Archive for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Category

This Mother’s Day, Black Lives Matter Activists Will Give More Than … – The Nation.

These women are in jail not because theyve been convicted of a crime but because they cant pay to get back to their lives as they await trial.

Shonta Montgomery hugs her son Levell Jones at California Institute for Women in Chino, California. (Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

This week, black women in more than a dozen jails across the country will receive a Mothers Day gift from the Black Lives Matter movement: their freedom. These women are among the 62 percent of people in jail who are there not because theyve been convicted of a crime but because they cant pay to get back to their lives as they await trial. Organizers with Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Movement for Black Lives, ColorOfChange, and other groups have reached their goal of raising more than $250,000 for what theyre calling National Mamas Bail Out Day, and are continuing to raise more. These groups will pay for the release of women whose pretrial detention illustrates much of whats wrong with the criminal justice system. Many of the women who will be freed are in jail for low-level offenses such as loitering or small-scale drug possession. Nationwide, nearly a third of all women in jail have serious mental health issues, and the racial disparity is clear: Black women make up 44 percent of women in jails.

The idea for the Mothers Day bailout, which will free at least 30 women in Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and other cities nationwide, came out of a January gathering of representatives from 25 black-led organizations that wanted to collaborate on bail reform. The groups wondered how they might begin to put into action the vision outlined in the Movement for Black Lives policy platform released last summer. Mary Hooks, co-director of the Atlanta-based LGBTQ organizing project SONG, offered an idea shed been developing with other activists who had noticed the disparate impact that money bail and jail-related fines and fees has on LGBTQ communities. Hookss campaign ideawhat she describes as using our collective resources to buy each others freedomwas welcomed by the larger group. And because event organizers emphasize the ways race, class, and gender identity all play a role in criminalization, they have an expansive understanding of who qualifies as a mother. When we talk about black mamas, we know that mothering happens in a variety of ways, Hooks said. Whether its the mothers in the clubs who teach the young kids how to vogue, or the church mothers who took care of me. Women who are birth mothers and chosen mothers are eligible to be bailed out.

Mothers Day, with its idealized notions of family and womanhood, is the right moment to force an examination of women in jails, said Arissa Hall, a national Mamas Bail Out Day organizer and project manager at the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund. All mothers are not celebrated, she said, adding that this is especially true of women who struggle with poverty, addiction, and mental-health issuesin other words, the women who fill our jails. Black moms especially have not been granted that title of motherhood, she added, going on to describe how slavery shredded kinship bonds. Black women, too, she noted, have historically taken on caretaker roles that have put them in charge of other peoples children and away from their own.

Black moms especially have not been granted that title of motherhood. Arissa Hall

History guided event organizers in other ways as they pieced together their strategy. They studied the incremental steps toward abolition that enslaved people made in centuries past. From putting ourselves in cardboard boxes and mailing ourselves to freedom, to using the Underground Railroad, black people didnt wait for an Emancipation Proclamation or the end of the Civil War to act on their own behalf, Hooks told me. Instead, they sometimes bought their own and each others freedom, and in doing so left a blueprint for how to directly challenge mass criminalization today, even as policy battles are in progress. Marbre Stahly-Butts helps lead the Movement for Black Lives policy table and is partnership director at Law for Black Lives. She and others who advocate for criminal-justice reform and prison abolition are engaged in the long fight of pressuring district attorneys, judges and local and state officials to change their policies and practices. We have to be doing that, she told me. But we also can be collecting our resources to make a direct impact on the material conditions of our people who are in cages right now.

Donate to National Mamas Bail Out Day

This is the work bail funds across the country engage in every day, which is why Halls expertise has been critical. Shes been researching the specifics of how bail operates in the cities and counties where this weeks actions will take place, building relationships with sympathetic public defenders and otherwise demystifying the process for organizers. Its a myth that folks dont come back to court when released on their own recognizance, she told me, explaining that upwards of 95 percent of people helped by bail funds return to court for their scheduled appearances. People will come back to court regardless of whether or not bail is set. In her experience, what it takes to get people to their court dates is phone-call reminders and bus or train fare.

Providing the social services people need can help, too, which is why in Atlanta there will be a homecoming celebration on Mothers Day where the women bailed out of Fulton County and Atlanta city jails can gather for a barbecue and more information about subsequent campaigns to end cash bail, Hooks said. In addition to learning about the national effort theyre a part of, the women will be able to have photos with their families taken and get access to resources for housing, jobs, health services, and rides back to court.

Recently, the stories of Kalief Browder in New York City and Sandra Bland in Texass Waller Countypeople who were jailed and then met related tragic deathshave brought public attention to how torturous the experience of jail can be. Desperation to get out of that environment can force people to do whatever it takes to go home, including taking plea deals even when theyre innocent, organizers said. Bail corrupts the concept of justice, in that people who cant pay to get out of jail will eventually resolve their cases through a plea, said Hall. We dont force our court system to do what its actually supposed to do, which is give people a fair trial.

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This Mother's Day, Black Lives Matter Activists Will Give More Than ... - The Nation.

BLM leader DeRay Mckesson: ‘Minnesota Nice’ hurts equity efforts – Minneapolis Star Tribune

Anthony Souffle, Star Tribune DeRay Mckesson, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, spoke at the Charities Review Council forum on equity and inclusion in northeast Minneapolis on Tuesday.

DeRay Mckesson, a former Minneapolis schools official who left his job to become one of the most high-profile figures of the national Black Lives Matter movement, told local nonprofit leaders Tuesday that Minnesota Nice can stand in the way of equity.

