Datasets:

valurank
/

Topic_Classification

Dataset card Viewer Files Files and versions Community

Split (1)

train · 22.5k rows

article_text stringlengths 294 32.8k ⌀	topic stringlengths 3 42
More than 50 years before Robb Elementary School became the site of one of the worst school mass shootings in American history it was the location of one of the biggest demonstrations in the Chicano Rights Movement, a push that sought to reclaim Mexican Americans' Indigenous heritage and original territories.In the spring of 1970, nearly 650 students staged a walkout over the firing of Josue Garza, one of the few Hispanic, bilingual teachers in the district, amid the larger push for equal rights in the community.Uvalde students walked out of their classrooms in protest of the removal of a Latino teacher in the spring of 1970.Abelardo Castillo "It was a climax to a chain of injustices for the Mexican American parents and the students," Garza told "Nightline," looking back on the protest 52 years later.Garza and the students who took part in the walkout said they are seeing history repeat itself as parents, students and residents of Uvalde, Texas, take to the streets in reaction to the fallout from the May shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.They said they are confident the current protests will bring about the same positive change their efforts did back in 1970.Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.Garza was a fifth grade teacher at the school in 1970 and said he wasn't afraid of speaking out for the Latino community over injustices he saw at the school.Josue Garza talks with ABC News about the 1970 student walkout coordinated in Uvalde, Texas.ABC NewsElvia Perez, who was a 17-year-old high school senior at the time, told "Nightline" that she and other Latino students would be mistreated in various ways."Kids would get suspended from school, they would get spanked, they would get fined, [and] just different things would happen. That was unfair," she told ABC News. "Why would you want to do that, and not make the kid feel welcome, not make them feel like they're part of that place?"Garza said his school was not getting the same resources as the predominantly white schools in the neighborhood and worked to improve morale, organizing sports teams and fighting to create basketball courts on the school grounds.When he was fired, parents and students quickly took their issues to the school board.Uvalde students walked out of their classrooms in protest of the removal of a Latino teacher in the spring of 1970.Abelardo Castillo Perez said there was inspiration from the Black community activism of the previous two decades."I thought, 'You know, it's time we need to start doing some of the same if we want to make a change, if we want to be heard,'" she recalled.Abelardo Castillo, a Uvalde school walkout organizer, filmed the demonstrations and told "Nightline" that if their demands weren’t met, they wanted to hurt the school board financially."If kids don't go to school, the school doesn't get money from the government. Every day a student is absent, that's less money they get," he told "Nightline."Abelardo Castillo, a Uvalde school walkout organizer, told ABC News the 1970 demonstration aimed at hurting the board economically.ABC NewsIn addition to reinstating Garza to his position, the protesters demanded the board hire more Mexican American teachers and incorporate Mexican American history lessons into the curriculum.Perez said tensions were high, and she remembered Texas Rangers pointing a gun at her from the roof of the school board building before a meeting."It just broke my heart that a citizen should have to endure this, an American, but we weren't seen as Americans," she said.Garza was never reinstated and the students said they were retaliated against by the school district the following year as many were held back a grade or penalized in other ways.Elvia Perez was one of 650 students who walked out of classes after Uvalde teacher Josue Garza was dismissed.ABC News"I was rumored to be the valedictorian, but I never got to graduate," Perez said.Still, Uvalde residents didn't stop fighting and later that year a mother of one of the students filed a class action lawsuit contending discrimination.The case ended in a settlement agreement in 2008, with the parties agreeing to "a specific plan to completely root out the continuing effects of discrimination."And the lawsuit was only dismissed in 2017 after both parties agreed that the terms of the agreement had been met.Uvalde students walked out of their classrooms in protest of the removal of a Latino teacher in the spring of 1970.Abelardo Castillo Today, the district has several new schools that offer dual language programs and a more diverse teaching staff."It took years for that lawsuit to vindicate what we were alleging back in 1970," walkout participant Alfredo Santos told "Nightline."And now those same Uvalde residents are seeing history repeat itself.Parents, teachers and other students have called on the police, elected officials and school board members to be held accountable for the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School.In the aftermath, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo resigned from his position on the Uvalde City Council. He was terminated from the police department on Aug. 24 by the school board.In a 17-page response, Arredondo's attorney stated his client "Did everything he knew how to save the children and school employees on May 24," and that he was "forced into the role of the 'fall guy' and 'the sacrificial lamb.'"Family and friends of those killed and injured in the school shooting at Robb Elementary take part in a protest march and rally, July 10, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.AP Photo/Eric GayLast week, Uvalde citizens protested outside the Texas Capitol demanding that Gov. Greg Abbott pass stricter gun control laws."People found their voice," Perez said. "It was this action that made people realize, 'You know, if we want better for our kids, we gotta start speaking up.'"Perez said she is confident that the families will be able to make a difference.Garza, who was eventually elected to the school board and then mayor in 1996, agreed and encouraged the community to continue to raise its voice."The people who forget the past will repeat it," he said. "I hope we can come up stronger than ever, for the sake of our children, our students."	Civil Rights Activism
NEW YORK (AP) — Parades celebrating LGBTQ pride kick off in some of America’s biggest cities Sunday amid new fears about the potential erosion of freedoms won through decades of activism. The annual marches in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere take place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signaled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognized in 2015. That warning shot came after a year of legislative defeats for the LGBTQ community, including the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children. As anti-gay sentiments resurface, some are pushing for pride parades to return to their roots — less as blocks-long street parties but overtly civil rights marches. “It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life,” Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City’s annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius’s, one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders. “As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream,” Clarkin said, “there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.” Dan Dimant, a spokesman for Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that organizes New York City’s parade, said this year’s march will still be festive, with floats and “people dancing and celebrating.” “Pride is many things to many people. And for many people, it’s a protest. And to many people, it’s a celebration. We create experiences for members of our community to experience pride and the way that resonates with them,” Dimant said. New York’s first Pride March, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a spontaneous street uprising triggered by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan. San Francisco’s first march was in 1972 and had been held every year since, except during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Celebrations are now global, taking place throughout the year in multiple countries, with many of the biggest parades taking place in June. One of the world’s largest, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was held June 19. In the United States, this year’s celebrations take place amid a potential crisis. In a Supreme Court ruling Friday striking down the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage and a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalizing gay sex. More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ+ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas. Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify. According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment. Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation. In recent years, schisms over how to commemorate Stonewall have opened, spawning splinter groups, including in New York City, holding their own events intended to be more protest-oriented. In New York City, the Queer Liberation March takes place at the same time as the traditional parade, billing itself as the “antidote to the corporate-infused, police-entangled, politician-heavy Parades that now dominate Pride celebrations.” More of that spirit could rub off on the major parades this year, though many fans of the marches see them as a combination of activism and celebration. New Yorker Vincent Maniscalco, 40, who has been married to his husband for five years, said he thought the marches are an opportunity to both spotlight civil rights issues and bring “individuals together of all walks of life to celebrate their authentic self. And I think the New York City Pride Parade does a very excellent job of that.”	Civil Rights Activism
The family of Emmett Till urged authorities Thursday to move on a recently discovered unserved warrant from 1955 that charges a white woman in the Black teenager’s murder and kidnapping.Till's cousin Priscilla Sterling pressed District Attorney W. Dewayne Richardson, whose office would handle a potential prosecution, to issue the warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham. Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” in the warrant unearthed last month in the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse — was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was abducted from a relative’s home, killed and dumped into a river."The family wants Carolyn Bryant to face justice," Sterling told reporters Thursday. "We want her to at least come here and defend herself."The DA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks was not immediately available for comment, but he told The Associated Press last month that he had never before heard of the warrant."I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it,” Banks said, according to the AP.The warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, was inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, said Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill, who certified the document as genuine.Although the two men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were acquitted, they later admitted to the killing in a magazine interview. Last year, a federal investigation that re-examined the murder ended after the Justice Department failed to find proof that Donham had lied.Till, 14, of Chicago, was visiting family when he entered the store in Money, Mississippi, where Donham, then 21, was working. She accused Till of making improper advances after he whistled at her, an act considered at the time to be in defiance of the South's racist social codes. Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. Her arrest warrant was publicized at the time but was never served because the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to "bother" Dohman because she had two young children to care for.Donham, who is now in her 80s and was most recently living in North Carolina, has not commented publicly on the discovery of the warrant. She couldn't be reached Thursday at phone numbers listed for her.Till’s murder shocked the nation and acted as a catalyst for the civil rights movement. His mother insisted on an open casket to show the brutality of his killing, and thousands attended his funeral.Malik Shabazz, a lawyer who appeared with the Till family Thursday, said that the effort to bring Donham to justice was worth pursuing, despite Donham's age. "Emmett Till never got to make it to 87," he said. "Emmett Till never had a day where he could go to a nursing or whatever because his life was taken."Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.	Civil Rights Activism
In 1972, hundreds marched in the first Pride event in London, united by a refusal to be invisible in the face of a homophobic, hostile society. Fifty years on, the capital is host to another important milestone: the arrival of Queer Britain, the UK’s first national LGBTQ+ museum.Three months after the museum opened in Kings Cross, its first exhibition is now open to the public. We Are Queer Britain is a selection of artefacts that bring together important voices, objects and images from the UK’s queer activism, art, politics and culture, with some materials dating back to the 18th century.Many stories remain undiscovered, hidden and untold, but Queer Britain’s first exhibition is a stirring and vibrant guide to how LGBTQ+ people came out of the shadows in the UK. Here are 10 pieces from the show that capture the essence of the UK’s modern queer history.Oscar Wilde’s prison cell doorWilde’s cell door, on show at Queer Britain. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianYou are immediately greeted in the exhibition by the door of the prison cell that confined Oscar Wilde in 1895. The celebrated Irish writer was imprisoned on the charge of gross indecency after his relationship with another man was discovered. He died three years after his release, destitute and outcast. He left behind a complicated legacy of flamboyance, fear, inspiration and injustice. Wilde’s experience of being villainised by the media and persecuted by the state has made him an icon for many LGBTQ+ people and, as curator Dawn Hoskin says, the piece is also symbolic of the doors he opened for later generations.At Queer Britain, the cell door is displayed alongside a cover of the Gay Liberation Front magazine Come Together, which ran from 1970 to 1973. It reads “Oscar power to Oscar people”, reflecting Wilde’s enduring significance in queer British history. “In the museum space, the door literally casts a shadow,” Hoskin says. “It’s representative of how Wilde’s legacy and the homophobia of that time created a shadow, too.” Also displayed is a 1909 edition of Wilde’s De Profundis, written during his imprisonment and published after his death. It belongs to Queer Britain co-founder Joseph Galliano-Doig. “I found this copy of De Profundis when I was 14 and anxious about being gay. It saved my life,” he says. “It made me feel seen, comforted and angry.”Duncan Grant erotic watercolour Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianThe visual arts have always been a haven for queer expression, recording lives, loves and emotions long before the LGBTQ+ acronym existed. Duncan Grant, one of Britain’s most famous mid-20th-century painters, navigated a time when gay and bisexual people risked legal persecution in expressing and representing their lives. He was born in 1885, seven months before an act was passed in parliament that criminalised all male homosexual sex in England (the same law under which Wilde was imprisoned).In 2020, more than 400 erotic drawings by Grant were found under a bed. “Everybody thought they had been destroyed,” said Dr Darren Clarke, head of collections at Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse where Grant lived and worked. The 422 works were created in the 1940s and 50s, a time when male homosexuality was still illegal, and depict “every conceivable act of couples”, as Clarke put it in 2020. “It’s quite a kama sutra of Duncan Grant’s sexual imagination.” The collection was secretly passed from lover to lover, and from friend to friend. Due to the vulnerability of old watercolours to excessive light, Queer Britain will showcase three of Grant’s drawings on rotation; the choices will become gradually racier over time.“All of the drawings have a tenderness and intimacy to them,” says Hoskin. “The first piece has a gentle hand on the thigh and represents making the ‘first move’, which is connected to what the museum is doing with our first exhibition, too.”Rotimi Fani-Kayode portrait by Robert Taylor Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianRotimi Fani-Kayode was a photographer who moved from his home in Nigeria to England in 1966, at the age of 12, to escape the Nigerian civil war. While working in New York he became friendly with Robert Mapplethorpe, whom he cited as an influence on his work exploring tensions between sexuality, race and culture. Fani-Kayode was living in Brixton when he died at age 36 from an Aids-related illness in 1989.British photographer Robert Taylor met Fani-Kayode in 1987, and the two became fast friends, with Taylor saying: “My passion for photography was sparked by a richly rewarding friendship with Rotimi.” His portrait of Fani-Kayode symbolises the radical love between black queer men, speaking to a wider story of queer loss and survival, with Fani-Kayode’s legacy living on through Taylor’s work.“I was very conscious of getting across the idea of ‘living legacies’ and people inspiring each other by making personal connections,” Hoskin says. “For queer people in particular, inspiration has not always been about seeing someone in a book – it can come from meeting friends and forming close, intimate relationships.”Hat from Gentleman JackSuranne Jones as Anne Lister in the BBC series Gentleman Jack. Photograph: Jay Brooks/BBC/Lookout Point/HBOAnne Lister was a Yorkshire-born industrialist, writer and landowner who is considered to be “the first modern lesbian”. Lister’s diaries recorded her daily life and, in code, her many relationships with women, which started during her school days. Her appearance was considered masculine and she dressed only in black, which is why she came to be known (generally unkindly) as “Gentleman Jack”. Her final relationship was with Ann Walker, to whom she was symbolically married in Holy Trinity church in York, which is now celebrated as the birthplace of lesbian marriage in Britain. Lister’s diaries, a rare first-person account of life as a pre-20th-century lesbian, were recently brought to life in the TV drama Gentleman Jack. This black hat, which was worn by Suranne Jones in the BBC/HBO series, is based around the signature look Lister wore every day. “I love and only love the fairer sex … my heart revolts from any love but theirs,” she once wrote. Switchboard logbook Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianSwitchboard, a helpline for anyone who wants to talk about gender identity and sexuality, has been taking calls since 1974. In the days when being in the closet was the norm and any semblance of equality felt like a pipe dream, Switchboard provided a lifeline – and it still does today. Displayed at Queer Britain is the volunteers’ logbook, which offers insight into the range of issues facing LGBTQ+ people in Britain, with stories of curiosity, fear, friendship and loss. This exhibit, from 1987, records a time when Switchboard was the leading source of information on HIV/Aids.Alongside the logbook, visitors to Queer Britain can listen to a selection of actual calls from the archive, featuring Switchboard volunteers such as Lisa Power – a Stonewall co-founder and Queer Britain trustee.Divine’s octopus dressDivine’s octopus dress. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianDivine (1945-1988) was a titan of drag from the era before RuPaul’s Drag Race catapulted the art form into the mainstream. Known for their work with gay film-maker John Waters, Divine was named the “drag queen of the century” by People magazine upon their death in 1988.Divine’s work was particularly pioneering because, at the time, drag was preoccupied with prettiness and pageantry. Instead, they explored beauty in dark, sexy and confusing forms. Hoskin says this feels closely connected to British drag, despite Divine’s US roots. “Divine was about revelling in the weird and the unusual. There was always a challenging element of: am I going to be made to laugh, or be a bit scared? That is what I really like about British drag, which has a similar basis in humour and observation.”Before their death, Divine toured the UK in the 1980s, performing high-energy disco tracks on Top of the Pops and on a boat on the Thames at Pride. This orange octopus dress became synonymous with Divine’s later years and was the inspiration behind Ursula the Sea Witch, the villain in Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which was released a year after Divine’s death. The dress is displayed alongside a series of portraits of today’s drag performers in Divine-inspired looks, shot by photographer Darren Evans.Rainbow hijab ensemble Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianIn 2005, representatives from LGBTQ+ Muslim charity Imaan marched at London Pride. Faizan Faiz, the organisation’s co-founder, wore a rainbow hijab to make a statement about the erasure and marginalisation queer Muslims have faced, from outside and also from within the LGBTQ+ community. “On the 2005 Pride march, we were jeered by gay Islamophobes and in defiance we gave a speech to 10,000 people at Trafalgar Square,” they say in the notes accompanying the exhibit. Just as the Pride flag symbolises different people coming together, the rainbow hijab represents the union of queer and Muslim identities. “If my mum had known her handiwork would end up in an art gallery, would she have viewed me being LGBTQ+ differently?” Faiz adds.Hoskin says that, while it would have been easy to curate an exhibition that was purely celebratory, she was keen not to erase challenging moments like this. “We shouldn’t just be talking about the idea of an LGBTQ+ community versus wider society, but should also be looking within and questioning how inclusive and open to diversity we actually are,” she says. Lady Phyll and Christine Burns statuesFigures of Christine Burns (left) and Lady Phyll. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianAt the start of 2018, there were 925 public statues in the UK – just 158 of which depicted women, and only 25 of which depicted non-mythical or non-royal women. (By contrast, there were more statues of men named John.) The Put Her Forward project set out to change this by making 25 three-dimensional printed statues of inspirational women. Activists Christine Burns and Phyll Opoku-Gyimah (known more widely as Lady Phyll) were among the 25 women selected. Burns, whose statue previously stood in Manchester, was a key negotiator in the creation of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, while working with trans equality organisation Press for Change. She has since written the book Trans Britain: Our Long Journey from the Shadows. Opoku-Gyimah, whose statue was unveiled in Lambeth, is a trade unionist who co-founded UK Black Pride and is the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust. In 2016, she rejected an MBE to protest against persecution of LGBTQ+ people under homophobic laws put in place by the British empire.Olly Alexander’s Glastonbury capeOlly Alexander of Years & Years wearing his cape at Glastonbury 2016. Photograph: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImagePart of the story of the UK’s LGBTQ+ movement is new leaders coming to the fore within the art and culture worlds, as well as activism and politics. Years & Years frontman and It’s a Sin star Olly Alexander has become an advocate for queer people, speaking out on a range of topics, from mental health to sexual health and bullying. Performing at Glastonbury festival in 2016, Alexander wore a vibrant rainbow cape and delivered a rousing speech on LGBTQ+ rights, where he called for the elimination of racism, ableism and misogyny. “Sometimes I’m afraid but I’m never ashamed. I am proud of who I am,” he said, wrapped in the colours of the Pride flag. “Say ‘No thank you, fear!’”There is a dialogue between Alexander’s cape and a nearby item in the exhibition: a handwritten letter from Elton John to his teenage self, in which he urges himself to let go of his fears – and change his name. He and Alexander have since performed gay anthem It’s a Sin together at the 2021 Brit Awards. This cape is a reminder that the visibility of Alexander’s generation follows years of struggle and silence.“Sometimes, for older queer people, seeing younger people discover themselves sooner and have that freedom of expression is wonderful and joyful to see,” Hoskin says. “But also, that might be tinged with a bit of sadness. We wanted to create space for that intergenerational dialogue.”Trans Pride placards Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The GuardianDuring the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the larger-scale Pride festivals were cancelled. In their place, Trans Pride emerged as a radical alternative for people who consider Pride to be a political protest. These placards were collected at London Trans Pride 2022, where 20,000+ people marched in defiant joy, but also rage at the hostility and state-sanctioned prejudice being directed towards trans people. Reflecting on the past 50 years, these handmade signs are a visual record of how much Pride has evolved, while maintaining its founding principles of queer solidarity and resistance.“These placards capture a colourful combination of joy, fierceness and emotional urgency, as well as the process of advocating for yourself and being an ally to others,” Hoskin says. “We are a museum, but we’re very much a ‘museum of now’. We don’t have to wait for years to respond. We’re able to do that quickly, in the moment.”	Civil Rights Activism
