Free Republic

Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that the federal civil rights investigation into the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin remains active, noting “recent developments” in the case. The Justice Department is weighing charges against George Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman who shot and killed Martin in an incident that captured national interest. Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges more than a year ago, but the Justice Department is still running down leads as part of its civil rights probe, Holder said. “That matter is ongoing,” said Holder, who was asked about the case during a news conference announcing the...

Activists say Holder dropped the ball on investigation of Sanford shooting. The NAACP delivered 1.7 million signatures to the U. S. Department of Justice a year ago, requesting a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford. Despite the outrage and demands for justice after Zimmerman was acquitted of manslaughter, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to announce a clear answer on his findings in the shooting of the unarmed 17-year-old who quickly became a household name across America. Ben Jealous, the NAACP President who collected and electronically delivered the signatures says...

There are few claims in American politics more misguided than the claim that Barack Obama has caused a resurgence of racism and racial unrest in this country. But it's a claim that you hear too often, for example in remarks last month by U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who complained that Obama had launched a "war on whites."** As the AJC's Political Insider reports, the latest to make that kind of argument is Randy Evans, a member of the National Republican Committee and one of the best-connected, most powerful GOP operatives in Georgia. In an interview with an Australian...

Approximately two times a week in the United States, between 2006 and 2012, a white police officer killed a black person. On August 9, it happened again. That day, Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old, unarmed black teenager, as he was walking home from a convenience store with a friend. According to a private autopsy report commissioned by the family, Brown was shot four times in his right arm and twice in the head. None of those shots appear to have been taken at close range. Brown’s body was left in the street,...

Since the recent unrest in Ferguson, Mo., there have been a host of changes to the way the local police do business that are meant to prevent another incident like the shooting death of Michael Brown. Gov. Jay Nixon has appointed Dan Isom, an African-American, as the state's new public safety director. The city's police have begun wearing front-facing body cameras. But what exactly does it mean to "prevent the next Michael Brown"? Brown's name has become the latest in a long litany of names that in their totality represent an archetype: a black life snuffed out in an encounter...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Oriana Farrell was terrified. The single mother of five recalled an October 2013 traffic stop, when officers wrestled her out of her minivan along a New Mexico highway, and then shot at the vehicle as she tried to flee with her children inside. Video from a police dashboard camera captured the seemingly-routine traffic stop devolving into a tense incident. “I started thinking about children who have been shot, families who have been shot,” she said in her first television interview that appeared today on “Good Morning America.” “I started thinking about Trayvon Martin.” The ordeal began when a police officer...

Many people in Ferguson are not satisfied by the fact that things have calmed down and want to see Darren Wilson charged as soon as possible.It has been more than a week now since Michael Brown, the unarmed Black teenager in the St. Louis area, was laid to rest. Since then, life in Ferguson has largely returned to a relative normalcy. School has resumed, people are returning to their jobs and the media coverage has diminished dramatically as the world shifts its focus to places like Iraq and Syria. But there is nonetheless a sense of restlessness among many in...

When Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, was gunned down in Florida in 2012, Quinten Baker and Stevon Statom knew it was only a matter of time before something similar happened in St. Louis. And they knew the uproar it would cause. "I feel like it was supposed to happen, because all of this stuff has been going on in this city for so long," said 19-year-old Baker, who grew up in St. Louis County and was out protesting in Ferguson. "Now that this happened, everyone is standing up. We've had enough of it." More telling is what they expected...

Rapper and Pastor Ma$e. Mason Betha, the founder of El Elyon International Church and Mason Betha Ministries, recently released a song about his frustrations with racial affairs in the United States titled "Politically Incorrect." Betha, 39, has reportedly stopped pastoring his church to focus on the release of his music. While his previous song releases seemed fit for partying, his latest effort seems to be inspired by the Ferguson, Missouri black teenager Mike Brown who was killed by a police officer last month. Betha, known in the hip-hop world as Ma$e, has raised some eyebrows in and out of the...

KINGSTON, Jamaica — US attorney Jasmine Rand said that Trayvon Martin’s accused killer George Zimmerman was acquitted because the victim was black. Speaking at press conference in Kingston on Monday, Rand, who represented the interests of Martin’s relatives in the case, said Zimmerman was set free because of where the incident happened. “Trayvon Martin was shot because he was black. Zimmerman got away because he (Martin) was black. I think the case was lost because the jury selection was not done properly and the area where the trial took place,” Rand said. The law professor is in Jamaica to...