As a human resources director for Minneapolis schools, Mckesson said he noticed that people in the Twin Cities liked to talk about equity ensuring that kids regardless of color can achieve at the same high level but sidestepped the honest, sometimes hard-to-hear conversations and criticisms that can result in change.

Minnesota Nice does damage to kids, he said. While observing in classrooms, he found that some felt attacked and were defensive when people just gave feedback.

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BLM leader DeRay Mckesson: 'Minnesota Nice' hurts equity efforts - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Black Lives Matter and other groups raise money to bail women out of jail before Mother’s Day – ABA Journal

Criminal Justice

Posted May 10, 2017 12:34 pm CDT

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Shutterstock

Several groups have been raising money to bail black women out of jail so they can spend Mothers Day with their families.

The idea for National Mamas Bail Out Day originated with the Atlanta-based, LGBTQ nonprofit Southerners On New Ground, report The Nation, Phoenix New Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Women in pretrial detention are being bailed out of jail in 16 cities across the country in advance of Mothers Day on Sunday.

Other groups participating include Black Lives Matter, the Movement for Black Lives, ColorOfChange, Healing Hearts of Families USA Ministries, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and SisterSong.

The idea springs from freed slaves raising money to buy their relatives freedom before the Civil War ended.

Southerners on New Ground co-director Mary Hooks spoke at a fundraiser on Thursday, according to the Journal-Constitution. Many of the women being stuffed into cages right now are in for minor, low-level offenses, she said. Its time for us to divest from police, jails and courts and invest in our communities.

Black women are imprisoned at higher rates. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 30 percent of all incarcerated women in the United States are black, although they make up only 13 percent of the female population.

The groups are also considering a bailout day for Fathers Day.

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Black Lives Matter and other groups raise money to bail women out of jail before Mother's Day - ABA Journal

Audio: Black Lives Matter activist files $4M lawsuit against LAPD … – 89.3 KPCC

Black Lives Matter activist Greg Akili Tuesday filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the LAPD and city of Los Angeles claiming he was wrongfully arrested during a raucous police commission meeting last year.

The suit stems from the events that transpired as the Feb. 9, 2016 meeting was getting underway.

Akili and other Black Lives Matter activists were refusing to sit down and stop shouting denunciations of commission President Matt Johnson and the LAPD.

As Johnson gave the 68-year-old Akili his "last warning" to sit down, the activist stood up and pointed his finger at Johnson, saying he had no right to tell activists to be quiet.

Officers escorted Akili out of the building and arrested him, not for disrupting the meeting but for allegedly grabbing a female officer. The city attorney charged him withmisdemeanor battery.

Akili refused a plea deal. The city took the case to trial; a jury convicted him of resisting arrest but couldnt reach a decision on the battery charge.

For Akili, his arrest had nothing to do with battery.

"I wasnt arrested for anything but upsetting and disrupting the meeting. And there is no law against that,"Akili told KPCC outside police headquarters Tuesday.

The city attorneys office says it's reviewing his lawsuit.

Akili has been a familiar face at police commission meetings in recent years. He is perhaps the best dressed activist, in his trademark double breasted sport coat, pocket square, dress shoes and brown fedora. He also is often defiant.

Akili remains a regular at police commission meetings in fact he was asked to leave Tuesdays session after loudly claiming that the LAPD "is the most murderous police force in the country."

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Audio: Black Lives Matter activist files $4M lawsuit against LAPD ... - 89.3 KPCC

#WalterScott: ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Sign Put Up Near Where Killer Cop Gunned Down Unarmed Black Motorist – The Root

People join hands in prayer as they visit a memorial set up on the site where Walter Scott was killed April 11, 2015, in North Charleston, S.C. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Even with former North Charleston, S.C., Police Officer Michael Slager pleading guilty in his federal civil rights trial for Walter Scotts death, the unarmed black motorist who was gunned down in cold blood still cannot rest peacefully, it would seem.

The Post and Courier reports that police sympathizers have paid to have a Blue Lives Matter billboard put up more than a mile from the site where Slager killed Scott by shooting him in the back.

Community members are upset by the sign and say that the message mocks the Black Lives Matter movement, which has put the spotlight on controversial uses of force by police, including the April 2015 shooting of Scott.

On May 2, Slager pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Scotts civil rights, and according to the Post and Courier, the sign was installed Friday.

Its an insult to the whole Black Lives Matter movement, resident Devonte Holmes said while waiting at a bus stop near the billboard. And they did it on Remount Road, where the police shot that man. Thats disrespectful.

From the Post and Courier:

The person behind the message, Scott Garland of West Ashley, has hoisted a cardboard sign emblazoned with the same words outside the courthouses where Slager has appeared. He attended Slagers federal plea hearing last week.

Garland would not say Monday whether the signs placement was purposeful. About $500 was donated to the cause on GoFundMe.com, a fundraising effort that started two weeks ago.

Scott Garland told the Post and Courier: Its nothing negative against anybody. It was intended as a show of support to the men and women in blue.

Local activist Thomas Dixon disagrees and told the Post and Courier that the sign and its message detracts from the healthy scrutiny of police-involved shootings more than it bolsters support for law enforcement.

There is no dispute that police officers lives matter, he said. But this just drives another wedge between law enforcement and the community.

On the other side of the issue, John Blackmon, president of the Tri-County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 3, applauded Garlands display.

You have men and women who put on the badge and do their best every day to help the community, Blackmon said. Now you have a citizen stepping up and saying, Thank you. Theres nothing wrong with that.

Read more at the Post and Courier.

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#WalterScott: 'Blue Lives Matter' Sign Put Up Near Where Killer Cop Gunned Down Unarmed Black Motorist - The Root