The Freedom Libraries will be placed in the facilities' housing units for unfettered access to a 500-book collection donated by the non-profit organization.

New York state tried to limit writings and artistic works from prisoners — illustrating a growing issue across the country.

The Supreme Court has ruled against Alabama's defense of an electoral map drawn by the state's Republican-dominated legislature. Black voters had challenged the law as racially discriminatory.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered Alabama officials to redraw the state’s congressional map to allow an additional Black majority district to account for the fact that the state is 27% Black.

Nakala Murry says her son doesn't understand what happened to him. "His words to me were: 'Why did he shoot me? What did I do?' "

This post is a detour from my series on section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Superior Court of Justice and Court of Appeal Working Families decisions (see here and here (SCJ) and here (ONCA)). (See those posts here, here, here and here). In this post I provide some thoughts […]

By Candice Fong (Follow us on LinkedIn) Years ago, I helped a female BIPOC colleague put together a session with a speaker. On the day of the presentation, I walked into the room and introduce…

"In May of 1976, twenty-four-year-old Carol Menaker was impaneled with eleven others on a jury in the trial of Freddy Burton, a young Black prison inmate charged with the grisly murders of two white wardens inside Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. After being sequestered for twenty-one days, the jury voted to convict Mr. Burton, who was then sentenced to life in prison without parole. For more than forty years, Menaker did what she could to put the intensely emotional experience of the sequestration and trial behind her, rarely speaking of it to others and avoiding jury service when at all possible. But the arrival of a jury summons at her home in Northern California in 2017 set her on a path to unravel the painful experience of sequestration and finally ask the question: What ever happened to Freddy Burton--and is it possible that my youth and white privilege were what led me to convict him of murder? The Worst Thing We've Ever Done is Menaker's inspirational account of journeying back in time to uncover the personal bias that may have led her to judge someone whose shoes she never could have walked in." --

"The Brady rule was meant to transform the justice system. In soaring language, the Supreme Court decreed in 1963 that prosecutors must share favorable evidence with the defense-part of a suite of decisions of that reform-minded era designed to promote fairness for those accused of crimes. But reality intervened. The opinion faced many challenges, ranging from poor legal reasoning and shaky precedent to its clashes with the very foundations of the American criminal legal system and some of its most powerful enforcers: prosecutors. In this beautifully wrought work of narrative nonfiction, Dybdahl illustrates the promise and shortcomings of the Brady rule through deft storytelling and attention to crucial cases, including the infamous 1984 murder of Catherine Fuller in Washington, DC, which led to eight young Black men being sent to prison for life after the prosecutor, afraid of losing the biggest case of his career, hid information that would have proven their innocence. With a seasoned defense lawyer's unsparing eye for detail, Thomas L. Dybdahl chronicles the evolution of the Brady rule-from its unexpected birth to the series of legal challenges that left it defanged and ineffective. Yet Dybdahl shows us a path forward by highlighting promising reform efforts across the country which offer a blueprint for a legislative revival of Brady's true spirit"--

"What if social transformation and liberation isn't about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle."--Page 4 of cover.

"Police power was built on women's bodies. Men, especially Black men, often stand in as the ultimate symbol of the mass incarceration crisis in the United States. Women are treated as marginal, if not overlooked altogether, in histories of the criminal legal system. In The Streets Belong to Us - the first history of women and police in the modern United States - Anne Gray Fischer narrates how sexual policing fueled a dramatic expansion of police power. The enormous discretionary power that police officers wield to surveil, target, and arrest anyone they deem suspicious was tested, legitimized, and legalized through the policing of women's sexuality and their right to move freely through city streets. Throughout the twentieth century, police departments achieved a stunning consolidation of urban authority through the strategic discretionary enforcement of morals laws, including disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and other prostitution-related misdemeanors. Between Prohibition in the 1920s and the rise of 'broken windows' policing in the 1980s, police targeted white and Black women in distinct but interconnected ways. These tactics reveal the centrality of racist and sexist myths to the justification and deployment of state power. Sexual policing did not just enhance police power. It also transformed cities from segregated sites of 'urban vice' into the gentrified sites of Black displacement and banishment we live in today. By illuminating both the racial dimension of sexual liberalism and the gender dimension of policing in Black neighborhoods, The Streets Belong to Us illustrates the decisive role that race, gender, and sexuality played in the construction of urban police regimes"--

