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The Revolution Is Socialized: Organization ‘Live-Tweets’ Watts Riots on 50th Anniversary
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Watts rebellion (Aug. 11-17, 1965), the California Endowment’s Sons and Brothers Campaign, in partnership with the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles, is “live-tweeting” the uprising, drawing clear parallels between the raw revolution of Watts, a South Los Angeles neighborhood, and its grandchild, the uprising in Ferguson, Mo. It hasn’t been marked with the pageantry…
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Staten Island Yankees Hold ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Event on Anniversary of Michael Brown’s Death
As social-justice activists and supporters around the nation joined the family of slain teen Michael Brown—gunned down by now-former Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson—to commemorate the anniversary of his death one year ago Sunday and the global movement it sparked, the Staten Island Yankees, a minor-league baseball team in New York City, held a…
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‘What the Hell Is Going on in Ferguson?!’ How #MikeMike Changed Our World
It’s hard to believe it’s been one year since then-Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson’s bullets plowed through the body of 19-year-old Michael Brown Jr. One year since the teen’s slain body was left lying in the middle of Canfield Drive in the sweltering heat for four hours, his warm blood trickling down the pavement,…
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Lawsuit Details Brutal Attack on Innocent Man by Shreveport, La., Cops Who Allegedly Beat and Sodomized Him
A Houston man has filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Shreveport, La., and several police officers who he alleges falsely arrested and brutalized him, including sodomizing him with a nightstick while he was in the back of a patrol car, the Shreveport Times reports. According to the lawsuit, Desmond Lewis was walking away…
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An Exclusive Interview With the Mother of Jonathan Sanders, the Miss. Man Who Was Allegedly Choked to Death by a Cop
As the deaths of Sandra Bland and Sam Dubose continue to capture national attention—both serving as undeniable evidence of police brutality, selective outrage and the ability of police officers to lie through their teeth even with video evidence to contradict their stories—the police killing of 39-year-old Jonathan Sanders in Stonewall, Miss., has largely flown under…
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Why It’s Dangerous to Say Sandra Bland Didn’t Look Like Someone Who Would Commit Suicide
Can you look at someone and tell that she or he wants to die? In the wake of Sandra Bland’s death, the most vocal reason given for why she didn’t hang herself in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell after being brutalized and arrested by state Trooper Brian Encinia is this: Sandra, who was passionate…
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#SandySpeaks: ‘I’m Here to Change History’
As I watched 28-year-old Sandra Bland assert her humanity by refusing to roll over and play slave for white Officer Brian Encinia, who had grown increasingly agitated by that refusal, the words of Zora Neale Hurston rang in my head through the numbness: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say…
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1 Year After Eric Garner’s Death and Black America Still Can’t Breathe
The labored breathing of black America has grown more intense since the state-sanctioned choke hold death of 43-year-old Eric Garner last summer on Staten Island, N.Y. You can feel it—chests seizing, eyes watering, in-out, in-out—sharp pain slicing through the hot desperation of a nation struggling not to collapse onto itself. Gil Scott-Heron was right and…
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An Art Exhibit Revictimizes Michael Brown
Traditionally in black American communities, when someone dies, before the spirit-filled homegoing service and solemn funeral procession to the final resting place, there are those quiet moments in the embalming room between the deceased and the mortician, the dead and the artist. If death was by stroke and the face of the deceased is disfigured,…
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Silence Around Who Is Burning Black Churches Speaks Volumes
There is something both sinister and cowardly about trying to destroy Black Jesus. Black churches in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee have burned in the weeks following the terrorist attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., that killed nine people. In response, agents of the state and mainstream media have attempted to…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
