|
Families should not have to spend years fighting for justice for their loved ones killed by police. But for thousands of Black families across the country, that is an every day reality. Eric Garner, Ramarley Graham, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson, Mya Hall, Freddie Gray, Dajerria Becton, and most recently Sandra Bland, are just a few of the police brutality cases the Department of Justice is yet to prosecute. The DOJ’s failure to do it’s job and hold abusive and discriminatory police accountable in a timely and effective manner has had an unconscionable human toll. Since Eric Garner was killed, at least 12 Black people have been killed in New York, and countless others unjustly stopped and harassed.6 Last February, NYPD Officer fatally shot 28-year-old Akai Gurley as he walked up the stairs of an apartment building with his girlfriend.7 And in response to the growing resistance to the NYPD’s discriminatory practices, law enforcement is under reporting the number of times they stop and search people, creating an illusion of reform.8 In fact, the number of settlements New York has paid out for victims of police violence has sky rocketed in recent years.9 But in the face of injustice, we cannot back down. Recently, New York families spent months campaigning for a special prosecutor to oversee police killings in New York — and won 8 It is an incredible step in the right direction and speaks volumes to the power of Black and brown folks to create a safer and more just world for our communities. On this tragic 1 year anniversary, we must renew our calls for justice and send a clear message to our national leaders that we will not stop until justice is served. Thanks and peace, — Rashad, Arisha, Shani, Lyla and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team Please help support our work. ColorOfChange.org is powered by YOU—your energy and dollars. We take no money from lobbyists or large corporations that don’t share our values, and our tiny staff ensures your contributions go a long way. References, 1. “One Year Later, Remembering Eric Garner,” New York Times 07-17-15 2. “Officer Who Put Eric Garner in Fatal Choke Hold Would Like His Old Job Back,” New York Magazine 07-13-15 3. “New York Police Department Is Undercounting Street Stops, Report Says,” New York Times 07-09-15 4. “Eric Garner’s Family Urges Justice Department To Prosecute Officer,” NPR 07-14-2015 5. Communities United for Police Reform Upcoming Events 6. “The Counted,” The Guardian 7. “Officer Charged in Akai Gurley Case Debated Reporting Gunshot, Officials Say,” NYTimes 02-11-2015 8. See reference 3. 9. “Cost of Police-Misconduct Cases Soars in Big U.S. Cities,” Washington Post 07-15-2015
|
Tag Archives: black people
My son was shot and killed — now I’m taking on the NRA
 |
My son was shot and killed at UC Santa Barbara in May of this year.
Why did Chris die? He died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. I said it the day after my son was murdered, and sadly it’s still true today.
What has changed is that millions of Americans like you have stepped up to demand more of our country and its elected officials: Not. One. More.
And it’s working. Here in California, with the help of Everytown, we passed a law that will temporarily suspend somebody’s access to guns if they’re found to be a threat to themselves or others — somebody like the man who killed my son. Everytown can take winning strategies like this all across the country, but only with your support.
I’m asking you to join me in supporting Everytown with a year-end gift of $5 or more. With your support, we can save lives. Please join this fight before Wednesday’s end-of-year deadline.
Everytown is doing something no one else has ever done before. I’ve seen the passion that powers this movement up close. I’ve shared hugs and tears with others whose lives have been turned upside down by gun violence.
Everytown has given me a chance to share Chris’s story and a platform from which I can work so that fewer parents have to experience this pain.
Our work is fueled by gun violence survivors, moms, dads, and concerned citizens — and it’s backed by cutting edge research and policy analysis. Because of this movement, the NRA is losing its grip on our country’s state houses.
Help us move forward in 2015. Lives depend on it. I’m asking you to show your support with a year-end donation of $5 or more right now — before the Wednesday night deadline:
https://donate.everytown.org/donate/2015-NOM-donate6
As the father of a young person killed with a gun, I know that it’s not enough to just want change. We must work hard and keep the pressure on in 2015.
