in this country,” says Carole Joffe, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco medical school who studies and teaches the history of abortion. “Along with improved birth control, what legal abortion meant was that women who were heterosexually active could still take part in public life. It enabled the huge change we’ve seen in women’s status over the last 50 years.” Joffe says many women, like her, now feel that the right to contraception could be at risk — something she calls “unthinkable.”One of them is Heather Booth. When she was 20 and a student in Chicago, a male friend asked if she could help his sister obtain an abortion. It was 1965, and through contacts in the civil rights movement, she found a way to connect the young woman, nearly suicidal at the prospect of being pregnant, to a doctor willing to help. She thought it would be a one-off, but Booth ended up co-founding the Jane Collective, an underground group of women who provided safe abortions to those in need. In all, the group performed some 11,000 abortions over about seven years — a story recounted in the new documentary “The Janes.” Booth, now 76, sees the Roe v. Wade upheaval as a chilling challenge to the triumphs of the women’s movement.“I think we are on a knife’s edge,” she says. “On the one hand, there’s been 50 years of a change in women’s condition in this society,” she adds, recalling that when she was growing up, women could only respond to employment ads in the “women’s section,” to list just one example.“So there’s been an advance toward greater equality, but … if you ask about where we stand, I think we are on a knife’s edge in a contest really between democracy and freedom, and tyranny, a dismantling of freedoms that have been long fought for.”Of course, not every woman feels that abortion is a right worth preserving.Linda Sloan, who has volunteered the last five years, along with her husband, for the anti-abortion organization A Moment of Hope in Columbia, South Carolina, says she values women’s rights. “I strongly believe and support women being treated as equals to men … (in) job opportunities, salary, respect, and many other areas,” she says. She says she has tried to instill those values in her two daughters and two sons, and upholds them with her work at two women’s shelters, trying to empower women to make the right choices.But when it comes to Roe v. Wade, she says, “I believe that the rights of the child in the mother’s womb are equally important. To quote Psalm 139, I believe that God ‘formed my inner parts’ and ‘knitted me together in my mother’s womb.’” Elizabeth Kilmartin, like Sloan, volunteers at A Moment of Hope and is deeply pleased by the court’s decision. In her younger years she considered herself a feminist and studied women’s history in college. Then, over the years she came to deeply oppose abortion, and no longer considers herself a feminist because she believes the word has been co-opted by those on the left. “No women’s rights have been harmed in the decision to stop killing babies in the womb,” Kilmartin says. “We have all kinds of women in power. Women aren’t being oppressed in the workplace anymore. We have a woman vice president ... It’s just ridiculous to think that we’re so oppressed.” Cheryl Lambert falls squarely in the opposing camp. The former Wall Street executive, now 65, immediately thought back to the gains she made earlier in her banking career, becoming the first woman to be named an officer at the institution she worked for. She calls the court decision “a sucker punch.”“My thought was, what era are we living in?” Lambert says. “We are moving backwards. I’m just furious on behalf of our children and our grandchildren.”Lambert herself needed an abortion as a young mother when the fetus was found to carry a genetic disease. “I thought it would get easier, not harder, to have an abortion in this country,” she says. Now, she and many other women fear a return to dangerous, illegal abortions of the past — and a disproportionate impact on women without the means to travel to abortion-friendly states. Still, many are trying to see a positive side: that as bleak as the moment may seem, change could come via new energy at the ballot box. “We’re in it for the long haul,” says Carol Tracy, of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia.Steinem, too, issued a note of resolve. “Women have always taken power over our own bodies, and we will keep right on,” she wrote in her email message. “An unjust court can’t stop abortion, but it guarantees civil disobedience and disrespect for the court.”___AP Reporter Maryclaire Dale contributed to this report.___For AP’s full coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, go to https://apnews.com/hub/abortion. | Civil Rights Activism |
CNN — The Biden administration on Thursday proposed strengthening protections for transgender students under Title IX and overhauling controversial Trump-era guidance on how schools should handle sexual assault cases. The new rules would clarify that Title IX’s protections against discrimination apply to sexual orientation and gender identity and that preventing someone from participating in a school program or activity consistent with their gender identity would be in violation of the law. Title IX, a landmark piece of legislation that was signed into law 50 years ago Thursday, prohibits sex discrimination at federally funded schools. President Joe Biden said in a statement Thursday that Title IX “transformed our nation” and the US has made “monumental progress in advancing equity and equality for all students.” But, he said, “There is more work to do. As we look to the next fifty years, I am committed to protecting this progress and working to achieve full equality, inclusion, and dignity for women and girls, LGBTQI+ Americans, all students, and all Americans.” The Biden administration is also proposing rolling back a rule put in place by the Trump administration that offers more protections for those accused of sexual harassment and assault on college campuses and narrows the definition of sexual misconduct on campuses. The Trump-era changes received significant backlash from victim advocacy groups, which argued the regulations would discourage survivors from reporting sexual assault and harassment. Under the Trump rules, colleges and universities are required to hold live hearings with cross-examinations of both parties. Then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos argued that guidance issued under the Obama administration had denied due process to those accused of harassment or assault and the new rules would give more rights to those accused. The Department of Education on Thursday argued that the Trump administration had “weakened protections for survivors of sexual assault and diminished the promise of an education free from discrimination.” “These proposed regulations will advance Title IX’s goal of ensuring that no person experiences sex discrimination in education, that all students receive appropriate support as needed to access equal educational opportunities, and that school procedures for investigating and resolving complaints of sex discrimination, including sex-based harassment and sexual violence, are fair to all involved,” the department said. The proposed changes face a public comment period before being finalized. The new proposals come as conservative state lawmakers across the nation have pushed more than 100 anti-trans bills this year, with a particular focus on transgender students. If approved, the changes could give LGBTQ advocates more legal ammunition as they challenge some of the recently enacted state laws in court. The laws targeting trans students focus on several different areas of life. In Oklahoma, for example, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt last month signed into law a bill that requires students at public schools and public charter schools to use restrooms and locker rooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificates. Earlier this month, Louisiana banned transgender women and girls from competing on sports teams consistent with their gender at all public and some private elementary and secondary schools and colleges. A number of these so-called sports bans have already been challenged in federal court, with judges temporarily pausing West Virginia’s and Idaho’s enforcement of their bans in the last two years. Several civil rights groups on Thursday praised the proposals from the Biden administration, saying the new rules will