"As bad as it was during the era of 'The Janes,'" co-director Tia Lessin told IndieWire, "we're looking at something even more sinister." Back in 2016, after Donald Trump was elected president, documentary producers Emma Pildes and her brother Daniel Arcana had a bad feeling about Trump packing the Supreme Court. The time was right, they decided, to develop a movie about his mother Judith’s late 1960s involvement in Chicago with the underground Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation, known as The Janes, which provided abortions for some 11,000 women between 1969 and 1972. Seven of the leaders were arrested and were facing a possible 110 years in prison — until the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision came down. After Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2018, Pildes approached Oscar-nominated documentarian Tia Lessin (“Trouble the Water”) to co-direct; HBO Documentary Films agreed to back “The Janes,” which started filming in 2019 and debuted at Sundance 2022. It’s currently streaming on HBO Max and Hulu. Slowly but surely the filmmakers found Janes willing to speak on the record. Even though the Janes’ leaders Ruth Surgal and Jody Parsons had passed on the opportunity to talk, and other Janes had never come forward even to their own families, it didn’t take long for participants to jump on board. And filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman willingly donated her 1995 interviews with the Janes. One Jane, Eileen Smith, told her parents that she dropped out of college to make puppets. Inspired by the “Hamilton” lyric “Who’s going to tell your story?,” she told Lessin, “Well, I’m going to tell my story!” Soon, when the overturn of Roe v. Wade became a certainty, the floodgates opened. “We knew that these women’s voices would be useful in a new way,” said Pildes. “And they were up for it.” But finding women who actually obtained abortions from the Janes was more difficult. Finally the filmmakers took out a newspaper ad in The Chicago Reader. “We went old school to find one of the 11,000 women who came through the service,” Pildes told IndieWire. Dorie Brown called them and recounted the story that opens the movie, comparing her Janes abortion with her back alley mob abortion. “It was a gift from the newspaper gods. We got lucky.” The Janes serviced women not only from Chicago and Illinois but all over the midwest: Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where abortions were also illegal. When the scale of the demand became clear, the Janes, who were homemakers, mothers, and students, took all their student experience from the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements and applied them to getting organized on a grand scale, protecting the identities of their patients via secret locations. When one abortion doctor turned out to not be an M.D., the Janes recognized that women within their ranks could learn the procedure, too. “As the word spread, it became quite clear that not only was there a need, but there was an incredible void,” said Lessin. “There were just too few private physicians willing to risk their medical license and prison time. And they were primarily serving wealthy women of means, who could also go outside of the country and the state for legal procedures. So, this was a massive endeavor. When this chance came, they came at it with smarts and were infinitely resourceful. They were up to the task.” Demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme CourtAP What shocked the filmmakers and many viewers of the Sundance entry was not just the scale of the demand for abortions, but the existence of septic abortion wards in hospitals across the country set up to handle sick women wounded by back alley and self-inflicted abortions. The filmmakers debated where to put that story in the film: they opted to edit it in early. “We needed to understand the stakes of this drama and why these women were willing to risk so much at such a young age,” said Lessin. The wards were eerily silent, as no family came to visit the ailing women. At Cook County Hospital, Dr. Alan Weiland was accustomed to calling the morgue once a week. “That was a gut punch to take in,” said Pildes. “It spurred us on. That was something we created the need for. Within a year of Roe passing, they became obsolete, there was no need for them. And I don’t see any way that we’re not going to be going back there. The realities of criminalizing abortions are going to be the same.” “Roe v. Wade has been in the crosshairs of the Supreme Court and the extreme right for a long time,” said Lessin. “How could we go backwards 50 years? How could we be having the same battle? It came as a brutal shock. [Judge Samuel] Alito was saying that Roe v. Wade was egregiously wrong. No. What’s egregiously wrong is women ending up in septic abortion wards.” She continued, “This isn’t just about going after abortion rights. They’re laying the groundwork for the rescinding of marriage equality, potentially for the reinstatement of sodomy laws, curbing access to contraceptives. Many of the laws that are being passed now by the state legislatures in the Dakotas, Oklahoma, and Texas are much worse than anything that existed pre-Roe. In Ohio, they are looking at a law with no exceptions for rape and incest. They’re criminalizing interstate travel for abortions. That wasn’t a thing, pre-Roe. They’re incentivizing vigilantes in Texas to go after their neighbors and friends and offering them bounties. As bad as it was during the era of ‘The Janes,’ we’re looking at something even more sinister.” For their dramatic cloak and dagger saga, the filmmakers decided to stick to “The Janes” story, figuring that “the audience can connect the dots to the present day,” said Pildes. “We don’t need to hold people’s hands. It’s very clear. The same low income people are going to suffer. There’s so much that’s the same.” Needless to say the film has hit some viewers hard. At one screening in Washington, DC, a woman raised her hand in the audience during the Q&A. She said: “My grandmother had a back alley abortion and died when my mother was five years old,” according to Lessin. “So her mother grew up motherless because of this. And another woman in her sixties just found out that she was named after a cousin of her mother’s who had died from a back alley abortion, and that her parents had never told her because they didn’t want her burdened with that knowledge.” Another woman went ahead and gave birth to her child and married an abusive husband. “It’s not just that women are going to die,” said Pildes. “It’s that we are crushing them. We’re taking away their freedom, and we are starving ourselves of what they could have given to the world. The implications of this are going to be felt so deeply for so long.” The filmmakers plan a college tour for the fall, as well as screenings at churches and synagogues. “We’ve heard from folks at all sorts of organizations at the forefront of this struggle,” said Lessin, “that feel like this film will help engage the people that need to be engaged in this fight.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.	Civil Rights Activism
“Right to Offend” examines the pioneering work of Dick Gregory in the 1960s. Getty Images “Do Black comedians have a right to offend? No, we have a JOB to offend.” — Alonzo BoddenA prominent Black comedian is talking about police shootings of young Black men: “How do you accidentally shoot a n------ six times in the chest? ‘Well, my gun fell and just went crazy.’ ”That could be Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock or any of other dozen modern-day comedic greats on stage in 2022 — but the comedian was Richard Pryor, and the observation was made a half-century ago, and the clip is from the two-part A&E documentary series, “Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution.” ‘Right to Offend: The Black Comedy Revolution’ From executive producer Kevin Hart and co-directors Mario Díaz and Jessica Sherif, this is a timely, insightful, comprehensive, historically valuable chronicle of the Black comedy experience in America, from the minstrel acts of the early 20th century through the emergence of pioneers such as Redd Foxx and Dick Gregory and Slappy White in the 1950s and early 1960s to the revolutionary comedy of Richard Pryor in the 1970s to the rock-star ascension of Eddie Murphy in the 1980s through breakthrough TV shows such as “In Living Color” and “Def Comedy Jam” in the 1990s to present-day creative forces such as Issa Rae and Amanda Seales and Michael Che and Donald Glover, to name just a few.This two-part series is a master class in Black comedy, but it never feels like a lecture because it’s also friggin’ FUNNY, as we’re treated to a bounty of brilliant archival footage from one Hall of Fame level comedian after another, whether it’s stand-up routines or talk-show guest shots or audio snippets from classic comedy albums. Yes of course, these trailblazing comics were commenting on race relations, oppression, poverty, violence, incendiary politics and other hot-button issues — but they made their points in flat-out hilarious fashion, with observational monologues and rapid-fire jokes that yielded huge laughs. Funny is funny is funny is funny. Richard Pryor, a towering figure in “Right to Offend,” performs in 1978 at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago.Paul Natkin/Getty Images Co-directors Díaz and Sherif wisely let the material — and the greats — do the talking, eschewing any unnecessary flourishes or timeline hopping in favor of a mostly linear, straightforward approach to the material. We occasionally see news footage of relevant and revolutionary moments in American history, from the protests of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement of the 2010s, providing context to the aforementioned archival footage, which is augmented by insightful interviews with academics and historians such as Todd Boyd, Michael Eric Dyson, Mark Anthony Neal, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor (Richard’s daughter) and Bambi Haggins.And we get frank and often laugh-inducing insights from generations of comedians, including Michael Che, Tiffany Haddish, Steve Harvey, Sherri Shepherd, Chris Rock, Tommy Davidson, Jimmie Walker. D.L. Hughley, Aisha Tyler, Kenan Thompson, Amber Ruffin and Amanda Seales. (My only complaint would be that we’re left wanting to hear even more from the interview subjects.) “Your role is bigger than being funny,” says Hart, a sentiment echoed time and again by modern-day comics, as when Amanda Seales notes, “Out of crisis comes comedy.”In “Part 1: The Revolutionaries,” we get a brief history of Black comedy in the early 20th century — I was today years old when I learned Charlie Case finished off his jokes with a punching gesture, hence the phrase, “punchline” — before we’re reminded of how Dick Gregory was a massive crossover star who put his career on the back burner to be on the forefront of the civil rights movement. We also hear about the underground “party records” phenomenon, with Black comics doing not-safe-for-broadcast material on albums that would be played during parties. (Redd Foxx did more than fifty such albums.) Richard Pryor is of course a huge figure in the series, with Paul Mooney getting his due as a force of his own and a mentor-writer for Pryor. Eddie Murphy (pictured in 1984) rose to rock-star status.MTV There are some interesting detours into the world of sitcoms, as when we see how “Good Times” stars John Amos and Esther Rolle were concerned about Jimmie Walker’s “DYN-O-MITE!” hamming it up, as they felt it distracted from the show’s larger goal of portraying a Black family in the Chicago housing projects in an authentic manner.In Part 2, titled “The Contemporaries,” we’re reminded of how there was criticism of Eddie Murphy for not being more political, but it’s pointed out that Murphy DID include social commentary in his comedy routines and on “SNL,” and his rise to global superstardom was in and of itself pioneering. Black comedy clubs such as the Comedy Act Theatre in South Central L.A. and the Uptown Comedy Club in Harlem are recognized, followed by sections on Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle bringing social criticism back to the stage.The latter sections of the series focus on the last 10 years, with the election of Donald Trump, the murder of George Floyd, the chilling rise in white supremacy and other events of monumental consequence giving rise to a whole new level of political and social commentary. (Naomi Ekperigin, onstage: “Nazis are out! They’re out without hoods, getting haircuts!”) It’s all terribly sobering and yet grounds for fertile comedy, and we’re left remembering what Dick Gregory said more than a half-century ago: “If we don’t make massive changes, this country is doomed.”	Civil Rights Activism
On June 26—two days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—Jessica Yellin, the award-winning journalist and founder of the independent media company News Not Noise, called the two people she knew could put that seismic event into perspective. The first? Gloria Steinem. The second? Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.Steinem, the face of American feminism, and Meghan, a vocal advocate for paid leave and fair labor rights for women, have been friends since 2020. After Meghan learned that they were both sheltering in place in Montecito, she asked if Steinem wanted to help her make calls thanking voter-registration organizers. Steinem agreed. That connection soon blossomed into an alliance, and for the past several months, Steinem and Meghan have been formulating a plan to get the Equal Rights Amendment ratified. (“It would explicitly extend to women the rights granted in the Constitution to men,” Yellin tells Vogue. “The ERA would change the playing field for women’s reproductive rights, women’s workplace rights, and so much more. For decades Steinem has been advocating for its enactment, and now Meghan is joining in.”)The Duchess of Sussex, on the phone with Gloria Steinem and Jessica Yellin after the Supreme Court’s ruling last week. Photo: Courtesy of the Duchess of SussexSo, when the Supreme Court’s ruling came down, Yellin decided to moderate a conversation between the two advocates about their own reproductive choices, the realities of America pre-Roe and post-Roe, and, most importantly, where the country goes from here. “I entered this conversation feeling disoriented by the new reality—anxious that there is no clear path forward. Opponents of abortion built so much infrastructure over so many years. How can that be answered quickly, and how many lives will be destroyed in the meantime?” Yellin says. “For now, some women will be denied basic life-saving medical care because of a power struggle in a dysfunctional political system. But after this conversation, I was reminded that change starts with simple actions—and deadly setbacks sometimes precede transformational change.”Read their wide-ranging conversation below.Jessica Yellin: I hear from so many people—they’re feeling panic, confusion. They’re looking for guidance on what to do now. Let’s talk about the immediate impact of this ruling. Women in 13 states are seeing their reproductive rights vanish. And in another 13 they’ll likely be severely restricted. Tens of millions of women will have to make brutal choices, and we know that some will die. For people who were born after 1973 and have no idea what that was like, would you tell us a little about the reality of being a pregnant woman before Roe?Gloria Steinem: There were underground networks, most famously Jane. That is where you called up a particular number and asked for Jane and that meant you needed an abortion. And there were women who bravely guided you. In my situation, I was in London, not this country, when I needed an abortion and was lucky to find a physician in the equivalent of the Yellow Pages, who said that if I promised him two things—one that I would never tell anyone his name and two, that I would do what I wish to do with my life—he would send me to a woman doctor who would do the abortion. I dedicated a book to him. He’s no longer with us. So I thought it was okay, finally, after all these years, to do that.Meghan, Duchess of Sussex: That gave me chills, Gloria. Also that you were in the hands of someone who understood that it was your choice to create the life that you wanted for yourself. That’s so powerful.GS: Yes. And I kept my promise. Without him, I would have been stopped there. I was working as a waitress in London waiting for my visa to India, where I had a fellowship. I wouldn’t have been able to do that. My life would’ve stopped there.Meghan, for women who live in the states where trigger laws have already gone into effect, they will learn quickly what life was like before Roe.MM: This is having a very real impact on women’s bodies and lives starting now. Women are already sharing stories of how their physical safety is being put in danger. Women with resources will travel to get an abortion, those without might attempt to give themselves one at tremendous risk. Some will have to source abortion pills from unregulated pharmacies. Others who are pregnant and find themselves in a medical emergency will be at the mercy of doctors and lawyers to determine if a procedure that is needed to save her life can even be done at all. What does this tell women? It tells us that our physical safety doesn’t matter, and as a result that we don’t matter. But we do. Women matter. And this is one of the reasons that I called Gloria immediately. Because in all of it, she reminds me that when you have anger, you have to channel that energy into something that makes a difference. That’s what activism is. It’s about how we show up.GS: Meghan, I owe this friendship to you because I did not realize that in California, where I was sheltering on a friend’s ranch, we were neighbors—or at least what is called neighbors in California, which means you’re, what, a half-hour away. [Laughs.] It was you who realized that and came to the farmhouse where I was. Then we sat at the dining room table and made cold calls together.MM: I was thrilled. I was nervous too. I thought, Oh my goodness, how am I going to be in front of Gloria Steinem? The [presidential] election was coming up soon and we both knew the value of women and everyone getting out to vote. The ripple effect of elections matters so much, and that’s what we’re seeing now, unfortunately.GS: A big part of the problem, of course, is that we have a Supreme Court that does not represent the country. Perhaps because I’ve been here longer, which means I’ve been here before, I say we are going to do what we need and wish to do. Something like one in three American women had an abortion when it was illegal. The need and the right to govern one’s own body continues. We need to translate it into a political reality.Many of the states that are banning abortion, Meghan, are also those with the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality, especially for Black women. Across the U.S., Black women are almost three times more likely than white women to die in pregnancy or childbirth, and Black infants have twice the mortality rate of white infants. How concerned are you that this ruling will have an outsized impact on those women? And what specifically worries you?MM: These issues are systemic, interconnected, and preventable. Women of color and especially Black women are most impacted by these decisions because most of us don’t have the same access to healthcare, economic opportunity, mental health resources…the list goes on. It’s difficult to overstate what this decision is going to do to these communities.GS: When I first entered into this struggle for reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right, it was the 1970s. Ruth Ginsburg was with the ACLU and she sent me to Alabama to talk with a Black woman who had been sterilized without her knowledge or permission when she went into the hospital for something else entirely. So, you know, this was a struggle with quite a few state legislatures to keep them from allowing the sterilization of women who were on public support.Gloria, Representative Mary Miller of Illinois was at a Trump rally this weekend, and she thanked President Trump “the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court.” Her office insists that she misspoke and meant to say “right-to-life,” not white life, but her language does track with a strain of thought in the anti-abortion movement that’s about race and demographics. Would you give us a little more context and history on that?GS: There is a proportion of this country that is well aware that the first generation of babies who are majority babies of color has already been born. And that means that the country could and would become a country where people of color are the majority. Then we’ll look more like the rest of the world. But if you’re a white racist, it’s obviously frightening. So the same forces that were in favor of the forced sterilization of women of color on welfare are now frequently against abortion.In his concurring opinion Justice Clarence Thomas said that the court should “correct the error” of allowing for same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships and even contraception. Legal analysts I trust argue that same-sex marriage is most at risk from this court. James Obergefell, who brought the case that legalized same-sex marriage, has warned it’s in danger. Meghan, how concerned are you not just for women, but for other groups who fought to gain rights in the U.S.? Do you think this is a canary-in-the-coal-mine moment?MM: Absolutely. We saw it in plain terms with Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion. This is a blueprint for reversing rights. The ruling is a signal about the future of same-sex marriage, contraception access, and many fundamental rights to privacy. It feels like the tip of the iceberg and is part of why people feel so scared. We have to channel that fear into action. We can start this November in the midterms. I know hearing that feels so repetitive, but we have to vote, every time, from local elections to state and national elections.Editor’s note: “It’s worth remembering that abortion opponents did not win this victory overnight,” Yellin adds. “They formed the National Right to Life Committee in 1967, before Roe but just after the Griswold case, which legalized contraceptives for married couples. The Federalist Society, which gave legal intellectual heft to the movement, was founded in 1982. These groups and others worked for decades to elect politicians who would fill courts with anti-abortion judges.”So, let’s talk about what can be done. People ask what they can get behind, where they can make a difference. Is the fight now at the state level, working for new laws and bringing challenges to existing restrictions? Is it getting out the vote nationally and electing pro-choice candidates? Where would you tell people to focus their attention?GS: It depends where the person is. If they’re living in an anti-choice state or with a state that has a majority anti-choice legislature, then working politically is very important. If they’re in a pro-choice state where the clinics are being picketed or not supported, then it’s important to protect and support those clinics. But wherever we are, we can make clear that reproductive freedom is a fundamental right like freedom of speech.MM: It’s a much larger conversation about why for years, for decades, we’re fighting to get a constitutional amendment put through [the Equal Rights Amendment] that makes it clear that women can be treated equally, and how it is completely nonsensical that that’s even something we’re still fighting for. And Gloria, you know, we’ve talked about how to continue to push that through. I think now is probably the time more than ever before.GS: We are the only democracy in the world that doesn’t include women in its constitution. I think we should put big billboards up in every airport where people arrive from other countries saying, “Welcome to the only democracy in the world that doesn’t include women.” Maybe that would embarrass people into action. All the necessary states have ratified [the ERA], and it just needs acceptance in Congress. So if the president made it a priority, it could happen. It means that we would be on the same standing of inclusiveness as every other democracy in the world.Editor’s note: The ERA likely as the votes—all that’s needed now is the signature of the Archivist of the United States, who heads the National Archives and Records Administration. While proponents are calling on elected Democrats to get involved, opponents insist that the deadline to pass the ERA has expired.Meghan, is that an issue you want to tackle?MM: Without question. Being home, seeing what’s happening in our country and feeling energized and motivated, if this is the type of legislation that we need pushed through, then this is a moment that I am absolutely going to show up for. Not just because it’s what we need as women, but it’s what we need as people.GS: The ERA has been ratified by the requisite number of states and we should put the pressure on the White House and Congress to enact it.MM: Well, Gloria, maybe it seems as though you and I will be taking a trip to D.C. together soon.There’s so much stigma around all this. I think it’s important to normalize conversations about abortion and women’s health. What do those topics bring up for you?MM: I think about how fortunate I felt to be able to have both of my children. I know what it feels like to have a connection to what is growing inside of your body. What happens with our bodies is so deeply personal, which can also lead to silence and stigma, even though so many of us deal with personal health crises. I know what miscarrying feels like, which I’ve talked about publicly. The more that we normalize conversation about the things that affect our lives and bodies, the more people are going to understand how necessary it is to have protections in place.This is about women’s physical safety. It’s also about economic justice, individual autonomy, and who we are as a society. Nobody should be forced to make a decision they do not want to make, or is unsafe, or puts their own life in jeopardy. Frankly, whether it’s a woman being put in an unthinkable situation, a woman not ready to start a family, or even a couple who deserve to plan their family in a way that makes the most sense for them, it’s about having a choice. It’s interesting that here you’re talking to two women: one who chose to give birth happily, and one who chose not to give birth happily. And we’re both prospering because we were able to make our own choices. Incredible.GS: This is as old as human beings. I remember a couple of decades ago sitting with women in the Kalahari Desert as they showed me one plant that they used to increase fertility and one that they used as an abortifacient. This is hardly a new consideration, and in our Native American cultures here, too, it was understood.It’s worth saying this shouldn’t just be on women. There is never an abortion without sperm. What would you say to men who support reproductive rights?MM: Men need to be vocal in this moment and beyond because these are decisions that affect relationships, families, and communities at large. They may target women, but the consequences impact all of us. My husband and I talked about that a lot over the past few days. He’s a feminist too.GS: Yes—I can testify to that since I met him before I met you. He was at a big meeting I attended and he was advocating for people’s rights.MM: And his reaction last week was guttural, like mine. I know that for so many women right now, there is a sentiment of despair. But again, we have to band together and not wallow. We have to do the work.GS: Also, you and I are in states where there is reproductive freedom—New York and California. So it is a state-by-state question, and unfortunately the Supreme Court has allowed it to remain a state-by-state question.Gloria, what kind of impact does it have when people like Meghan and Harry own this issue, speaking openly about abortion and equal rights and reproductive access—a happy man and woman with a huge public platform?GS: It’s very, very, very important. Because what they both have is trust. We trust them and nothing but nothing replaces trust. It is the most important quality or attribute. We can see things on television and not believe them or not trust them. But when people like these two tell us, then we trust it.MM: Thank you. That’s really kindGloria, I’m listening to this conversation and I wonder, are you passing the baton to another generation and a new voice to help carry forward the work you’ve done?GS: Well, you know, it’s true, though I plan to live to 100.We hope you do!MM: You will. My goodness, Gloria, I hope it’s even longer than 100. And you’ll still be wearing these incredible leather pants.GS: I do have to recognize my own age, but I’m not passing the baton. I’m keeping the baton, but understanding that we each have a baton; there’s not just one.Meghan, what do you think this moment requires?MM: This moment requires unity—really listening to people, understanding the Constitution was written at a time when women were second-class citizens. We’re not. Certain things need to change. I think it’s equally about honoring the people who’ve been doing the work long before us, like Gloria. I’m grateful that I’m holding a baton right there next to her and that we will continue to be doing this work together.GS: Yes, we are chosen family. I feel just as thankful to Meghan for being the present, the future—for taking risks of criticism by standing up for what she believes in and what the majority needs.MM: I always look at things with the undercurrent of hope. If you are someone who truly believes that there can be something better, if you’re someone who sees injustice, you have a choice: You can sit there and be complacent and watch it, or you can say, “What can I do to get us to the other side of this?” That’s another reason why I called Gloria, because I knew what I was looking for. What do we do? How do we do it? How do we support each other? How do we get the necessary changes across the line? What we need, in this moment, is to start with hope.GS: I think we need to remember that hope is a form of planning. [Laughs.] If you’re not hopeful, you’ve given up.This conversation has been edited and condensed. Additional reporting by Thalia Halloran.	Civil Rights Activism
