Criminal Justice
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NFL Player Kenny Stills Charged With Felony for Seeking Justice for Breonna Taylor
Breonna Taylor is dead. Not that Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s Attorney General, cares. He’s too busy throwing engagement parties to charge the officers involved with her murder. But plenty of other people care, including Houston Texans receiver Kenny Stills. He was one of 87 people charged with a felony on Tuesday for protesting Taylor’s death on…
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The Story of a Black Teenage Girl Incarcerated for Not Doing Her Online Schoolwork Shows Us Just How Big Our Criminal Justice Problem Is
As activists have sustained calls for a radical transformation of our nation’s criminal justice system over the last several weeks, many among us are reimagining what necessary interventions ought to look like, absent the police. How can we resolve domestic issues, for instance, without having to call 911? One idea that’s been frequently tossed around…
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The Genius of Resilience: Toward a New, Black National Convention
Imagine it’s 2070. History classes all over the U.S. teach the 2020 Black Lives Matter Uprisings and the national campaign to defund police. Students are shocked to learn about police officers who once killed Black people. For these young people, public safety means community and skilled professionals coming together to resolve problems peacefully and everyone…
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Christian Cooper Says He Will Not Participate in Prosecution of the White Woman Who Threatened to Call 911 on Him
Earlier this week, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said his office had filed charges against Amy Cooper, a white woman who went viral earlier this summer when she frantically threatened to call the cops on a Black bird watcher. She’s been charged with filing a false police report, a class “A” misdemeanor.” But the man…
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WNBA Players Will Wear Names of Women Killed at the Hands of Police. NBA Players Will Wear…'Listen'?
The NBA could learn a thing or two from its “little sister,” the WNBA. After both leagues announced their intentions to resume their seasons, one of the highest priorities for players has been the opportunity to continue to address police brutality and racial injustice. It’s become so much of a sticking point that it damn…
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WNBA Star Maya Moore Earns MVP Off the Court by Helping Wrongly Convicted Black Man Regain His Freedom
As a young girl, Maya Moore dreamed of becoming a professional basketball player. But after conquering the sport as an adult, and abandoning that dream in order to pursue criminal justice reform, another dream of hers has now become a reality. ESPN reports that after putting her WNBA career on pause in 2019 in order…
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Defund the Police, Explained…for the Last Time
There are a lot of misconceptions about what defunding the police means, which, at its simplest definition, is a reallocation of resources. Everyday citizens assess their budgets on a regular basis to determine if they are wasting money and could spend their precious dollars more efficiently. As police officers continue to kill Black people across…
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Chicago Police Announce Plans to Make Mass Street Arrests, Ask Courts to Hold People in Jail Over July 4th Weekend
Putting Black faces in high places will not be the solution to structural racism in the United States. And while drug-fueled gun violence in the oft-maligned city of Chicago is an objectively horrifying problem, violating the constitutional rights of young Black men isn’t the way to address it, either. Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown apparently…