Social Movements & the Law

Black Lives Matter Managing Director, Kailee Scales is joined by Activist Tamika Mallory, Co-founder of Until Freedom, and Taylor Family Attorney Lonita Baker to discuss the brutal shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT who was killed by police officers in her own home, and the ongoing marginalization of police violence against Black lives.

The city of Minneapolis on Thursday agreed to pay roughly $8.9 million to settle two lawsuits involving former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with killing George Floyd in 2020. In th…

On July 10, 2015, a 28 year-old black woman named Sandra Bland was pulled over in a small Texas town for failing to use a turn signal when she changed lanes. She was ultimately arrested and taken to the county jail. Three days later, she was found dead in her cell. The official coroner's report ruled the death a suicide, but many people believe that Sandra Bland was murdered. Sandy, as she was known to her family and friends, became a national figure in the Black Lives Matter Movement and "Say H

“Digidog is out of the pound,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference showing off three new NYPD technologies, including a robotic dog.

Last night on Instagram Live I took time to really break down and explain the systems, structures, and people that are responsible for Breonna's murder and the subsequent lack of justice and accountability. I want you to hear that entire conversation. Later today, on The Breakdown Live, I will give us solutions and action steps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Affirmative action has long been controversial. Proponents say it’s a way to address historical discrimination. On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in two cases to strike down race as a factor in admissions processes.The decision's impact will be tough to measure in nine states, including Arizona, that already bar public universities from considering race in admissions.Since 2010, Arizona hasn’t allowed public universities to consider race. But private universities were still able to, to an extent.

All is not lost. I see multiple pathways to change, justice, and accountability for Breonna Taylor. Today, I'll share some clear action steps for us. ---- If you listen to The Breakdown and want to help support the work we do, consider becoming a member of our Patreon at www.patreon.com/thebreakdown for exclusive members perks and early access to content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m breathing deeply as I write this. What I’m writing about is charged. I feel this energy in my body. It’s a heat in my throat and a rumbling in my belly. It’s an intensity that’s frustrated that…

The U.S is the only country in the world that allows minors to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Approximately 2,500 juveniles have been effectively sentenced to die in prison—considered “irredeemable” by the state for crimes committed when they were just teenagers. One of them was David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez, who entered prison at 17 expecting to leave in a coffin. Suave tells the story of what happens when your whole world is a prison cell, and you suddenly get a second chance at life. It’s the story of one man’s incarceration and redemption and an unusual relationship between a journalist and a source.

SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council on Tuesday added caste to the city's anti-discrimination laws, becoming the first U.S. city to ban caste discrimination and the first in the world to pass such a law outside South Asia.

If You Want To Understand The Conversation Around Abolishing The Police, You Should Start Here. We Can’t Think Of A Better Time For An Encore Presentation Of This 2019 Episode With Mariame Kaba On How To Radically Rethink Our Approach To Public Safety And What It Would Look Like If We Got Rid Of The Criminal Justice System As We Know It. What If We Just Got Rid Of Prisons? The United States Is The Epicenter Of Mass Incarceration – But Exactly What Is It We Hope To Get Out Of Putting People In Prisons? And Whatever Your Answer Is To That – Is It Working? It’s Worthwhile To Stop And Interrogate Our Intentions About Incarceration And Whether It Enacts Justice Or Instead Satisfies Some Urge To Punish. Prison Abolitionist Mariame Kaba Wants Us To Explore Some Truly Radical Notions That Force Us To Inspect Those Instincts Towards Punishment. Hear Her Dismantle What She Calls The Current "Criminal Punishment System" And Instead Employ The Ideology Of Restorative Justice. RELATED LINKS The Color Complex By Kathy Russel, Midge Wilson, And Ronald Hall Locking Up Our Own By James Forman Jr Circles And Ciphers Project NIA

Lexipol, a little-known private company based in Orange County that over the past two decades has quietly become one of the most influential forces in U.S. policing, writing policy statements for many police departments.

