Social Movements & the Law

"Of course some of Oprah's favorites made the list."

Washington, DC's Metropolitan Police Department made roughly five times as many arrests during the height of last June's Black Lives Matter protests compared to the US Capitol insurrection on Wednesday, a CNN analysis of the police department's data found.

"In the post-World War II period, students rebelled against the archaic university. In student-led movements, they fought for the new kinds of public the university needed to serve--women, minorities, immigrants, indigenous people, and more--with a success that had a profound impact on the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. Because of their efforts, ethnic studies, women's studies, and American studies were born, and minority communities have become more visible and important to academic debate. Less than fifty years since this pivotal shift in the academy, however, the university is fighting back. In We Demand, Roderick A. Ferguson shows how the university, particularly the public university, is moving away from "the people" in all their diversity. As more resources are put toward STEM education, humanities and interdisciplinary programs are being cut and shuttered. This has had a devastating effect on the pursuit of knowledge, and on interdisciplinary programs born from the hard work and effort of an earlier generation. This is not only a reactionary move against the social advances since the '60s and '70s, but part of the larger threat of anti-intellectualism in the United States."--Provided by publisher.

Documenting the impact of COVID-19 on Black America.

“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it,” writes professor Ibram X. Kendi. This is the essence of antiracism: the action that must follow both emotional and intellectual awareness of racism. Explore what an antiracist society might look like, how we can play an active role in building it, and what being an antiracist in your own context might mean. This conversation was recorded during the 2019 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado. The week-long event is presented by the Aspen Institute in partnership with The Atlantic. Prominent leaders and thinkers across business, politics, media, culture, science, and more participate in hundreds of panels, interviews, presentations, and screenings. Learn more at https://www.aspenideas.org

Recent controversial interactions of police with the public have become an issue of important concern for public and governmental leaders, who have openly quest...

Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal

"Even though I'm a kid, it's important to speak my voice so people can hear me and know they can share their voice too, just like me," the young organizer said.

This article examines critical issues regarding criminal profiling, its misuse by law enforcement, and its utility to solve serious crimes with the technique, hereinafter known and called "Criminal Profiling". The specific issue under investigation is the misuse of criminal profiling in the United States, and its impact on African Americans, and other minorities. In that realm, a discussion and analysis of the importance of criminal profiling, the development of criminal profiling and, the misuse of criminal profiling as a critical issue in the 21st century are analyzed.

"Race Racism And The Law considers race racism and racial distinctions in the law. It examines the role of domestic and international law in promoting and/or alleviating racism. This website makes law review scholarship (and related material) more accessible to community activists students and non-legal faculty."

As protests erupt throughout the nation to hold law enforcement and criminal justice institutions accountable, UIC's Richard J Daley library has created this research guide to help our community understand systemic racism and demand justice for all.

November 17th, 2019 - New York Times Best Selling Author, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Moral Movement Architect, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II engage in conversation led by author Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove on how the systems of our shared lives must change if we are to progress as a people.

The health worker was shot dead during a police raid and protestors say she too must be remembered.

"What follows is an articulation of the five key policies that our experience and research reveal as the most critical to advancing public safety in America. Rather than a summary or laundry list, we offer these five recommendations as the fundamental next steps. Each makes the rest of the policies we have collectively endorsed easier, more likely, and more effective. In other words, these are the five steps that we believe can do the most work towards turning a just public safety system from a goal to a reality."

In this compelling book, distinguished activist lawyer Francis Boyle sounds an impassioned clarion call to citizen action against Bush administration policies both domestic and international. Boyle, who has spent his career defending civil resisters, offers the only guide available on how to use international law, constitutional law, and the laws of war to defend peaceful non-violent protesters against governmental policies that are illegal and criminal. He focuses especially on the aftermath of 9/11 and the implications of the war on Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, the war on Iraq, the doc

"The labor conditions of incarcerated workers in many US prisons violate the most fundamental human rights to life and dignity," says Claudia Flores.

"Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed SB 1480 into law on March 23 2021. Effective immediately the law significantly amends the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA) Illinois Equal Pay Act (IEPA) and the Illinois Business Corporation Act. The amendments affect employers' ability to use criminal conviction records in employment decisions and imposes new reporting requirements regarding pay equity."

