A “New Moment” in Black Struggle The Black struggle in the U.S. is “approaching a new moment” when the country might “become ungovernable by the political class that is tried to Wall Street and the 1%,” said Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro , an activist with the Black Radical Organizing Committee. President Obama is fond of claiming that Sixties-type politics is over. However, Dr. Monteiro thinks “it’s almost as though we’re starting up from the 1980s, and going forward from the militancy of the 1970s; rather than civil rights, the whole problem of human rights and self-determination is what you’re hearing on the streets, these days.”
Democrats Fear Embarrassment in Philadelphia The City of Philadelphia appears to be “starting to back down” on restrictions on protesting at next week’s Democratic National Convention, said Scott Williams , an organizer of the “Shut Down the DNC” march, set for July 26. The Democratic Party had taken over every public space in the Center City area for the entire convention,” Williams said. However, “the city, in some ways, is starting to back down, because they don’t want to see hundreds, or thousands, of Black people getting arrested at the Democratic Party National Convention, which is supposed to represent Black people.”
Armed March Set for St. Louis to Honor Slain Panther The Revolutionary Black Panther Party will hold an armed march against genocide in St. Louis, Missouri, an open-carry weapons state, on August 5, to honor Angelo Brown, also known as General Houdari Juelani, the local party leader who was shot dead by police in nearby Belleville, Illinois, last month. The party also plans “to file human rights violations with the International Criminal Court and the World Court,” according to Chief General in Charge Dr. Ali Muhammad . Juelani died from a single bullet to the temple, but his face showed signs that he had been beaten before death. “Every time he was out he was harassed” by the cops, said Dr. Muhammad, a neurologist. “They assassinated him.”
Mumia Salutes Maroon Shoatz Court Victory Russell Maroon Shoatz, the former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member who has been imprisoned since 1972, won an agreement from Pennsylvania prison authorities that they will never again place him in solitary confinement. Shoatz spent 22 years in solitary before being released into the general prison population, in 2013. Mumia Abu Jamal , the nation’s best known political prisoner, saluted Shoatz’s victory, which includes unspecified monetary compensation. “The struggle continues,” Abu Jamal said – “and, sometimes, you win.”
The Poor Suffer in Civil Court, Just Like Criminal Court The nation’s civil courts process 20 million cases a year, some involving matters that are “the cutting edge civil rights issues of the day,” said David Udell , executive director of the National Center for Access to Justice, at Cardozo University. However, Udell said a survey by the center shows there is only one civil court legal aid attorney for every ten thousand poor people in the country. Although deficiencies in the criminal justice system get more media coverage, civil law is even more pervasive in people’s lives. “People are so often in court on debt collection matters, on family matters, on housing matters,” he said. The center operates a website at JusticeIndex.org.
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Dr. Jemima Pierre is a professor in the African American Studies and Anthropology Departments at UCLA.
Johanna Miller is Director of Education Policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
