Free Republic

Storme DeLarverie, a lesbian activist who took part in the New York Stonewall riots in 1969 that started the gay rights movement in the United States, has died. She was 93. DeLarverie died Saturday at a Brooklyn nursing home, said Lisa Cannistraci, a longtime friend and one of her legal guardians. …

<p>Police arrested a prominent North Sacramento resident Monday night after he allegedly threatened to burn down the home of former Sacramento City Manager Bob Thomas, according to authorities.</p> <p>Bob Slobe, whose family once owned much of what has become North Sacramento, was taken into custody about 7 p.m. during a community forum about the proposed relocation of a card room to a local hotel, said police spokeswoman Officer Michele Gigante.</p>

CHICAGO — He still walks the same streets here as his old acquaintance Barack Obama once did. That is about all they have in common anymore. At 50, Chicago activist Mark Allen lives with his parents, barely able to pay his bills. The head of a small, community-assistance organization called Black Wall Street Chicago, Allen regards his personal survival alone as a small victory, grateful he can pay the rent on his modest office space, aware he is doing better than many on this city’s restive South Side. “Things haven’t gone the way we’d hoped after Barack got elected,” he...

New Attorney General Kamala Harris took office Monday with a rapid-fire barrage of promises to target everything from violent gangs to online scams to truancy and prison recidivism rates. Minutes after her swearing-in, Harris sent a message that she plans to be an activist as California's top cop, an innovator with a motto identical to the title of her book: "Smart On Crime." "Ultimately, being smart on crime is about doing more preventing and less reacting, it's about being tough and being tough-minded, doing more of what works and less of what doesn't," she said. Harris, who narrowly defeated Los...

Van Jones — the Oakland social- and environmental-justice activist and author who went to Washington last year as President Barack Obama's "green jobs czar," only to be let go in the face of conservative criticism — has joined a White House-friendly think tank in a similar capacity. Jones, 41, will serve at Center for American Progress as a senior fellow to lead its new Green Opportunity Initiative. He also has been appointed distinguished visiting fellow in the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public...

Obama's 'Blue Wall' Locks in Democratic Gains Led by President Obama, Democrats are leveraging the nation’s economic crisis and the aura of inaugural goodwill to build a “blue political wall” — new constituencies dependent on expanding government programs — that could lock in 2008 Democratic political gains for decades to come. Unless Republicans act to counter those initiatives, pundits and pollsters warn, they could find themselves on an extended vacation from power in Washington. The combination of former Rep. Rahm Emanuel, described by former Bush adviser Karl Rove as a “sharp-edged partisan,” and President Obama’s strategic mindset, could spell big...

New Orleans (AP) -- New Orleans police said Thursday they are investigating the slaying of a 25-year-old San Francisco community activist found shot in the head in a hurricane-battered part of the city. Kirsten Brydum had arrived in the city two days before her body was found Saturday morning in a desolate part of the city's 9th Ward neighborhood, said Marlon Defillo, assistant superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department.

In 1985, Barack Obama traveled halfway across the country to take a job that he didn't fully understand. But, while he knew little about his new vocation--community organizer--it still had a romantic ring, at least to his 24-year-old ears. With his old classmates from Columbia, he had talked frequently about political change. Now, he was moving to Chicago to put that talk into action. His 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounts his idealistic effusions: "Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks....