Racial Justice

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White People | Official Full Documentary | MTV

What does it mean to be white? MTV’s ‘White People’ is a groundbreaking documentary on race that aims to answer that question from the viewpoint of young white people living in America today. The film follows Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker, Jose Antonio Vargas, as he travels across the country to get this complicated conversation started. ‘White People’ asks what’s fair when it comes to affirmative action, if colorblindness is a good thing, what privilege really means, and what it’s like to become the “white minority” in your neighborhood. For more information on ‘White People,’ and to join the conversation, head to race.lookdifferent.org

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To understand Mixed American Live it helps to understand what it means to be White.

 

#Whiteness

#WhiteStudies

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Stop racist executions!

The Supreme Court has backed the use of an execution drug used in U.S. prisons over the objection of death row inmates. By a vote of 5-4, the court’s five right-wing justices on June 29 gave the stamp of approval to death-penalty states to utilize midazolam during executions. Their ruling in Glossip v. Gross endorses painful deaths and has been widely denounced by progressive forces everywhere.

Four Oklahoma death row prisoners had brought the lawsuit seeking to stop the use of midazolam. One inmate has since been executed. While the drug is supposed to decrease pain during executions, the prisoners say that it does not — and cited three excruciating executions in 2014 that used the drug. Plaintiffs claimed the state’s three-drug protocol violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Absurdly, the high court also ruled that the prisoners had to take responsibility to find an available alternative to this drug.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the main dissent, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. In the Glossip v. Gross section of the Supreme Court’s blog, Sotomayor stingingly criticizes the ridiculous “available-alternative requirement.” “Petitioners contend that Oklahoma’s current protocol is a barbarous method of punishment — the chemical equivalent of being burned alive. But under the court’s new rule, it would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death or actually burned at the stake.”

 

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A couple messages from the article:

 

19 states plus Washington, D.C., have abolished the death penalty.

 

What kind of government continues to kill prisoners and tortures them in the process?

 

#TakeDownThatFlag #BlackLivesMatter Tweets 7.7
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#TakeDownThatFlag #BlackLivesMatter Tweets 7.7

#LatinosAreHuman Tweets 6.30
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#LatinosAreHuman Tweets 6.30

@getgln PBSO/Bradshaw promotes deputy who shot, paralyzed unarmed bicyclist http://t.co/UH3KLCAnbF pic.twitter.com/TIGjxxht9g #DontrellStephens

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Shock Video: Police Lieutenant Addresses White Supremacy Group of Which He’s a Member

Anniston, AL (RT) — The city of Anniston, Alabama has placed two police officers on administrative leave over allegations that they belong to a hate group.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing legal advocacy organization, posted an article on its Hatewatch blog that alleges Lt. Josh Doggrell and Lt. Wayne Brown have ties to the League of the South (LOS), an organization that the SPLC has deemed as “neo-Confederate.” The allegations are being investigated by the City of Anniston.

The SPLC website explains that neo-Confederacy is “strongly nativist and advocating measures to end immigration.” It goes on to say “neo-Confederacy claims to pursue Christianity and heritage and other supposedly fundamental values that modern Americans are seen to have abandoned,” and it exhibits “an understanding of race that favors segregation and suggests white supremacy.”

In a statement made on Friday afternoon, the city announced that the two officers were being placed on leave.

“After being made aware of the Wednesday, June 17 article by the SPLC, the City of Anniston is taking the allegations made against Lt. Brown and Lt. Doggrell very seriously and have placed both officers on administrative leave,”

 

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Florida police murder black computer engineer as he listens to music; attempted cover-up exposed

On July 31, 2013, Jermaine McBean, a 33-year-old computer engineer with no criminal record, paid $100 for a camouflage BB gun at his local pawn shop. As he walked to his home with his headphones on, listening to music, he was shot and killed by police in Oakland Park, Florida. Police claimed that he ignored their requests to put down his weapon and then aimed the gun, which was empty, at them in an aggressive manner.