Serena Willams announced her impending retirement from professional tennis in Vogue magazine on Tuesday. As we celebrate her greatness and all that Williams has achieved on the court – the 23 major singles titles, the four Olympic gold medals, the 319 weeks at No 1 in the world rankings – I think it’s important to not skim over all that she had to endure off of it and the inspiration she’s given to Black girls in particular.I remember when my daughters Imani and Baby Sierra were a little younger and I was watching a segment on ESPN’s SportsCenter. They were in the family room with me and not really paying attention until they overheard then-ESPN commentators Jemele Hill and Michael Smith discussing the onslaught of body shaming, slander and general criticism that Serena was being bombarded with. My daughters both stopped what they were doing and began listening intently as it was reported that Serena had been accused of being “too manly”. One tennis coach had said that he didn’t want his players to look like Serena, others were saying that her butt was too big, some were still criticizing the beads that she and her sister Venus wore when they were younger. Other critics said that Serena had the wrong body type for tennis and therefore wasn’t fully realizing her potential on the court.Etan ThomasI can still hear the questions from my daughters: Why do they keep talking about Serena like that? Why are they so worried about her body and what’s wrong with her body anyway? She’s the one winning and beating everybody so obviously, they should try to have bodies like Serena right? And didn’t Serena beat that Sharapova girl like 20 straight times already? So why do they keep talking about her like she’s actually her big rival? If I beat you 20 straight times, you are not on my level. They better leave Serena alone.I remember being amazed at how personally my young daughters were taking all of this. It was like they were defending someone they knew personally. At the time, I don’t think they even followed tennis that much. But from that point on, they followed Serena and rooted for her to win every match.In my book We Matter: Athletes And Activism, I reached out to both Hill and Smith since my daughters were so affected by the criticism Serena was receiving. We discussed everything that both of the Williams sisters had to endure on their journey: the criticisms by the media, how their father, Richard, pushed them to greatness and the racism and hate he had to endure, the double standard that Serena always had to deal with and how that is a reflection of the larger society’s double standards for Black women.“There is always going to be a certain conversation around Serena to delegitimize who she is and what she has accomplished,” Hill told me. “How they have body shamed Serena has definitely had an impact on how Black women view ourselves. … There are definitely a lot of positives and a lot of inspiration to be drawn from the success and dominance of Serena and Venus.”Serena showed Black girls like my daughters that they have to be confident and proud of themselves, because society is not always going to embrace or encourage their Black Girl Magic or their Black beauty.When Serena C-Walked in victory at Wimbledon after winning Olympic gold, or when she balanced the Wimbledon plate on her head, when she was wearing the beads, and even with her outfits, she was thumbing her nose at all of her critics and walking in defiance. She was saying something along the lines of: “I’m proud of who I am, proud of my body, proud of where I come from and I am going to be me no matter what you think. And I’m going to dominate in a sport you think is not meant for me.”That was a message to Black girls everywhere that they too didn’t have to conform and could be who they were in spite of society attempting to force onto them their standard of beauty for gaining their acceptance.Some may think I’m overstating Serena’s influence but remember historically how Black women have been ridiculed in the US for their lips, skin tone, hair, body type and nose, while America has held skinniness, white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes as the standard of beauty. In contrast, Black women have had their self-confidence, self-worth and self-pride attacked by mainstream America for decades. “Serena became an activist for Black Beauty,” Smith told me. “And the fact that this is something she even needs to be an activist for is tragic in itself.”So while the media were sniping away at Serena with these attacks, she was posting pictures of herself in bathing suits or fitted dresses or wearing a catsuit while dominating on the court. It sent a message to Black girls and Black women everywhere that you are beautiful just the way you are.Serena also sent a message that you can speak your mind and stand up for yourself by boycotting Indian Wells after suffering racial abuse in 2001. She revealed the depths of her pain in a 2015 essay for Time magazine announcing her return to the California tournament after a 14-year absence. “The false allegations – that our matches were fixed – hurt, cut and ripped into us deeply. The undercurrent of racism was painful, confusing and unfair,” she wrote. “This haunted me for a long time. It haunted Venus and our family as well. But most of all, it angered and saddened my father. He dedicated his whole life to prepping us for this incredible journey, and there he had to sit and watch his daughter being taunted, sparking cold memories of his experiences growing up in the South.”Not to mention her going public about almost losing her life after a blood clot scare while giving birth to her daughter Alexis Olympia. Serena shed light on not only the health risks that can come with childbirth, but how maternal mortality rates are compounded by racial bias and mistreatment of Black women, too often resulting in tragedy. If an elite athlete who is known worldwide is having trouble getting the proper care, what does that mean for Black women at all levels of society.Serena’s impact has far exceeded all of her accomplishments on the court. She has become an inspiration for Black girls and Black women everywhere to always stand up for yourself and to never allow any critic to destroy your self-confidence and self-worth, to dominate the competition and shine despite those who say you don’t belong. Many Black women of all ages will continue to find strength and inspiration in Serena long after her playing days are through, and that’s what truly makes her special.	Civil Rights Activism
The family of Emmett Till urged authorities Thursday to move on a recently discovered unserved warrant from 1955 that charges a white woman in the Black teenager’s murder and kidnapping.Till's cousin Priscilla Sterling pressed District Attorney W. Dewayne Richardson, whose office would handle a potential prosecution, to issue the warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham. Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” in the warrant unearthed last month in the basement of the Leflore County Courthouse — was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was abducted from a relative’s home, killed and dumped into a river."The family wants Carolyn Bryant to face justice," Sterling told reporters Thursday. "We want her to at least come here and defend herself."The DA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks was not immediately available for comment, but he told the Associated Press last month that he had never before heard of the warrant."I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it,” Banks said, according to the Associated Press.The warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, was inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, said Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill, who certified the document as genuine.Although the two men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were acquitted, they later admitted to the killing in a magazine interview. Last year, a federal investigation that re-examined the murder ended after the Justice Department failed to find proof that Donham had lied.Till, 14, of Chicago, was visiting family when he entered the store in Money, Mississippi, where Donham, then 21, was working. She accused Till of making improper advances after he whistled at her, an act considered at the time to be in defiance of the South's racist social codes. Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. Her arrest warrant was publicized at the time but was never served because the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to "bother" Dohman because she had two young children to care for.Donham, who is now in her 80s and was most recently living in North Carolina, has not commented publicly on the discovery of the warrant. She couldn't be reached Thursday at phone numbers listed for her.Till’s murder shocked the nation and acted as a catalyst for the civil rights movement. His mother insisted on an open casket to show the brutality of his killing, and thousands attended his funeral.Lawyer Malik Shabazz, who appeared with the Till family Thursday, said that the effort to bring Donham to justice was worth pursuing, despite her age. "Emmett Till never got to make it to 87," he said. "Emmett Till never had a day where he could go to a nursing or whatever because his life was taken."Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.	Civil Rights Activism
A 26-year-old man in Kansas City, Missouri, has pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime after he shot a gay teen eight times after the boy made sexual advances toward him.In a hearing at the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Malachi Robinson admitted using a gun to willfully injure the teen because of his sexual orientation on May 29, 2019."This attempted murder is a reminder that hate crimes against the LGBTQI+ community are real and must be confronted," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. "Violent acts targeting people based on their sexual orientation are heinous crimes that have no place in our country."As part of a plea agreement entered into on Thursday, Robinson acknowledged that he met the teen, identified only in court documents as M.S., at a branch of the Kansas City Public Library, where the teen asked if he could add Robinson as a Facebook friend. Over Facebook Messenger, M.S. asked Robinson his sexual orientation and suggested they hook up in the library bathroom. Robinson said he wasn't gay, but agreed to receive oral sex outside the library in exchange for $5.But unbeknownst to the teen, Robinson was emailing screenshots of the conversation to his girlfriend at the same time. "He tryna set me up on sumn now, gonna unfriend me," Robinson wrote to his girlfriend. "Might shoot this boy if he try some gay shit."Later, Robinson suggested they walk to a wooded area nearby, but M.S. sought to leave the woods before any sex occurred. That's when Robinson pulled out a handgun and shot M.S. three times in the chest, three times in his right arm, once in his left buttocks, and once in his right hand, almost detaching his finger.The teen spent roughly two weeks in a hospital and continues to receive treatment for his injuries.After Robinson fled the scene, he admitted to his girlfriend and cousins that he had shot M.S. because the teen had tried "gay ass shit.""I shot a nigga," he also wrote in a Facebook message a few days later to another person. "He was being gay af and following me like a mf."Robinson was arrested on June 3, 2019, but not before he had searched online for coverage of the attack and made efforts to avoid capture by shaving off his Afro and trying to ditch his gun.He also searched Google for, among other things, "How to know if the police are looking for you," "When will police arrest you after a murder," and "How to get away with murder in real life."When Robinson is sentenced on Dec. 15, he could be sent to prison for life without parole.A lawyer for Robinson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The 2009 federal law that Robinson admitted to violating was named in part for Wyoming 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death in 1998 because of his sexual orientation.In October, the FBI said 20% of victims from the 8,052 hate crime incidents it recorded in 2020 were targeted because of their sexual orientation, while 2.7% were targeted because of their gender identity.	Civil Rights Activism
Having grown up in Berlin admiring Mavs’ German legend Dirk Nowitzki, Sabally witnessed first-hand Nowitzki’s rise and his activism within Dallas and the international basketball community.While her time as a pro has been short compared to Nowitzki, Sabally’s help in refurbishing a basketball court at Tempelhofer Feld in her hometown of Berlin is likely just the beginning of her activism.This means everything to me 🤞🏾✨ Satou Sabally, Bahar Bambi and Jordan Brand Design a Berlin Baskeball Court for Young Girls https://t.co/zaZq3rgR0r— Satou Sabally (@satou_sabally) July 28, 2022 “I’m very interested in the concept of intersectionality,” Sabally said in an article by Hypebeast. “As a woman, you have to constantly fight battles that other people never have to think of. Refurbishing the court is a small step in giving marginalized groups like young girls the same chance to play basketball, have fun and stay safe.”Sabally teamed up with artist Baher Bambi to create a safe spot for young girls to enjoy the game. The red and purple hues are from Bambi’s signature Turkish pattern, but she also took inspiration from Sabally’s Gambian heritage and the multicultural nature of Berlin itself.The Wings No. 2 pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft, Sabelly’s willingness to be involved has not come out of nowhere. Right after she was drafted, she let Dallas know that helping communities is at the top of her priorities.“I definitely want to be there for communities of minorities, for the ones that are not as privileged as others,” Sabally said. “I don’t want to be some person that’s this untouchable person that people cannot reach out to and have connections with and build a strong community together.”+++Related:Teaira McCowan’s career-high not enough to power Dallas Wings past Washington MysticsFind more Wings coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.	Civil Rights Activism
Latest in tech CNN Now playing Internet Explorer is no more. CNN reported on the 'browser wars' it started in 1996 Now playing Robots could soon look human, with living skin and hair Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America/Getty Images for TIME Now playing Apple's CEO responds to evolving workplace dynamics Apple Now playing See the new features coming to iPhones Northwestern University Now playing Meet the researchers revolutionizing micro-scale robots for medical use Caltech/Reuters Now playing This new technology helps drones survive strong winds Now playing How Paris Hilton became 'The Queen of the Metaverse' Now playing Google's Street View is 15 years old. See the new camera it's rolling out Shutterstock Now playing See Google Street View's new camera and the garage where the tech is built Now playing Big Tech and Ireland: How the combination made Ireland one of Europe's wealthiest countries Markus Tatzgern Now playing This mask makes breathing in virtual reality more realistic Google Now playing See how Google's new AR technology works CNN Now playing In 1997, an IBM computer beat a chess world champion for the first time Now playing In 2005, an iPod was sold every two seconds. See how CNN covered the phenomenon Getty Images Now playing Hear Elon Musk's plans for Trump's Twitter ban CNN — Apple workers at a retail outpost in Towson, Maryland, are set to begin voting on Wednesday in a union election, with the potential to form the first labor union in one of the tech giant’s US stores. Voting will take place in person at a vacant store in the Towson Town Center, a mall near Baltimore that houses the Apple store where workers are seeking to unionize. Polls will be open during select times on Wednesday through Saturday, according to a notice of election posted by the National Labor Relations Board. The vote count is set to take place on Saturday evening. Organizers are calling their union the Apple Coalition of Organized Retail Employees, or AppleCORE for short, and have garnered support from the larger International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers trade union. The vote comes amid a broader union push inside Apple. Organizers seeking a union election at an Apple store in Atlanta later withdrew their petition in April. Meanwhile, some employees at the Apple store at New York’s Grand Central Terminal have begun collecting signatures to file a petition to unionize. The Apple efforts are part of a wave of worker activism in the tech sector and beyond as the pandemic has put a new spotlight on labor rights and working conditions. Household names from Amazon to Starbucks have confronted organizing activity in various locations as employees seek to leverage a tight labor market to push for better working conditions and pay. Within the tech industry, there are also tensions over the large gap in compensation and perks for corporate employees compared to retail workers and contractors. In an open letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook last month, the AppleCORE group nodded to the larger labor organizing movement and said the decision to form a union “is about us as workers gaining access to rights that we do not currently have.” A worker-organizer who said he had been at the Towson store for seven years previously told the Washington Post that the unionization bid is about having a seat at the table. “More money is nice, but it’s really about agency,” the worker told the outlet. (AppleCORE did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment Wednesday.) In a statement to CNN Business, Apple emphasized the compensation and benefits it offers retail workers. “We are fortunate to have incredible retail team members and we deeply value everything they bring to Apple,” the statement said. “We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full time and part time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits.” After reports emerged of various organizing pushes at Apple stores, the company said it would raise the minimum starting pay for hourly workers in the United States to $22 an hour — a 45% jump from 2018 levels — or higher based on the market.	Civil Rights Activism
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Thurgood Marshall became the first Black justice to be confirmed to the United States Supreme Court on this day in history, August 30, 1967.President Lyndon B. Johnson first appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court following the retirement of Justice Tom Clark that same year, according to History.com.At Marshall’s confirmation hearing, some southern senators expressed their concerned with his liberal outlook and activism, the National Constitution Center reported.ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, AUGUST 29, 1966, THE BEATLES PLAYED THEIR LAST LIVE PAID CONCERTBut most judiciary committee senators noted Marshall’s admirable and desirable qualities such as "thoughtfulness, care, moderation, reasonableness, a judicial temperament and a balanced approach to controversial and complicated national problems." Thurgood Marshall takes his seat as the first Black member of the United States Supreme Court. (Getty Images)The full-floor vote and debate on Aug. 30 took about six hours, according to the National Constitution Center.Marshall was ultimately confirmed by the Senate by a 69-11 vote and took two oaths — one in September 1967 and the other in October 1967, when he first took the bench.Marshall remained on the Supreme Court for 24 years — voting in favor of abortion rights and against the death penalty during his time on the high court.SCHUMER FALSELY CLAIMS SUPREME COURT WAS ALL ‘WHITE MEN’ UNTIL 1981, IGNORING THURGOOD MARSHALLBorn in Baltimore, Maryland, Marshall also continued his lifelong commitment to ensuring equal rights for all individuals, especially minorities. Thurgood Marshall (left), Charles Houston and Donald Gaines Murray prepare a desegregation case against the University of Maryland in 1935. (Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)As a kid with an appreciation for the U.S. Constitution, Marshall aimed to attend law school after graduating from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930.He was turned away from the University of Maryland School of Law, however, due to the school’s segregation policy; instead, he attended Howard University Law school, graduating magna cum laude in 1933.ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, AUGUST 5, 1957, ‘AMERICAN BANDSTAND’ MAKES NATIONAL DEBUTMarshall later took on Maryland School of Law in a successful lawsuit for the school's unfair admissions policy, History.com reports.The lawyer eventually set up a private practice in his home state of Maryland and began working with the Baltimore NAACP. NAACP attorneys William T. Coleman Jr., chief counsel Thurgood Marshall (center) and Wiley A. Branton arrive to present arguments before a special session of the Supreme Court in the Little Rock school integration case on Aug. 28, 1958. (Getty Images)In 1940, he became the advocacy organization’s chief counsel at 32 years old.Marshall soon developed a reputation as one of the nation’s leading advocates for individual rights. He won 29 of the 32 cases argued in front of the Supreme Court.ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, AUGUST 26, 1939, MLB GAME BROADCAST ON TV FOR FIRST TIMEAll of these cases challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine established in the Plessy v. Ferguson landmark case, History.com noted. The Supreme Court released this official photograph of the 1982 high court. The justices are — left to right, front row — Thurgood Marshall; William J. Brennan Jr.; Chief Justice Warren Burger; Byron R. White; Harry A. Blackmun. In the back row, left to right, are John Paul Stevens; Lewis F. Powell, Jr.; William H. Rehnquist; and Sandra Day O'Connor. (Bettman via Getty Images)Perhaps the peak of Marshall’s career in law was represented by his victory in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, which launched the desegregation of America’s schools.Marshall’s work was recognized by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, who appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit — a position he held until 1965.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPMarshall stepped down from his SCOTUS seat in 1991 due to health concerns and age, the SCOTUS blog pointed out — but his legacy in advocating for individual rights lives on. Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle writer for Fox News Digital. Follow her on Twitter at @atstabile.	Civil Rights Activism
Ben & Jerry’s has lost its attempt to block its parent company Unilever from selling its ice-cream in West Bank settlements, which the US firm said would run counter to its values.The company, known for its political activism, took the unusual step seeking an injunction after London-based Unilever announced it had sold its interest in the ice-cream to an Israeli license-holder.But a US federal judge ruled on Monday the ice-cream company had “failed to demonstrate” that the move to sell the goods in the Israeli-occupied settlements caused it “irreparable harm”.In July last year, Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s announced it would no longer sell its ice-cream in the Palestinian territories, which Israel seized in 1967, saying it was “inconsistent with our values”, although it said it would keep selling its products in Israel.However, the Israeli license-holder, Avi Zinger, had continued to produce the ice-cream in his factory in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and distribute it to the Israeli settlements, going against the company’s decision.Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in communities widely regarded as illegal under international law.On 5 July, Ben and Jerry’s asked that any agreement allowing distribution or sale of its products in the West Bank be dissolved and that any further such transaction go before its board of directors to be given a green light.Unilever’s decision was “made without the consent of Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board”, and went against the merger agreement that gave the board the ability to protect the founder’s values and reputation, the complaint said.However, US district court judge Andrew Carter Jr in Manhattan said the idea the company’s messaging could be marred or customers could become confused about its core values was “too speculative”.Founded in the United States in 1978, Ben & Jerry’s is known for championing progressive causes, including protecting the environment and promoting human rights, and has frequently released special ice-cream flavors to support causes or in protest.	Civil Rights Activism