The eyes of America remain focused on Ferguson, Missouri, gripped by the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death. The anguish of Ferguson — from the murder of an unarmed young person of color, to the lack of accountability fueled by a sheer disregard for black lives — is all too familiar for Florida. Our state has been the backdrop for a number of high-profile stories that have similarly illuminated America’s tragic legacy of killing unarmed people of color. There was Trayvon Martin, 17, who was walking down the street in Sanford in 2012 when he was followed and killed by George...

I am having trouble understanding the error the teacher in Selma, Ala., made that was serious enough to warrant suspension without pay (“Sixth-graders re-enact Missouri shooting; teacher suspended,” Reuters article, Aug. 23 Dispatch). It sounds like a good idea to give an assignment requiring students to act out a current event. If the students themselves chose the Ferguson, Mo., shooting and the Trayvon Martin incident, perhaps they gained a deeper understanding of racism, crime and other societal problems. It would be a great exercise in communication, teamwork and addressing emotionally charged issues. The principal at the school was quoted as...

Rapper Nipsey Hussle has been arrested for interfering in the arrest of a man authorities were after for violating his probation. The incident occurred on the night of Friday, August 29th. Police responded to a report that a man had violated his probation and was currently located in a clothing store in downtown Los Angeles. Upon searching the store for the alleged parole violator, they came across Hussle, who committed an undisclosed action that authorities viewed as obstructing an officer which subsequently resulted in his arrest. He was released shortly after his arrest after posting bail in the amount...

It is beyond refute that the United States is a world leader, and exceptional, in several categories, although not in those that portray the richest nation in the world in a favorable light. Oh, it is true that America’s military is without peer, American corporations pay some of the lowest tax rates in the world, and the wealthy elite holding most of the nation’s wealth pay minimal taxes compared to most other countries. However, the United States also leads the world in the number of citizens incarcerated, number of guns in the population, number of gun-related homicides, lowest median income...

Our belief that the government wants to help us achieve fairness is lower than ever—leading to fantasies of lawless revenge. The events in Ferguson and elsewhere across the U.S. have launched a heated national dialogue that questions our faith in the benevolence of government institutions — especially police, judiciary, and politicians. Dead black bodies always makes us wonder whether they really have the best interests of the American people at heart, or just the best interests of some American people. Sometimes in the dense fog of passion and tear gas it is hard to see what values a country as...

What is occurring in communities across this nation is tragic. It is as if a dark cloud has enveloped and fallen upon this nation when it comes to homicides by whites of black youngsters and black men. Blacks in Sanford, Florida; Jacksonville, Florida; New York City and now Ferguson, Missouri have had enough. The killings were all suspicious in nature and in each instance the black victim was unarmed. Many of you know the details. Trayvon Martin, a youngster of 17 years was stalked and killed by a neighborhood watchman in Sanford as he was making his way home from...

Here’s an excerpt from an administrative decision I just read, DeMay v. Richmond County Dep’t of Social Servs., 2014 WL 4206296 (N.C. Office of Admin. Hearings); it was filed July 2, 2014, but just posted on Westlaw on Wednesday. The petitioner was demoted because of a statement she made at a meeting, and the administrative decision upheld the demotion: 3. The [Department of Social Services’] Policy Concerning Unlawful Workplace Harassment provides in pertinent part: The policy of [DSS] is that no employee may engage in conduct that falls under the definition of unlawful workplace harassment. All employees are guaranteed the...

“Support Daren Wilson.” These three words emblazoned at the top of the GoFundMe website in support of the Ferguson, Mo, cop who gunned down Michael Brown said it all. In the span of less than 48 hours, nearly 5,000 donations were received and the site got tens of thousands of Facebook looks and tweets. The fund’s beleaguered sponsors pleaded for patience while they tried to respond to the flood of emails that poured in supporting Wilson. The organizers announced triumphantly that they’d raised three times more than their goal. This was no surprise. The instant Wilson was fingered as the...

TWO US lawyers who represented the family of slain teen Trayvon Martin and police shooting victim Michael Brown have joined the legal team of Mario Deane, a Jamaican construction worker who died three days after being beaten by inmates in his cell. Justine Rand and Benjamin Crump agreed to join the team after hearing about the tragic circumstances that led to the death of the 31-year-old. In an email to The Gleaner’s news centre, Rand said human rights violations cannot be tolerated in the USA or Montego Bay, Jamaica. She added humanity in itself is universal and what happened to...

The events that have unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, in recent weeks have revealed many tragedies, among them the fact that the death of so many youth of color in this country is still debatable in its status as a vaunted “feminist issue.” But it is, and the expansive definition of reproductive justice, which reaches into the universe of conditions necessary to create and sustain life, shows us how. As RH Reality Check Senior Legal Analyst Imani Gandy put it so well in a recent tweet: Imani ABL @AngryBlackLady I saw so many people on Twitter saying "I don't want to...