help protect LGBTQ youth from discrimination. “This is a much-needed step in the right direction,” said Paul D. Castillo, an attorney with Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal advocacy group, in a statement. “With LGBTQI+ students, and especially transgender and nonbinary students, under attack from extremist politicians, these new rules will provide a stronger, clearer measure of recourse and better ensure that victims of unlawful discrimination can avail themselves of the longstanding protections under Title IX.” The Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights groups, said that by “spelling out protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, it will further safeguard a vulnerable population that is all too often preyed upon.” “The proposed rule change gets at the heart of what Title IX is supposed to do – protect students from sexual assault, sexual harassment and discrimination while on campus,” said Sarah Warbelow, the Human Rights Campaign’s legal director. “These protections are particularly critical for female and LGBTQ+ students.” Since taking office, Biden has taken several actions aimed at protecting LGBTQ rights and rolling back controversial moves made by the Trump administration. Last year, the Biden administration revoked a Trump-era decision to end protections in health care for patients who are transgender. The Department of Housing and Urban Development also announced last year that protections under the Fair Housing Act will cover LGBTQ Americans. This move allowed the federal government to investigate complaints of housing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report. | Civil Rights Activism |
Workers who are leading some of today’s most notable union campaigns gathered at HuffPost’s New York City office on Wednesday to share their stories.The panel, “A New Labor Movement,” showcased workers from Amazon, Starbucks, REI and Apple. All of those companies have seen a share of their workforce unionize for the very first time in recent months, part of a pronounced increase in labor organizing in the U.S. over the past year. The panelists explained why they decided to organize their workplaces and how they managed to pull it off, considering their employers all campaigned against their efforts and urged workers to vote against unionizing.Angelika Maldonado, vice president of the Amazon Labor Union, was a lead organizer at the retailer’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, the first and so far only Amazon facility in the U.S. to form a union. Maldonado discussed the mammoth undertaking of trying to organize an 8,000-employee facility while the company spent millions of dollars on anti-union consultants who held meetings with workers at the warehouse.Maldonado, who works as a packer at Amazon, said she and her coworkers openly challenged those consultants. “I’m a very bubbly person, very kindhearted,” she said. “However, once I feel defensive, I become very combative.... Not only myself but other organizers from the ALU were speaking out and ruining these meetings. We had proof and facts for our coworkers. We were standing up for our coworkers.” Maldonado’s experiences resonated with CJ Toothman, a worker and organizer at Starbucks in Brooklyn. Toothman’s store is one of nearly 200 Starbucks locations that have unionized with Workers United since December in a remarkable burst of organizing at the previously non-union coffee chain. Federal labor officials have accused the company of breaking the law by firing union organizers and closing certain stores where union support is high, though Starbucks maintains the terminations and closures were legitimate and not retaliatory. From left to right: Amazon worker Angelika Maldonado, Starbucks worker CJ Toothman and REI worker Emma Kate Harris speaking at "A New Labor Movement."Alexander C. Kaufman for HuffPost“Just last week I had to have a meeting with 12 different managers at one time,” Toothman said. “So many managers they couldn’t fit into the office and were literally standing around the door. I think they’re definitely trying to use scare tactics against any store that unionizes or any store that wants to unionize.”Emma Kate Harris was one of the workers who formed the first union at outdoor retailer REI, at the company’s store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. Workers there approved of unionization in a landslide in March, voting 88-14 in favor of joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. REI fought the campaign despite its progressive image as an employer. Harris discussed why the company’s arguments against a union ― including a widely mocked podcast produced by the company ― fell so flat.“The more they try to show that they’re a progressive company, the more they’re showing that their activism is really performative,” Harris said. “With all of that union-busting… they’re just bringing in more evidence of how out of touch they are and really highlighting the fact that they don’t actually know what’s going on with us.”An Apple Store in Towson, Maryland, became the tech giant’s first U.S. location to unionize last month. Billy Jarboe, a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, was one of the workers leading that effort. Jarboe said the pandemic made him and his coworkers realize that they didn’t have much of a say in workplace policies that affected them.“The pandemic… what that really revealed for me personally and for a lot of us was how many decisions were made in succession without our consideration or inclusion,” he said. “The messaging from our company was ‘we’re progressive, you already have a seat at the table.’ Well, no we don’t.”The full video of the panel can be viewed above.Apple Store worker Billy Jarboe speaks at the panel.Alexander C. Kaufman for HuffPost | Civil Rights Activism |
MINNEAPOLIS — Federal prosecutors asked a judge Wednesday to sentence one of the four former Minneapolis police officers convicted of civil rights violations in George Floyd’s killing to as many as 6 1/2 years in prison but to impose significantly stiffer yet unspecified sentences on two others.They urged U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson to follow the nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines for former Officer Thomas Lane and impose a penalty between 5 1/4 and 6 1/2 years on prison.Prosecutors also said former Officer J. Alexander Kueng deserves a “substantially higher” sentence than Lane’s, but less than the 20 to 25 years Derek Chauvin is expected to get. And they said they’ll seek a ”comparable” sentence to Kueng’s for former Officer Tou Thao.Both Lane and Kueng helped restrain Floyd on the night in May 2020 when Chauvin, who is white killed Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes despite Floyd’s fading pleas that he couldn’t breathe. Thao helped hold back a crowd of concerned bystanders.The killing sparked immediate protests in Minneapolis that spread around the U.S. and beyond in a reckoning over police brutality and discrimination against people of color.Chauvin reached a plea agreement in December that calls for a 20- to 25-year sentence. Prosecutors are seeking 25 years for him. Thao, Kueng and Lane went to trial and were convicted on related federal civil rights charges in February. Lane is white, Kueng is African American and Thao is Asian American.Prosecutors said in a sentencing memo for Kueng that “several factors weigh heavily in favor of a lengthy prison sentence” for him.They cited Kueng’s “abuse of state powers,” his “lack of acceptance of responsibility, including his (at-times obstructive and incredible) trial testimony,” the need to deter other officers from standing by when colleagues abuse arrestees who aren’t resisting, and the need for consistency with other cases of officers accused of failing to intervene to protect an arrestee from abuse.Prosecutors noted how it was established at trial that Kueng “directed a helpful firefighter away from Mr. Floyd and rebuffed Lane’s questions about whether Mr. Floyd should be rolled on his side. He personally assessed that Mr. Floyd did not have a pulse, and then did nothing about it.”And they said some of Kueng’s testimony “directly and obviously conflicted with other, irrefutable evidence presented at trial” in ways that amounted to perjury, particularly as it related to whether Kueng knew that Floyd “had a serious medical need.”The prosecutors indicated they would lay out different reasons for a similar sentence for Thao in a separate memo that had not been filed as of Wednesday evening.In a sentencing memo for Lane, prosecutors said a penalty within the federal guidelines range would be appropriate, but not less as the defense is seeking. They said Lane’s failure to provide aid that could have saved Floyd had “serious consequences” for Floyd and the broader community.Attorneys for Lane and Thao have not filed their sentencing recommendations yet. A filing outlining what Kueng is seeking was not publicly available Wednesday, but his attorney filed another document Wednesday indicating he would seek a sentence below the guideline range.Magnuson has not set sentencing dates for the four former officers. The federal civil rights cases were separate from the state murder and manslaughter charges against them.Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree murder and sentenced to 22 1/2 years. Lane accepted a plea agreement in May to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter and is awaiting sentencing on that count. Thao and Kueng, who turned down plea bargains earlier, are scheduled to go on trial Oct. 24 on state charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. | Civil Rights Activism |