Citizen Ashe Now playing Jeanne Ashe describes learning her husband had AIDs Now playing Here's how athletes have inspired change Now playing The radical strategy that led to a historic first in sports Now playing Arthur Ashe: 'If you're very confident, you can do anything' Rowland Scherman Now playing Skinny and gangly': This No.1 tennis star had an unusual approach Now playing Tennis star was banned from playing during South Africa's apartheid Now playing Tennis star says was envious of McEnroe going off on the court Now playing Tennis great explains the stakes before his Wimbledon win Now playing Harry Edwards: Here's what Ashe taught me about activism Now playing Watch the trailer for 'Citizen Ashe' Now playing Arthur Ashe 'a man who was bigger than tennis' Now playing Celebrating the life of Arthur Ashe Editor’s Note: The new CNN Film “Citizen Ashe” airs Sunday, June 26, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. CNN — Arthur Ashe may have been most known for his tennis success, but it was his activism that set him apart off the court. When not winning major tennis championships and breaking barriers in one of the most lily-white sports at the time, Ashe was a vocal advocate for civil rights, even getting arrested in 1985 for protesting apartheid outside the South African embassy. Documentary “Citizen Ashe” premieres Sunday, June 26, at 9 p.m. ET on CNN. It explores Ashe’s life as both a tennis player and an activist, but his civil rights activism is only a part of his legacy. The other? His HIV/AIDS advocacy. It’s believed Ashe contracted HIV from a blood transfusion for an open-heart surgery, eventually learning of his condition in 1988. At the time, HIV/AIDS was heavily stigmatized. And Ashe, having retired from tennis eight years earlier, chose to keep his diagnosis a secret. That is, until 1992 – when USA Today contacted him saying it was about to break the story. So, on April 8, at a press conference with his wife, Ashe came forward. The reactions were largely positive, said Eric Allen Hall, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University and author of “Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era.” Ashe was a beloved figure at the time and many supported him. He had contacts around the world, endorsed products, sat on boards of corporations – he had even written a book, Hall said. President George H.W. Bush, a friend of the tennis icon, gave him a call following the reveal. “He was a squeaky clean figure, so it was hard to look at him and think ‘Oh, he deserves it because X, Y, and Z,’ like many folks would say when they would find out that somebody gay had AIDS, for instance, or a drug user had AIDS,” Hall said. “He was the ideal person to destigmatize the disease.” Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Ed Lacey/Popperfoto/Getty Images Arthur Ashe hits a shot at Wimbledon in 1969. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Harry Harris/AP Ashe, far right, shakes hands with opponents at the Eastern Junior Tennis Championships in 1959. Ashe was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1943 and began playing tennis at an early age. He first tested his skills on a Blacks-only playground in the city. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Jerry Cooke/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images Ashe plays at Wimbledon in 1964. A year earlier, he won the NCAA title at UCLA and became the first African American to represent the United States in the Davis Cup. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Rowland Scherman Ashe signs autographs for children in 1965. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Bob Gomel/Premium Archive/Getty Images Ashe is interviewed by reporters at the US National Championships, now known as the US Open, in 1965. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Rowland Scherman After graduating from UCLA, Ashe spent three years in the US Army. He continued to play in tennis tournaments during this time. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Ashe works with children during a tennis clinic in Washington, DC, in 1968. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Bob Peterson/The Chronicle Collection/Getty Images Ashe poses with other Davis Cup team members for a portrait in 1968. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Julian C. Wilson/AP Ashe returns a shot during a Davis Cup match in Cleveland in 1968. The United States won the competition that year. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Hulton Archive/Getty Images Ashe is congratulated by his father, Arthur Ashe Sr., after winning the US Open in 1968. Ashe was the first Black man to win a grand slam singles title. He would also go on to win the Australian Open in 1970 and the US Open in 1975. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Ashe attends a hearing at the United Nations in New York in 1970. He was campaigning for South Africa to be excluded from the International Tennis Federation. He had earlier been denied a visa by the country's apartheid government. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe David Ashdown/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Ashe holds the Wimbledon trophy after his upset win over Jimmy Connors in the 1975 final. That year, he also became the world's top-ranked tennis player. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe PA Images/Getty Images Ashe leads fellow Wimbledon champion Billie Jean King onto the dance floor at a post-tournament ball in 1975. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Bettmann/Bettmann/Getty Images In 1977, Ashe married Jeanne Marie Moutoussamy in New York. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Los Angeles Times/AP Ashe holds a certificate commemorating his entry into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985. The world was shocked in 1979 when the super-fit Ashe suffered a heart attack and underwent a bypass operation. He was set to return to the tennis tour when further complications arose and he was forced to announce his retirement. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe Ashe sits with his daughter, Camera, in 1990. He and his wife adopted Camera in 1986. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe Ashe meets with South African leader Nelson Mandela during a visit to New York in 1991. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Malcolm Clarke/AP Ashe, his wife and his daughter attend the Arthur Ashe AIDS Tennis Challenge in 1992. That year, Ashe announced to the public that he had AIDS. It was thought that Ashe contracted HIV from infected blood transfusions during his heart operation many years before. He began campaigning to debunk myths about AIDS and the way it is contracted. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Greg Gibson/AP Ashe takes part in a demonstration outside the White House in 1992, protesting the Bush administration's policy on Haitian refugees. He was later arrested during the protest. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Hai Do/AFP/Getty Images Ashe addresses the World Health Organization during a meeting on World AIDS Day in 1992. He founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe AP Ashe's casket is carried into the Governor's Mansion in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, in 1993. A few days earlier, Ashe had died of AIDS-related pneumonia. He was 49 years old. Among those on the right is his widow, Jeanne, a professional photographer. She is with their daughter. Photos: Tennis great Arthur Ashe Al Bello/Getty Images Fireworks are set off during the dedication ceremony for the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York in 1997. It's the main stadium at Flushing Meadows, which hosts the US Open, and it's the largest tennis stadium in the world. A statue of Ashe is outside. There were some, though, who wished Ashe had come forward sooner, Hall said, arguing that if he had disclosed his condition he could have done more to help the cause – just as he did with apartheid and civil rights. Ashe’s disclosure came just after Magic Johnson announced his own HIV diagnosis in 1991. HIV/AIDS already disproportionately affected Black people, and having two major Black global figures speak publicly about the disease was huge, said Ravi Perry, chair of the department of political science at Howard University. “It was important to have two Black major international global figures come out and not only have to deal with the horror of being infected with the virus, but also use their platform to continue to change the narrative around the virus,” Perry said. Changing the narrative around HIV/AIDS is something Ashe became dedicated to after going public with his disease. Ashe was the type of person to dive into issues and deeply educate himself on topics, so when he spoke on them, he could do so with authority, Hall said. He did so with South Africa – once, for example, forcing the tennis world to confront apartheid by putting the country in a Catch-22 situation for denying Ashe a visa. His approach to HIV/AIDS was no different. Ashe dove into sometimes complicated academic medical literature, becoming an expert on AIDS, AIDS treatment and the health care system, Hall said. One of his biggest pushes at the governmental level was health care reform. He was open about the difficulties of procuring early AIDS drugs, like AZT, and how expensive and inaccessible those treatments were. He was determined to make it easier for people with AIDS, or anything else, to get the coverage they needed with as little red tape as possible. “Many, many athletes were activists, but I don’t think there were any as well read and as well informed as he was,” Hall said. He went on to found the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, which Hall said pledged 50% of its funding to countries outside the US battling the disease. Even as the disease progressed, Ashe continued to make appearances on radio and television, attend tennis tournaments and host tennis clinics, Hall said. In 1992, he spoke at the World Health Organization’s World AIDS Day, where he advocated for further funding for AIDS research. Through it all, he was never afraid to talk about the disease. Some events events paired tennis instruction with messaging about AIDS prevention, Hall said, discussing safe sex and other paths of healthy living. All this was done at a time when the US was a very socially conservative country, Perry said. Ashe continuing to make appearances as someone who was HIV positive was still a shocker for many people – especially since he continued his activism around other issues as well, like the treatment of Haitian refugees, for which he was arrested outside the White House in 1992. And the fact that both Ashe and Johnson, two of the most high profile people with AIDS, were also sports stars certainly helped, Perry said. “After both of them came out with their diagnosis, it became a federal agenda item in the presidential campaign in 1992; health care became a significant issue that helped propel Clinton’s first time,” he said. “And so certainly I would say that the impact of Arthur Ashe made up much of what we saw in terms of policy and investment in policy reform around HIV.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 100,000 people died from AIDS in the US between 1981 and 1990. The federal government’s response to the disease at the time is now largely considered insufficient. The people most at risk didn’t have a global audience the way Ashe had. They couldn’t demand media attention like he could, even though many were dying right there in New York, blocks away from him. “I think he felt an obligation to continue,” Perry said. “He’d been a pioneer in race and social relations for decades already.” Now, nearly 30 years after Ashe’s death, there’s still work to be done. Racial disparities in who contracts HIV still exist, and 35 states have laws criminalizing HIV exposure. And there’s still ignorance about the disease among medical professionals, Perry said. Perry, who is HIV positive, lived in Starkville, Mississippi for three years, and said he had to drive two hours for better care – a privilege he said not everyone in the region can afford. “We need to continue to do the work in urban and rural spaces to eliminate the disease, but certainly, at the very least, hopefully we can commit to eliminating the disparity that exists between racial groups,” he said. Doing so would require listening to Black figures and activists still living today, Perry said – those who now stand on the shoulders of Ashe.	Civil Rights Activism
Politics June 15, 2022 / 10:37 AM / CBS News Buffalo victim's son presses senators Buffalo victim's son pleads with senators to address domestic terrorism 04:24 Washington – The Justice Department has filed multiple federal hate crimes charges against alleged Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron. Prosecutors in the Western District of New York charged the 18-year-old White man with 26 counts of hate crimes and firearms offenses, some of which carry the possibility of the death penalty.According to the criminal complaint, "Gendron's motive for the mass shooting was to prevent Black people from replacing white people and eliminating the white race, and to inspire others to commit similar attacks." He's being charged with 10 counts of hate crime resulting in death, three counts involving bodily injury and attempt to kill, 10 counts of use of a firearm to commit murder and in retaliation to a crime of violence and three counts of use and discharge of a firearm during and in retaliation to a crime of violence.Just over a month after 18-year-old Gendron opened fire inside a Buffalo Tops supermarket, killing 10 and wounding three others, Attorney General Merrick Garland is traveling to the site of the massacre Wednesday to pay his respects to the victims' families. In the wake of the massacre, Garland announced the Justice Department would investigate the matter as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism. Investigators allege the suspect detailed his plans and his racist motivation for the violence in hundreds of pages of writings he posted online shortly before the shooting. According to authorities, 11 of the 13 individuals who were shot were Black. A state grand jury earlier this month indicted the alleged shooter with charges of domestic terrorism motivated by hate and 10 counts of first-degree murder. The accused shooter, Payton Gendron, has been in custody since the May 14 shooting and has pleaded not guilty. Garland is traveling with Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, whose division is a part of the federal hate crime investigation. The group will stop at the Tops market before meeting privately with victims' families and survivors of the mass shooting. The attorney general is scheduled to hold a press conference with U.S. Attorney Trini Ross for the Western District of New York, whose office has federal jurisdiction over the Buffalo area and filed the charges on Wednesday. In recent weeks, the Justice Department has announced new initiatives aimed at combating hate crimes, using grants to create state-run hate crime reporting hotlines and to support community-based approaches to reducing their frequency. The department has also established the first anti-hate crimes resources coordinator over the last year, who has been tasked in part with facilitating community awareness of hate crimes. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue	Civil Rights Activism
SAN JOSE — Famed civil rights activist and labor leader Cesar Chavez’s family home, where he lived from 1951 to 1953, is on the market, and a local nonprofit is looking to purchase it. Located in East San Jose at 53 Scharff Ave. in a neighborhood originally known as “Sal Si Puedes” — meaning get out if you can — the property was designated a historical landmark by the San Jose City Council in August 1993. Chavez, who in 1962 co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Dolores Huerta, lived in the San Jose home with his family for several years while working in nearby apricot orchards. SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – June 23: A plaque designating Cesar Chavez’s family home, where he lived from 1951 to 1953, as a San Jose historic landmark is seen on June 23, 2022, in San Jose, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) Listed for $1.19 million, nonprofit Amigos de Guadalupe has plans to purchase the property, along with help from the city of San Jose. Earlier this month, the council approved $500,000 to assist with the acquisition. Amigos de Guadalupe Executive Director Maritza Maldonado declined to comment, but the nonprofit plans to restore the home and use it for community education purposes and housing, according to Mayor Sam Liccardo. “Cesar Chavez’s family home comprises a vital part of our community’s heritage and identity,” Liccardo said in a statement. “The City’s funding will enable the Amigos de Guadalupe to secure and restore the property, and to make it an educational and historic asset and likely to house young adults serving East San Jose with local non-profits.” Councilmember Magdalena Carrasco, who represents the district where Chavez’s home is located, called the neighborhood a “historic” part of San Jose. Less than half a mile from 53 Scharff Ave. is another historic site — McDonnell Hall at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. McDonnell Hall sits in a parking lot behind Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and is where Chavez first started organizing in the 1950s and 1960s with the Community Services Organization. They planned voter registration drives, civil rights lawsuits and legislative campaigns. The site became a state landmark in 2014, and received the prestigious federal landmark designation by the National Park Service in 2017. Just down the road from McDonnell Hall is the Mexican Heritage Plaza, the location of a supermarket where Chavez launched one of his first boycotts. Carrasco said she’s “thrilled” the city decided to invest in the Chavez home and preserve it for future generations — especially since the east side and its history have traditionally been “sorely neglected” by the city. It’s not just East San Jose’s history, she said. It’s the entire city’s history. “He belongs to all of us,” Carrasco said. “Not just the Latinos, not just the Mexicanos and not just the poor people, but anyone who believes in social justice.” Fernando Zazueta, the founding president of La Raza Historical Society, said Chavez’s home is a “physical confirmation” that a significant member of history resided in San Jose. “We need somebody to give us some sense of worth and some sense of belonging because we often were not treated as we belonged,” Zazueta said of the Mexican-American community. “I think it’s important to us to have some heroes. It’s important to have some tangible evidence that they lived here and walked among us.”	Civil Rights Activism
U.S. June 27, 2022 / 7:57 AM / CBS News Fallout nationwide from Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade America is "a country convulsed by the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision" 02:33 During one of many protests for abortion rights over the weekend, actress Jodie Sweetin was seen on video being shoved to the ground by Los Angeles police officers. Sweetin, best known for her role as Stephanie Tanner on "Full House," was leading a group of protesters away from the freeway when the incident occurred, a journalist who captured the moment said on Twitter. In the video, Sweetin is seen standing on an embankment on the freeway shouting something through her megaphone towards the protesters when LAPD officers grab her and shove her several feet onto the freeway. She promptly stood back up. The crowd immediately starts shouting at the officers, with one person yelling, "what the f*** is wrong with you guys?" The protesters then began chanting, "No justice, no peace," led by Sweetin. It is not immediately clear what may have happened prior to the incident. Mike Ade, the journalist who captured the moment on video, said it "pained" him to see Sweetin being "thrown to the ground" in such a manner. "She was trying to lead a group of peaceful protesters away from the freeway," Ade said on Instagram. "[Shaking my head] @LAPDHQ what are y'all doing? Jodi is the definition of a real one and fortunately she's okay! But for others who choose to protest today move with caution and keep your head on swivel. It's going to be a very long summer." CBS News has reached out to the LAPD for comment. Another video captured by Ade this weekend shows police using batons to shove and hit protesters. Some of the protesters were seen confronting the police directly. Sweetin, who also appears on the CBS show "Beyond the Edge," posted the video to her own Instagram profile, commenting, "Love everyone out there in the streets fighting for what's right." In a statement to People, Sweetin said, "Our activism will continue until our voices are heard and action is taken. This will not deter us, we will continue fighting for our rights. We are not free until ALL of us are free."This weekend's protest in Los Angeles was one of many across the country spurred by the Supreme Court's announcement on Friday that it has overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion in the U.S. Justice Samuel Alito delivered the opinion, calling Roe "egregiously wrong from the start" and saying it was a decision that's had "damaging consequences." The three dissenting judges, however, said the 6-3 ruling is a "curtailment of women's rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens." "In thus safeguarding each woman's reproductive freedom, the Constitution also protected '[t]he ability of women to participate equally in [this Nation's] economic and social life,'" the dissenting judges wrote. "But no longer." The end of Roe v. Wade: America reacts 61 photos In: Los Angeles Abortion Protest Li Cohen Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending reporter for CBS News, focusing on social justice issues. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue	Civil Rights Activism
Malachi Robinson A Kansas City man pleaded guilty in federal court today to committing a hate crime by shooting a local teenager eight times in an attempted murder that was motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation. Malachi Robinson, 26, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Brian C. Wimes to one count of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Robinson, who has been in federal custody since he was indicted by a federal grand jury on Aug. 10, 2021, will remain in federal detention until his sentencing hearing, which has not yet been scheduled. By pleading guilty today, Robinson admitted that he shot the victim, identified in court records as “M.S.,” approximately eight times with a Taurus 9mm pistol in an attempt to kill him because of his sexual orientation, causing life-threatening injuries. “This defendant is being held accountable for violently attempting to end the life of someone because of his sexual orientation,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This attempted murder is a reminder that hate crimes against the LGBTQI+ community are real and must be confronted. Violent acts targeting people based on their sexual orientation are heinous crimes that have no place in our country. The Justice Department will continue to use our civil rights laws to pursue justice for survivors and others impacted by bias motivated crimes.” “Violence against others, motivated by hatred of their sexual orientation, is unacceptable,” said U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore of the Western District of Missouri. “Such callous disregard for the life of a teenage victim, gravely wounded in a failed murder attempt, must be challenged by a commitment to protect the civil rights of all our citizens. When those rights are threatened, the Justice Department will act to hold the violators accountable.” “Hate crimes—and the violence we saw in this case—are especially cruel because victims are attacked because of who they are,” said Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “The FBI treats hate crimes as the highest priority of our civil rights program because everyone deserves to feel safe to express who they are, without fear of violence from others. We are committed to working with our law enforcement partners to bring justice to all communities affected by hate.” According to today’s plea agreement, after a chance meeting at the Kansas City Public Library on May 29, 2019, Robinson and M.S. talked briefly over Facebook Messenger before leaving the library. Robinson then walked with M.S. in the Swope Park area under the guise of looking for a place to engage in a sex act. Around the same time, Robinson wrote separately to his girlfriend that he “might shoot this boy” because of his sexual orientation. When Robinson and M.S. ultimately entered a wooded area nearby, Robinson pulled out his pistol and fired repeatedly at M.S. Robinson fled through the woods toward his apartment building, and continued to engage in attempts to avoid detection or arrest. Later that day, and in the days that followed, Robinson told others that he shot M.S. because of his sexual orientation. Under federal statutes, Robinson is subject to a sentence of up to life in federal prison without parole. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the completion of a presentence investigation by the U.S. Probation Office. DOJ Facebook Comments	Civil Rights Activism
Lamenting rising gun violence in Buffalo in a letter to her local newspaper, the civil rights activist Kat Massey wrote that new legislation was needed to stop the flow of illegal guns across state lines.On Saturday she was murdered in a supermarket by a gunman alleged to have driven to Buffalo from several hours away, armed with a modified assault weapon and a rifle he bought in Pennsylvania.Massey, 72 who was remembered as a “powerful” and “unapologetic” voice for her community, was among the ten people killed in the shooting whose names have now been released by the Buffalo police department.Katherine Massey campaigned for tougher gun lawsROBERT KIRKHAM/BUFFALO NEWSOne was Heyward Patterson, 67, a church deacon sometimes known as ‘jitney’ because he gave people lifts to the Tops supermarket	Civil Rights Activism
