Category: Justice

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Ansel Adams’ slides portray the lives of detained Japanese Americans in 1943 WWII internment camps

Louise Tami and Joyce Yuki Nakamura hold Mrs. Naguchi's hands
Source: Library of Congress collection of Ansel Adams’ Japanese internment camp photos, 1943

110,000 Japanese American citizens, some of them US military personnel, were detained in detention camps during the WWII. In 1943, Ansel Adams documented the lives of Japanese living in the Manzanar War Relocation Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Adams donated the photographs to the Library of Congress in 1965, commenting,

The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.” read more

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Michelle Alexander says we need revolutionary love but btw Bernie’s great

revolutionary love
Source: Religion at University of Alabama
Michelle Alexander, attorney and celebrated author of The New Jim Crow, wrote a provocative article recently – Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote. This week, she shared a post on Facebook explaining why she’s not going to continue belaboring the Hillary v. Bernie argument. This is a lady who really knows how to elevate important issues above the noise and the point she makes is an excellent one: no matter what happens in the external world of politics, each of us needs to busy ourselves with the hard work of improving society. Ms. Alexander writes: read more

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How the Supreme Court will handle decisions with Scalia gone and only eight sitting justices

supreme court justices 2010
Source: Outside the Beltway
With Antonin Scalia gone from the Supreme Court, there will be only eight justices until his replacement is nominated and confirmed. If the court splits 4-4 over a decision, the lower court ruling will be upheld without new precedent being set.

Scalia wasn’t completely anti-environment but he did effectively weaken several important environmental protections during his term. His absence makes it less likely that Pres. Obama’s Clean Power Plan will be aggressively challenged.

More here read more

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Powerful video: Eric Garner’s daughter supports Bernie Sanders because he’s a protester, like she is now

Erica Garner
Source: Erica Garner endorses Bernie Sanders for President video

Erica Garner is the daughter of Eric Garner. In this powerful video clip, Ms. Garner tells about the impact her dad’s murder has had on her family’s life and her own life. She has had to explain to her young daughter Elissa that the racism she’s learning about in school, which Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought against, is:

Eric Garner poster
Source: Erica Garner Bernie Sanders for President endorsement video
… not really over … I’m a activist … My Dad’s name was Eric Garner. No one gets to see their parent’s last moments and I was able to see my Dad die on national TV … They don’t know what they took from us … he was loved daily … Elissa misses my dad. She tells me, “Are you OK mom, do you Miss PopPop?” She wishes he was there so her mom wouldn’t be sad any more. read more

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Bernie Sanders’ race activism earned him University of Chicago censure, bad grades & arrest

bernie arrest
Source: Chicago Tribune
This is fun. Details about Bernie Sanders years as an activist in college, who was invited by a University of Chicago dean to take some time off from studies because his grades suffered from the intense anti-racism activism activities he engaged in.

Bernie began his fight against racism with a housing equity battle in 1961: a group of students learned that the university did not rent off-campus apartments it owned to black students and formed a coalition to change that, which Bernie Sanders helped lead. A couple of years later, in 1963, Sanders was arrested for protesting segregation at a Chicago South Side school. read more

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Young Bernie campaigned for civil rights and Hillary, for segregationist Goldwater

Bernie marched with MLK, HRC supported Goldwater
Source: Carl Manley on Facebook
On Facebook, Carl Manley shared this photo and these very enlightening words:

I’m not trying to tell you who to vote for in the upcoming election, I’m just asking you how many current presidential candidates marched with the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? In 1963 Bernie Sanders Marched With MLK Jr on Washington DC’s “I Have A Dream Speech”. In 1964, Hillary Clinton Campaigned for Sen Goldwater who Promised to Racially Re-Segregate the Nation & Overturn the Civil Rights Act. read more

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Special folk like Etzion Neuer confront hatred without becoming haters

Etzion Neuer talking to reporter
Source: Etzion Neuer Twitter page

It’s always remarkable to find those champions of justice whose job it is to confront daily incidents of hatred, bigotry and harassment … who take a stand on behalf of equity and fairness … and do so without losing their faith in the overall goodness of humanity. Etzion Neuer is one such champion. He now heads up the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) NY’s Regional Operations Department and was the New Jersey office chief for over six years, handling calls for both organizations for some time. read more

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Makes sense: Hillary will share her speech transcripts when hell freezes over

Hillary Transcripts
Source: Vets for Bernie
The Young Turks report on Hillary’s comeback to the New Hampshire debate question: will she share the transcripts of all of her speeches, even the ones she made to Goldman-Sachs? In a nutshell, Hillary’s answer was no, not really. We’ve learned that Hillary’s speaking contract stipulates that they be recorded both digitally and by a hired stenographer; and that she retains full copyright protection for all of her words.