UAL Special Collections

"I Am Not Your Negro: Race, Identity, and Baldwin" with Raoul Peck, Academy award-nominated director of the documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript. October 18, 2017. Follow Vanderbilt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vanderbiltu, on Instagram: http://instagram.com/vanderbiltu and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanderbilt. See all Vanderbilt social media at http://social.vanderbilt.edu.

Virginia's attorney general has directed his civil rights office to investigate a possible "pattern of misconduct" by police in the town of Windsor after officers drew their guns and used pepper spray on a Black uniformed U.S. Army officer during a traffic stop.

The development of law is inextricably linked to matters of race and ethnicity. The stories of minority citizens--the texture of their lives, the prejudices they have endured, and their struggles for fair treatment--have been documented in the pages of legal opinions, as judges over the years have wrestled with fundamental questions of racial bias and inequality. Studying race, ethnicity, and the law is challenging for many reasons, not the least of which is the prime difficulty of defining what we mean by race. Even the choice of words used to identify minority individuals has social and political ramifications. How law functions to oppress and liberate minorities has been a longstanding topic in the field of sociolegal studies. Issues of race, ethnicity, and law have taken on new urgency in recent years, as affirmative action and reverse discrimination claims as well as reapportionment battles and racial hate speech cases have come before the courts. This special issue of Law and Human Behavior focuses on social science research on race, ethnicity, and the law. Articles in the special issue consider the influence of race and ethnicity on substantive law, legal processes, and crime and deviance, and illustrate the tensions and contradictions that pervade the law's treatment of racial and ethnic minorities. We conclude that taking race and ethnicity into account may force scholars to reconceptualize theories about law's impact and that a greater number of racial and ethnic minority scholars would enrich the field of sociolegal studies.

"How can we build a better world? And why do so many people with privilege end up making things worse when they try to help? It's called the savior mentality, and Jordan Flaherty finds it in FBI informants, anti-sex-work crusaders, Teach For America corps members, and out-of-touch journalists. No More Heroes celebrates grassroots challenges to these saviors and highlights movements focused on real, systemic change from the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter." -- Publisher's description

On Tuesday, we gathered with more than 70 of our colleagues for an information session on our recently announced Digital Equity Project. Our goal was to give some context and background on the project, share information on our big-picture plans and the opportunities this new funding presents, and answer questions from our community.  In 2019, …

This post describes ongoing research by Kenny Peng, Arunesh Mathur, and Arvind Narayanan. We are grateful to Marshini Chetty for useful feedback. Computer

This guide supports the Dickinson Law Faculty Resolution to become antiracists, to end racism, and to support the learning necessary to banish injustice, inequality, racism, and sexism. Resources available through the H. Laddie Montague, Jr. Law Library at Penn State Dickinson Law

Two sheriff’s deputies in South Carolina were fired on Monday over their involvement in the case of the death of a Black man who had died after he was forcibly…

Victim Services in Colorado Examined From an Equity Perspective

Since the civil rights era, the doctrine of nonviolence has enjoyed near-universal acceptance by the US Left. Today protest is often shaped by cooperation with state authorities-even organizers of rallies against police brutality apply for police permits, and anti-imperialists usually stop short of supporting self-defense and armed resistance. How Nonviolence Protects the State challenges the belief that nonviolence is the only way to fight for a better world. In a call bound to stir controversy and lively debate, Peter Gelderloos invites activists to consider diverse tactics, passionately arguing that exclusive nonviolence often acts to reinforce the same structures of oppression that activists seek to overthrow. Contemporary movements for social change face plenty of difficult questions, but sometimes matters of strategy and tactics receive low priority. Many North American activists fail to scrutinize the role of nonviolence, never posing essential questions: Is nonviolence effective at ending systems of oppression? Does nonviolence intersect with white privilege and the dominance of North over South? How does pacifism reinforce the same power dynamic as patriarchy? Ultimately, does nonviolence protect the state? Peter Gelderloos is a radical community organizer. He is the author of Consensus: A New Handbook for Grassroots Political, Social, and Environmental Groups and a contributor to Letters From Young Activists. He is the co-facilitator of a workshop on the prison system, and is also involved in independent media, copwatching, anti-oppression work, and anarchist organizing.

EPA approves plan to truck contaminated soil from one North Carolina Black community to another; hazardous waster landfills