LGBTQ+ social media content creators are increasingly complaining about their posts being taken down, a practice labeled as “the digital closet” by researcher Alexander Monea.Monea, who is a professor of English and cultural studies at George Mason University, spent two years digging through data sets and tracking down different anecdotes from users of major social media platforms who reported being censored, silenced or demonetized in different ways to write his book, “The Digital Closet,” which details the policing of online spaces focused on the LGBTQ+ community.“It has historically been the case that these companies never release damning information unless absolutely compelled to,” said Monea.Monea's work is an example of the growing field of research that focuses on how LGBTQ+ people, including youth, sex workers and other internet users, experience the internet in a different way than heterosexual people."Once the internet is largely controlled by a very few companies that all use an advertising model to drive their revenue, what you get is an over-policed sort of internet space," he told ABC News' "Perspective" podcast.STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images“It’s a particularly difficult time for LGBTQ+ people on social media,” said Jenni Olson, the senior director of social media safety at the LGBTQ+ advocacy non-profit GLAAD.“We are doing our best to monitor and hold the platforms accountable,” she said, “to point things out to them, hold their feet to the fire and insist that they do better.”LGBTQ+ people are more likely to experience online harassment than any other group surveyed by the Anti-Defamation League in their 2022 report.Online harassment is experienced by 66% of LGBTQ+ individuals, compared to 38% of non-LGBTQ+ individuals, according to the report, which was released this month.Of the 2,330 LGBTQ+ and non- LGBTQ+ adults surveyed who experienced harassment on social media, 68% percent said they've experienced harassment on Facebook, among other platforms, 26% named Instagram, 23% named Twitter and 20% named YouTube.The 2021 GLAAD Social Media Safety Index found “inadequate content moderation, polarizing algorithms and discriminatory AI which disproportionately impacts LGBTQ users and other marginalized communities” on the five major social media companies: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.The report makes recommendations, ranging from improving community guidelines, fact-checking and content moderation to hiring a more diverse workforce.Recently, GLAAD’s advocacy led to TikTok adding community guidelines banning misgendering and dead-naming, which is the practice of calling a trans person by their former name, according to Olson. TikTok now joins Twitter and Pinterest in having LGBTQ+ sensitive community guidelines, said Olson.Last week, President Joe Biden took the first steps in establishing a task force that would investigate online harassment and abuse, particularly targeted at women, youth and members of the LGBTQ+ community.A day prior, he signed an executive order to “advance equality” for LGBTQ+ Americans, with provisions to prevent the practice of “conversion therapy” and expanding support services for LGBTQ+ youth.In their recent survey of the content on Meta’s platforms Facebook and Instagram published over the past year, the non-profit media watchdog organization Media Matters found nearly 1,000 violations of the company’s own hate speech policy, including anti-LGBTQ+ content that includes misinformation.A spokesperson for Meta told ABC News "our policies prohibit hate speech and harassment on Facebook and Instagram,” and cited statistics that “in the last quarter alone, the prevalence of harassment and bullying content decreased to 0.09% on Facebook and about 0.05% on Instagram, and the prevalence of hate speech was at 0.02% on Facebook and Instagram due to significant efforts on our part.”“We are committed to improving our policies so that people feel safe on our platforms. We will continue to work with civil rights organizations to address issues around speech and social media,” they added.STOCK PHOTO/Getty ImagesAlexander Monea’s research is focused broadly on the different mechanisms, ranging from advertising incentives to pressure from conservative legislators, that he says has created a dynamic he calls “heteronormative enforcement.”This dynamic falls into three categories he describes as an over-blocking of LGBTQ+ content online, an uneven enforcement of content that falls into a gray-area of “things that talk about sex and pornography but aren't sex and pornography” and a content bottle-neck that favors heterosexual porn.“The internet is largely controlled by a very few companies that all use an advertising model to drive their revenue,” he said, "which results in “an over-policed sort of internet space.”A 2019 report by the cybersecurity intelligence company Cheq.ai found that 73% of safe LGBTQ+ related news articles were being blocked from hosting advertisements.Monea says he has found queer creators, who rely on the internet to distribute their content, frequently complain of their posts being taken down.This dynamic has created what he describes as a “digital closet,” whereby LGBTQ+ users have difficulty producing and distributing content online, and connecting on social media without facing harassment and misinformation.Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic who identifies as trans, says a tweet of hers directed at Christina Pushaw, spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, was taken down last week without an explanation.Caraballo’s original tweet, which she shared with ABC News via email, read: “@ChristinaPushaw This was pulled from a widely circulated nazi meme 3 years ago of a facebook post from burlesque dancer who is a cis woman. This was not drag, nor did it happen in dallas. Care to comment why you’re resharing nazi disinformation and propaganda?”The original tweet by Pushaw, which features a photo of a performer at a burlesque show posted alongside a tweet about DeSantis’ statement about drag shows, has not been taken down at the time of this article’s publication.“I was targeted specifically for this moderation,” says Caraballo, “and it felt highly political.”Caraballo, whose Twitter handle is @Esqueer_, says she was targeted because she publicly identifies as trans, and because the intention of her post was to stop what she calls an “anti-LGBTQ+ smear.”"Keeping people safe on Twitter, and enforcing against content that could result in offline harm, continue to be top priorities for our teams," a spokesperson for Twitter told ABC News."We are committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized."Twitter declined to comment on Alejandra Caraballo's case.Linda Charmaraman, who is the director of Wellesley College’s Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab, recently completed a research study that found LGBTQ+ youth were more likely to have smaller social networks online and to share less personal information.Although Charmaraman’s research did not find that LGBTQ+ youth experienced different levels of harassment online, Charmaraman attributes the findings to “the history of sexual minorities facing a lot of different kinds of harassment in school and out of school,” she says.The upside, she adds, is that these youth are “more likely to join online groups that make them feel less lonely, so they can actually seek to find places where they belong online.”	Civil Rights Activism
The new Jackie Robinson Museum is encouraging the next generation of social justice activists. The museum, which had its ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday, features memorabilia from the baseball great and highlights his work and activism in the Black community.One prominent wall display in the museum is titled “Speak out, stand up,” which encourages people to commit to a social justice initiative they care about, while holding them accountable, said Della Britton, president and CEO of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind the creation of the museum.“It’s for groups to come in and take on an issue, whether it’s LGBTQ, whether it’s global warming and then — it’s actually also a sort of a museum strategy to get people to stay involved, which is having a competition,” Britton said of the display which serves as part of the museum’s scheduled programming.The museum also highlights major efforts Robinson implemented to help the Black community throughout his life. As reflected in the museum exhibits, Robinson started his own bank after learning that certain banks were denying mortgage loans to Black people. He also started a housing development corporation and built 200 units throughout New York City. Britton said a lot of people aren’t aware of all Robinson’s contributions.“We want them to learn about him and his life, because there are a lot of people who don’t know,” said Britton. “But we also want them to be inspired, to continue the work, to go forward and to start to get involved and become involved civically.”Following the museum’s ribbon-cutting, individuals gathered for a reception near the museum, where the movie “After Jackie” was screened. One of the major hurdles Robinson faced throughout his baseball career was discrimination, which other Black baseball players also experienced even after his death in 1972. CC Sabathia, a Black retired baseball pitcher, told TODAY that many Black baseball players continue to experience barriers. Sabathia uses his current positions as special assistant to the commissioner of MLB and vice president of the board of directors of the Players Alliance to help address these challenges.“If you look around the league, there’s no utility players that are Black,” he said. “There’s never, like, a 25th, 26th man on the roster, so you always pretty much have to be the best player if you want to play in the league.”Sabathia said one of Robinson’s major goals in working with MLB is “to give the guys more opportunities to play and more opportunities to play more positions.”“For me, I would love to see the game where it was when I grew up in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, when we made up a lot of the representation of the league, and it was super diverse.Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.Randi RichardsonRandi Richardson reports for TODAY Digital and NBC BLK from New York.Claretta Bellamy is a fellow for NBC News.	Civil Rights Activism
Employees are often encouraged to bring their "whole selves" to work — yet for transgender people, expressing their true, authentic identities in the workplace can have devastating consequences: rejection, discrimination, harassment and social isolation, just to name a few. Despite growing public awareness of the challenges transgender individuals face, this group is still subjected to a significant wage and employment gap across all industries. According to a November 2021 report from McKinsey & Co., transgender adults are twice as likely as cisgender adults to be unemployed, and cisgender employees make about 32% more money each year than their transgender colleagues, even when the latter have similar or higher education levels. The report also found that more than half of transgender employees are not comfortable being out at work, and feel pressured to suppress their gender identity because it doesn't conform with long-held norms regarding gender expression. Such barriers can damage transgender individuals' job satisfaction, career growth, retention rates, lifetime earnings and emotional well-being. "There has been a ton of progress in prioritizing corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts over the last several decades, but that hasn't necessarily translated into actual improvements for the transgender experience in the U.S.," David Baboolall, one of the authors of the McKinsey report, tells CNBC Make It. Baboolall identifies as a biracial, queer, transgender person working in corporate America — and all too frequently, they add, the transgender experience "doesn't even register on employers' radars when they're working on LGBTQ+ inclusivity initiatives." What's driving the wage gap Transgender people are about 2.4 times more likely to work in the food or retail industries, the McKinsey report found, in which the average annual wage hovers between $25,000 and $30,000. Safety ranked as the most important factor in transgender people's decision to pursue a job or not, trailed by not seeing others who looked like them in the workplace and finding support for transgender or gender-nonconforming people. As a result, transgender job-seekers might feel like they have limited options when deciding which industries to pursue, and gravitate to sectors where there are more transgender employees, the report noted. Throughout the hiring process, too, transgender candidates continue to encounter anti-transgender discrimination and bias, the McKinsey report notes, further limiting their employment options."A disproportionate number of transgender people work in the service sector because a lot of us face employment discrimination and don't get hired into traditional office or white-collar jobs," Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, says. "That pushes us into jobs as servers, bartenders or baristas that don't get paid as much, have shorter hours and, overall, don't have the security or stability a white-collar office job might offer." The same social norms that often lock transgender people out of higher-paying opportunities can also hurt their long-term career prospects. As Heng-Lehtinen points out, "When you don't have those points of commonalities with the people you work with, especially with your boss, you're way less likely to have that kind of access to prove yourself and, consequently, get promoted." How companies can create more trans-inclusive environmentsBecca Green remembers the afternoon she came out as transgender at work in vivid detail: It was New Year's Day in 2019, the first day she and her co-workers returned to the office after the winter holidays, and about six months after she started hormone therapy for her gender transition. At the time, she was working for a media company in Salt Lake City — and when she announced her transition, Green says her co-workers were excited and ready to celebrate with her. "I definitely got more open acceptance than most trans people get," she adds. One of her managers connected Green with someone in the company's HR department who had helped a transgender employee in a previous job, to make sure that she had the right support and guidance throughout her transition. "I benefitted pretty tremendously from that," Green says. Still, Green recognizes that most transgender workers aren't as lucky. "One of the most common questions other trans people ask me is, 'Where can I find a supportive workplace?'" she says. "They just want a workplace where they can use the bathroom safely and be treated like a human." Green has since left her job at the media company and is now a copywriter — and during her job search, she notes, it always made her feel safer applying to companies that included "gender identity" in their discrimination policies, or had explicit messaging that they supported transgender people. It's a small step that she hopes more companies will consider taking to be more welcoming to transgender talent. Companies should also look at their hiring and benefits policies to see where they're falling short of being trans-inclusive and take steps to get there, Baboolall points out, whether it's by asking candidates their pronouns, offering gender neutral bathrooms in their offices or attending recruitment events hosted by transgender advocacy organizations.Another change companies should consider is updating their employee databases to distinguish between someone's legal name and their preferred one, so a transgender employee isn't mistakenly referred to by their "deadname," or the one they were given at birth that doesn't align with their gender, Heng-Lehtinen says.He points to the Supreme Court's historic decision in June 2020, which stated that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex, as "an important step forward" toward creating more equitable workplaces for all.Advancing equity and full inclusion for transgender individuals is an ongoing process — but Heng-Lehtinen is hopeful that companies are beginning to see "diversity and inclusion" as more than buzzwords, including when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community."More employers are realizing that diversity is a strength, that it can help productivity, creativity, efficiency and more," he says. "I'm absolutely optimistic that things will keep improving, it just takes time." Check out:5 U.S. employment laws every person entering the job market should knowThe 10 highest-rated companies for LGBTQ+ workers, according to GlassdoorA transgender CEO on coming out at age 49: 'The biggest transphobia' was 'my own'Sign up now: Get smarter about your money and career with our weekly newsletter	Civil Rights Activism
When the high court’s conservative majority struck down Roe v. Wade on Friday, the Hope Medical Center for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana, was packed with patients seeking care. Some were already in the center’s waiting rooms. Hundreds more were scheduled for the next two weeks. But with Roe now reversed, the dozens of procedures and consultations scheduled for the day had to be canceled on the spot. Louisiana is one of 13 states with trigger laws that outlaw abortion immediately or in the near future after Roe falls. At Hope Medical Center, one of three abortion providers in the entire state, staffers and patients were facing a new reality. “Some of the patients are truly in shock. Some of our staff are crying on the phone along with the patients. We have a patient that is so desperate, she is simply sobbing,” said Kathaleen Pittman, the clinical administrator at the Shreveport clinic. “It’s difficult. It’s very difficult.” Pittman said, as of now, the clinic has not closed its doors, nor has it surrendered its licenses. “We’re certainly here for the women that still need us to call and talk, or those that have been under our care that might have follow-up needs. We certainly are not going to abandon them. But I’m telling you, the air is thick with disbelief and grief today.” The recovery room is seen at the Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana. Photo taken February 2020. Photo by Lila Engelbrecht/Reuters The clinic had already been overwhelmed for months after Texas enacted the nation’s then-strictest abortion law last fall, sending hundreds of patients into Louisiana to seek care. For now, the clinic is handling a steady stream of calls as staff provide as much information about their options and the availability of other clinics – outside the state – that will not be affected by this decision. Louisiana patients wanting to terminate their pregnancies surgically will have to travel possibly hundreds of miles, to Kansas, North Carolina or Illinois, where abortion remains legal, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Pittman said the ruling isn’t just about getting rid of abortion, it’s about getting rid of safe access. “It’s going to worsen their situations, especially for women who cannot get the care that they need and what they deserve and should be entitled to. Some are going to be forced to continue a pregnancy they cannot afford,” Pittman said. She added that there will likely be an increase in women attempting to self-manage their abortions, an increase in emergency room visits, and an increase in pregnancy-related adverse events and maternal mortality. Louisiana’s maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the nation, according to 2018 figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to state figures, the rate is about four times higher for Black mothers than it is for white mothers. The state also has the fifth highest infant mortality rate in the United States. David Schmit, spokesperson for Lift Louisiana, an advocacy group for women and children, said the ruling will have “potentially devastating effects” on certain groups of people. “Let’s be clear that this decision will not affect privileged people, mostly white, from accessing abortion services. Instead it empowers the state to continue to oppress Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, people with low incomes, young people, people living in rural areas and other marginalized communities from accessing abortion care,” Schmit said in an email. “This oppression is rooted in anti-Black racism, white supremacy, patriarchy and misogyny.” Patients’ files are organized on a shelf at the Shreveport clinic. Photo taken February 2020. Photo by Lila Engelbrecht/Reuters Friday’s ruling triggered a law passed by the state legislature in 2006 that imposes an immediate prohibition of all abortions in Louisiana, except in cases where giving birth would threaten the mother’s life. There is also no exception for rape or incest. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who is not shy about his support for strict anti-abortion laws, called for providing resources to women impacted by the high court’s decision. “I am and have always been unabashedly pro-life and opposed to abortion,” Edwards said in a statement shortly after the decision was handed down. “Being pro-life means more than just being against abortion. It means providing the necessary resources and implementing policies that provide real options and not just lip service to the children, women, and families.” Edwards said it is critical that Louisiana funds services to support women, children, and families throughout their lives. At least two rallies were planned in New Orleans on Friday night as abortion advocates react to the fallout. Many worry that the ruling will disproportionately affect women of color and marginalized communities the most. Arséne DeLay, a New Orleans musician and activist, believes lives are at risk. A new generation of activism is needed, she said. “All we have is each other, and it’s going to take full community participation to keep the desperation from not having access to reproductive healthcare from causing self-inflicted harm, and an even higher mortality rate in young girls, women, and the LGBTQ community,” she said. Activist Arséne DeLay speaks at an abortion rights rally in New Orleans on Oct. 2, 2021. Photo by Bobbi-Jeanne Misick/WWNO DeLay said she hopes people will use this moment to donate to local abortion funds, volunteer as clinic escorts, and most importantly, support the people and the organizations already doing the work. “There is no need to attempt to reinvent the wheel,” she added. Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists in the state celebrated the Supreme Court decision to end constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years. Democratic State Rep. Mandie Landry from New Orleans lamented the news that the state’s closures were already in effect in Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. “They’re closed. If they perform any abortion care, they go to jail, get arrested or fined heavily.” This legislative session, lawmakers passed even stricter abortion laws, which increased penalties but exempts pregnant women from persecution. Medication-induced abortions, which now account for half of all abortions, according to the Guttemacher Institute, are illegal in Louisiana. While Pittman is angry at the conservative justices of the Supreme Court, she lays the blame on state lawmakers. “As far as what we’re faced with in Louisiana, never have I been more ashamed of my state as I am today,” she said shortly after the ruling. “If we had people in our state legislature that were in tune with what our citizens want and if they were in tune with their citizens’ needs, we would not be in this predicament. Roe would not matter.” Instead, state lawmakers “have shown a blatant disregard for their citizens, especially persons of color and the marginalized communities,” she added. Members of the Louisiana Right to Life applauded the high court’s decision and said at a news conference that it has compiled an extensive list of resources for pregnant and parenting moms at several parenting centers. However, critics say anti-abortion groups like Louisiana Right to Life rarely support bills to help women and families, including a raise in the minimum wage in Louisiana which would dramatically improve the economic positions of patients seeking care. Still, at a Friday news conference, Benjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, said his group is “ready to help women in a post-Roe abortion-free future.” “Today is a huge day. A celebration where we can now protect the rights of unborn children. We can protect their lives under the law,” Clapper said. “But, we know our work is not done. Through an abundance of public and private resources, Louisiana is ready to support women and children before and after birth.” In Shreveport, Pittman said her clinic is considering further legal options, but for now she is focused on women who are confused by the news and staff who have seen their work come to an abrupt halt. “Even though we anticipated bad news, it actually was even worse than I anticipated. It’s devastating. It truly is. We had to go into comfort mode with some of the patients,” Pittman said. She said the center’s staff has been attempting to reach their patients to make sure they received the news – and that their scheduled appointments are now canceled. “It’s very tough though because we have patients that are truly frightened about what’s going to happen now.”	Civil Rights Activism
By Frances MaoBBC NewsImage source, WEIBOImage caption, The attack in Tangshan renewed debate about gender violence in ChinaIt was a busy Friday night at a barbecue restaurant in the Chinese city of Tangshan. A group of women were having dinner together when one of them was approached by a male diner.Recoiling from his touch, she said "go away". In return, he clubbed her in the head, throwing her to the ground. His friends then joined him, using chairs and bottles to hit the women, some of whom were then dragged outside and kicked in the head.It was just the latest example of violence against women that's outraged the Chinese public - in January, news of a woman found chained in a shack sparked similar distress.Both cases have triggered unprecedented levels of online criticism as well as rare acts of activism. They've also raised questions, particularly among young women, about misogyny and male power."It's profoundly disrupted how Chinese people view their own society and specifically, the gender norms and stereotypes underpinning it," said Pichamon Yeophantong, a China researcher at the University of New South Wales.Endemic violenceWomen being assaulted in public by their partners "is disturbingly common online", says Kerry Allen, the BBC's Chinese media monitoring analyst."I see footage almost every day of either covertly filmed domestic violence or attacks that have been picked up via surveillance footage."A 2013 UN study involving 1,000 men in a county in central China found that more than half admitted to physical or sexual violence against their partner - a similar number also said they would use violence to defend their honour. The UN report attributed gender-based violence to deeply-rooted gender norms in China - a country where domestic violence was only made a criminal offence in 2016.In Chinese society, "toughness, sexual prowess… and use of force in some occasions" remain ideals of masculinity, it said.But observers say there is also a reluctance to intervene in what is still widely seen as a private matter between a couple. Ms Allen said that when living in the country a decade ago she witnessed several attacks in broad daylight where "groups of bystanders [were] simply watching on".That's what happened in Tangshan, although the victim didn't know the attacker. It was the same in Xuzhou too, where a woman had been chained by her neck in a hut outside her home. Her husband had claimed she was locked up because her mental illness made her a threat to others. But a police investigation confirmed suspicion that she had been trafficked as a bride in the 1990s.The footage only surfaced and went viral after a vlogger came across her while touring the village - the fact that it took so long for her to be discovered deeply shocked people. "She is a person, not an object. After having eight children over 20 years, she is only to be found today? None of the government departments involved are innocent," one user wrote on social media platform Weibo.Image source, DOUYINImage caption, The video of the woman chained in a hut triggered national outrage in JanuaryDemands for changeMany Chinese women were surprised with the extent of violence shown in the Tangshan and Xuzhou cases, particularly given China's low crime rates and high levels of surveillance."Speaking to the younger generation - university students, in particular - I've heard many of them express genuine shock that such violence against women still exists, if not condoned, in modern Chinese society," Dr Yeophantong said.With the bubble burst, many are interrogating gender dynamics for the first time, she added.Calls for social change appear to be most prominent among Chinese millennials who are active on social media and keenly aware of global movements like #MeToo.Some of the most popular posts on Weibo about the two cases voice concerns about how women are treated in a society that still largely promotes patriarchal Confucian ideas."We need to... acknowledge that there are still forces in our environment that support, encourage, and drive men to engage in gender-based violence against women," read one essay.Many have also expressed discontent over how authorities have responded to these cases, accusing those in power of downplaying the role of gender.In the Tangshan incident, the initial police and media response appeared to focus on the attackers' links to local gangs and their criminal history.One report said the woman had only been approached for "conversation". But on Weibo many users objected, saying it was sexual harassment.Outrage over the chained woman also prompted rare acts of public protest. In separate incidents, two women drove across the country to try to rescue her. Unmasked demonstrators photographed themselves with signs and posted the pictures online. One bookshop set up a display of feminist literature.Is this a turning point?"Women are angry now and speaking up. But I'm not optimistic that this will lead to fundamental changes," said Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch.In the face of immense public pressure, authorities responded to both cases by launching investigations and taskforces. Amid outrage over the condition of the woman in Xuzhou, they promised a trafficking crackdown by stepping up checks on local marriage licences. After the restaurant attack, they increased night patrols in Tangshan, and dismissed a local police chief. Alleged perpetrators in both cases have been arrested.But Guo Jing, a domestic violence case worker in China, said it's typical for authorities to treat gender-based crimes as one-off incidents, solved by catching and punishing the accused."These incidents are not viewed from the structural point of view; there is no long-term perspective nor institutional solutions," she told BBC Chinese.In March, some party members at the National People's Congress suggested strengthening laws protecting women, and increasing punishments for human trafficking. But these have yet to materialise, and the Chinese Communist Party leadership has not signalled any changes.Meanwhile, censorship has increased. In the wake of the Tangshan attack, Weibo removed accounts that "incited gender confrontation". Older threads about the chained woman - which often included discussions about sexism - have also been wiped.Ms Wang said it's near impossible to sustain grassroots activism given how China has been erasing its civil rights groups in recent years. Observers are concerned that the crackdown has also hit women's rights activism: vocal feminists have been arrested and high-profile MeToo court battles dismissed. The recent case involving tennis player Peng Shuai has also prompted fears that sexual assault accusers are being silenced."The forces that used to exist that pressured the government to do better on gender issues have been eliminated," Ms Wang said."All these bode ill for women's rights in China."	Civil Rights Activism
