Suicide note from a 19-year-old mother imprisoned at Karnes with her baby

English translation:

I write this letter so you know how it feels to be in this damn place for 8 months you don’t understand that people’s lives has no price a you don’t have a heart for anybody you just lie and humiliate all of us who have come to this country for the second time if I do this is because only God knows what I have suffered in my country I come here so this country can help me but here you’ve been killing me little by little with punishment and lies in prison when I haven’t committed any crime

 

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Sourced through Scoop.it from: endfamilydetention.com

#LatinosAreHuman

Kalief Browder

Kalief Browder (1993-2015), an American student, was arrested in 2010 at age 16 for stealing a backpack. He spent three years at Rikers Island, New York’s main prison – without ever having been found guilty. He spent over a thousand days in prison, over 700 in solitary confinement.


In the US Constitution
, the Sixth Amendment states:
“the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial”
But in the Bronx, Browder’s part of New York, there are not enough judges or money to carry out the Constitution.
About 96% of those accused of a felony in the Bronx plead guilty in exchange for a shorter sentence. There is no trial. Those who maintain their innocence – and whose families’s cannot afford bail or who are held without bail – are sent to prison where they can wait up to five years.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com

Racism in Grade School And Its Damaging Long-Term Effects – DiversityInc

By Kaitlyn D’Onofrio

 

According to a March 2014 report released by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, more Black students are severely punished at school than white students – despite the fact that more white students are enrolled in schools.

The study reveals that this begins as early as preschool: “Black children represent 18% of preschool enrollment, but 48% of children receiving more than one out-of-school suspension; in comparison, white students represent 43% of preschool enrollment but 26% of preschool children receiving more than one out of school suspension.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.diversityinc.com

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Unarmed Black People Twice as Likely to Be Killed by Cops As White People, Says Report

By Michael Nam

 

 

While the federal government and law enforcement agencies do not have or provide standardized figures on fatal shootings by police officers nationwide, the growing awareness of police-related violence has spurred more and more independent investigations.

 

The Guardian reports that in 2015 alone, 102 of the 464 individuals killed by police were unarmed, and that 32 percent were Black. Adding Latino and other people of color, almost two-thirds of unarmed individuals killed by police were from underrepresented people:

 

 

 

Percent of Unarmed People Killed by Police


 

 

Whites15%Hispanic/Latino25.4%Blacks31.9%

 

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Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.diversityinc.com

U.S. Addicted to Enslavement for Profit

by Vicky Pelaez

 

The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery? The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery? by Vicky Pelaez Human rights org…anizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

 

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Sourced through Scoop.it from: moorbey.wordpress.com

McKinney

McKinney, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, became #McKinney, a Twitter hashtag, on Sunday June 7th 2015. That was when a seven-minute video of a pool party on Friday went viral on the Internet. It shows Corporal Eric Casebolt, a White police officer, throwing a 15-year-old Black girl, Dajerria Becton, to the ground – “On your face!” – and putting his knees in her back as she cries in pain. Apparently he did not like something she said. When two unarmed Black teenage boys try to help her, he pulls a gun on them (not his taser).

 

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Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com

Kalief Browder, Teenager Wrongfully Imprisoned and Tortured at Rikers Island, Commits Suicide

In 2013, after spending years behind bars in the notorious New York torture chamber known as Rikers Island without ever having been convicted of a crime, then 19 year-old Kalief Browder finally was allowed to return to his family and loved ones. However, those who had known the 16 year-old young man before he was tragically apprehended by an NYPD officer in 2010 (all because he erroneously thought Browder took someone’s backpack) quickly found that he had been profoundly damaged by his traumatic experiences on the island. As was reported on this blog in 2013,

Sourced through Scoop.it from: ushypocrisy.com

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