Striding from the US supreme court to the nearby US Capitol, holding aloft a sign that said “My body my choice” and “Women’s right to choose”, Taylor Treacy was struggling to fathom how she had fewer constitutional rights now than when she awoke that morning.“It’s heartbreaking,” said the 28-year-old, who works in sports marketing. “The people who have legally gotten abortions in the United States are mostly Black and brown women, yet the five justices able to have the final word were four powerful men and one white woman. We’re allowing more access to guns yet we’re taking away the rights of women. It just seems like we’re going backwards.”Millions of women had just lost access to abortion on Friday after America’s highest court overturned a near-50-year-old ruling and other precedents enshrining that right. The conservative justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s majority opinion that Roe v Wade was “egregiously wrong and deeply damaging”, and that states should decide whether to limit or criminalise the procedure.Fury from protesters in US after Roe v Wade overturned – videoThe court’s liberal minority responded: “With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent.” The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states, although the timing of those laws taking effect varies.The decision, though widely expected a draft opinion leaked last month, was nevertheless a stunning aftershock of Donald Trump’s presidency and sure to enflame America’s divisions. It also cemented the supreme court’s emergence an alternative centre of power that threatens to rupture the delicate governing balance of executive, legislature and judiciary.Just 24 hours earlier, the justices had struck down New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns in public, potentially opening the way to fresh legal challenges to other state-level gun laws despite recent mass shootings in California, New York and Texas. It was a triumph for the gun lobby and a blow to Joe Biden’s efforts to curb violence.Simon Schama, a leading historian, tweeted on Friday: “American democracy is in deep trouble. It can’t survive in its present form if the constitution is manipulated to impose minority rule.”The back-to-back decisions were the fruit of a long campaign by conservatives to shift the judiciary to the right, powered by influential groups such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. The Republican presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush appointed Clarence Thomas, John Roberts (now chief justice) and Alito to the supreme court.Donald Trump’s three supreme court choices: Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who all voted to lift limits on carrying guns and strip away the right to an abortion. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/AFP/Getty ImagesA democratic deficit opened when Senate Republicans blocked Barack Obama’s last nominee for the court, Merrick Garland, on the spurious grounds that it was an election year. Then Trump, a one-term president who had lost the national popular vote by 3m, appointed three justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. It has proven his most significant legacy.The court struck down Roe v Wade against the wishes of a Democratic president, Democratic-controlled Congress and the citizenry. The majority of Americans (61%) believed that Roe should remain the law of the land, and only 36% supported overturning it, according to the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank. Even most religious Americans wanted to see Roe upheld.Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, said: “I’m afraid it’s extremely undemocratic. You now have the least democratic branch of the federal government on an ideological agenda to roll back liberties that are extremely popular with the general public in America.“It is a recipe for potential unrest, certainly demonstrations and political turmoil, as they seem intent on a course of action that will run counter to the will of the public.”The surge of judicial activism has knocked both the White House and Congress back on their heels. In Washington abortion rights protesters crowded outside the fenced-off supreme court on Friday, opposite the gleaming dome of the US Capitol, where their elected representatives vented frustration at the demise of Roe but were powerless to intervene.Two miles away at the White House, even the president seemed politically impotent. A solemn group of female staff, including domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, gathered beneath a staircase in the cross-hall to watch Biden deliver a response. Portraits of Bill Clinton and George W Bush, presidents in an era when Roe seemed sacrosanct, looked on from opposing walls.Calling it “a sad day for the court and the country”, Biden said: “It was three justices named by one president – Donald Trump – who were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country.“Make no mistake: this decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realisation of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the supreme court, in my view.”He added: “With this decision, the conservative majority of the supreme court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of this country. They have made the United States an outlier among developed nations in the world.”The president admitted that he cannot take executive action to secure a woman’s right to choose. The only hope is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade as federal law, which in turns depends on Democrats winning the midterm elections. “This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” he said. “Personal freedoms are on the ballot.”Joe Biden is powerless to restore a woman’s right to choose but urged voters to cast their ballots on the issue in the midterm elections. Photograph: Oliver Contreras/EPAOthers argue that there is another solution to offset minority rule: expanding the supreme court beyond its current total of nine justices. The pressure group Demand Justice pointed to this week’s rulings on guns and abortion as proof that reform is needed.Christopher Kang, its co-founder and chief counsel, said: “This is part of the decades-long Republican agenda to accomplish through the supreme court what they cannot through the democratically elected branches of Congress. We’ve seen in the last couple of days decisions making it harder for lawmakers to combat gun violence in the wake of some of the worst mass shootings in our country’s history. We’ve seen, now, overturning the right to an abortion.“These are things that are supported by 70 to 80% of the American people and I think we’ll see it again next week in a big case concerning whether or not the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to take action to fight climate change, another thing supported by 70 to 80% of the American people. This is a further example of what Republicans are doing through our unaccountable courts that they couldn’t do through Congress or the White House.”Americans’ faith in the supreme court has dropped to a historic low, with only 25% saying saying have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in it, down from 36% a year ago, according to a Gallup poll. Kang believes that rebuilding trust is crucial to the health of America’s increasingly fragile democracy.