Free Republic

In four years, Black Lives Matter went from a hashtag about social injustice to a full-fledged global civil rights movement. Metro spoke with Patrisse Cullors, who cofounded Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2013, about its evolution, fighting racism in the age of Trump, her upcoming memoir and what saying “all lives matter” really means. What is the biggest misconception you find people have about Black Lives Matter? Patrisse Cullors: That we just started a hashtag. That it isn’t a sophisticated set of ideas that would lead to a larger strategy to build out, a powerful...

In her keynote address to the opening plenary of Netroots Nation, an annual gathering of progressives, Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said the first seven months of the Trump administration represented an "all-out assault on our fundamental civil and human rights." President Trump, she told the audience, has "wasted no time in implementing the hateful agenda that he ran on." Lee pointed to the so-called Muslim ban, transgender military ban, healthcare reform efforts, and Commission on Election Integrity among other recent Republican actions to illustrate her argument. Like Jason Kander, who addressed the crowd only moments earlier, Lee encouraged activists to...

Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate - Black or African American Labor force status: Unemployment rate Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 years and over Race: Black or African American

In a Monday appearance on “The Breakfast Club” radio show, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) left the door open for an all-black political party. Host Charlamagne Tha God asked Waters if black people should start their own political party. “No, not at this point,” Waters responded. “You’ve got to show that you’re willing and you’re able to put the numbers together and exercise your influence. We still are not voting our influence yet. What we should do is organize our power, exercise our power, particularly in the Democratic Party because that’s where most of us are.”(continued)

Education provides people concrete opportunities to overcome real circumstances of poverty or oppression. Even after weeks of macho vulgarity, preening and unruly incompetence, this week the Trump administration still managed to send shock waves through the higher education and civil rights communities. The New York Times reported that the White House wants the U.S. Department of Justice to “redirect resources” of its civil rights division “toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.” Subsequently, the DOJ announced that it was really just seeking “volunteers” interested in a lawsuit alleging discrimination against Asian-Americans....

WASHINGTON – A new video ad portraying America as a racist society, produced by consumer product giant Procter & Gamble, is being met with fierce criticism. The ad, titled “The Talk,” depicts scenes of black mothers warning their children about the dangers of being black in America, how the system is stacked against them and why they should fear police. Building on the company’s decade-old “My Black is Beautiful” campaign, the commercial begins with a black girl, from what appears to be the 1940s era, holding a white doll telling her mother that a woman at the store told her...

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans there was a brief moment of shocked compassion before racial anxieties flooded the Internet. Victims of the disaster were quickly recast as looters, criminals, and layabouts. They were government “dependents” seeking even more entitlements now that they were bona fide survivors. Some of these hideous opinions drew on the physical “evidence” of the bad character of hurricane survivors: their size. The mostly black bodies crowding the Superdome, getting on rafts, and being carried away by helicopters, were too large for online critics. Obesity, while common in the US and over-represented in the South, was...

Democrats must strongly consider putting an African-American candidate on the ticket if they plan to win back the White House, a number of Black activists say. The issue stands to be a topic of concern as hundreds of Black leaders gather in Baltimore, Md., this week for the NAACP’s 108th Annual National Convention, according to The News & Observer. This is the organization’s first major gathering since the contentious presidential election last fall. The group already has a growing number of potential candidates on its list, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), former Attorney General Eric Holder...

Former first lady Michelle Obama was a breath of fresh air as usual while making a public appearance in Colorado since leaving the White House for a live armchair conversation with The Women’s Foundation of Colorado President Lauren Casteel. But even as poised and graceful as always, Obama touched on some tough topics, speaking out frankly about the hurt she felt from the racist attacks she received while in the White House. “The shards that cut me the deepest were the ones that intended to cut,” Obama said when Casteel asked her about the trials of being the first black...

3 Men Blocked I-80 Ramp Before Early Morning Carjacking A report indicates three suspects carjacked a vehicle on the I-80 ramp to I-355 in New Lenox early Saturday morning. By Tim Moran (Patch Staff) - Updated July 23, 2017 12:41 am ET NEW LENOX, IL -- A reported car jacking took place early Saturday morning on an expressway ramp. An incident was reported on police scanner traffic on the westbound Interstate 80 ramp to northbound Interstate 355. Three men were blocking the ramp and asked the victim to use his phone before one of the men approached on the passenger...

