Tag: U.S. Supreme Court

Across the country organizations and individuals are standing together to protest the United States government’s attempt to silence and criminalize anti-war and international solidarity activists in solidarity with them. Legendary lawyer Lynne Stewart, who is already in prison, and an activist who has been subpoenaed by the grand jury tell why they resist.

Although on a very small scale (which by no means diminishes the deed), we, the people, have wrought a revolution – “a sudden and momentous change in a situation” – and accomplished in 12 days what the powers that be have repeatedly told us would never happen.

Although America’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution are premised on the principles of democracy, the historical treatment of America’s citizens of color is replete with racial dichotomies. Today’s youth need to know that Dr. King was only 25 when he began to fight back with the year-long Montgomery bus boycott.

Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir Mateen (James Were) will start a hunger strike on Monday, Jan. 3, to protest their 23-hour-a-day lockdown for nearly 18 years. They were sentenced to death for their alleged roles in the 11-day Lucasville rebellion in April 1993. They are innocent! They were wrongfully convicted! They are political prisoners.

Among the very few people celebrating our country’s fiscal crisis are criminal justice reformers. Bill Piper of Drug Policy Alliance says, “Next year is probably an unprecedented opportunity to defund the federal drug war.” But colorblind cost-benefit approaches leave intact the racial attitudes, stereotypes and anxieties that gave rise to the system in the first place.

The three-decades-long murder case of Philadelphia journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was back in court Nov. 9 with a three-judge federal appeals court panel. The three judges seemed, in their initial remarks and in their questions, to be leaning towards the defense view.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets outside the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals here and around the world Nov. 9, demanding that Mumia Abu-Jamal must live and be free and that the U.S. must abolish the death penalty and end racist killings and brutality by police.

At its core, the death penalty derives from, and thus replaces, lynch law. States in the former confederacy established the convict lease system, where prisoners worked, without pay, for the state. Both Black men and women became “slaves of the state.”

Amiri Baraka, one of the most fiery political poets and cultural critics in Black Amerikkka, recently celebrated his 75th birthday. He is the father of the Black Arts Movement of the ‘60s and after 2001, New Jersey abolished the poet laureate position because they couldn’t fire him, the incumbent, after he wrote his controversial piece, “Somebody Blew Up America.” On Sunday, Nov. 8, 1 p.m., Amiri will be speaking in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Library, 100 Larkin St., as well as at the Black Dot Cafe, 1195 Pine St. at 6:30 in West Oakland on the same day. Here’s a quick Q & A that I did with Amiri Baraka ...

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1986 Batson v. Kentucky decision prohibited the state from removing Black jurors for racial reasons. Still, courts have been loathe to grant relief.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that they have rejected death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal for a new guilt phase trial. Readers are urged to contact the White House to protest this unjust ruling. Call (202) 456-1111 or visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/.

On Oct. 14, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the death-row case of Troy Anthony Davis, putting him on the fast track to be murdered by the state of Georgia for the murder of a Savannah police officer in 1989. But on Friday, Oct. 24, in his third 11th-hour reprieve, the federal appeals court in Atlanta granted a stay so Troy's lawyers can file claims of his innocence. Block Report Radio speaks with Troy's sister Martina Davis about his case.