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Pennsylvania Prisons Locked Down Indefinitely After 29 Employees Hospitalized
This week, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ordered a lockdown of its entire 47,000-person-prison system after yet another spate of employees was rushed to the hospital, sickened by what the DOC is calling “unknown substances,” which many believe to be illicit opioid-related drugs. The Washington Post reports that the prison in Albion, Pa., where five…
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Texas Prison System Slashes Price of Inmate Phone Calls by 77 Percent, Contractor to Set Up Video Phones
Perhaps not coincidentally during a #NationalPrisonStrike2018, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on Friday voted to drastically slash the cost of calls from prison inmates by more than 75 percent, a boon to the cash-strapped black and brown communities that feed the prison industrial complex. Angela Davis put it best: “Mass imprisonment generates profits as…
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Jemele Hill and ESPN Get It Over With: Report
Jemele Hill, a black woman who remained so while on television, had a rough go of it at ESPN in the fallout of calling Donald Trump, a sho nuff white supremacist, just that. She’s reportedly set to completely sever ties with the company at the beginning of September. Hill’s commentary is just too direct for…
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John McCain Requests Former Rivals, Barack Obama, George W. Bush to Eulogize Him at Funeral
I’m of the contention that we should generally be judged or even rated as humans by the best—and not worst—thing we’ve ever done. So I have no problems with the recently deceased Senator from Arizona, John McCain, a flawed, fallible white man from America, being assessed honestly. But frankly, I’m having the biggest kiki over…
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Ex-Trump Doorman Who Claims Trump Has Love Child Is Now Free to Tell His Story: Report
It looks as if the jaws of justice are slowly, but steadily squeezing the breath out of Donald “Can’t Keep It in His Pants” Trump as an ex- Trump World Tower doorman has been released from a “catch and kill”-contract, and can now come forward and speak about an alleged affair Trump had with an…
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Tavis Smiley's Lawsuit Against PBS Isn't Going Too Well
The indignantly distressed former PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley is not faring well in his legal battle against PBS, the network which released him from his contract in December 2017 over allegations of sexual misconduct. On Thursday, D.C. District Court Judge Anthony Epstein ruled that Smiley cannot compel the nonprofit network to turn over…
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Georgia Board of Elections Nixes Plans to Shut Down 7 of 9 Polling Places in Majority Black County
In what can only be hailed as a hard-fought victory against blatant voter suppression, on Friday, a rural Georgia elections board voted down a plan to close down seven of nine polling places in a majority-black county. Many deemed the move “consolidate” polling places in Randolph County, Georgia as a brazen attempt to depress the black…
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Prosecutors Say Story of White Man Peeing on 5-Year-Old Black Girl Was Fabricated
Many of us were horrified (and beyond furious) when we heard news of a white man urinating on a black girl child and calling her a racial slur in an alley in Western Michigan. Yet prosecutors in the case are now saying the children involved in the incident made the story up. The AP reports…
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Rap Song That Advocated Violence Against Police Not Protected by First Amendment: Pennsylvania High Court
Hip-hop has had a long and fraught history with law enforcement because the communities that spawned the genre have been traumatized and over-policed since we first hit these shores. Consequently, rap lyrics that have spoken to this brutality have been tried in the courts, where words deemed inappropriate are criminalized (some would say weaponized) against the…
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Aretha Franklin, With a Reported Net Worth of $80 Million, Died With No Will
In what strikes many as odd, soul singer Aretha Franklin died without a will. The “Queen of Soul” who died at age 76 on Thursday, died “intestate,” according to court documents obtained by TMZ. Franklin’s not having a will was surprising for two main reasons: she had reportedly been ill for quite some time (she…