"This book explores the private weaponization of racial fear that drives modern-day enforcement of these Black and white spaces. More than any express hatred of African Americans or desire to return to formal segregation, private white actors today react to deeply ingrained, systemic, and often unconscious racial fear of Black people who appear "out of place" in their public environment. They weaponize this racial fear in a variety of ways, including by abusing 911 to enforce formal social control via armed government agents, by trafficking in racial fear to whitewash their own misdeeds through "racial hoaxes," and by exacting vigilante justice through extrajudicial killing under the guise of self-defense and standing one's ground. Each of these approaches perverts and exploits the weapon of choice - the criminal justice system - with violent repercussions for the Black targets of this subformal apartheid. More often than not, private actors employing these methods enjoy the express or implicit support of government officials at all levels, from local police departments to state legislatures to the United States Supreme Court"--

"Every Supreme Court transition presents an opportunity for a shift in the balance of the third branch of American government, but the replacement of Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas in 1991 proved particularly momentous. Not only did it shift the ideological balance on the Court; it was inextricably entangled with the persistent American dilemma of race. In The Transition, this most significant transition from 1953 to the present is explored through the lives and writings of the first two African American justices on Court, touching on the lasting consequences for understandings of American citizenship as well as the central currents of Black political thought over the past century. In their lives, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas experienced the challenge of living and learning in a world that had enslaved their relatives and that continued to subjugate members of their racial group. On the Court, their judicial writings--often in concurrences or dissents--richly illustrate the ways in which these two individuals embodied these crucial American (and African American) debates--on the balance between state and federal authority, on the government's responsibility to protect its citizens against discrimination, and on the best strategies for pursuing equality. The gap between Justices Marshall and Thomas on these questions cannot be overstated, and it reveals an extraordinary range of thought that has yet to be fully appreciated. The 1991 transition from Justice Marshall to Justice Thomas has had consequences that are still unfolding at the Court and in society. Arguing that the importance of this transition has been obscured by the relegation of these Justices to the sidelines of Supreme Court history, Daniel Kiel shows that it is their unique perspective as Black justices--the lives they have lived as African Americans and the rooting of their judicial philosophies in the relationship of government to African Americans--that makes this succession echo across generations"--

"Professor Scherer's research proves that increasing diversity on the bench promotes the courts' legitimacy among formerly-marginalized groups; at the same time, white men experience a backlash to an increase in diversity on the bench"--

"Many DEI interventions lack rigor and measurable value beyond staff composition, statistics, and surveys. Data-Driven DEI presents readers with science-based, technology-enabled assessments and tools that will help individuals and organizations achieve measurable lasting impact. With the tools in this book, readers can achieve greater diversity, equity and inclusion by: assessing their current state of DEI with the author's proprietary the Intrinsic Inclusion Inventory; analyzing that data to produce a personalized action plan; and implementing evidence-based, behavioral learning interventions like the author's proprietary The Inclusion Habit program. Following these steps will lead to several measurable individual outcomes: increased cultural competence, accelerated career advancement, genuinely inclusive leadership, and effective allyship. It also produces numerous, quantifiable organizational outcomes such as improved recruitment and retention, strengthened customer orientation, increased employee satisfaction, better-quality decision making, enhanced brand and reputation, and improved bottom line financial performance"--

"Critical Race Theory is essential for understanding developments in this burgeoning field, which has spread to other disciplines and countries. The new edition also covers the ways in which other societies and disciplines adapt its teachings and, for readers wanting to advance a progressive race agenda, includes new questions for discussion, aimed at outlining practical steps to achieve this objective"--

"Climate change. Two words that are quickly becoming the clarion call to action in the twenty-first century. It is a voter issue, an economy driver, and a defining dynamic for the foreseeable future. Yet, in Black communities, climate change is seen as less urgent when compared to other pressing issues, including police brutality, gun violence, job security, food insecurity, and the blatant racism faced daily around the country. However, with Black Americans disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change--making up 13 percent of the US population but breathing 40 percent dirtier air and being twice as likely to be hospitalized or die from climate-related health problems than white counterparts--climate change is a central issue of racial justice and affects every aspect of life for Black communities. In Before the Streetlights Come On, climate activist Heather McTeer Toney insists that those most affected by climate change are best suited to lead the movement for climate justice. McTeer Toney brings her background in politics, community advocacy, and leadership in environmental justice to this revolutionary exploration of why and how Black Americans are uniquely qualified to lead national and global conversations around systems of racial disparity and solutions to the climate crisis. As our country delves deeper into solutions for systemic racism and past injustices, she argues, the environmental movement must shift direction and leadership toward those most affected and most affecting change: Black communities."--