“Today’s ruling shows that the supreme court is the problem and so any solution has to address the supreme court,” he added. “There are other things that the president can do or Congress, with greater majorities, could do but fundamentally we have to fix the court if we have any hope of addressing these problems.”The calls take on even greater urgency because of what might be to come. Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion on Friday that the supreme court should reconsider other legal precedents protecting same-sex relationships, marriage equality and access to contraception. Biden warned: “This is an extreme and dangerous path this court is taking us on.”Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, an organisation that works to engage young voters, said: “It is the takeover of an extreme rightwing minority that seeks to roll back the gains for the LGBTQ community, for women, for people of colour.“This isn’t the end, this is the opening salvo, and they made that clear in their decision. You had Clarence Thomas state they are going to take a look at how they can change the fundamental rights that the LGBTQ community has recently won in this country.”Ramirez added: “We didn’t defeat fascism in 2020; we beat it back. But to kill fascism in this country is going to require a lot more than one election cycle.”Map of state by state abortion restrictions in USFriday’s decision is set to create a patchwork of laws from state to state. Twenty-six are certain or likely to immediately ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute thinktank. In Alabama, the state’s three abortion clinics stopped performing the procedure for fear providers would now be prosecuted under a law dating to 1951; women in the waiting room on Friday morning were suddenly turned away. Democratic state governors, however, promised to strengthen protections.Back at the supreme court, the sun was shining but the mood was one of sombre defiance as hundreds of people waved placards, chanted slogans such as “the supreme court is illegitimate” and contemplated a leap into the unknown after half a century.At 43, Tracy Tolk, a climate change and energy policy advocate, had known nothing but Roe her entire life. “I’m absolutely devastated,” she said. “I thought it would hurt less because we had a preview but it hurt more than I expected. It’s gut-wrenching. People marched on the Capitol for less than this.”Virginia Shadron, 71, a retired academic administrator from Stone Mountain, Georgia, was wearing a badge with the face of late liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death in 2020 allowed Trump to rush through the appointment of Barrett even with a presidential election already under way.She said: “Millions of women will die. It sets back women and it’s only the beginning. It’s the beginning of the end of many things, as Clarence Thomas said. Next, they’ll take on contraception. Reasonable people can feel strongly and differently about abortion. I’m glad for myself, I never had to make the choice, but if I had needed to, I would have wanted a safe, legal procedure.”There was sadness in the eyes of Maureen John, 67, who warned that the decision to overturn Roe would lead to an increase in illegal and unsafe abortions. “I’m a nurse and I’ve seen many unnecessary deaths because of the abortions done illegally,” she said.John was born in Guyana, moved to the US in 1976 and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. “I’m from the Caribbean and I came here and I became an American citizen because of democracy which wasn’t available in my country at that time. I loved it. I love being American and now I’m being disappointed at what’s happening.”“They’re making a mockery of democracy.” | Civil Rights Activism |
An attendee holds a sign supporting Planned Parenthood during the NYC Pride March in New York, U.S., on Sunday.Gabby Jones/BloombergThousands of people — many decked in pride colors — lined the parade route through Manhattan, cheering as floats and marchers passed by. Organizers announced this weekend that a Planned Parenthood contingent would be at the front of the parade.In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the top court ruling a “momentary setback” and said Sunday’s events were “an opportunity for us to not only celebrate Pride, but be resolved for the fight.”“We will not live in a world, not in my city, where our rights are taken from us or rolled back,” said Lightfoot, Chicago’s first openly gay mayor, and the first Black woman to hold the office.In San Francisco, some marchers and spectators held signs condemning the court’s abortion ruling. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rode in a convertible holding a gavel and a rainbow fan, said the large turnout was an acknowledgement that Americans support gay rights.“Even in spite of the majority on the court that’s anti our Constitution, our country knows and loves our LGBTQI+ community,” she told KGO-TV.Marchers hold Pride flags as they participate the 52nd Annual San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration on Sunday.Justin Sullivan/GettyThe warning shot from the nation’s top court came after a year of legislative defeats for the LGBTQ community, including the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children.As anti-gay sentiments resurface, some are pushing for the parades to return to their roots — less blocks-long street parties, more overtly civil rights marches.“It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life,” Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City’s annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius’, one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders.“As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream,” Clarkin said, “there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.”New York’s first Pride March, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a spontaneous street uprising triggered by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.San Francisco’s first march was in 1972 and had been held every year since, except during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.Celebrations are now global, taking place throughout the year in multiple countries, with many of the biggest parades taking place in June. One of the world’s largest, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was held June 19.In the United States, this year’s celebrations take place amid a potential crisis.In a Supreme Court ruling Friday striking down the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage and a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalizing gay sex.New York City parade spectator Jackie English said she and her fiancee Dana had yet to set a wedding date, but have a new sense of urgency.“Now we feel a bit pressured,” she said, adding they might “jump the gun a little sooner. Because, what if that right gets taken away from us?”More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas.Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify.According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment. Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation.In recent years, schisms over how to commemorate Stonewall have opened, spawning splinter groups events intended to be more protest-oriented.In New York City, the Queer Liberation March takes place at the same time as the traditional parade, billing itself as the “antidote to the corporate-infused, police-entangled, politician-heavy Parades that now dominate pride celebrations.”San Francisco’s parade was marked by the return of uniformed police, who were banned in 2020 after a 2019 confrontation with protesters who staged a parade-stopping sit-in. Critics accused them of using excessive force. On Sunday, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott, in full dress uniform, passed out small rainbow pride flags to spectators.Despite the criticism of growing commercialism, a strong streak of activism was apparent among attendees this year.“The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade has caused a very strong uproar about what went down,” said Dean Jigarjian, 22, who crossed the river from New Jersey with his girlfriend to take part in the New York City parade. “So as you can see here, the crowd seems to be very energized about what could be next.”___Associated Press writers Sara Burnett and Robert Jablon contributed from Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively. | Civil Rights Activism |