A CNN analysis found that, since 2001, Hillary and Bill Clinton have received $153 million in speaking fees, with at least eight speeches given by Ms. Clinton to big banks for $1.8 million. The media has repeatedly asked Ms. Clinton to release the transcripts, to which she sarcastically responded on ABC’s This Week, “Yeah, you know, here’s another thing I want to say. Let everybody who has ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them all—we’ll all release them at the same time.” read more

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Did NAACP pay Hillary her usual $225K fee to speak at 2015 National Convention?

Bill & Hillary Clinton
Source: BreakingBrown.com
Hillary was the opening speaker at the 2015 NAACP National Convention in Philly last year, and Bill closed out the speaker roster. Were the Clintons there on a freebie basis in order to raise votes for Hillary, or did they get a portion of their customary speaker fees? For Hillary, that’s $225,000 per speech. She earned $9 million from speaking fees in 2013 and since 2001 the couple have netted $153,000,000 (yeah, million) total. At least some of that money came from Goldman Sachs.

Adam Edelman of the Daily News writes, read more

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Hillary Clinton’s record is not the record of a liberal

Orwell poster
Source: unknown
HRC’s record makes her not a liberal. None of the Republican candidates have achieved what she colluded with her husband to do: remove millions from welfare and foodstamps without reducing poverty; spend billions building prisons; create the three-strike sentencing system that would send people to prison for many years even if their offenses were small; lock up millions of black and brown men and women. The inmates became an unpaid prison workforce for clever CEOs.

And the prisons were taken over by private corporations that have demanded 80-98% occupancy rates. When occupancy drops, they extort money from the states they’re located in for breach of contract. read more

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A tale of three travesties of justice and two unfortunate outcomes

https://www.facebook.com/Justice-for-Marvin-Louis-Guy-320199521496316/

marvin louis guy
Source: police photo
This is a series of those completely messed up stories that seem like they can only happen in America. It starts with Marvin Louis Guy. He and his wife became aware that armed intruders were entering their Kileen, Texas home. As they were gun owners, the Guys took the logical step of shooting these dangerous men, killing one of them. But ooops, it turned out that the intruders were police staging a “no-knock” raid on the Guy’s home – where by the way no drugs or any thing illegal, was found. read more

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NYPD uses a little known law to bar minority tenants from their legal homes

Screenshot Daily News article on 297 victims
Source: Screenshot of Daily News article header on 297 Nuisance Abatement victims

A morally questionable rule is being used by the NYPD to harass over 1000 tenants a year and boot several hundred out of their homes, sometimes permanently – without providing victims of this heavy-handed practice with immediate opportunity to enter an enquiry or response to the action in a courtroom and with almost no legal protection and few redress options ever being made available. Pro-Publica shares one woman’s story.

New York City resident Ms. Jameela El-Shabazz became the victim of a, “nuisance abatement action, a little-known type of lawsuit that gives the city the power to shut down places it claims are being used for illegal purposes. In May when police broke into Ms. El-Shabazz’s apartment and arrested her for criminal possession of cocaine, a court-ordered chemical analysis identified the police-seized powder seized as eggshells. Ms. El-Shabazz uses it in a Nigerian religious ceremony. read more

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Prison-based gerrymandering brings in power & extra money to towns housing prisons

black male incarceration
Source: blackcommentator.com via americantribune.org
The political aspect of prison-based gerrymandering is often presented as being the only aspect of the phenomenon worth discussing. It’s important, of course, but so is the net financial and services gain to a community housing a prison when compared against the net financial and services loss to an inmate’s pre-incarceration community – the community where his children and other family members may still live. The direct negative financial and social impact of prison-based gerrymandering on an inmate’s true “home community” merits attention and discussion as much as the political aspect does. read more

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Many excellent reasons young people like Bernie much more than Hillary

The Youth Vote Matters
Grfx source: whatkidscando.org
My answer to friend Bryan Alexander‘s question to friends earned me the top spot in his Facebook post list for 2016. He asked: “Here’s a question for readers of any political stripe. Why is Bernie Sanders winning much more of the youth vote, as compared to Hillary Clinton?”

My response. I’ve got 2 millennials at home, both social/environmental justice champions. They love Bernie for a plethora of reasons:

He explains how political and financial systems work, and they want to know. read more