central park five
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The Glow Up Goes to NOLA, Day 4: Maybe My Mascara Should Run for President
No, Michelle Obama is not running for president, y’all. But we all know that if she did have the inclination, she’d have the coveted black female vote on lock. In fact, of all the headliners in Essence Festival weekend, it was our forever first lady who packed the Louisiana Superdome to the rafters when she…
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Melania Trump and the Hypocrisy of White American Motherhood
Over the last few years, much of the conversation around Melania Trump has hinged on her foreignness—both in the literal sense, and in the ways she breaks from White House traditions: She’s a former lingerie model, the first first lady in more than two centuries to be born outside of the U.S., and the only…
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Beto O’Rourke Says Donald Trump Owes The Exonerated Five an Apology
“This is the most divisive, the most xenophobic, the most racist, the most nativist, the most Islamophobic president we have ever had.” — Beto O’Rourke text The Exonerated Five are in the spotlight following the release of Ava DuVernay’s Netflix series, When They See Us. Donald Trump, who took out full-page ads in New York…
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Trump Won’t Apologize to the Exonerated Five, Claims They Admitted Their Guilt and That There Are ‘People on Both Sides’
President Donald Trump believes what he wants to believe. Not only can he not be swayed, but he doesn’t even want to hear anything that isn’t remotely close to what he believes. As it stands, Trump doesn’t believe DNA evidence, pollsters, his own CIA or the FBI director. If God himself came down from heaven…
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Manhattan District Attorney Refuses to Reopen Cases Handled by Central Park Five Prosecutor Linda Fairstein
Since the release of Netflix’s haunting masterpiece When They See Us, karma has been working overtime to derail the lives and careers of former prosecutor Linda Fairstein and attorney Elizabeth Lederer—two of the biggest beneficiaries of the Exonerated Five’s 1990 convictions. But despite calls to do otherwise, CNN reports that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance…
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T.I., the Central Park Five, and Ebenezer Baptist Church Kick Off Summit to End Mass Incarceration
Anyone who thinks the black church is a bygone relic with no relevance to the social justice struggles of today may need to reassess. “The church” is obviously not a monolith and is taking on everything from mental illness and HIV/AIDS to voter suppression and mass incarceration. In that vein, Rev. Raphael Warnock and the…
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When Karma Has GPS: Linda Fairstein Dropped By Literary Agency Amid Backlash for Being a Despicable Human Being
As society’s “Fuck Linda Fairstein” campaign continues, on Tuesday came the news that Hollywood literary agency ICM Partners has decided to wash its hands of the former New York City prosecutor-turned crime novelist-turned bane of our collective existence. Deadline confirmed the news and reports that ICM Partners represented the bestselling author, who created a multimillion-dollar…
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Black Student Protest Leads to Prosecutor in the Central Park Five Case Quitting Her Columbia Law School Job
Another day, another example of karma coming for folks in the fallout over the wrongful prosecutions of the Central Park Five. Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer has quit her part-time gig as a professor at Columbia Law School after renewed calls for her ouster by the Black Law Students Association, the New York Daily…
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Blacklisted: Publisher Kicks Central Park Five Prosecutor Linda Fairstein to the Curb
Sometimes life comes at you fast or — in the case of former prosecutor-turned-author Linda Fairstein — decades later, with Fairstein facing the latest comeuppance as a result of backlash since a revisting of her handling of the prosecution of five black and brown boys in New York’s infamous 1989 Central Park jogger rape case.…