The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the New York City Police Department’s Special Victims Division after receiving reports of officers mishandling sexual assault cases and engaging in “gender-biased” practices. For more than a decade, the NYPD has failed to conduct thorough investigations when receiving reports of sexual assault and instead shamed and abused survivors while reviewing their cases, according to the DOJ. As a result, the department will examine how the sex crimes unit interacts with survivors, how it allocates resources, and what kind of support it offers victims of sexual assault. ADAMS WANTS NEW YORKERS TO SNITCH ON CELLPHONE-SURFING SUBWAY POLICE “Survivors of sexual assault should expect effective, trauma-informed and victim-centered investigations by police departments,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “Based on information provided to the Justice Department, we find significant justification to investigate whether the NYPD’s Special Victims Division engages in a pattern or practice of gender-biased policing. Investigations into sexual assault that comply with the Constitution promote accountability, enhance public safety and foster community trust.” The investigation comes three years after the city Department of Investigation released a review that determined the sex crimes unit was understaffed and did not take reports of rape seriously. Sexual assault victims also testified in the fall before the city council that the unit failed to investigate their claims and closed investigations without their approval. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The unit was restructured in May after the NYPD released a report from an independent agency recommending policy changes that would give officers “clear expectations” on how to establish a “more consistent and standardized response to sexual assault.” Police Commissioner Keechant L. Sewell and New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) have also pledged to cooperate with the DOJ’s investigation, the department said. “There is no higher priority for law enforcement than ensuring that victims of sexual assault get the justice they deserve and the care, support, and treatment they need,” Max Young, a spokesman for Adams, told the Washington Post. “We welcome this review, will cooperate fully in this investigation, and will continue to take all steps necessary to ensure we fix problems that have been decades in the making.” | Civil Rights Activism |
Prominent civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said Tuesday he will lead the legal fight on behalf of Randy Cox, a Black man who was seriously injured in the back of a police van in Connecticut when the driver braked suddenly.Crump also called for a federal civil rights investigation into the treatment of Cox, 36, who was being taken June 19, now officially the federal holiday Juneteenth, to a police station in New Haven, Connecticut, for processing on a weapons charge when his head struck the back wall of the van.Crump said police mocked Cox's cries for help and later dragged him by his feet from the van and placed him in a holding cell before he was taken to a hospital. Cox, whose legal first name is Richard, is in intensive care, paralyzed from the chest down, Crump said.At a news conference Tuesday in front of New Haven Superior Court, Crump, who has been called Black America’s attorney general for his work on civil rights cases, led a crowd in chants of “Justice for Randy Cox.”His co-counsel, Jack O'Donnell, said the legal team expects to file a federal lawsuit within 60 days, once it has reviewed all the evidence, including more than two hours of video.Some of that, including footage from a camera that recorded the moments when Cox was injured, has been released publicly.“I am here because when I looked at that video, it shocked my conscience,” Crump said. “And I believe when you all see that video, it's going to shock your conscience. The only question is, why, when the police look at Randy Cox saying, ‘I can’t move,' why doesn't it shock their conscience?”Five members of the New Haven police department have been put on leave while the episode is investigated.Cox was handcuffed when he was in the back of the New Haven police van, which was not equipped with seat belts. He flew headfirst into a wall when Officer Oscar Diaz braked hard; he said it was to avoid a collision, police said.Diaz resumed driving to the police department, despite Cox calling for help and saying he was injured and couldn’t move, according to the video and officials. A few minutes later, Diaz stopped the van to check on Cox, who was lying motionless on the floor.Diaz then called paramedics but told them to meet him at the station instead of waiting for them where he was, police said.At the station, officers dragged Cox out of the van by his feet and put him in a wheelchair, video shows. Police then booked Cox, took him out of the wheelchair and dragged him into a cell, where he was left on the floor, video shows.Paramedics arrived minutes later and took Cox to a hospital, officials said.Crump said Cox was accused of lying and told to get up several times by police.“Where’s the first aid training? Where’s the on the job training? Where’s the accountability?” said Latoya Boomer, Crump’s sister, who attended the news conference with several other family members. “I want to know, where’s the person who sees what’s going on and says, ’Maybe he’s not joking. Maybe he’s not drunk. Maybe he is in distress.”Scot Esdaile, the president of the Connecticut branch of the NAACP, said he is not convinced the hard braking of the van was an accident.“People from the community have been coming to us for years talking about how they torture people in the back of paddy wagons,” he said. “They put people in the back of the paddy wagon; they go real fast and then they slam the brakes.”New Haven Mayor Justin said last week that prisoner transport vans not equipped with seatbelts have been taken out of service and that the police department is working to install seatbelts in them. | Civil Rights Activism |
Will they or won’t they support marriage equality? That is the question facing Senate Republicans. Backers of the Senate version of the House’s Respect For Marriage Act think they are close to finding 10 Republican votes to make up the 60 votes needed to pass the measure and overcome a filibuster. But many Republicans have been very quiet about whether or not they support the bill. A common response is that they haven’t looked at the bill — a four-page document — yet. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Rob Portman have co-sponsored the bill. The time it’s taken just to confirm that eight more members of the GOP will vote yes on the measure is very much at odds with the lightning speed at which the House introduced and passed the bill. It aims to codify marriage equality for LGBTQ and interracial couples into law and would effectively cut off expected attempts to throw the U.S. back into darker times by outlawing marriages for some based on sexual orientation or race. The time it’s taken just to confirm that eight more members of the GOP will vote yes on the measure is very much at odds with the lightning speed at which the House introduced and passed the bill. With 47 House Republicans voting in favor of the bill, it seems like conservative lawmakers have figured out something very important: They can’t be the party of family values and be in favor of taking away the right to be a family for many of their constituents at the same time. Now, we wait to see how many Senate Republicans have realized it too. As a journalist who has covered many similar pieces of legislation, this issue is also particularly personal. For many queer people, marriage isn’t even a goal. In many communities, it’s still something seen as what boring heteronormative suburban gays do. I say this as someone who does want to get married someday and carries an aching heart over the fact that marriage was legalized for me just as my last serious live-in relationship ended — and might be taken away again just as I’ve moved in with a new partner and am exploring domestic bliss once again. But regardless of whether it’s a knot you’d like to tie (or not), everyone from staunch Republican voters to anti-assimilationist queer activists agrees that it’s a right people should have. Marriage equality was never about assimilation — it was about putting an end to a separate-but-equal