Pearl Prescod’s star soared high in her day. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she became the first Black actor to play with the National Theatre company, under Laurence Olivier, in London in 1965. She appeared in the West End and on television, recorded radio plays, worked on the cabaret circuit and was also a prominent activist alongside Claudia Jones and Amy Ashwood Garvey. So why isn’t Prescod better known today?Partly because her career was cut short by an untimely death – she had a brain haemorrhage at the age of 46, just a year after her breakthrough National Theatre role. But those excavating her forgotten legacy today think there is more to it than that. Coming to Britain in 1954, aged 34, on a music scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she was part of a larger group of well-educated, highly politicised Caribbean figures who arrived in the postwar era to make similarly impressive strides in culture and in consciousness-raising around race but whose names have since been forgotten.The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has brought out a pamphlet on Prescod’s life as part of an endeavour to shine a light on the overlooked stories of this generation of Caribbean artists and intellectuals. There is so much to unearth in the case of Prescod’s short but glittering life and work: in 1958, she appeared at the Royal Court, in Barry Reckord’s Flesh to a Tiger – a play directed by Tony Richardson but written by a Black writer about the Caribbean with a fully Black cast, who broke from the theatrical expectation of the time to speak in their own natural accents. She campaigned with Equity to secure more roles for Black British actors who were discriminated against, even for their Caribbean accents, and she marched to the US embassy in a parallel protest to Martin Luther King’s historic 1963 march on Washington. She also featured in the 1964 civil rights stage show made for TV called Freedom Road: Songs of Negro Protest.Her son, Colin Prescod, was born in Trinidad and lived with his aunts and grandmother until the age of 13 when he joined Pearl in her home in Ladbroke Grove, west London, where she raised him as a single mother. He remembers watching her perform at the Royal Court on his first night in London. He met Olivier, too, when his mother was cast in the role of Tituba – a slave from Barbados accused of witchcraft – in the National’s staging of The Crucible, alongside Frank Finlay, Michael Gambon and Anthony Hopkins. He was a teenager when she got the part and did not appreciate its magnitude, not least because the company had only just come into being a couple of years earlier under Olivier. “I was in sixth form at the time and was backstage in the huge dressing room as Olivier came in. My mother was keen to see her son introduced to him so she said ‘Sir Laurence, this is my son …’ and Sir Laurence says to me, ‘Aren’t you proud of Pearly?’”As Tituba in The Crucible. Photograph: Chris Arthur for National TheatrePrescod told Olivier that her son was thinking of making a career in acting but that she was trying to encourage him to complete his studies instead. “Laurence Olivier said ‘Pearly’s quite right, you really should finish your studies because an actor’s is a tough life – we’re not always working.’ I had really wanted to go on to the boards but that turned my head. I decided to pay attention to my A-levels and then went on to university.”Clint Dyer, the current deputy artistic director at the National Theatre, says Prescod’s achievement in The Crucible cannot be overestimated: “We talk about the conscious and unconscious biases within racism today but imagine what she would have received at that time, and in a company led by a man [Olivier] who blacked up to play Othello.”How far does Dyer think we have come since Prescod’s appearance? “We’ve come so far. Since September 2021 we have staged [shows by] four Black directors and writers, three south Asian writers and directors, and more to be announced next month. I wish Pearl Prescod could have seen the development happening right now. I didn’t think I’d see it in my own lifetime.”Many younger Black practitioners he has spoken to feel they are the first, he says, but it is essential to remember past, groundbreaking figures such as Prescod “so that we can understand the context of how we work today”. The NT has its own initiative in the Black Plays Archive, he adds, which aims to incorporate otherwise forgotten Black British texts into the canon. “We are doing readings of these plays to find if we can put them on stage and make them into classics.”Laurence Olivier with Pearl Prescod and the actors Ken Mackintosh and Sarah Miles. Photograph: Prescod familyAnya Edmond-Pettitt, coordinator of the Black History Collection at the IRR, says Prescod came to Britain in mid-life with a sophisticated understanding of empire, and with no sense of separation between her acting and her political activism, like many in her milieu.Although she migrated at the same time as the Windrush generation, Prescod’s story differs from that prevailing narrative, which may be one reason why it has been forgotten, thinks Edmond-Pettitt. “It’s not to say that [the Windrush] narrative isn’t true or important but it’s not the only story. There were people who came from the Caribbean who did not become bus drivers, hospital porters and nurses. There’s a strange blindspot in that this is the only story we have of colonial migration to this country from the Caribbean.”Prescod was part of a group that included the actors and singers Cy Grant and Edric Connor, and Pearl Connor, who created the first theatrical and literary agency for people of colour. Colin Prescod calls the pamphlet on her life an “archival teaser” that points to the fact that there are hosts of life stories that should be formally archived. “Many other names are worthy of being remembered, such as [the folk singer] Nadia Cattouse, [the actor] Earl Cameron and Errol John, who won the Observer award for best new playwright in 1957 and played Othello at the Old Vic. But who talks about him?”He is, he adds, curious about how the NT’s latest production will present the figure of Tituba: “They can and should do interesting and different things with that character in 2022 than they would have done back in 1965.” The educational pamphlet Pearl Prescod: A Black Life Lived Large is available now. The Crucible is at the National Theatre, London, from 14 September.	Civil Rights Activism
Inundated with threats during Pride Month, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and allies have been forced to cancel events and involve local law enforcement authorities after a group of white nationalists were arrested outside a Pride event in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.California state Sen. Scott Wiener said he was at a supermarket Sunday when he was alerted by a staff member not to return to his home before calling police. Wiener, who had joked on Twitter about making “Drag Queen 101 part of the K-12 curriculum” in response to a tweet last week by a Texas state House representative announcing a bill seeking to ban drag shows in the presence of minors, had received an email saying there was a bomb in his house.Bomb-sniffing dogs had to clear Wiener’s apartment before he went back in. “There is a very orchestrated network of right-wing accounts and personalities to coordinate on whatever the current attack message is and who’s going to be targeted. And they have an army of social media trolls who amplify their messages,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a very orchestrated attack machine.”The bomb scare directed at the state senator’s home was just one of several threats and intimidation tactics aimed at LGBTQ activists in the last week, some just hours after the high-profile arrests of 31 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front in Idaho on Saturday.Sen. Scott Wiener in San Francisco on Jan. 10, 2020.Liz Hafalia / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images fileThe threats mostly aimed to shut down events for transgender rights and drag performances, which have become frequent targets of extremists, militias and far-right personalities during June, which is Pride Month. They come as more than 200 bills targeting LGBTQ people have been filed across the United States this year.Far-right influencers and militias have been particularly focused in the last month on “Drag Queen Story Hour” events, which have been hosted at libraries throughout the U.S. since 2015.Discussion of such events has spiked online. Mentions of drag queen story hour on Twitter increased 777% in the last month, according to data provided to NBC News by the social media intelligence company Zignal Labs.Michael Hayden, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights and legal advocacy organization, said the “level of disruption that’s happened in the last few weeks is new.”He said the process of targeting specific LGBTQ events has become mainstreamed and systematized in recent months by far-right influencers with megaphones on social media. “The way this works is, that they have to get their targets from somewhere,” Hayden said. “Things get broadcast in advance by LibsOfTikTok and other major influencers on the right-wing right now. Then, extremists go into planning over it.”The person who runs the LibsOfTikTok account did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Hayden said there were instances in 2018 of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa crashing talks by trans rights activists and drag queen story hours, but those events did not snowball into a string of actions by disparate extremist groups.“There’s a level of chaos involved with the target, but the choice of target comes from top down,” Hayden said. “And the messaging is tied up with the far-right machine.”That increase in online discussion has been matched by a growing number of real-world incidents.Around 1:30 p.m. ET Sunday, hours before the threat to Wiener’s house, members of the far-right group Proud Boys interrupted a Drag Queen Story Hour at the San Larenzo Library in Alameda County, California, and screamed transphobic and homophobic slurs in front of the children, according to local authorities.“An active hate crime investigation is underway as is an investigation into the annoying and harassing of children,” Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Ray Kelly said in a news release.Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has exploded in many conservative and far-right online communities in recent months.Wiener’s satirical post about Drag Queen Story Hour was quickly aggregated by far-right influencers, specifically the account LibsOfTikTok, which aggregates examples of events, public school teachers and others who publicly support LGBTQ causes on TikTok and other platforms that are frequently cited by far-right influencers and outlets. LibsOfTikTok had also posted several times condemning the Coeur D’Alene Pride rally in the run-up to the event.The account specifically called out a performance titled the Family Friendly Drag Dance Party to the town’s mayor, saying “We live in hell.”The 31 men associated with Patriot Front were charged with criminal conspiracy after the event. A 911 caller described them to police as resembling a “little army” after seeing the group of masked men loading into a U-Haul truck with shields.Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said following their arrests that he believed that caller likely prevented a more dangerous situation, as the group allegedly planned to incite a riot at the local Pride in the Park event nearby. White told reporters that he assumed the Pride event became a “flashpoint” for anti-LGBTQ groups. Groups that participated in the Jan. 6th riots such as the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters also appeared at the rally, along with Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group.Of those arrested, only two individuals were residents of Idaho. White also confirmed to reporters Monday that he observed documents in which the group allegedly planned to create a confrontation, including the use of smoke grenades, before retreating down Sherman Avenue.Hours after the Coeur D’Alene arrests Saturday night, a transgender rights rally scheduled for Sunday at Atlanta’s Liberty Plaza was canceled when organizers said they received a specific, targeted threat for an activist that included the date, time and location of their planned event.Alex Ames, an organizer for the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition that had planned the rally, said it was a “vulgar death threat” that caused them to quickly cancel the event. She said the rally was rescheduled as a virtual event on Tuesday for the safety attendees.“We want to get those stories out anyways, without anyone having to make that difficult choice of ‘Will I go out there without knowing how safe I will be?’” she said.Despite the wave of threats against LGBTQ+ events, Wiener said, it’s “even more important this year for us to be out” at events during Pride Month.“Particularly with all of these threats around the country — now, more than ever, we need to be visible and vocal and out there,” he said. “The last thing we should be doing is curling up into a ball, because then they win.”	Civil Rights Activism
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department has launched a sweeping inquiry into the New York Police Department’s famed sex crimes investigators following years of complaints about the way they treat crime victims.The civil rights investigation, announced Thursday, will examine whether the NYPD’s Special Victims Division engages in a pattern of gender-biased policing, officials said.“Survivors of sexual assault should expect effective, trauma-informed and victim-centered investigations by police departments,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. New York City’s two U.S. attorneys joined her in announcing the inquiry.The police unit inspired TV’s “Law & Order: SVU,” and the real-life version has tackled such major cases as the prosecution of former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. But the division also has faced a decade of complaints about thin staffing and superficial investigations.In a 2019 lawsuit, a woman alleged detectives shrugged off her report of being raped by someone she’d been involved with, logging it as a “dispute” instead of a sex crime. Another woman said in the suit that her account of being kidnapped and gang-raped was grossly mishandled for months before she was told the case was “too complex” to investigate.After the lawsuit and a leadership shakeup, the NYPD promised change. But victims’ advocates say it hasn’t happened.“We hope the Justice Department’s investigation and our lawsuit will finally result in real change for victims and survivors of sexual assault in New York City,” said the women’s lawyer, Mariann Wang.The NYPD said it welcomes the review and is committed to improving its investigations.Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said she believed any “constructive” review would “show that the NYPD has been evolving and improving in this area, but we will be transparent and open to criticism as well as ideas.”Mayor Eric Adams, a retired police captain who took office in January and appointed Sewell, said she immediately took steps to make sure the unit was “professional.”“We were not sitting on our hands,” the Democrat said.Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said the NYPD has already taken steps to address concerns, but authorities want to ensure victims are treated fairly in the future.Justice Department officials said they planned a comprehensive review of policies, procedures and training for the Special Victims Division’s sex assault investigations — including how police interact with survivors and witnesses, collect evidence and complete investigations.The officials also want to see what steps the police department has taken to fix deficiencies, including the unit’s staffing and its services for sexual assault survivors.The Weinstein case spotlighted the sex crimes division, which helped build a prosecution that ended with a watershed conviction for the #MeToo movement. But along the way, prosecutors dropped one of the charges in 2018, after evidence surfaced that a detective had coached a witness and told an accuser to delete material from her cellphone.A lawyer for the woman whose allegation was dropped from the case has faulted prosecutors for what happened. She said Thursday that she welcomed shining light on police practices, offering a mixed view of the police sex crimes unit.“Our experience is that many viable sexual assault cases are tossed out by police at the earliest stages of investigation,” said the attorney, Carrie Goldberg. “On the other hand, some of the most consequential sexual assault prosecutions of recent history — for example, that of Harvey Weinstein — were driven by the tenacity of dedicated NYPD investigators.”After the 2019 lawsuit, the unit got a new leader, Judith Harrison, and shifted to what she called a “victim-centered” approach — but she soon moved to a different position.Successor Michael King, appointed in 2020, was a veteran investigator and forensic nurse. King was removed from the job in February, amid complaints about his leadership and continued mishandling of cases.Last October, a woman who identified herself as a rape victim told a City Council hearing that detectives failed to interview witnesses, collect security camera footage from the bar where she’d been before the attack, or test for date-rape drugs. She said they closed the case twice without telling her.In another case, detailed in a 2020 article in The New York Times, a New York University student said a sex crimes detective openly doubted her allegation that a stranger had raped her in her apartment. The investigator talked her out of moving forward and shut down the case, she said.The suspected rapist, identified through fingerprints on a condom wrapper found at the apartment, was later jailed on burglary charges — but ended up being released and assaulting three more women because the Special Victims Division never told prosecutors he was a rape suspect, the Times reported.The unit has also been under scrutiny, including from the NYPD’s internal affairs bureau, for allegedly mishandling rape kits and for investigators allegedly shortchanging the department on hours worked.Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said sex crimes victims “deserve the same rigorous and unbiased investigations of their cases that the NYPD affords to other categories of crime.”	Civil Rights Activism
As people across the US reacted in shock and disbelief to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, thousands converged in front of government buildings, parks, and the nation's top courtroom to protest what they said was a rollback of hard-won rights dating back nearly 50 years.Outside the Supreme Court on Friday, a growing crowd of protesters gathered to oppose the decision. Hundreds of people carrying last-minute handmade signs defiantly raised their voices in chants and promises to “aid and abet” abortions.BuzzFeed News also spoke to many DC tourists who canceled their plans to come to Capitol Hill on Friday when they heard the news. Bonnie Sutton, 69, from Illinois said that she and her husband had just landed and were in a cab when their daughter texted them about the decision and urged them to protest.“I’m a teacher — I stuck [posterboard and markers] in my bag at the last minute in case the decision came down today,” she said. The Suttons walked an hour from their hotel to the court.“We had to do something,” Sutton said. “I just could not believe that [the abortion rights issue] was going to come around again.”Erin Somers, 36, of Texas, told BuzzFeed News that she had been at the National Archives with her husband and two children earlier Friday morning, but they decided to come to the Supreme Court as soon as they learned of the court’s decision.“I think that it’s important in an age-appropriate way to let them be a part of things like this,” she said, looking at her 10-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. “It’s scary. I think that [the decision] opens the door to so many other things that could affect me, and could affect [my children]. I feel like when we start opening doors to take such significant rights away, the rest of us should be concerned.” In a 6–3 decision by the conservative majority, the court overturned its 1973 opinion in Roe v. Wade and upheld Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. That will give states — mostly in the South and Midwest — the ability to outlaw the medical procedure, forcing people to travel long distances to places where it's still legal. For many, however, that's cost prohibitive.Demonstrations were also planned for major metro areas across the US Friday evening, including in Los Angeles and in New York, where hundreds of people gathered Washington Square Park.Lizz Winstead, the co-creator of the Daily Show and now-abortion rights activist who runs Abortion AF, said Friday was “the worst day of my life.”“It doesn't affect me, I use my uterus for storage now,” she said while demonstrating at the park. “It affects me because it affects other people. I'm a human being in the world. I've had abortions. I have privilege. I'm out here because I'm not of reproductive age, which means I can work my ass off with organizations who are funding abortions as we speak.”Others in the crowd included Anna, Linda, Constance, and Becca.“Its not just about me,” Anna said. “It's about all the women that will suffer, and the people that will die.”“My first thought was, ‘I can never leave New York now,” Constance added. “We have family in Georgia and cousins in other sides who want us all to be together, and now I'm like — yeah no.” They also feared that gay marriage will be next.“It's a very big step on a slippery slope,” Becca said.President Joe Biden and others warned that the Supreme Court decision had set the US on an “extreme and dangerous path” that could lead to the overturn of other civil rights, including marriage equality. As Pride Month draws to a close, the timing of the Roe decision, combined with Justice Clarence Thomas's separate opinion that his colleagues should reconsider other rights previously granted by the court, is expected to draw even more people to demonstrations.“I don't know what to tell people other than we have come too far to let these things be taken away from us,” Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized marriage for same-sex couples nationwide, told BuzzFeed News on Friday.Steffi Cao reported from New York City.	Civil Rights Activism
Thousands of people took to the streets of Warsaw on Saturday in a joint march for peace uniting Ukraine’s KyivPride with Poland’s Warsaw Pride. The innovative cooperative event between the two Eastern European capitals called for an end to war and solidarity with LGBTQ Ukrainians.“It was wonderful and beautiful, a very exciting presence,” Lenny Emson, KyivPride executive director, told NBC News just after the march. Organizers had predicted some 120,000 participants in all, and Emson said the Ukrainian contingent alone more than doubled its expected 200 marchers. “Over 500 Ukrainians marched with our group,” he reported.This year marks the 10th anniversary of KyivPride’s first Equality March — the largest LGBTQ rights event in Ukraine — but the Russian invasion and ongoing war rendered marching in the Ukrainian capital impossible. “When we looked into the future, we realized that unfortunately we could not foresee when the war will stop, or how we can actually be visible as a community,” Emson explained. “During the Russian invasion, Warsaw Pride was always helping us with humanitarian aid and with medications, and they were sheltering our people. So it was very natural for us to partner with the nation that has accepted the biggest number of Ukrainian refugees.”For Warsaw Pride President Julia Maciocha, the KyivPride partnership also made perfect sense. “They explained how they were supposed to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, but of course due to this horrendous war, they cannot do that in Kyiv,” she said. “So they asked if they could use Warsaw Pride and make a joint march, to let them walk on our streets since they cannot walk on their own.”People march during KyivPride and the Warsaw Equality Parade in Warsaw, Poland, on Saturday.Michal Dyjuk / APThe combined KyivPride and Warsaw Pride march promoted a multipronged manifesto, including a call to queer people around Europe and the world to show “maximum solidarity” with LGBTQ Ukrainians. “If you want the queer community in Ukraine to survive, help our country,” Emson urged. “This is the main message.”Emson said he believes Warsaw's Equality Parade — the largest annual Pride march in Central Europe — may also mark the first time a Pride parade marched not just for LGBTQ rights but for broader human rights. “We are marching for basic human rights for all people,” he said, “because right now, Russia is taking them from us — the right to life, the right to freedom, the right to security, the right to peace.”Though members of the Ukrainian military — and indeed all men between the ages of 18 and 60 — were precluded by law from leaving the country to be at today’s march in Poland, KyivPride organizers were able to bring in 25 activists from LGBTQ organizations across Ukraine. “We wanted our LGBTQI movement to be represented, and these are the best of the best in our movement who work with us,” Emson said. Ukrainian refugees living in Poland and neighboring countries were also warmly invited to take part in the Warsaw march. Not so eagerly embraced were a pro-Russian group of potential marchers, who were told in no uncertain terms that promoting Russia would be forbidden. “The goal of their group was to advocate for free Russia and for Russians against the war,” Emson said. “We politely asked them not to do that. ‘You can march with us,’ we told them, ‘but please do not promote anything related to Russia. Please do not take our space from us.’Emson added, “If people want to advocate for free Russia, there are places where these actions would make more sense — like in front of the Russian Consulate, for example.”Maciocha said Warsaw Pride’s pairing with KyivPride was not only vitally important but also exactly the sort of intra-European communion she’s been striving for with her Warsaw-based LGBTQ activism.“I’m putting a lot of effort into building coalitions and building bridges with activists from the whole of Europe,” Maciocha explained. “I’m trying to connect us, to stay in touch, to know what is happening in different countries, to know what are the biggest struggles in different countries around Poland — so we can support each other, we can help each other, and we can also learn from each other’s experiences.“So for me, this situation where KyivPride or any other Pride can call Warsaw Pride and say, ‘Listen, we cannot do it without you,’ and they know that we are going to help them — this is the situation I’m fighting for. It’s the situation I want for the future of activism. I want us to be there for each other in the darkest, darkest times.”Participants of KyivPride and the Warsaw Equality Parade hold the Ukrainian flag and a rainbow flag during a march through the streets of Warsaw, Poland on Saturday.Wojtek Radwanski / AFP via Getty ImagesEmson said he and the other marchers are "extremely grateful" to Poland. “You know, we have the same context. Poland has the same problems with Russia that we do, and the situation with homophobia and transphobia in our countries is more or less the same," he said. "I would say in Ukraine it is a bit worse, but still, they understand us, they know us, and we understand them, we know them. That’s why this partnering was very natural.”KyivPride is also being represented locally at several other Pride events around the world this year, including at Riga Pride in Latvia last weekend. On Sunday, Toronto’s Pride march will feature a large Ukrainian contingent, in a city with one of the largest Ukrainian diaspora populations in the world.“For the local Prides in other cities and countries, we let people decide what is their goal,” Emson said. Some Ukrainians, as in London, just want to be visible as a group at their local Pride events, he explained, while others are raising money for KyivPride and for the LGBTQ community in Ukraine. Still others have specific aims.“In Riga for example, they were marching for freedom,” Emson said. “For them this was very important, because Latvia is a neighbor country to Russia, and they understand very well that if Ukraine would not resist, what will happen to them? They will be next. So freedom for them is crucial right now.”Emson said the key thing for the global LGBTQ community to remember right now is that like the entire Ukrainian populace, its queer people are suffering, though their struggles are often less visible.“All of us saw the Bucha massacre, and we saw what Russians did to Mariupol,” he said. “When you see this news from Ukraine, you should ask yourself, ‘How many queer people died in Bucha? How many queer people were shelled in Mariupol? How many queer people were raped among all the women that Russians raped in occupied territories?’ Those are the questions we should ask ourselves.“So we would ask you to not give up on Ukraine, to stand up for Ukraine, to remind the world that Ukraine needs help. When you pay attention to the fact that LGBTQI people are part of the population that is suffering inside Ukraine, you’re helping us already."Emson is already looking forward to the day when KyivPride can welcome LGBTQ people from around the world to the Ukrainian capital.“When you march today, think of all LGBTQI Ukrainians who are with you in their thoughts and who cannot march today,” he told the crowd at the start of Saturday's event. “But they are welcoming you to KyivPride when we celebrate the victory — you will come to Kyiv and march with us.”Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram	Civil Rights Activism
