Racism

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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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Healing Race Relations with Lee Mun Wah [VIDEO]

Since its founding in 1994, StirFry Seminars & Consulting has revolutionized the field of diversity through its internationally acclaimed documentary films and seminars. Millions of viewers worldwide have seen The Color of Fear, as well as many of the other groundbreaking films produced and directed by Lee Mun Wah, StirFry’s founder, CEO and Master Trainer. In 1995, Oprah Winfrey produced a one-hour special on Lee Mun Wah’s life and the impact of The Color of Fear.

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

Lee Mun Wah describes how dialogs are better than panel discussions and how to acknowledge the person in front of you and stop playing devil’s advocate.

 

Get your popcorn and drink. The video is about an hour.

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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

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Families of Police Violence Victims Face Trauma Without Support

Truthout spoke with relatives of murdered Black men, who described feeling angry and isolated, their lives left in tatters.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.truth-out.org

 

#TraumaCenterNow

 

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Jerry Hough

Jerry Hough (1935- ) is an American political scientist, a professor at Duke University. About to retire, he is no longer holding his tongue on his racist views.

 

Continue reading, if you want to understand how the doctrine of White Supremacy, ethnocentrism and racism is spread through academia.

 

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

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The Real “Looting”: From Enslavement to Policing and Beyond

Recent US protests are part of a growing movement against systemic racism, including the looting of Black wealth and violence against Black people.

Source: www.truth-out.org

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VIDEO: The Difference Between a Black Man and a White Man Open Carrying An AR-15 Legally

Two men carrying the same rifle down the street receive two entirely different reactions from police.

Source: thefreethoughtproject.com

 

I was scared-to-death just watching this video.

 

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San Francisco arrests under review after officers’ slur-filled texts revealed

At least 3,000 arrests are under review in San Francisco in a bias scandal about how police officers allegedly wrote racist and homophobic text messages.

Source: www.cnn.com