society in which only some people have fundamental rights, including financial security and protection and stability for children, while others are seen as lesser and undeserving of those same rights and relationship recognition. A majority of American voters across all political parties have supported equal marriage rights for same-sex couples since 2021, when the annual Gallup Values and Beliefs poll found 55% of Republicans, 73% of independents and 83% of Democrats saying same-sex marriages should be recognized under law. This year, Gallup reported that 71% — up from last year’s 70% — of Americans support marriage rights for LGBTQ people. It’s a number that has risen every year since the Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized it. It could explain why 47 Republican House representatives voted in favor of the Respect For Marriage Act in this era of hyper-partisanship and divisiveness over everything politics. Decades of advocacy and activism led to this moment: LGBTQ people are more visible and accepted across mainstream society than ever before, and marriage is a fundamental part of that. We are out and proud, able to live authentically at work, school and in communities without having to hide our partners and identities out of fear of repercussion. Another Gallup poll this year found that 7.1% of the U.S. population identify themselves as LGBTQ, with numbers increasing with each younger generation to the point where 1 in 5 members of Gen Z is out as LGBTQ. This visibility has led to increased discrimination. A 2022 report from GLAAD found that 70% of LGBTQ people reported that personal discrimination has risen over the past two years. Not to mention the dozens of discriminatory state laws proposed to shove LGBTQ youth into a closet they’ve never had to be in. But change is inevitably coming; when it comes to LGBTQ equality, the train has already left the station. The GOP claims to be for family values. LGBTQ people have families now. Families with kids. LGBTQ people serve at every level of government from the federal Cabinet down. Transportation Secretary and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, campaigned openly and affectionately to help millions of people see how mainstream and likable gay couples can be. Buttigieg’s unspoken campaign slogan might as well have been, “We’re boring and suburban, just like you.” We’ve come far from the 2004 resignation of former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey, who stepped down in brewing scandal and outing threats with a new phrase that quickly entered the discourse: “I am a gay American.” But the current conservative makeup of the Supreme Court threatens to stop the progress LGBTQ communities have fought hard for. When Justice Clarence Thomas said that the court should “reconsider” its ruling in cases like Obergefell, which guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry, and Lawrence v. Texas, which decriminalized LGBTQ intimacy, it sent such a panic throughout LGBTQ communites across the country. How could it not? After all, the nation had just watched the court decide to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion — despite a majority of Americans disagreeing with the move. To even “consider” overturning constitutional protections for the LGBTQ community would be out of step with not just what the majority of the American people want, including the majority of Republicans. But anything seems possible right now. Now is the time for Republican lawmakers to act. The GOP claims to be for family values. LGBTQ people have families now. Families with kids. How would a Wanda Sykes or a Neil Patrick Harris, much less the countless other LGBTQ parents across America, explain to their kids why the Supreme Court took their parents’ marriage away and why the government didn’t do anything to stop it? When did breaking up families become a mandate for the party of family values? These questions should haunt the 157 Republicans in the House who voted against the Respect For Marriage Act, and it should give pause to the senators poised to cast their own votes. Republican voters made it clear that they support marriage equality. Now it’s up to Republican senators to listen.Mary Emily O'HaraMary Emily O'Hara is the rapid response manager at GLAAD. Previously, their news and culture writing has been published by Adweek, Into, Them, NBC News, MSNBC, Daily Dot and Vice, among others. | Civil Rights Activism |
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s annual pride parade kicked off Sunday with glittering confetti, cheering crowds, fluttering rainbow flags and newfound fears about losing freedoms won through decades of activism.
The annual marches in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere are taking place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signaled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognized in 2015.
“We’re here to make a statement,” said 31-year-old Mercedes Sharpe, who traveled to Manhattan from Massachusetts. “I think it’s about making a point, rather than all the other years like how we normally celebrate it. This one’s really gonna stand out. I think a lot of angry people, not even just women, angry men, angry women.”
Thousands of people — many decked in pride colors — lined the parade route through Manhattan, cheering as floats and marchers passed by.
People wave rainbow flags during celebrations for Pride month on June 25, 2022, in Raleigh, North Carolina. – A written opinion by one justice in the US Supreme Court’s decision to bury abortion rights has ignited fears that other progressive gains, including same-sex marriage and contraception, could also be overturned. (Photo by ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)
The warning shot from the nation’s top court came after a year of legislative defeats for the LGBTQ community, including the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children.
As anti-gay sentiments resurface, some are pushing for pride parades to return to their roots — less blocks-long street parties, more overtly civil rights marches.
“It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life,” Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City’s annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius’s, one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.
As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders.
“As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream,” Clarkin said, “there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.”
New York’s first Pride March, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a spontaneous street uprising triggered by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.
San Francisco’s first march was in 1972 and had been held every year since, except during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Celebrations are now global, taking place throughout the year in multiple countries, with many of the biggest parades taking place in June. One of the world’s largest, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was held June 19.
READ MORE: After Supreme Court abortion decision, some fear rollback of LGBTQ and other rights
In the United States, this year’s celebrations take place amid a potential crisis.
In a Supreme Court ruling Friday striking down the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage and a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalizing gay sex.
“The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade has caused a very strong uproar about what what went down. Other rights might be involved next,” said Dean Jigarjian, 22, who crossed the river from New Jersey with his girlfriend to take part in the New York City parade.
More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas.
Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify.
According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment. Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation.
In recent years, schisms over how to commemorate Stonewall have opened, spawning splinter groups events intended to be more protest-oriented.
In New York City, the Queer Liberation March takes place at the same time as the traditional parade, billing itself as the “antidote to the corporate-infused, police-entangled, politician-heavy Parades that now dominate Pride celebrations.”
More of that spirit could rub off on the major parades this year, though many fans of the marches see them as a combination of activism and celebration.