WASHINGTON (AP) — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday launched a $1 billion first-of-its-kind pilot program aimed at helping reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by road projects, pledging wide-ranging help to dozens of communities despite the program’s limited dollars.Under the Reconnecting Communities program, cities and states can now apply for the federal aid over five years to rectify harm caused by roadways that were built primarily through lower-income, Black communities after the 1950s creation of the interstate highway system.New projects could include rapid bus transit lines to link disadvantaged neighborhoods to jobs; caps built on top of highways featuring green spaces, bike lanes and pedestrian walkways to allow for safe crossings over the roadways; repurposing former rail lines; and partial removal of highways.Still, the grants, being made available under President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, are considerably less than the $20 billion the Democratic president originally envisioned. Advocacy groups say the money isn’t nearly enough to have a major impact on capital construction for more than 50 citizen-led efforts nationwide aimed at dismantling or redesigning highways — from Portland, Oregon, to New Orleans; St. Paul, Minnesota; Houston; Tampa, Florida; and Syracuse, New York. Meanwhile, some Republicans, including possible 2024 presidential contender Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have derided the effort as the “woke-ification” of federal policy, suggesting political crosswinds ahead in an election season.“Transportation can connect us to jobs, services and loved ones, but we‘ve also seen countless cases around the country where a piece of infrastructure cuts off a neighborhood or a community because of how it was built,” said Buttigieg, who was announcing the pilot program later Thursday in Birmingham, Alabama. He described Reconnecting Communities as a broad department “principle” — not just a program — to address the issue with many efforts underway.“This is a forward-looking vision,” Buttigieg said. “Our focus isn’t about assigning blame. It isn’t about getting caught up in guilt. It’s about fixing a problem. It’s about mending what has been broken, especially when the damage was done with taxpayer dollars.”The Transportation Department has aimed to help communities that feel racially harmed by highway expansions, with the Federal Highway Administration last year taking a rare step to pause a proposed $9 billion widening project in Houston, partly over civil rights concerns. That move likely spurred action in other places such as Austin, Texas, where environmental and racial justice groups recently filed a lawsuit to force the Texas transportation agency to better lay out the impacts of a proposed highway expansion there.Buttigieg drew fire from some Republicans earlier this year when he said the federal government had an obligation to address the harms of racist design in highways. “There’s trees they’re putting in, they’re saying that highways are racially discriminatory. I don’t know how a road can be that," DeSantis said in February, dismissing it as “woke.”Under the program, $195 million in competitive grants is to be awarded this year, of which $50 million will be devoted for communities to conduct planning studies.The department will also launch a “Thriving Communities” initiative to provide technical support for potential projects that serve disadvantaged communities alongside the Housing and Urban Development Department.The Transportation Department has previously estimated it could help as many as 20 U.S. communities under the new program to remove portions of interstates and redesign streets by tapping into other transportation funds. According to the department, communities that win the Reconnecting Communities grants but still need additional funds will be prioritized in their applications for other pots of federal transportation money. Dozens more communities could derive benefit from the planning grants.“Prior to 2021, the idea that we would deal with highway infrastructure that has divided communities was very much a fringe idea," said Ben Crowther, coordinator for the Boston-based Freeway Fighters Network, which is supported by the Congress for the New Urbanism. “The Biden administration has really transformed that into mainstream thinking. We are thinking now this is something that is possible — that you can remove a highway and instead build safe streets that are walkable, add housing and address other community needs besides travel time.”	Civil Rights Activism
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a controversial bill this week that prohibits people from recording a police officer within 8 feet. The governor and the bill's sponsor, state Rep. John Kavanagh, claim it will protect law enforcement officers and keep them focused on their jobs. Opponents claim it violates the First Amendment, is intentionally vague, and gives police too much discretion. Bystander videos of police have been crucial in exposing police misconduct, including the case against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. DEREK CHAUVIN SENTENCED TO 21 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS Chauvin was sentenced by a federal judge on Thursday to 21 years in prison for violating George Floyd's civil rights when he knelt on his neck for more than 9 minutes with both Floyd and bystanders telling him he couldn't breathe. The incident was caught on camera by multiple people on the scene and used by prosecutors in both the state and federal cases against Chauvin, as well as the officers who were with him. Kavanagh, a former police officer, said he has no problem with people filming law enforcement at a distance but argues that when they come too close, it can escalate a situation or distract the officer. "I have no problem with people videotaping police activity, when they're a reasonable distance away," he told CBS 5 in Phoenix. "This bill simply says you're free to photograph police officers, but if it's a potentially dangerous situation, you simply have to stay back 8 feet. It's a very reasonable bill, and only unreasonable people walk right into the middle of an arrest encounter. It's dangerous for everybody." Constitutional attorney Dan Barr disagrees and claims the bill infringes on the public's rights. "Members of the public have a First Amendment right to video police in public places, and what this tries to do is discourage people from doing that," he said. "You are punishing people for exercising their First Amendment right, when they are not actually interfering with police." Exceptions to the 8-feet rule were made for people at the center of an interaction with police, anyone standing in an enclosed structure on private property where an incident was taking place, and during traffic stops, provided the person does not interfere with police actions. CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Opposition to the new law, which goes into effect on Sept. 24, triggered many media organizations to weigh in during the legislative process. The National Press Photographers Association signed a letter written by Mickey Osterreicher, NPPA's general counsel, saying that the bill "violates not only the free speech and press clauses of the First Amendment, but also runs counter to the 'clearly established right' to photograph and record police officers performing their official duties in public places."	Civil Rights Activism
When 13-year-old Fischer Wells testified against Kentucky’s trans sports ban in February, supporters of the bill wouldn’t look her in the eye as she spoke. “They were covering their faces and looking at their notepads, looking around the room and checking the ceiling for any cracks,” Wells told HuffPost. “I felt like I was the most intimidating thing in the world.”Looking back, Wells said it’s because she wasn’t what proponents of Senate Bill 83 expected. At the time of her testimony, Wells was the only trans student in Kentucky competing in school sports. She thinks lawmakers were anticipating a “timid” student who would shyly plead with government leaders to let her play sports, but that’s not the kind of kid she is. Wells is intelligent, self-possessed and not afraid to admit she has the “largest ego in the room,” as she said with a laugh. She showed up to the Senate legislative committee hearing that day in a bright pink pea coat zipped all the way up, her short hair frizzy and wild, and told lawmakers the bill was “disgusting.”Wells played field hockey on the girls team at her Louisville middle school, which she admits wasn’t exactly a team to be feared on the field. She helped restart the school’s field hockey program last year, working with other students to sign up enough classmates to qualify as a team, but they didn’t win a single game. Their best outing as a group was their final match, which ended in a tie. None of the students or their parents ever complained about Wells playing on the girls team, and yet she won’t be playing field hockey this year. Republican lawmakers in Kentucky forced through SB 83, which bans trans female athletes from girls sports from sixth grade through college, over the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. The law went into effect in July, and thus far Wells is the only student affected by it. Last year, she was the only known trans athlete playing sports in the entire state. Jennifer Alonzo, Wells’ mother, said it has been difficult to see her daughter kept from doing something she loves. The family recently saw the other members of the field hockey team at an award ceremony, and Alonzo said that one of her daughter’s former coaches told her, “We’re sure going to miss Fischer next year.” She wanted to respond, “Not nearly as much as Fischer is going to miss you all.” “They get to go forward doing the thing that they started with, which is to become a team,” Alonzo said. “That team is not going to include Fischer. Everybody else is going to continue their life, but Fischer is not.” Fischer Wells helped restart the girls' field hockey team at her Louisville, Kentucky, school. Now she won't be allowed to play.Alton Strupp for HuffPostTo date, 18 states across the U.S. have restricted trans students from participating in school sports at the K-12 or collegiate levels. Supporters say these laws are necessary to protect women’s sports from trans athletes dominating the competition, and they often cite Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who became the first trans woman to win an NCAA championship earlier this year, but the panic over students like Wells playing sports is unfounded. There are very few student athletes playing sports in any U.S. state, and those that are, like Wells, are often the only ones. According to high school athletics associations and LGBTQ advocacy groups contacted by HuffPost, at least two states found themselves in the same situation as Kentucky.South Dakota and Tennessee each have had just one trans student play school sports, but in both states, the student was a trans boy. At least five states have not had any recorded cases of trans athletes playing school sports at all: Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia.These laws hurt students of all genders, but trans students across the country have found themselves literally singled out by their own government leaders. Instead of focusing on their school work or enjoying the fleeting privilege of being a kid, they have been forced to defend their right to participate in an activity others take for granted. Critics of trans sports bans often say that these bills are a “solution in search of a problem,” but the weight of discriminatory legislation is even heavier for these youth — who are made to feel that they are the problem.Jenifer Alonzo, left, and her husband, Brian Wells, have been pulled into activism for transgender rights after Kentucky's Republican-run legislature passed a transgender sports ban.Alton Strupp for HuffPostWells’ father, Brian, said no one really knows how many trans youth are affected by Kentucky’s sports ban because some athletes may not be out in their schools or communities. There could be others who are simply unable to speak up or fight back. Without that chorus of voices behind them, he said, it’s been shocking to watch his state enact a law “visibly affecting only one person: your daughter.” “We’re trying to get the government to do things every day — to start up the mysterious and inexorable machinery to achieve some kind of end — but they can whirr it up real quick to do this,” he said. “It is enraging that we don’t direct this political will to help people but to punish someone — a young girl, a child. What the actual fuck?”Fighting To LiveWhen The Associated Press contacted lawmakers who had introduced anti-trans sports bills back in March 2021, very few were able to name examples of trans athletes in their communities. Despite signing West Virginia’s bill in April, Republican Gov. Jim Justice couldn’t cite any instance in which a trans student had gained a competitive advantage by playing against cis athletes. The lead sponsor of Kentucky’s legislation, state Sen. Robby Mills (R), told the Louisville Courier Journal in May that SB 83 was not inspired by any case from within the state. Neither Justice nor Mills responded to a request for comment on this story.Idaho state Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), lead sponsor of the nation’s first trans sports ban, which was signed into law in March 2020, did not dispute the lack of trans athletes in her state but still insisted it was necessary to ban them from school sports.“In this progressive war being waged on women, especially in sports, constant misdirection arguments are being created to justify the removal of girls and women in our own sports,” Ehardt said in an email. “Fifty years ago, there were countless arguments used to exclude women from participating in sports because it was for males. Fifty years later, it appears not much has changed. But it is this effort to erase us as women that will strengthen our resolve to continue to pass state legislation to protect our opportunities since it is obvious that the Biden Administration won’t.” Many states that have passed trans athlete bans already made it extremely difficult for trans youth to play sports, even before enacting laws on the subject. The Louisiana High School Athletics Association (LHSAA) previously mandated that trans students correct their birth certificate to compete in alignment with their lived gender, which LGBTQ advocates considered a “de facto ban.” Peyton Rose Michelle, the incoming director of Louisiana Trans Advocates, said that bar was “basically impossible” to meet. “To update your birth certificate in Louisiana, you need gender-affirmation surgery,” she said. “That is very uncommon for trans and queer youth across the country.”Fischer Wells, here on a neighborhood swing in Louisville, was apparently the only student affected by Kentucky's SB 83, which was enacted over the veto of the governor.Alton Strupp for HuffPostDespite the difficulty of competing in alignment with their gender identity, Louisiana lawmakers passed legislation in June forbidding trans females from competing in girls’ and women’s sports at the K-12 and college levels, despite opposition from Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, rubber-stamped his state’s similarly worded law in March, even though the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) has had guidelines since 2015 that allow trans students to play on the team that aligns with their gender only after they have completed one year of hormone therapy. OSSAA and LHSAA confirmed to HuffPost that there were no active trans athletes in Oklahoma or Louisiana when their states’ bills were signed into law. The Mississippi High School Activities Association did not respond to a request for comment on the story, but Jensen Matar, director of the Transgender Education and Advocacy Program (TEAP), conducted a statewide survey of youth athletes after Mississippi’s trans sports ban was enacted in March 2021. Matar couldn’t find a single case of a trans student competing in athletics, which he said is likely due to the overwhelming discrimination they are facing in their daily lives. “Trans people, especially trans people in Mississippi, are not in a place to be considering participation in a luxury such as athletics,” Matar told HuffPost. “It might not sound like a luxury to a lot of people, but the trans and nonbinary community suffers ― day in, day out ― in meeting their basic human needs: not being able to find employment, not being granted access to restrooms and schools, not having proper access to health care, and being denied right and left for housing. Trans and nonbinary people are fighting to live, and so it doesn’t surprise me that I couldn’t come across a single trans or nonbinary person who was actively participating in athletics.” In other states, small numbers of trans students have been playing school sports in accordance with their identities for years with no issue, but that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from excluding them from competition anyway. When Chris Paulsen, CEO of the LGBTQIA+ nonprofit called Indiana Youth Group, met with the Indiana High School Athletic Association in 2017 to discuss trans inclusion in school sports, she was told it wasn’t a problem that needed to be addressed because there were no trans kids playing sports in the state. According to Paulsen, that statement wasn’t correct: She brought with her to the meeting a high school sophomore who had been running track and cross-country since she was in the seventh grade. With the support of a select few coaches and teammates who knew about her gender identity, she competed alongside the other girls, and it had never caused an issue. “In my mind, there is no need for a law because either it’s being worked out among the participants or people are unaware that there are trans kids playing,” Paulsen said. At the time that meeting was held, Paulsen estimated that she knew of seven to nine other trans youth in Indiana. Those students would now be unable to compete under state law: In May, lawmakers forced through a sports ban after the state’s GOP governor, Eric Holcomb, vetoed the legislation. At the time of the veto override, one of the bill’s key sponsors, Indiana state Rep. Michelle Davis (R), said that HB 1041 was a “commonsense approach to protect and preserve the integrity of girls’ sports.”“Today, we voted for fairness, opportunity and safety,” Davis said in a months-old statement forwarded to HuffPost through her press team. “This issue stems from Hoosier parents like me who are concerned about our female athletes, and their opportunities to compete, earn top spots and obtain scholarships.”In Ohio, the number of trans youth playing sports is much smaller. Ember, who asked that her last name not be included in this story, is the only trans girl currently competing in high school athletics in the state, as the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) confirmed to the Ohio Capital Journal. (The organization did not return requests for comment on this story.) Soon to be a senior, she has been playing on the girls’ softball team for two years, where she has found a group of unlikely friends. “We’re all from completely different cliques, but we support each other. We’re there to listen to each other and to help one another.”Ember has been looking for that kind of camaraderie for years. She was involved in her school’s theater program until the seventh grade, but she stopped performing because listening to the sound of her voice changing triggered her gender dysphoria. “She quit singing, she quit acting and she almost quit talking,” said Ember’s mother, Minna. “Everyone just wants to have at least one place where they feel like they belong. She’s been on the outside most of her life.”Ohio has yet to enact a trans sports ban, but Ember worries that the state may be on the verge of doing so, taking away the confidence she has worked so hard to rebuild. On the second day of Pride month in June, the Ohio House passed HB 151, one of the nation’s most restrictive bills on trans athletics access. The legislation would require any female student athlete competing in K-12 or college sports to submit a “signed physician’s statement” verifying their sex assigned at birth should their gender be questioned. To meet the requirement, students must undergo a test of their “genetic makeup” and “internal and external reproductive anatomy.”HB 151, which would apply to both cis and trans athletes, is likely to be heard by the Ohio Senate in November, but it remains to be seen if it has enough support to become law. Senate President Matt Huffman (R) called the medical exam requirement “unnecessary” in June, and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine promised to veto an earlier version of the bill last year.Ember said HB 151 fails to recognize how difficult it has been for her to play sports already. To be eligible to play on the girls’ team, Ember had to wait three years to be able to meet all the requirements, and she has to resubmit for approval every single year. The girls’ softball team at Ember’s school has been forced to play on an “old T-ball field at the grade school” that floods when it rains, Minna said, even though the boys’ baseball team gets two fields at the high school. Last year Ember wore a hand-me-down catchers’ mitt donated by the boy’s squad until her mother invested in a $400 glove for Ember’s birthday, just so she would be able to have one that fit.Minna believes that if the lawmakers behind HB 151 cared about girls’ athletics, they would fix the problems that her daughter’s team is actually facing. “Our girls have to have fundraisers just to buy helmets, but the boys get brand-new equipment,” Minna said. “Most of these people don’t give a flying flip about girls’ sports.” Teetering On The EdgeEven more states could be poised to ban trans youth from athletics in the years to come: In 2022, at least 28 states introduced legislation seeking to limit their participation in sports, according to the American Civil Liberties Union legislative tracker. Nine of those bills have been signed into law, and other states are teetering precariously on the edge of joining them. This year marked the second consecutive legislative session in which Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) stopped a trans sports ban from becoming law, but she did so by an ever-narrowing margin. Just three votes prevented lawmakers from overriding her veto.Trans athletes are being forced to fight these laws themselves, often at very young ages. In a trio of ACLU lawsuits, students and their families have successfully lobbied for injunctions against trans sports bans in their states. In Tennessee, 14-year-old Luc Esquivel was barred from the boys’ golf team as the result of a 2021 law mandating that all trans students compete in alignment with the “sex at the time of the student’s birth.” Eleven-year-old Becky Pepper-Jackson wasn’t allowed to try out for cross-country at her middle school after West Virginia’s trans sports ban was enacted last year, and fellow cross-country athlete Lindsay Hecox, who was 19 at the time of Idaho’s ban, had hoped to run track in college before the state’s law made that impossible.Fischer Wells won't be able to join her field hockey team this year. Her father said it has been shocking to see the state of Kentucky enact a law “visibly affecting only one person: your daughter.” Alton Strupp for HuffPostHecox is now 21 and in her second year at Boise State, where she has been playing club soccer while her lawsuit proceeds through the court system. She finds a strange satisfaction in the fact that she isn’t very good. “It really does show that there’s not some automatic advantage that I have just because I’m trans,” she told HuffPost. “I’m just doing it because I like having people around me who love the same sport as I do.”Although any given state typically has thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of cis students playing sports, the athletics groups and advocacy organizations contacted for this story didn’t know of another trans student competing in Idaho, Tennessee or West Virginia. A representative of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association said the organization wasn’t aware of any trans athletes playing sports at the high school level, where Esquivel hopes to compete this year as an incoming freshman. Sports associations in West Virginia and Idaho did not respond to requests for comment, but ACLU representatives in both states confirmed to HuffPost that Pepper-Jackson and Hecox were the only cases of which they had heard.Jenifer Alonzo and Brian Wells wrestle some kisses onto each other and their daughter, Fischer Wells, in their backyard in Louisville.Alton Strupp for HuffPostThese fights are taking a toll on trans youth thrown into the middle of a national debate at a time they say they should be focused on being kids. “I just want to run, I come from a family of runners,” Pepper-Jackson said in a statement provided by the ACLU. “I know how hurtful a law like this is to all kids like me who just want to play sports with their classmates, and I’m doing this for them. Trans kids deserve better.”Kris Wilka, a 15-year-old football player, estimated that he has participated in at least 20 media interviews since he testified against a trans sports ban in March 2021. Wilka’s tireless advocacy, which included serving as grand marshal of this year’s Sioux Falls Pride Parade, didn’t stop the state from restricting trans athletics access: Two days after a February GQ profile of Wilka went to print, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) signed a trans sports bill into law. The 2022 bill was similar to legislation she vetoed last year over concerns it would lead to retaliatory actions against the state from groups like the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Wilka has continued to speak out against the law because he knows it’s important, but he admitted that the attention is “uncomfortable.” “People call me a local celebrity. I don’t want to be a local celebrity. I want to be a kid, a 15-year-old kid in South Dakota. I’ve spent two years of my life in the media, and I could have been doing something completely different with those two years.”Despite fears that Wilka would be affected by South Dakota’s trans sports ban, SB 46 applies only to trans girls playing girls’ sports in the state. He made the high school football team for the 2022 season — making him the state’s only known trans athlete — but had to delay for a year because of health issues. South Dakota Transformation Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group based in Sioux Falls, said in an email to HuffPost that the group is not familiar with any other trans athletes competing in the state, and requests for comment to the South Dakota High School Activities Association were not returned. Wilka isn’t sure yet whether he’s going to try out again next year. His father, John, said his son had been training hard in hopes of playing the sport that he loves, including going on a specialized diet to build muscle mass before the season. Though he is proud to have a child who fights for what he believes in, John Wilka said their family shouldn’t have to be fighting so hard to begin with. When he thinks back over the past two years, he can’t help but shake his head in disbelief at what he described as “all the wasted effort that these folks put into debating the one child in the state.”“It’s really a nonissue. People are looking for a problem that’s not there,” he said. “We didn’t set out to be here, but we are. You can either recoil and hide, or you can face it head on and show people by your demeanor, by your bearing and by your love that you should be celebrated.”	Civil Rights Activism