Now, nearly two years later, it turns out the police told multiple lies in attempt to cover up their killing of McBean. Below we will expose each of the lies they told.

 

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

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SPLC statement on the #CharlestonShooting in South Carolina

By Richard Cohen, President
A white man who admires apartheid walks into a black church and kills nine people.  According to an eyewitness, he says that he has “to do it” because black people “rape our women” and are “taking over our country.”  It’s an obvious hate crime by someone who feels threatened by our country’s changing demographics and the increasing prominence of African Americans in public life.

 

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Film “Angola 3”, 3 Black Men Spend Decades in Solitary Confinement

Robert King with Philippe Diaz at Cinema Libre Studio in February 2015
Los Angeles, CA (BlackNews.com) — Woodfox is the last imprisoned member of the Angola 3 – three African-American men held for decades in solitary confinement, two of whom were framed for the 1972 killing of a prison guard at Louisianas State Penitentiary at Angola. Woodfox, along with Robert King (released in 2001) and Herman Wallace (who died from terminal cancer in 2013, three days after he was released from prison) have all become a cause celebre for the gross injustices committed to them by the Louisiana penal system and the blatant disregard for black lives. Kings life story is the foundation for an independent feature film about the three men and their decades-long battle against institutionalized racial injustice and is now in pre-production.
Cinema Libre Studios Philippe Diaz has collaborated with Robert King on a feature length script Angola, 1, 2 and 3, which provides an unvarnished look at the three black mens experiences in prison and how, as young black men in the south in the 50s and 60s, they were consistently railroaded by the penal and justice systems. They were further persecuted for their efforts to end systemic rape, cavity searches, segregation and corruption in Angola, as well as for being members of the Black Panther Party. Each man has spent decades in solitary confinement, about which the UN has declared, Four decades in solitary confinement can only be described as torture.The film is on track to go into production in Fall 2015 and shares Kings perspective on the manipulation of evidence by the justice system, the fabrication of false testimonies, and the mental and emotional challenges of solitary confinement.

King spent 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola, accused in the murder of another convict, although all witnesses testified that he had nothing to do with it. King struggled for decades to prove his innocence but was forced to plead conspiracy to murder in order to be released even after his conviction had been overturned.
Released in 2001 at the age of 59, King has worked ceaselessly to build international support for the remaining two members of the Angola 3. He has spoken before the parliaments of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Indonesia, Brazil and Britain about his fellow prisoners and about solitary confinement, which has been likened to torture in the US. He was invited by the African National Congress to South Africa where he met with Desmond Tutu.
Amnesty International added the Angola 3 to their watch list of “political prisoners”/”prisoners of conscience.” In July 2013, Amnesty International called for the release of 71-year-old Herman Wallace, who had advanced liver cancer. Although he was released October 1, 2013, he was re-indicted on October 3, 2013, and died the next day before he could be re-arrested. With regards to Woodfox, Amnesty International has called for Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to “stop pursuing a campaign of vengeance by trying to re-indict a man who has already spent more than four decades in cruel confinement, after a legal process tainted with flaws.”
The Angola 3 members have been the subject of three documentary films, 3 Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation (2006), In the Land of the Free (2010), and Hermans House (2013) as well as a music video and numerous public interest pieces.
Philippe Diaz, founder of Cinema Libre Studio, a production/distribution company known for controversial social impact cinema, will produce the film. We cheered when we heard the news of Alberts possible release. But seeing how the Louisiana justice system has been allowed to deny justice to this man, and is still trying to do so, it may take months or years for Albert to be freed. In the last 20 years, the state has become the worlds number one prison capital, with a for-profit system that incarcerates people at 5 times the rate of Iran and 13 times the rate of China. We feel its essential to make this film now so that social pressure increases to aid Alberts release and so that it never happens again.
More about the Campaign to Free the Angola 3 (official website) can be found here: www.angola3.org/category/albert-woodfox/
More about the film: www.facebook.com/angola3thefilm

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