By Joseph Lowndes of HuffPost:
The FBI’s recent announcement that it has placed former Black Panther and escaped prisoner Assata Shakur at the top of its Most Wanted list and the doubling of the reward for her capture by the State of New Jersey is a development that we should not ignore.
read more »
From Anarchist News:
ATLANTA —
Today, April 9th 2013, there was a riot in Edgewood, a neighborhood northeast of downtown Atlanta.
Around fifty people gathered for a “March Against the Police” with drums, banners, and a desire for vengeance at the playground in Edgewood Courts, an apartment complex in the back of the neighborhood. Edgewood Courts contains some of the few remaining low income housing units in Atlanta. Yesterday, the police pepper sprayed a group of kids and beat and arrested a man grieving over his lost father.
read more »
In a new study put out by the National Partnership for Women and Families, an analysis of the most recent census statistics available has found that Seattle has one of the highest disparities in pay between sexes.
read more »
A panel on rebutting charges of racism at a conservative political conference went exactly as well as you might expect when one audience member suggested slaves should have been thankful to their masters for “feeding… and housing” them, earning scattered applause and a collective chorus of “Ooooooohh….!”
read more »
The fire that caused extensive damage to an under-construction townhouse project at 24th and Norman last week was intentionally set, fire department investigators say.
Now a post signed only by “Some Anarchists” on the Puget Sound Anarchists website claims responsibility for the arson.
read more »
Taken from the Stranger, by Cienna Madrid:
The day after being slapped with a lawsuit, the Seattle Police Department capitulated by publicly releasing a controversial dash-cam video Tuesday that appears to show three officers restraining, choking, and then punching an uncooperative suspect. The video’s release after six weeks of delay is a heartening victory for transparency, albeit one that exposes yet another explosive case of police using force.
read more »
If you’re looking for one of the reasons why the United States imprisons more people — by miles — than any other nation, you can look to the development of private prisons as a means of making some people rich. Those people spend millions of dollars to lobby elected officials to do two things: Convert government-run prisons to private prisons, and lock up more people for longer periods of time. Because that makes them even richer.
read more »
By Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce A. Dixon:
In what should be the biggest story of the week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced Tuesday that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of current enrollment to charter schools, the streets or wherever, and put thousands of experienced, well qualified teachers, often grounded in the communities where they teach, on the street.
Ominously, the shredding of Philadelphia’s public schools isn’t even news outside Philly. This correspondent would never have known about it save for a friend’s Facebook posting early this week. Corporate media in other cities don’t mention massive school closings, whether in Chicago, Atlanta, NYC, or in this case Philadelphia, perhaps so people won’t have given the issue much deep thought before the same crisis is manufactured in their town. Even inside Philadelphia the voices of actual parents, communities, students and teachers are shut out of most newspaper and broadcast accounts.
read more »
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, from the New York Times.
Fuki Madison, centre, mother of Ronald Madison, who was killed by New Orleans police, reacts as she leaves federal court after sentences were handed out in her case in New Orleans on Wednesday.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge sentenced five former police officers to years in prison for the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina but not before lashing out at prosecutors for allowing others involved to serve lighter penalties for their crimes. The case that wrapped up Wednesday was the centerpiece of a Justice Department push to clean up New Orleans’ police department that has long been tainted with corruption.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt expressed frustration that he was bound by mandatory minimum sentencing laws to imprison former Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and former officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon for decades when other officers who engaged in similar conduct on the Danziger Bridge — but cut deals with prosecutors — are serving no more than eight years behind bars.
read more »