A North Carolina preacher who serves as the state's NAACP chair said the Twitter photo of Evangelical leaders "laying hands" on President Trump in prayer was "theological malpractice." Rev. William Barber II, of the Greenleaf church in Goldsboro said the Evangelical leaders should not have "prayed" with Trump while he is "preying on the most vulnerable." "You're violating the sacred principles of religion," Barber said, calling the incident "a form of theological malpractice bordering on heresy." Barber took issue with Trump's support for the "very very very extreme agenda" of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) -...

More than 500 teens in a flash mob confronted police outside the Lonnie Young Recreation Center in Germantown Sunday night. Police say it all began a little bit after 6 p.m. When officers arrived, they found the large crowd on the sidewalk and in the street, as most were estimated to be between 12 and 17-years-old. Officers said glass bottles were thrown at them. Publicly available videos on social media show the teens surrounding officers in their vehicles, hopping on top of cars and generally taunting police. Police commanders made the decision not to make any arrests, as to not...

It has been a big year for Tamika Mallory. A lifelong social justice activist, she also happens to be one of the four women who created the Facebook event which would eventually become the epic Women's March and later evolve into a movement in and of itself. In June, Mallory took the stage at the BET Awards to receive the Shine a Light Award for her fearlessness, and presenter Solange Knowles praised her for all the work that she's done in drawing attention to essential causes and for raising the voices of women of color around the world. But Mallory...

According to Breanna Edwards of The Root.com, CNN is facing a growing racial discrimination lawsuit that according to The Hollywood Reporter “may grow exponentially.” CNN’s ongoing lawsuit is explained in an April 5, 2017 piece titled “CNN Facing Racial-Discrimination Lawsuit Claiming African Americans Receive Lower Performance Ratings in Evaluations”: Another major news network is facing allegations in a racial-discrimination lawsuit, stemming from a proposed class action in Georgia federal court. In the lawsuit, plaintiffs claim that at CNN and other Time Warner units, African Americans receive lower performance ratings in evaluations, that there are huge discrepancies in pay between employees...

Democrats can never win in America without the Black vote and a progressive platform. Trump and the Republicans are winning with approval numbers below 40 percent, and the Democratic leadership has no strategy to change the trajectory of this administration. The Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House, and there appears nothing the Democrats can do. The Democrats can filibuster, resist and obstruct the Republicans’ policies, but when it is time for a vote, the Republicans win. In the House they win by 24 votes, and in the Senate they win by two votes. In the special...

Will Democrats ever actually listen to black people in terms of strategy and vote targeting? Can a political party toss over a billion dollars into the trash two election cycles in a row? Does it really take a genius to figure out that if a group votes for you 90 percent of the time you should do what it takes to make sure that group is at the polling place on election day? Both Hillary Clinton and Jon Ossoff, a democrat who ran for Congress and lost out of Georgia’s 6th district, taught us that no amount of money can...

This summer will mark the third anniversary of the death of Eric Garner, a New York man who was killed by police officers outside of a neighborhood convenience store in Staten Island (he was suspected of illegally selling loose cigarettes). Garner’s death is one of many that has raised Americans’ concerns about the increasing number of Black men, women, and children killed by U.S. law enforcement officers. At only 13 percent of the U.S. population, African Americans are killed by police, incarcerated, live in poverty, and have poor health at higher rates than White Americans, who make up the majority...

A black digital magazine featured a video showing black people explaining why they refused to celebrate the Fourth of July. The Root released “No Country for Me,” a video in which black Philadelphians list the issues they have with America’s founding and how that prevents them from celebrating the creation of the nation. “I’ve never identified with even being American, even though I’m born here,” Shani Akilah says at the video’s beginning. “At the inception of this country, it was based off of oppression and murder and colonization and rape. And so we are rotten at our core.”

Over a hundred people marched through downtown Newark, N.J., on June 24 demanding reparations for the African Holocaust. Called by the People’s Organization for Progress, the demonstration was greeted by people at bus stops with clenched fists. Speaking at a rally, Larry Hamm, chairperson of POP, quoted Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in saying that at least 150 million people were stolen from Africa during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. World capitalism was built upon this colossal crime, along with the genocide committed against Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Hamm noted that New Jersey’s history was intertwined with slavery. The state...

New research from The Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality says black girls as young as five are seen as "less innocent" than young white girls and need less protection. Black Americans in Washington, DC, gave their reaction.