Thank you for your care and support,
Richard Martinez
 |
| Asa movement of Americans fighting for common-sense gun policies, we depend on contributions from supporters like you to fund important work toreduce gun violence.Paid for by Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund. Contributions to Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund are not tax-deductible. |
Share this:
PLU adjunct faculty lose union vote, say they’ll try again
Posted by Katherine Long
in seattletimes.org Jan.15
Adjunct faculty members at Pacific Lutheran University, who won a precedent-setting national victory last month when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) endorsed their right to form a union, appear to have lost a vote to unionize.
The faculty group announced Wednesday that they were withdrawing a petition to form a union, but say they’ll likely attempt a new vote later this year.
The decision comes a week after the impounded ballots from the election — which was held in October 2013 — were finally counted. The vote was 54 votes against union representation and 30 votes in favor, but 38 votes were uncounted because they were challenged by either PLU or the contingent faculty.
The uncounted ballots were impounded immediately after the election when PLU appealed to the NLRB, arguing the school was exempt from national labor rules because it is a religious institution, and because full-time contingents (as adjuncts are called at PLU) were managerial employees.The NLRB, in its decision last month, rejected those arguments.
“The election was hopelessly flawed so we decided a new vote was the best course of action,” said Jane Harty, a contingent music teacher at the university, in an email. She said there were so many challenges to the ballots that it “would be very expensive and take months to contest” the challenges to the ballot.
PLU Provost Steven Starkovich said the university would try to address the contingents’ concerns through its faculty governance committee and a task force of contingents. “As we have stated before, we believe our robust, general-assembly style of faculty governance can serve as a model for other universities,” he said in a statement.
Adjunct faculty make up at least half the higher-education workforce nationwide, according to some studies. They are not eligible for tenure and teach anything from one class each quarter to a full-time slate of courses. They usually make less money than tenured professors and often have fewer benefits.
Share this:
Indiana and their New Reproductive Rights laws … that hurt Women
CREDIT: WNDU News Screenshot
A 33-year-old woman from Indiana faces decades in prison after she sought medical attention at a hospital as she was bleeding from a premature delivery. The case is just the latest example illustrating the real-world consequences of the harsh state laws that essentially criminalize pregnancy.
According to the charges being filed against her, Purvi Patel attempted to end her pregnancy last year by taking pills that she bought online from Hong Kong. The pills didn’t work, and Patel eventually delivered a premature baby at home. When she went to an emergency room to seek treatment after giving birth, the staff asked why she didn’t have an infant with her. She said her baby appeared to be dead, and she had wrapped it in a bag and placed it in a dumpster.
Now, Patel is being charged with both neglect and feticide, allegations that actually conflict with each other. She was initially charged with “neglect of a dependent” after prosecutors learned she left her baby in in a dumpster, a charge that won’t apply if the baby was already dead. But she’s now also being charged with “fetal murder of an unborn child” — a charge that an Indiana judge allowed to stand this week — for taking drugs that could have illegally ended her pregnancy.
As the Daily Beast’s Sally Kohn points out, the logic doesn’t exactly hold up. “The State of Indiana intends to convict and incarcerate Purvi Patel one way or another, whether the fetus she delivered was alive or not — never mind the fact that the facts necessary for filing the one charge (that the fetus have been alive) entirely contradict the facts necessary for filing the other (that the fetus have been dead) and vice versa,” Kohn writes.
On top of that, reproductive rights advocates and legal experts point out that Indiana’s “feticide” law was never intended to be applied to pregnant women themselves. It was originally written as a way to crack down on illegal abortion providers. Critics say Patel fits into a disturbing trend; similar “fetal homicide” laws are in place in at least 38 states, and they’re increasingly used to punish women who end up having miscarriages or stillbirths.
“Once again targeting a woman of color, prosecutors in Indiana are using this very sad situation to establish that intentional abortions as well as unintentional pregnancy losses should be punished as crimes,” Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which tracks these cases closely, said in a recent statement about Patel’s case. “In the U.S., as a matter of constitutional law and human decency, no woman should be arrested for the outcome of her pregnancy.”
Patel is the second woman to be prosecuted under Indiana’s feticide law. The state also pressed charges against Bei Bei Shuai, a Chinese immigrant who attempted suicide while pregnant and ended up delivering a baby that didn’t survive. Shaui was imprisoned for more than a year before a plea deal was reached in April, and her case sparked international outrage. More than 100,000 people signed onto a petition demanding Shuai’s release and pointing out that “it is wrong to have a set of separate and unequal laws for pregnant women.”
