culture
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Texas Teen Arrested in Tweet of Photo Showing Pellet Gun Pointed at Police Car
One Fort Worth, Texas, teen has found himself in a lot of trouble after he allegedly posted to Twitter a photo of an airsoft pellet gun being pointed at a police car with the caption, “Should I do it? They don’t care for a black male anyways!” CBS News reports. Montrae Toliver, 17, was arrested…
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LAPD Cops Shot Ezell Ford in the Back, Autopsy Finds
An autopsy released by the Los Angeles Police Department details that Ezell Ford, the mentally ill 25-year-old who was killed by police Aug. 11, was shot three times, including once in the back, KABC reports. Two days after Michael Brown’s shooting death, Los Angeles police officers were attempting to restrain Ford, who family members said…
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Watch: How Ellen DeGeneres’ Dance Dare Got a Black Man Thrown to the Ground by an NYPD Officer
An Ellen DeGeneres dance challenge, which centers around people doing fun dances behind unsuspecting strangers, took a brutal turn as a fan attempted to dance behind a New York City police officer who didn’t take kindly to his moves. Like a bad scene out of Footloose, the Free Thought Project notes, YouTube personality Alexander BOK…
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Obama’s Golf Game Forces Military Couple to Relocate Hawaii Wedding
President Barack Obama might be trying to enjoy himself during his Hawaii Christmas vacation, but his fun time cut into a military couple’s wedding, and they had to forsake their original choice of scenery because of the president’s golf game, Yahoo News reports. According to the report, two Army captains, Natalie Heimel and her fiance,…
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Gunman Opens Fire on 2 Los Angeles Officers Sitting in Patrol Car
On Sunday night, a man used a rifle to open fire on two Los Angeles police officers who were sitting in a patrol car, Al-Jazeera reports. The police officers immediately returned fire, “but no one was injured” during the incident, the report explained. The Los Angeles shooting was reminiscent of the shooting Dec. 20 in New…
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The Winners of 2014
For some, 2014 was made of win. Success was found both through hard work and happy accident. These beings shone the brightest. They stood out the most. They were highly tweeted on the Twitter. They lived up to the hype—or at least benefited from it. Here, the winningest people and things of 2014. Ferguson Protesters…
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#Every28Hours Author Answers Fact-Checkers
For two years after I wrote “Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards and Vigilantes,” major news media paid no attention to it. Until now. Why now? Because the report generated the hashtag #every28hours. And the national uprising against police terror has launched a…
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Chicago Activists Push for Reparations for Victims of Police Torture
Activists held a rally today at Daley Plaza in Chicago calling for reparations for the torture victims of former Chicago Police Chief Jon Burge, according to eNews Park Forest. The rally included members of Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, We Charge Genocide, Black Youth Project 100, SuperGroup, Chicago Light Brigade, Project NIA and Amnesty International. For 20…
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Change Agents of 2014: Black Women on Social Media
When herstory reflects on the year 2014, the many ways in which black women used their social media influence to address pivotal issues will be front and center. In the tradition of iconic feminist scholar Audre Lorde, the year 2014 found black women positioning self-preservation as an act of political warfare on both individual and…
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Calif. High School Basketball Team Banned From Tournament for ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Shirts
Members of the Mendocino High School girls’ basketball team in California are organizing on Monday after being banned from a tournament because of their insistence on wearing “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts in solidarity with Eric Garner, the New York City man who died in July after police placed him in a choke hold, USA Today reports.…