Ex-Officer Who Killed Unarmed Black Man Wins Lawsuit

 

A San Francisco civil jury today ruled in favor of a white, former transit officer who fatally shot an unarmed, black man in an infamous killing captured on cellphone cameras.

The federal jury awarded no damages to the father of Oscar Grant III, killed by a single shot to the back from BART Officer Johannes Mehserle early on Jan. 1, 2009 in Oakland.

 

– Click through for more –

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

 

Strange how Oscar Grant’s father didn’t win a settlement but Grant’s mother and daughter and Grant’s friends did win a settlement.

 

Laverne Cox, Janet Mock Talk Stigma of Loving Transgender Women – COLORLINES

 

Transgender activists Laverne Cox and Janet Mock joined scholar Mark Anthony Neal and The Nation’s Mychal Denzel Smith for a discussion on HuffPost Live about DJ Mister Cee

 

Source: colorlines.com

Trial Begins For Man Who Shot Unarmed Black Teenager On His Porch

  DETROIT — As a prosecutor showed a jury photos of Renisha McBride, her father rushed out of the court room. The photos of the 19-year-old — first smiling, and then lying lifeless on a porch — were shown in quick succession at the beginning of one of the most highly publicized and racially charged trials of the year. Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of Theodore Wafer, the 55-year-old Dearborn Heights, Michigan, man charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of McBride. Wafer is accused of shooting her with a shotgun through his locked screen door around 4:40 a.m. on Nov. 2. His attorney seeks to show that he was in fear for his life and shot her in self-defense, while the prosecutor has maintained Wafer had no reason to be fearful, and killed an unarmed, impaired woman. “His actions that night were unnecessary, unjustified and unreasonable,” Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Danielle Hagaman-Clark said. Defense attorney Cheryl Carpenter said what happened to McBride was “horrible” but that the jury should set aside their feelings and focus on the law.   Click through for more.     Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Botched Execution In Arizona Drags On For More Than Hour

 

Lawyers filed emergency papers to stop the execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona on Wednesday, saying prison officials botched the lethal injection.

“He has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour,” according to the motion filed in federal district court in Arizona. “He is still alive.”

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Torn Apart: Immigration and the American Family

 

We are a compassionate nation. We look back with sadness and horror at parents and children separated in centuries past, and then turn our heads when it happens in our day. The separation of parents and children is not confined to history.

American history is replete with stories of parents and children forever separated. Slaves were sold as individuals and families were wrenched apart to suit their owner’s needs. The tide of 19th century European immigration brought children to America on their own or parents without their kids hoping that family members would one day follow.

Immigration is surely a political issue, but it is also a parenting and family issue. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, approximately 17 million people live in families with an undocumented family member. About 4.5 million children who were born in the US have at least one undocumented parent.

Academics from Harvard and NYU wrote in the New York Times, “The extraordinary acceleration in the dismantling of these families, part of the government’s efforts to meet an annual quota of about 400,000 deportations, has had devastating results. Having a parent ripped away permanently, without warning, is one of the most devastating and traumatic experiences in human development.”

 

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The Nation’s Most Segregated Schools Aren’t Where You’d Think They’d Be

 

“NEW YORK — The nation’s most segregated schools aren’t in the deep south — they’re in New York, according to a report released Tuesday by the University of California, Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project.

 

That means that in 2009, black and Latino students in New York “had the highest concentration in intensely-segregated public schools,” in which white students made up less than 10 percent of enrollment and “the lowest exposure to white students,” wrote John Kucsera, a UCLA researcher, and Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor and the project’s director. “For several decades, the state has been more segregated for blacks than any Southern state, though the South has a much higher percent of African American students,” the authors wrote. The report, “New York State’s Extreme School Segregation,” looked at 60 years of data up to 2010, from various demographics and other research.

 

There’s also a high level of “double segregation,” Orfield said in an interview, as students are increasingly isolated not only by race, but also by income: the typical black or Latino student in New York state attends a school with twice as many low-income students as their white peers. That concentration of poverty brings schools disadvantages that mixed-income schools often lack: health issues, mobile populations, entrenched violence and teachers who come from the least selective training programs. “They don’t train kids to work in a society that’s diverse by race and class,” he said. “There’s a systematically unequal set of demands on those schools.””

 

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

What are we going to do to fix it America?

See on www.huffingtonpost.com

Woman Beaten To Death Over Photobomb

A Southern California woman faces a murder charge in the fatal beating of a woman outside a Santa Ana night club last weekend.

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Allegedly Pham accidently walked in front of a camera.

 

From the video it seems like a mob attacked her.

I’m wondering if this can be considered a hate crime.

 

See on www.huffingtonpost.com