The laws that allow states to arrest pregnant women for allegedly harming their fetuses actually end up undermining public health. Major medical groups like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose “feticide” laws because they ultimately deter women from seeking the medical attention they need.
Harsh restrictions on abortion, as well as unreasonably broad definitions of “fetal homicide,” have created a society in which all pregnant women are transformed into potential suspects in the eyes of the law. And since miscarriage and abortion are relatively common pregnancy experiences — and research has proven that women are going to end their pregnancies whether or not it’s legal — that means we’re also approaching a society in which desperate women may be too terrified to ask for health treatment. For instance, if Patel had known that she was at risk for being charged with fetal homicide, would she have thought twice about going to the emergency room? Would she have joined the millions of women around the world who die from botched abortions and risky childbirth?
“We cannot afford to deter a woman from seeking reproductive health care,” the Indiana Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice pointed out in a statement released this week. “Those of us who are Christian know that when Jesus responded to the hemorrhaging woman there was no place for aggressive interrogation and punishment. It was all for healing.”
Share this:
Rashad Robinson, ColorOfChange.org
|
Next week, I’ll take the stage at our 10th anniversary ceremony. But before I do that, I want to send this message to thank you, the core of our 1 million members. With your help, we have been able to create real-world change for Black people in America.
As I prepare for our anniversary, I’m also thinking a lot about why Van Jones and James Rucker founded this organization ten years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the past year alone, we’ve seen too many Black lives taken at the hands of police to keep count. Even ten years after the storm that ravaged the Gulf Coast and spurred the founding of this organization, our brothers and sisters in Black communities are still in a state of crisis.
Help drive the next decade of racial justice work by donating $15 each month.
Van and James wanted to build an organization with the capacity to respond in times like these. They wanted to build a network of ordinary people with the passion to push for justice. Even before “Black Lives Matter,” they had a vision of how we could bring our voices together and use that collective voice to demand accountability and grow a movement for Black people. That’s what ColorofChange has spent the past 10 years doing.
When I address the crowd at the ceremony next week, I’ll take stock of precedents we’ve set and the systemic change we have been able to bring about:
- We organized in support of the Jena 6 and were able to contribute $250,000 to the young men’s legal team and help them avoid jail time.
- We helped stop Glenn Beck’s racist hate speech from being aired on Fox News by getting hundreds of advertisers to stop funding his show.
- We helped end Pat Buchanan’s tenure as a political commentator at MSNBC after he pushed his white supremacist views as mainstream opinion.
- In the aftermath of Trayvon Martin’s killing, we de-funded the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), hindering its ability to develop and spread “shoot first” laws and discriminatory voter ID laws.
- We convinced Clear Channel to remove a series of voter fraud billboards placed in Black communities before the 2012 election.
- We pushed FOX to cancel the television show “Cops” after 25 years of dehumanizing portrayals of Black people.
- We successfully pressured Saturday Night Live to add two Black women to the cast, Sasheer Zamata and Leslie Jones, in addition to one Black woman writer. Zamata became the first Black woman cast member since 2007.
- We donated $70,000 to the Organization for Black Struggle to help it build an organizing infrastructure on the ground in Ferguson to support the Movement for Black Lives.
- We were a driving force behind winning “net neutrality,” ensuring that the Internet remains free and open, especially for people with limited resources and for organizations like ours who use online organizing.
- We convinced GoFundMe and Indiegogo to stop allowing their platforms to be used to fundraise for killer cops, and we continue to push tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to diversify their staff.
We’ve done all of this with a small core staff of committed, dedicated campaigners and, most importantly, the voices and support of our members. In the next ten years of our organization’s life, there will be much more work to do. With your help, we can seek out and support new movements that elevate the value of Black lives, Black voices and Black political power.
But it all depends on you. Your donations–the hard-earned dollars you give because you believe in justice for our communities–are what sustain our work. As we lay out an ambitious vision for the next decade, we are asking you to give what you can to help support that vision.
Thanks and peace,
–Rashad Robinson, Executive Director, ColorofChange
Be a Seed for Change 
You must be logged in to post a comment.