Radley Balko, author of Rise Of The Warrior Cop, says police departments across America are increasingly using equipment designed for use on a battlefield, including tanks, bayonets and grenades

Gugulethu Moyo is publicly accusing the board of Tuscon's Jewish History Museum of racism and sexism — and the board is threatening to sue her.

We talk with ​journalist ​Jamiles Lartey about systemic racism in American policing​. ​He writes about criminal justice, race and policing for the non-profit news organization 'The Marshall Project.' ​"Policing wasn't always this way. It wasn't always this big. It wasn't always this bureaucratic," he says. "Sometimes as a society, you need to rethink institutions."

Constitutional scholars Randy Barnett and Carol Anderson discuss how notions of gun ownership have changed -- and not changed -- since the founding of the country.

NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Jay Caspian Kang and William Garcia-Medina on the complex issues surrounding race relations within Asian and Latino communities and movements for Black Lives.

Where do our minds live? A simple, scientific response would be to say our minds live in our brains. But Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji says we should not think of our minds as being solitary.

Conversations about cultural property usually revolve around questions of ownership, conservation, national patrimony and public access. From a legal perspective, the origins and provenance of individual artworks or artifacts are of primary importance. Yet from

Protesters in Baltimore pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus and hurled it into the city's Inner Harbor on Saturday night, adding to the list of monuments toppled during nationwide demonstrations against racism and police brutality.

The day that a white mob came to Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa, Okla., Viola Fletcher was just 7 years old.

A new report documents the lack of Latino stories in media and entertainment. The Texas congressman warns that underrepresentation allows the ugliest stereotypes to hold sway.

The photos surface after an officer with the Aurora Police Department reported them to the internal affairs unit. The interim police chief calls them reprehensible.

In 1990, Yusef Salaam was one of the five boys wrongly convicted in the so-called Central Park jogger case. They weren't exonerated until 2002. Salaam tells his story in Better, Not Bitter.

The Gone, But Not Forgotten event aims to unite Black women and encourage them to raise their voices. "I want us to learn how to protect each other," organizers said.

The Prison Policy Initiative produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, and then sparks advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.

"Recent events have brought to the fore longstanding concerns about the nature of policing in the United States and how it undermines racial equity. As an institution policing needs significant reconsideration. It is time to rethink the structure and governance of policing. It is also time to engage in a deeper conversation about the meaning of public safety. In the meantime however the following is a list of urgently-needed reforms compiled by a small group of law school faculty each of whom runs or is associated with an academic center devoted to policing and the criminal justice system. The reforms are not intended as an entire agenda for what ought to happen around policing or what American policing should look like. Rather they offer immediate concrete steps federal state and local governments can take to address enduring problems in policing. The authors are scholars who are also deeply involved in the daily practice of policing and included among them are the Reporters for the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law: Policing which works with advisers from across the ideological spectrum in drafting high-level principles to govern policing though the recommendations here go beyond the scope of the ALI project."

Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum started the #SayHerName campaign to bring awareness to often invisible names of Black women who have been targets of law enforcement.

"This article argues that "race" is an unnecessary and potentially pernicious concept. As evidenced by the history of slavery segregation the Holocaust and other human tragedies the idea of "race" can perpetuate prejudices and misconceptions and serve as justification for systematic persecution. "Race" suggests that human beings can be divided into subspecies some of which are morally and intellectually inferior to others. The law has important symbolic and expressive value and is often efficacious as a force that shapes public ideology. Consequently it must undermine the notion that "race" is a legitimate mechanism by which to categorize human beings. Furthermore the focus on rigid "racial" classifications obfuscates political discussion concerning affirmative action scientific research and social inequities. When we speak of "racial" diversity discrimination or inequality it is unclear whether we are referring to color socioeconomic status continent of origin or some other factor. Because the term "race" subsumes so many different ideas in people's minds it is not a useful platform for social discourse."

Defense attorneys for eight of 19 indicted APD officers say they were following orders when they used force against 2020 protesters. So far, there are 14 lawsuits against the city for injuries suffered during those confrontations.