Friday, July 20, 2012

ACLU's Page on The War on Drugs

The ACLU has created a great page on their blog dedicated to information related to the War on Drugs. If you don't already know, the War on Drugs, declared by President Nixon, was actually started for political reasons. Over the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has had devastating affects on the African-American community and has been the largest contributing factor to the explosion in the U.S. prison population. As a result of War on Drugs laws, African Americans are incarcerated at rates 10 times greater than whites, even though whites commit more drug offenses.

Check out the ACLU War on Drugs page, and get to work helping to change the laws that contribute to this injustice.

Image here.

Friday, July 13, 2012

A Day in the Life of the Death Penalty




Warren Hill
It saddens me that I'm not even shocked to see that both of these men, set to be executed, are black, and that they will be put to death in the Southern states of Georgia and Texas.  I don't know how "ya'll" do things in the South, but putting mentally handicapped men to death doesn't sound like justice to me.  It sounds like murder.

Check out the full article in The Atlantic here.

Yokamon Hearn
Warren Hill's photo is here with more on his case.

Yokomon Hearn's photo can be found here along with a petition through Amnesty International.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Institutional racism in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating

Institutional racism in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating

Prison in America

This powerful eight-part series on how Louisiana became the prison capital of the world, published by the Times-Picayune, is some of the best journalism I have seen about mass incarceration in America.  Go take a look.

You can watch the first video here.