New Yorker Vincent Maniscalco, 40, who has been married to his husband for five years, said he thought the marches are an opportunity to both spotlight civil rights issues and bring “individuals together of all walks of life to celebrate their authentic self. And I think the New York City Pride Parade does a very excellent job of that.” | Civil Rights Activism |
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday protecting access to reproductive rights and patient privacy, even as he continued to urge Americans to vote to counter the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade."I'm asking the Justice Department, much like they did in the civil rights era, to ... do everything in their power to protect these women seeking to invoke their rights in states where clinics are still open," he said. "To protect them from intimidation. To protect the right of women to travel from a state that prohibits seeking medical attention that she needs to a state [that] provides that care. To protect a woman's right to FDA-approved medication that's been available for over 20 years."The order directs Health and Human Services to protect access to contraception and medication abortion, preserve patient privacy, and ensure the safety of patients, providers, and clinics.The White House will also establish a task force on reproductive healthcare access to coordinate federal agencies and offer the attorney general's support to states with legal protections for providers and out-of-state patients.Democrats have faced fierce backlash for their response to the court gutting the constitutional right to abortion. In the weeks since the decision, top Democratic leaders have fundraised off it and urged people to vote, courting criticism over the party's lack of action despite having control over Congress and the executive branch.Calling the ruling a "terrible, extreme, and, I think, so totally wrongheaded decision" in his speech, Biden repeatedly urged people to participate in the November elections, saying it was "the only way" to restore abortion rights."We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe as federal law. Your vote can make that a reality. I know it's frustrating, and it made a lot of people very angry. But the truth is this," he said. "The court now practically dares the women of America to go to the ballot box and restore the very rights they've just taken away."The Biden administration has also been criticized for failing to act sooner; a draft of the Supreme Court opinion was leaked to Politico on May 2, more than 50 days before the final ruling was announced.Some Democrats have shot down calls to scrap the filibuster, which requires 60 votes in the Senate — the Democrats have 50 seats in the chamber — for most bills to pass. However, Biden and several others have said in recent weeks they would back a filibuster carve-out to codify abortion rights, though it's unclear if that would have support from all 50 Democratic senators."We are glad to see the White House start to implement a whole of government approach to abortion access. But this plan, which the White House committed to months ago, is both late and not enough," Morgan Hopkins, the interim director of All* Above All, an abortion justice organization, said in a statement Friday. "This isn't theoretical — every day since this decision, more people are being denied care."Meanwhile, abortion providers and advocates continue to fight to keep the last clinics open in several states, and abortion funds are helping people cross state lines to terminate their pregnancies. Twenty-six states are expected to enact strict or wholesale abortion bans, according to the Guttmacher Institute. At least 16 states and the District of Columbia have laws protecting the right to abortion, and medication abortions are still widely available despite anti-abortion lawmakers' attempts to restrict access in multiple states. | Civil Rights Activism |
June marks 40 years since the brutal death of Vincent Chin. The 27-year-old was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two men, who were fined $3,000 and received no jail time. His death sparked calls for justice and a national movement among Asian Americans. Author Min Jin Lee, a writer-in-residence at Amherst College, joins Amna Nawaz for more on his death and Asian American identity today. Judy Woodruff: This month marks 40 years since the brutal killing of Vincent Chin in a suburb of Detroit.The 27-year-old was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two men, who were fined $3,000 and received no jail time. The killing sparked calls for justice in his name and a national movement among Asian Americans.Amna Nawaz is back with a closer look at the legacy of Vincent Chin today, part of our ongoing coverage of Race Matters. Amna Nawaz: Judy, on June 19, in 1982, Vincent Chin just days away from his wedding, went out to celebrate with friends in Detroit. Later that night, two white men, Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, attacked Chin and beat him to death.A 1998 documentary, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" dove into his story and was later nominated for an Academy Award. It's getting a special airing on "POV" tonight. Narrator: It was a hot night in Detroit, and the men from the auto plants were out for a night on the town. Somebody started a fight. When it was over, Vincent Chin was dead, his head split open with a baseball bat. Person: Vincent Chin would be alive today if he were not Asian. Reporter: Was it a case of racism or a barroom brawl? Person: God, it's so hard to explain. It's something you plan on happening, but it happens.Lily Chin, Mother of Vincent Chin: I want justice for Vincent. I want justice for my son. Thank you. Amna Nawaz: To mark 40 years since Vincent Chin's death, that documentary will air tonight on PBS stations across the country.For more on what followed Chin's death and Asian American identity today, I'm joined by author Min Jin Lee. Her novels include "Pachinko" and "Free Food For Millionaires." She's a writer in residence at Amherst College.Min, welcome back to the "NewsHour." Thanks for making the time. Min Jin Lee, Author: Hello, Amna. Amna Nawaz: So, there are a number of remembrance and rededication services in Vincent Chin's name and memory around the country.But to mark those 40 years, people remembering what happened that night. And it's still a story that very much resonates with millions of people today. Why do you think that is, 40 years later? Min Jin Lee: Oh, I think, because, right now, it's probably one of the worst times to be Asian or Asian American in the United States. And that's primarily can be demonstrated the data that we have seen that, since the onset of the pandemic, over 11,000 incidents of hate have occurred and have been reported.It's in the past over — a little over a year-and-a-half. And that is what is going on. And that is the experience of Asians and Asian Americans today. Amna Nawaz: We have to note, today, Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial or ethnic demographic group in America, also the most diverse, right, in terms of ethnicity and language and faith.But before the death of Vincent Chin, there wasn't a real Asian American identity. I think it's fair to say his death and the calls for justice that followed helped to really form and shape a community. What should we understand about that? Min Jin Lee: I think what's really interesting is exactly what you just said.Asian American, as a political identity was really formed around his era. And I think that, after his terribly tragic murder, what ended up happening was, people felt like we need to become more politically important and powerful. And that has occurred. And I think that that's a beautiful legacy of a very tragic event. Amna Nawaz: It's also really fascinating to me. When you look at the historical footage, you see people like Helen Zia, who we saw there in the clip, who was an Asian American civil rights icon.You also see people like Jesse Jackson. There were a number of Black civil rights leaders who showed up with Vincent Chin's mother and called for justice in his name. What do we need to understand about how the Asian American movement for justice was built on the Black-led fight for civil rights? Min Jin Lee: Oh, the extraordinary debt that Asian Americans, as well as white women, all oppressed minorities in this country, have for the African-American civil rights movement cannot be understated.And I think that when African-American civil rights leaders took up their time and energy and their resources and their political connections to come and support to get justice for Vincent Chin, then that's the reason why it became more remembered.And I think Helen Zia, who is one of the executors of his estate and his memory, has really highlighted this point. And it's so important for us to recognize that, especially this weekend. Amna Nawaz: You talked earlier about how you think it's a terrible time to be Asian American right now.You wrote a piece for The New York Times earlier this year that was called: "Asian Americans Have Always Lived With Fear."So I wonder if you, as you reflect back on that, is the fear today the same as it was 40 years ago, at the time of Vincent Chin's death, or even earlier? Is it different and new? Min Jin Lee: I think, ironically, Asians and