Black Lives Matter

Police officer absolved in Freddie Gray case

  • June 23, 2016
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Baltimore police officer Caesar Goodson Jr. on Thursday was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died of injuries sustained while in police custody. Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams found Mr. Goodson, who is also black, not guilty of all criminal counts including second-degree depraved heart murder, the most serious accusation against any of the six officers charged in connection with Gray’s death. Prosecutor had failed to secure convictions in two earlier trials of police officers. Mr. Goodson, 46, was the driver of a police transport van in which Gray broke…

Am Ende war JAJA Tod

  • June 15, 2016
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Das neue Jahr ist gerade zwei Wochen alt und der Winter hat Hamburg schließlich doch noch in seiner nass-kalten Variante erreicht. Am 14. Januar 2016 wird Jaja Diabi am Hamburger Berg von der Polizei festgenommen. Vier Tage später, am 18. Januar wird er von der U-Haft an der Holstenglacis nach Hahnöfersand verlegt. Genau einen Monat später, am 19. Februar 2016 ist Jaja Diabi tot. Laut Justizbehörde hat Jaja Selbstmord begangen, sich an einer Gardinenstange erhängt. Laut Justizbehörde gab es jedoch im Vorwege keine Anzeichen einer möglichen Suizidgefahr, weder das sogenannte Suizidscreening ergab dazu Anhaltspunkte, noch berichteten die Beamten, die am…

Minneapolis Activists Continue Fight Against Systemic Racism and Police Violence

  • January 18, 2016
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Nekima Levy-Pounds watched the scenes of officers slaying unarmed Black men replayed, one after another, in major cities across the United States, including New York, Charleston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Cincinnati. During all of them, she clung onto one hope: to never see the same stories unfold in Minneapolis, where she raises her 11-year-old son, heads the local NAACP and participates in the local Black Lives Matter movement. However, it’s clear that Minneapolis, too, is home to the kind of police violence that has inspired protests from Ferguson to Baltimore and led to the birth of Black Lives Matter, a…

More Officers Face Charges in On-Duty Shootings, but Few See Jail Time

  • December 30, 2015
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What was once a rarity has now become increasingly common: police officers facing criminal charges in the deaths of civilians. In Albuquerque, two officers will stand trial in the death of a homeless man. In Cincinnati, a campus police officer has been charged in the fatal shooting of a man during a traffic stop. In Chicago, where a video captured the death of Laquan McDonald at the hands of the police, an officer was charged with murder. But even as high-profile police shootings have attracted more scrutiny over the past year, one thing remains clear: The law gives the police…

Memorial Blockade: A Love Letter to Communities Resisting Police Violence

  • December 25, 2015
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Toting a number of large gift-wrapped packages, a group of 16 Chicagoans walked into a crosswalk in the city’s financial district on December 15. After strolling into a formation that stretched from one side of Congress Parkway to the other, at the mouth of the Eisenhower Expressway, they unwrapped the packages, revealing a set of lockboxes – blockade devices that attach protesters to one another as they attempt to hold space – and locked themselves together. The lockboxes were unusually ornate, with white lights and paper and cloth flowers woven throughout their surface area. Once a box connected each person…

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