USA

Black Lives Matter Activist Convicted of Felony Lynching: “It’s More Than Ironic, It’s Disgusting”

In Pasadena, California, Black Lives Matter organizer Jasmine Richards is facing four years in state prison after she was convicted of a rarely used statute in California law originally known as “felony lynching.” Under California’s penal code, “felony lynching” was defined as attempting to take a person out of police custody. Jasmine was arrested and charged with felony lynching last September, after police accused her of trying to de-arrest someone during a peace march at La Pintoresca Park in Pasadena on August 29, 2015. The arrest and jailing of a young black female activist on charges of felony lynching sparked…

Rights Lab: Can I Film the Police?

  • March 30, 2016
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Filming police is legal in all 50 states — so why are people still being arrested while doing it? The issue at hand is how any one set of actions can be interpreted by police officers — as a constitutionally protected activity, or as a threat. The third episode of Rights Lab, a groundbreaking web series produced in partnership with Scrappers Film Group and Truthout, uses experiments and performance art to explore the gap between what the law says and how recording law enforcement plays out on the ground. Artists Ricardo Gamboa and Steven Beaudion take to the streets of…

Forced reforms, Mixed results

  • February 13, 2016
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In Detroit, the Justice Department forced reforms on police after officers fatally shot 47 people in five years, including six who were unarmed. The overhaul took 11 years and eight police chiefs. In Los Angeles, Justice intervened after police officers in an anti-gang unit were accused of beating and framing people. The reforms cost taxpayers an estimated $300 million. In New Orleans, Justice stepped in to overhaul the police department after officers over 17 months shot 27 people, all of whom were black. The changes­ have fueled departures from the ranks and deterred some officers from pro­active policing. ABOUT this…

Policing the Police

  • February 13, 2016
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Could Ferguson Win Its Case Against the Justice Department? February 11, 2016/ by Sarah Childress Senior Digital Reporter, FRONTLINE Enterprise Journalism Group A few weeks ago, it seemed like Ferguson, Mo. might actually enter into an agreement to overhaul its police and city court. City officials had reached a tentative agreement with the Justice Department in January to implement widespread reforms, including retraining police officers, restructuring the city court and removing rules in the city code that police had used almost exclusively to penalize African-Americans. Now, change in the city that helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement following the police shooting…

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…

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