"Tens of thousands of innocent people are behind bars for offenses ranging from misdemeanors to capital crimes. But proving their innocence in the court of law is extraordinarily difficult. After conviction, the presumption of innocence vanishes, and a new presumption of guilt forms and ossifies over time. Our criminal justice system values finality over accuracy, even if it comes at the cost of an innocent person's wrongful conviction and even when there's good evidence they haven't committed the crime. In Barred, acclaimed legal scholar and pioneering innocence advocate Daniel Medwed argues that our justice system's stringent procedural rules are to blame for the ongoing punishment of the innocent. Every state gives criminal defendants just one opportunity to appeal their convictions to a higher court. Afterward, the wrongfully accused can pursue various post-conviction remedies, but all too often they fall short in leading to exoneration. Because of narrow guidelines and deferential attitudes toward lower courts, higher courts tend to uphold convictions, even when there is compelling evidence of a miscarriage of justice. And although the executive branch holds the power to release people who are in custody, it exercises this power sparingly and views with intense suspicion those who insist upon their innocence. The result is that a startling number of people are incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit; highly-publicized death-row exonerations are just the tip of the iceberg. The regime is stacked against the innocent, Medwed concludes, and the appellate and post-conviction process must be entirely overhauled. Through heart-wrenching real-life stories, alongside accessible descriptions of complex legal procedures, Barred exposes how our legal system perpetuates gross injustice and issues a powerful call for change"--

An Arizona organization working to investigate and litigate cases of wrongful conviction in Arizona will receive funding from the Department of Justice to continue that work.The University of Arizona Innocence Project started as a small clinic in 2014 and today it's one of two such initiatives in Arizona.

The city of Minneapolis has reached settlements totaling more than $8.8 million in two civil lawsuits that accuse former police officer Derek Chauvin of using excessive force in two incidents that happened nearly three years before he killed George Floyd during an arrest.

When I was a high school student in the mid-1960s, I used to trek up to the West Wing of UCLA’s Powell Library on Sunday nights.  This was the place to see and be seen in the social scene of …

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a bid by South Carolina officials to revive a Republican-crafted voting map that a lower court said had unconstitutionally "exiled" 30,000 Black voters from a closely contested congressional district.

UAL Special Collections

Daniel Perry, a US army sergeant stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, had been found guilty of murder in a 2020 shooting.

"The Evidence of Things Not Seen, award-winning author James Baldwin's searing 1985 indictment of the nation's racial stagnation, is contextualized anew by an introduction from New York Times bestselling author and political leader Stacey Abrams. In this essential work, James Baldwin examines the Atlanta child murders that took place over twenty-two months in 1979 and 1980. Examining this incident with a reporter's skill and an essayist's insight, he notes the significance of Atlanta as the site of these brutal killings-a city that claimed to be "too busy to hate"-and the permeation of race throughout the case: the Black administration in Atlanta; the murdered Black children; and Wayne Williams, the Black man tried for the crimes. In Baldwin's hands, this specific set of events has transcended its era and remains as relevant today as ever. Rummaging through the ruins of American race relations, Baldwin addresses all the hard-to-face issues that have brought us to a moment in history when we are forced to reckon with some of the country's most ingrained, foundational issues and when, too often, public officials fail to ask real questions about "justice for all." In this, his last book, Baldwin also reveals his optimistic faith in America's ability to move toward repair: "This is the only nation in the world that can hope to liberate-to begin to liberate-mankind from the strangling idea of the national identity and the tyranny of the territorial dispute. I know this sounds remote, now, and that I will not live to see anything resembling this hope come to pass. Yet, I know that I have seen it-in fire and blood and anguish, true, but I have seen it. I speak with the authority of the issue of the slave born in the country once believed to be: the last best hope of earth.""--

"Deliberately writing against archival erasure and death driven logics of anti-Blackness, this volume chronicles Black women's aliveness, ethics of care, and rituals of healing. Nineteen contributors from interdisciplinary fields and diverse backgrounds explore Black feminine community, consciousness, ethics of care, spirituality, and social critique. They situate Black women's multidimensional experiences with COVID-19 and other violences that affect their lives. The stories they tell are connected and interwoven, bound together by anti-Black gendered COVID necropolitics and commitments to creating new spaces for breathing, healing and wellness"--

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation. In these essays, the author takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the 2010s (Girls, Django Unchained) and commenting on the state of feminism (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. This book takes a look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and serves as a call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

"Dr. Baden chronicles his six decades on the front lines of the fight for accountability within the legal system-including the long history of medical examiners of using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium (a term that shows up in the pathology report for George Floyd) to explain away the deaths of BIPOC restrained by police"--