Kamala Was a Cop. Black People Knew It First.
Kamala Harris, then California’s attorney general, with Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell (left), Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Michel Moore, and Los Angeles interim County Sheriff John Scott at a 2014 event. AP Photo/Nick Ut In a roundtable discussion hosted by Blavity in October, Sen. Kamala Harris briefly addressed the meme that had beset…
What Happens When Incarcerated People Get a World-Class Education?
Bard Prison Initiative students conjugate Spanish verbs at Eastern New York Correctional Facility.Skiff Mountain Films In the fall of 2015, a maximum-security prison in New York invited Harvard’s debate team to compete against a squad of three incarcerated men. The men, all convicted of violent crimes, knew they faced tough odds: Unlike their Harvard opponents,…
Elon Musk Won His “Pedo Guy” Defamation Case
Elon Musk, leaves the US District Court, Central District of California in Los Angeles through a back door.Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images A jury on Friday ruled in favor of Elon Musk in a defamation lawsuit filed by a British cave diver, whom the union-busting Tesla CEO had baselessly called a “pedo.” Cave diver Vernon…
A Judge Says Thousands of Detainees May Sue a Prison Company for Using Them as a “Captive Labor Force”
John Moore/Getty Early one morning, Abdiaziz Karim was sleeping in his new dorm in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center when an officer woke him up. The guard pointed out graffiti on the wall and a light fixture smeared with toothpaste, and demanded that Karim, a Somali waiting for an asylum hearing, clean…
Books Have the Power to Rehabilitate. But Prisons Are Blocking Access to Them.
Behind the walls of California State Prison, Sacramento, six inmates gather in the library for their weekly short-story club. The librarian introduces the day’s pick, Doris Lessing’s A Sunrise on the Veld, and the men take turns reading it aloud. Some of them lean forward in their chairs as they listen; one traces the words…
When Your Rape Doesn’t Count
Something about the knock at the front door made Mary-Scott Hunter think a neighbor was in trouble. She had just arrived home from her job at a corporate training company, and she was mulling over an earlier fight with her girlfriend, but the sound jolted her out of it: five loud, fast raps. She could…