Asian Americans have faced great hostility since their arrival in this country.That said, there have been moments of great peace as well. The past year-and-a-half and the past, I guess since the pandemic, almost — over two years, we saw a greater rise of incidents of violence against Asians and Asian Americans, primarily because, since the Trump administration and people who supported his organization have often said that the virus for the pandemic came from China, and then that virus became associated with Asians and Asian Americans.And, unfortunately, Asian Americans are often seen as a monolith in which we don't even have distinct ethnicity or identity. And we are often considered disease carriers and stereotyped as foreigners. Amna Nawaz: We're talking now 40 years marked from the death of Vincent Chin.And I wonder, as you look back on everything that's happened in our community and more broadly among marginalized communities here, if there's something good or a lesson that can come out of such a tragic event. What do you think that is today, especially for the next generation? Min Jin Lee: I think that the greater politicization of Asian Americans in civic engagement to support democracy in this country is a beautiful thing.And I think that, unfortunately, you don't want bad things to happen for you to really pay attention to voting, but if we can all be more engaged as good citizens in this country, it's wonderful news out of a tragedy. Amna Nawaz: Finally, Min, I know the work that you do in your writing, you say you try to humanize people. You try to make sure that you are building bridges in your work.Tell me a little bit about the importance of that narrative work that you do. Min Jin Lee: I think that, within story, it's possible for the reader, as well as a writer, to feel a greater sense of identification with each other and to find empathy.And when we find empathy, we realize that Asians and Asian Americans are not this great horde or a mob, but, rather, individuals and human beings. And we can feel empathy and sympathy for human beings. And that's a very important role of storytelling. And I hope to be part of that. Amna Nawaz: That is Min Jin Lee joining us tonight.Thank you so much for your time. Always good to have you. Min Jin Lee: Thank you, Amna. | Civil Rights Activism |
Disgraced ex-police officer Derek Chauvin will be sentenced in federal court Thursday for charges surrounding the death of George Floyd that sparked a nationwide outcry and a summer of protests in 2020. The former Minneapolis police officer will receive his sentence for violating Floyd's civil rights after he agreed to a sentence of 20 to 25 years in his December plea to a federal charge in Floyd's killing. A May plea agreement, accepted by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, would extend Chauvin's sentence while potentially relocating him to more favorable conditions in federal prison. Chauvin's lawyers asked for 20 years in prison, saying their client accepts responsibility for his actions coupled with already receiving a sentence of 22.5 years in prison from a state court for the murder of Floyd. However, prosecutors want a full 25 years, arguing Chauvin's actions were cruel and unnecessary. FEDERAL JUDGE ACCEPTS PLEA DEAL FOR DEREK CHAUVIN IN CIVIL RIGHTS CASE In this screen grab from a video, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is seen during victim impact statements as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presides over the sentencing on June 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. (Court TV, via AP, Pool) The former officer's "remorse will be made apparent to this Court," defense attorney Eric Nelson wrote on behalf of his client, suggesting Chauvin may speak during the hearing Thursday. Magnuson will make the final decision and could sentence above or below the 20- to 25-year range. The sentencing is set to begin Thursday at 2 p.m. ET. Chauvin, 46, made an address to Floyd's family at his state sentencing hearing in May 2021. An attorney for the Floyd family told a local CBS affiliate that family members would be in court for the sentencing Thursday. By entering his federal plea, the former officer admitted for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck despite Floyd repeating the statement "I can't breathe" several times before he became unresponsive during the May 2020 arrest. Chauvin, a white man, pleaded guilty to federal charges in December that he abused his power to violate the civil rights of Floyd, a black man, thereby avoiding a possible life sentence in prison. During the hearing last year, he addressed the Floyd family and said: "I want to give my condolences to the Floyd family. There is going to be some other information in the future that would be of interest, and I hope things will give you some peace of mind." While Chauvin's plea calls for him to serve the federal sentence at the same time as the state one, rendering him a longer stay behind bars than he would have faced with the state sentence alone, experts say the deal could mean safer conditions in the federal system. The ex-officer may risk encountering inmates in Minnesota state prison whom he previously arrested or investigated. Although he may be viewed as a former law enforcement officer, a sentence in federal prison may reduce the risk of running into inmates he directly encountered during his career. Chauvin would also have more allowances to work and participate in programming and chances to move about the facility. By maintaining good credit for time in federal prison, he could serve anywhere from 17 years to 21 1/4 years behind bars if Magnuson upholds the range of the plea agreement. This undated file photo provided by Christopher Harris shows George Floyd. Floyd died on May 25 after he was pinned to the pavement by a police officer who put his knee on the handcuffed black man's neck until he stopped breathing. (Christopher Harris via AP, File) CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The video showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest in Minneapolis in May 2020. Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe before losing consciousness and was later pronounced dead. The events of that day spurred a wave of protests in Minneapolis and around the country against police brutality and racial inequalities. The three other former officers present during the arrest, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, were convicted of violating Floyd's civil rights in February and are awaiting sentencing. | Civil Rights Activism |
Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that created the basis for gender equity and fair treatment in education, turned 50 on Thursday. The law, which bars sex-based discrimination in education, was signed by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972, shepherding in a new era in education that continues to push for equality and to eliminate sex-based discrimination. FOOD FIGHT: SCHOOL LUNCH FUNDING ROW PITS BIDEN AGAINST STATES "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance," the statute reads. The 37-word statute covers most K-12 schools, colleges, universities, vocational schools, and other educational institutions that receive federal funding. The wide scope of the law applies to numerous areas of education: athletics, recruitment, admission, sexual assault and violence on campus, and financial assistance. The definition of discrimination has been used broadly under Title IX, covering students, faculty, administrators, staff, and students who are pregnant or a parent. More recently, Title IX has been invoked to bar discrimination against LGBT students and educators. One area that it has had a particular effect on is athletics, opening doors for women in sports across all levels. Athletic interests and abilities for male and female students "must be equally and effectively accommodated" under the law. It does not necessarily mean though that a college or university has to offer the same sports to each sex or provide equal budgets for facilities, travel, or meals. Athletic departments typically work under the idea of "equal in effect," which means a benefit for a men's or women's team can offset differences in another area as long as they are "negligible,” according to the Associated Press. Complaints of Title IX violations can be handled either at the local or federal level. Every educational institution receiving federal funding is required to have a Title IX coordinator to ensure the institution is in compliance with the law, following stipulated procedures for how to handle cases alleging sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and violence. Each school can also be disciplined for Title IX violations. Federal enforcement of Title IX falls under the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which "evaluates, investigates, and resolves complaints alleging sex discrimination," the website reads. Anyone can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights or bring his or her case through a lawsuit before a federal court. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER In the decades since Title IX's passing, the law has paved the way for the explosion of women's sports and has been instrumental in combating sexual assault and violence in educational settings. | Civil Rights Activism |