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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

#CharlestonShooting #BlackLivesMatter Tweets 6.19
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#CharlestonShooting #BlackLivesMatter Tweets 6.19

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The FBI has no idea how many hate crimes happen in America each year

By J. Richard Cohen

 

Our national reports vastly underestimate the problem

 

According to the FBI’s most recent annual hate crime report, which is based on voluntary reporting by law enforcement agencies across the country, there were 5,928 hate crimes in 2013. In South Carolina, the FBI report says, there were 51. Those numbers vastly underestimate the problem, according to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics. A comprehensive analysis in 2013 showed that about 260,000 people are victimized each year by hate crime. The statistics bureau’s estimate is based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, the nation’s primary source of information on criminal victimization.

 

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Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.washingtonpost.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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Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.splcenter.org

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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

Sourced through Scoop.it from: socialaction2014.wordpress.com

#CharlestonShooting #BlackLivesMatter Tweets 6.18
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#CharlestonShooting #BlackLivesMatter Tweets 6.18

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Dylann Roof

Dylann Storm Roof (1994- ), an American White supremacist, is suspected of having shot and killed six Black women and three Black men, including a state senator, at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The police are calling it a hate crime, but not an act of terrorism. They believe he acted alone.

 

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

#JoseVelasco Tweets 6.18
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#JoseVelasco Tweets 6.18