Per capita, the United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any industrialized nation in the world. Over 2.3 million Americans are living behind bars or under conditions where the state oversees their conduct. Crime rates have continued to fall over the past 25 years, however, incarceration rates have grown. Funding to build prisons exceeds [...]
Now It’s Inglewood’s Turn to Have a Federal Police Department Watch Dog
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Sometimes it takes an event (or two) to make plain a reality that nobody wants to talk about. Pervasive police abuse and police misconduct are usually activities nobody wants to acknowledge and nobody wants to admit to. Police have a way of trying to convince you that everything they do is legal, even when it [...]
Color of Law: U.S. Drug Policy Has Gone to Pot
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In a recent online town hall meeting at the White House, President Obama was asked by the online audience whether he thought legalizing marijuana would create jobs and help the economy. It was the most popular question asked at the meeting.
Close Down Guantanamo? What About Our Own Hellholes?
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As Tom Paine once opined on this subject: “When it shall be said in any country in the world, ‘My poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive’— when these things can be said then may that country boast of its constitution and its government.” Folks, we gotta ways to go.
Color of Law: Please Don’t Feed the Prison Monster
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At its worst, America’s criminal justice system represents the place where racism, greed and corruption intersect. At its best, it is inherently flawed, unjust, and unreliable, and little better than its worst. The engine that drives this injustice system is known as the prison industrial complex. It is the theater in which the nation’s foremost [...]
Color of Law: Now the Robber Barons Replace the Welfare Queens (and Rightly So)
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Gordon Gecko had a long run of it, but now the party is over. I’m talking, of course, about the character in the film Wall Street, that conniving titan of finance who would sell his mother for a buck and a quarter, and there is scant evidence that he had not already accomplished that goal. [...]
Response to ACLU Racial Profiling Study: Los Angeles Police Department Never Met a Reform Report It Agrees With
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The nation’s most abusive, and aggrieved law enforcement agency, the Los Angeles Police Department, is still “doin’ what it do” as it presented its response this week to a racial profiling study released to its civilian Police Commission in October 2008. The study, titled, “Racial Profiling & The LAPD,” documents that deep and pervasive racial [...]
Troy Davis: The Case Continues
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by Dr. Alan Bean – The Troy Davis case indicates just how subjective the legal system really is. The federal 11th Court of Appeals deals with cases in Florida, Alabama and Georgia. A panel of three judges, selected from this court, considered the Davis case yesterday.
Update: Troy Anthony Davis
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After the United States Supreme Court refused to hear Davis’ case, the Federal Appeals Court in Atlanta, Ga granted Troy Anthony Davis a temporary stay of execution. This stay was granted just days before he was scheduled to be executed on Monday, October 27, 2008. “Upon our thorough review of the record, we conclude that [...]
It Is Likely We Have Executed Innocent People
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Troy Anthony Davis, the Death Penalty and Innocent Men Most Americans have limited contact with the judicial system. For the most part, our contact with the courts usually amounts to an occasional interaction in traffic court or small claims court. Unless you are an attorney, law student, or are in some other way associated with [...]
Elections Have Consequenses – Can We Sit By and Let This Happen?
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The United States Supreme Court won’t consider Troy Davis’ appeal. Troy Davis was scheduled to be executed last month in Georgia but the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution just two hours before the execution was to occur in order to determine whether it the justices would hear his appeal. This case has [...]
U.S. Supreme Court Issues a Stay of Execution for Troy Anthony Davis
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Troy Anthony Davis was granted a last-minute reprieve today, September 23, 2008, according to a report by Rusy Domin of CNN International. This morning, before going to work, Dick and I joined hands in prayer for the life of Troy Anthony Davis. He was scheduled to be executed tonight at 7:00pm ET in Georgia for [...]
Occassionally, We Get Feedback
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I love doing surveys and polls. We put questions out on the Web, people answer, we post their responses. It’s a pretty simple process. But this simple process yields a big payoff. It results in us hearing from you. For me, getting your reponse is what makes the survey process rewarding. Everyday, Dick and I [...]
Judging the Judges
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When the time comes to vote in judicial races, I’m usually frustrated. This sense of frustration is driven by my lack of knowledge about the candidates and difficulty associated with getting enough information to make an informed decision. A few years ago, when I was relatively new to the Northeast Democratic Club, I attended a [...]
Are Progressives Blind to the Prison-Industrial Complex?
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ver the summer, my husband Dick and I attended one of the first meetings of the Downtown Los Angeles Chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America. Amid the high rises and lofts of the rapidly growing middleclass demographic of LA’s Civic Center, a modest sized group of progressive activists gathered on the patio of the [...]
Healing the Black-Brown Divide
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African American and Latino Communities Must Unite. Traditional allies and friends in a common struggle for equal opportunity, the African American and Latino communities of Los Angeles have grown apart in recent years. Where once blacks and browns stood shoulder to shoulder in the decades-long fight to correct the social injustices they both faced and [...]
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