Published June 29, 2022 3:31PM Updated 3:35PM President Joe Biden signs Emmett Till anti-lynching bill "Thank you for never giving up, never ever giving up," the President Joe Biden said on Tuesday. "Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone, belongs in America, not everyone is created equal." A team searching the basement of a Mississippi courthouse for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and relatives of the victim who initiated the hunt want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later. A warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as "Mrs. Roy Bryant" on the document — was discovered last week inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Documents are kept inside boxes by decade, he said, but there was nothing else to indicate where the warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, might have been. FILE - Image of a young Emmett Till in a hat. (Getty Images) "They narrowed it down between the ‘50s and ’60s and got lucky," said Stockstill, who certified the warrant as genuine. The search was started by the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and included two members of Till's family: Cousin Deborah Watts, head of the Foundation; and her daughter, Teri Watts. They want authorities to use the warrant to arrest Donham, who at the time of the slaying was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was abducted from a relative's home, killed and dumped into a river. "Serve it and charge her," Teri Watts told the AP in an interview. Donham set off the case in August 1955 by accusing the 14-year-old Till of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Mississippi. A cousin of Till who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, which flew in the face of Mississippi's racist social codes of the era. RELATED: Emmett Till's relatives seek accuser’s prosecution in 1955 kidnapping Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized at the time, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to "bother" the woman since she had two young children to care for. Now in her 80s and most recently living in North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. But Teri Watts said the Till family believes the warrant accusing Donham of kidnapping amounts to new evidence. "This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead," she said. District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose office would prosecute a case, declined comment on the warrant but cited a December report about the Till case from the Justice Department, which said no prosecution was possible. Contacted by the AP on Wednesday, Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks said: "This is the first time I've known about a warrant." RELATED: Emmett Till's family disappointed after DOJ closes investigation, no new charges filed Banks, who was 7 years old when Till was killed, said "nothing was said about a warrant" when a former district attorney investigated the case five or six years ago. "I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it," Banks said. If the warrant can still be served, Banks said, he would have to talk to law enforcement officers in the state where Donham resides. Arrest warrants can "go stale" due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly would not pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi. But combined with any new evidence, the original arrest warrant "absolutely" could be an important stepping stone toward establishing probable cause to initiate a new prosecution, he said. "If you went in front of a judge you could say, ‘Once upon a time a judge determined there was probable cause, and much more information is available today,’" Rychlak said. Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he entered the store where Donham, then 21, was working on Aug. 24, 1955. A Till relative who was there at the time, Wheeler Parker, told AP that Till whistled at the woman. Donham testified in court that Till also grabbed her and made a lewd comment. RELATED: President Biden signs Emmett Till anti-lynching bill into law Two nights later, Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, showed up armed at the rural Leflore County home of Till’s great-uncle, Mose Wright, looking for the youth. Till's brutalized body, weighted down by a fan, was pulled from a river days later in another county. His mother's decision to open the casket so mourners in Chicago could see what had happened helped galvanize the building civil rights movement of the time. Bryant and Milam were acquitted of murder but later admitted the killing in a magazine interview. While both men were named in the same warrant that accused Donham of kidnapping, authorities did not pursue the case following their acquittal. Wright testified during the murder trial that a person with a voice "lighter" than a man’s identified Till from inside a pickup truck and the abductors took him away from the family home. Other evidence in FBI files indicates that earlier that same night, Donham told her husband that at least two other Black men were not the right person. ___ Reeves reported from Newnan, Georgia.	Civil Rights Activism
We all knew that the Supreme Court was determined to cancel Roe v. Wade, and with it erase the federal constitutional right to abortion. And yet, Friday’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization still feels like a kick in the uterus.Those of us living in a blue state where abortion will remain legal for now may not feel the pain as sharply. But our role going forward is to be a savior state, one of a handful charged with preserving a pocket of reproductive freedom in America. No small task, so let’s get to work.With a five-justice majority, the court struck down Roe v. Wade on the basis that “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional protection.” The Constitution fails to specify a whole host of antidiscrimination provisions that nonetheless are fully protected today — despite the fact that our so-called Founding Fathers deliberately excluded women and enslaved people from their obtaining full rights. In focusing so heavily on the original text, the majority’s reasoning significantly threatens additional constitutional protections that have been based on privacy rights case law for decades: access to contraception, freedom to marry, and decriminalization of homosexuality.Get Weekend Reads from IdeasA weekly newsletter from the Boston Globe Ideas section, forged at the intersection of 'what if' and 'why not.'Justice Samuel Alito purports that those rights can be “sharply distinguishe[d]” from abortion, which he says poses a “critical moral question,” described in the Mississippi law as the destruction of “an unborn human being.” Yet the dissent by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, doubts that the court can “neatly extract the right to choose from the constitutional edifice without affecting any associated rights. (Think of someone telling you that the Jenga tower simply will not collapse.)” Indeed, the ground is shaking for a host of rights that the Constitution has protected for decades.In the immediate moment, Dobbs paves the way for over a dozen states to ban abortion almost instantly, while another dozen will start scrambling to pass their own restrictions. Some of these laws will probably apply the concept of “fetal personhood” to confer full legal rights on a pregnancy from the moment of conception. Doing so will chill medical providers’ ability to provide unfettered health care for pregnant patients, probably exacerbating high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity and increasing racial disparities in health care. If voters elect a majority of antiabortion candidates — either Republican or Democrat — to Congress in the 2022 midterm elections, we may be looking at a federal criminalization of all abortion on the horizon.Fortunately, the Massachusetts Legislature has recognized the importance of access to abortion as a fundamental right. Last December, in anticipation of this day, state legislators overrode Governor Charlie Baker’s veto, passing the ROE Act to expand access to abortion. Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Maura Healy has pledged to continue her demonstrated commitment to protecting reproductive rights if elected. This month New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a package of exemplary bills into law, and like-minded leaders in blue and purple states — including California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Washington — are similarly working to shore up access to abortion. We need to support these leaders, and vote to elect more champions for reproductive rights. Not every red state has to be turned blue, but it’s time to bring Republicans back to join us in the fight for our rights nationwide, as they did from the 1970s through 1990s.Meanwhile, blue states can expect to see the arrival of tens of thousands of abortion migrants seeking services and needing assistance. For far too long accessing abortion has depended on an individual’s resources and an ability to overcome barriers to health care. Many young women and teens — those in rural areas, living in poverty, and with physical impairments — have been experiencing this “post-Roe” world for quite some time. Abortion restrictions, combined with structural racism, have meant that the adverse impact has fallen disproportionately on women of color.Abortion funds and grass-roots organizations nationwide are already set up to assist with travel and the cost of food, accommodations, and child care. A proposed amendment to Massachusetts’ state budget would allocate up to $2 million to state abortion funds. It’s an important step and a necessary commitment of public funds. We need corporate, religious, and community leaders and allies to join us in speaking up in support.Before Roe legalized abortion nationwide, in 1973, women and their allies often took matters quite literally into their own hands to provide safe abortions without stigmatization. Today the arrival of medication abortion makes self-induced abortion far more feasible, and safe. For those who are unable or unwilling to travel, several organizations exist to help provide medications to safely self-induce abortion at home. Other organizations can provide legal defense services for those prosecuted for self-inducing or for miscarriages.Massachusetts is well-situated to be a leader in reproductive health care policy innovation. The state already allows telemedicine for abortion services. A key initiative is pending that would permit medical providers to do so across state lines and reach red state patients desperately needing services. To expand access to brick-and-mortar services within the state, university health care facilities and urgent care centers that have proved so vital and accessible to so many during the pandemic should provide medication abortion. Our many world-class hospitals should open their doors to a wider range of abortion patients, including second-trimester abortion services. The mental and physical health of a pregnant person must always come first in Massachusetts. Any facility that provides MassHealth recipients with abortions must be reimbursed at a higher rate.The end of Roe is the start of a new era of expanded rights within Massachusetts. The Beyond Roe Coalition has a created a comprehensive policy agenda that can serve those in the Bay State and make the state a hub for preserving reproductive freedom during this dark time.Allowing individuals to determine whether, when, and with whom to have a child is a basic human right. It is also politically popular nationwide — 60 percent of American adults support legal abortion, according to a new NPR/Marist poll. While the Supreme Court has turned back the clock on our federal constitutional rights for now, strong activism by those in Massachusetts and allied states will continue to provide women access to safe, legal abortions, and the right to do so.Julie F. Kay is a human rights lawyer who successfully argued against Ireland’s ban on abortion before the European Court of Human Rights. She is coauthor of “Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom.”	Civil Rights Activism
Thousands of people have gathered across London to be part of this year's Pride celebrations - which marks 50 years since the first march for LGBTQ+ rights in the capital. People wearing the traditional rainbow patterns, as well as face paint and glitter, are taking part in the event this year - the first since 2019 due to the COVID pandemic. Floats queued up along Park Lane ahead of the main parade and march through London, with more than a million people expected to line the streets in celebration of the movement.Dubbed "the biggest and most inclusive event in history", several artists will perform on four stages across London, including Emeli Sande, who publicly came out earlier this year. Twitter Due to your consent preferences, you’re not able to view this. Open Privacy Options Closing the show in Trafalgar Square will be performer Ava Max, with other artists on the line-up including Israel's Eurovision winner Netta, noughties popstar Samantha Mumba and American actress Kat Graham. The parade route this year will pay tribute to the original march in 1972, with some of the organisers of that event 50 years ago joining proceedings that will see participants pass important landmarks along the way. Speaking to Sky News, Martin, who was at the original march in the 70s, said: "We've still got a fight to do and certainly a big fight internationally. More on Lgbt LGBTQ+ on screen: We've come a long way but there's more work to do Pride parade has become 'overly corporate', says one of UK's leading LGBTQ+ rights activists Homophobic slurs and a violent assault - but this man's attacker can't be charged with a hate crime "What happened in Oslo last weekend has made this even more relevant - in my own choir, the guy who is organising our Pride march was attacked by homophobes last night and ended up in hospital."If anything, it shows that what we're doing today is absolutely relevant... and you see the flags, you see the rainbow as you see this joyous expression of being gay."But actually at the heart of this, the political activism is everything, that's what it was all about."All the money raised from the commercial partnerships will go to straight back into the LGBTQ+ community, organisers say, with the Unity Fund, which provides grassroots funding for community projects, being one major beneficiary.Read more:LGBTQ+ on screen: We've come a long way but there's more work to doPride parade has become 'overly corporate', says one of UK's leading LGBTQ+ rights activists Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 'The party has started' at London Pride 'There's still a danger to this community'Earlier, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan warned there was still a "danger" to the LGBTQ+ community in London, telling people not to be "complacent" at the event.He said: "We're back after the last two-and-a-half years or so. This year is the 50th anniversary of Pride, celebrating this community, celebrating the progress made, but also continuing to campaign and never be complacent."We saw this time last week an attack in Oslo just hours before that parade, where two people lost their lives and more than 20 were injured."So, we've got to be conscious of the fact that there's still a danger to this community of discrimination, bias and violence. But allies like me are really important to support this community." Prime Minister Boris Johnson also hailed this year's events, saying in a statement: "It gives me the greatest pride to lead a country where you can love whomever you choose to love. And where you can be free to be whoever you want to be."This hasn't always been a given, and certainly wasn't the case 50 years ago."Marching the streets in 1972 was an incredibly brave thing to do, and today will see thousands of people, friends and families once more coming together to mark the tremendous milestone of 50 years of our capital's Pride."	Civil Rights Activism
Gloria Allen, most widely known as Mama Gloria, a Chicago transgender icon and activist who was the subject of an award-winning documentary and a critically acclaimed play, died Monday in her Lakeview apartment at 76 years old, according to Luchina Fisher, director of a documentary about Allen’s life.She is believed to have died in her sleep, Fisher told the Tribune.Fisher said Allen was a “legend” in the community who transitioned before the Stonewall riots in 1969 and “the word transgender even existed.”“Her life is a testament to the love her mother, grandmother and other families poured into her, and the love that she shared with her chosen children and the world,” Fisher said. ”I am so grateful that she allowed me to share her story with the world. She has touched so many lives. And she got to experience it all.”Photographs from the scrapbooks of Gloria Allen. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)Allen was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Oct. 6, 1945, but grew up in Chicago, Fisher said. After overcoming traumatic violence in high school, she came out and became a “proud leader in her community.”She worked as a certified licensed practical nurse at the University of Chicago Medical Center and also worked as a private nurse’s aide. She went on to launch a charm school for young transgender people at Chicago’s Center on Halsted. The school taught love, makeup, manners and more that were passed down to her from her mother and grandmother.Allen’s activism and story served as inspiration on stage in Philip Dawkins’ play “Charm,” which premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Garage Theater before hitting Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York.Her trans journey was then featured in Fisher’s documentary, “Mama Gloria.” The documentary was broadcast on “Afropop: the Ultimate Cultural Exchange” on the World channel and PBS last year and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.In 2021, she received SAGE’s Advocacy Award for Excellence in Leadership on Aging Issues at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual Creating Change Conference.Allen is survived by several siblings, a number of nieces and nephews and her “chosen family.”sahmad@chicagotribune.com	Civil Rights Activism
President Joe Biden awards the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to civil rights leader Diane Nash during a ceremony Thursday in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, played a key role in the Freedom Rides and the 1965 Selma voting rights campaigns.Susan Walsh/Associated Press Chicago native Diane Nash was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor on Thursday by President Joe Biden in Washington D.C. Nash was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work organizing “some of the most important civil rights campaigns of the 20thcentury,” the White House said in a statement. “Nash worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr., who described her as the ‘driving spirit in the nonviolent assault on segregation at lunch counters.’”Other recipients on Thursday included gymnast Simone Biles, the late John McCain, the Arizona Republican whom Biden served with in the Senate, and gun-control advocate and former member of Congress Gabby Giffords.Nash was born in Chicago on May 15, 1938, to Leon and Dorothy Bolton Nash. She graduated in 1956 from Hyde Park High School and enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C. After a year, she transferred to Fisk University, majoring in English. In Nashville, Nash experienced for the first time the social wounds of racism, from segregation to muttered taunts on city streets. Her life quickly changed. She and other Fisk students began attending the workshops in civil disobedience conducted by the Rev. James Lawson, the Methodist minister, missionary and activist who had studied satyagraha, the philosophy of non-violent resistance preached and practiced by Mohandas K. Gandhi in his campaign to free India from British rule.Thus inspired, the students began applying Gandhian tactics, engaging in sit-ins at local lunch counters.And they were successful.On May 10, 1960, Nashville became the first southern city to desegregate its lunch counters. Nash attended the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coordinated by Ella Baker at Shaw University in Raleigh over Easter weekend in April 1960. In May, Nash began organizing the Freedom Rides from Birmingham to Jackson, later taking charge of the direct-action wing of SNCC; the second wing was devoted to voter registration.During the summer of 1961, Nash married activist James Bevel, who had been a classmate at Fisk.They moved to Jackson, Miss., where Nash continued to teach workshops in nonviolence. In 1962, she became a field staff organizer for the SCLC.In early 1963, the SCLC, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Bevel and Nash, began organizing the Birmingham Campaign.They recruited both adults and students for peaceful marches to the mayor’s office to protest the city’s notorious racial divisions. Thousands were arrested.Photographers captured the use of high-pressure water hoses and police dogs by Birmingham police officers.These images galvanized a nation, leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in hiring and public services across the United States. Nash and Bevel also worked with King and John Lewis, the civil rights leader and late U.S. representative, on strategy for the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 that pressed for the right of Blacks to vote.Beginning in the late 1960s, Nash taught for Chicago Public Schools and directed her activism toward fair housing and other issues, including the Vietnam War and the women’s liberation movement.In all, 17 people received the honors Thursday, including Nash. In a statement, the White House said all “have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities, and across the world, while blazing trails for generations to come.”Biden was awarded a Medal of Freedom by then-President Obama honored during a ceremony shortly before they left office in January 2017 for Biden’s decades of public service.	Civil Rights Activism
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Myers Park High School is nestled in an affluent, suburban-esque oasis of a neighborhood. There’s a country club, complete with a golf course, right across the street from the 62-acre campus. Leafy woods, trees crowned with ivy, surround several sides of it. It’s a vision of an all-American high school. It is also a school in a district, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, that the federal government has recently investigated at least three times over its handling of Title IX, the civil rights law that protects against sex discrimination in education.One of those investigations stemmed from an incident in November 2015, when a Myers Park student said she had been sexually assaulted by a classmate in the woods surrounding the school. Just days later, officials at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools wrapped up a separate federal investigation by promising that the district would reform its approach to Title IX.Now, current and former students want the feds to step in yet again. Over the last year, multiple people have publicly accused the district of silencing students who try to speak up about sexual harassment and violence.At least four women, including the student allegedly assaulted in 2015, have said that, after they reported being sexually assaulted in or around Myers Park, officials failed to take appropriate action or even threatened them with suspension if their stories didn’t hold up. In October, students walked out of Olympic High School after one student, a football player, was charged with a felony sex crime—but still allowed to play a game, with an ankle monitor. A student at another school in the district, Hawthorne Academy, said in November that she had told both police and school administrators that she’d been sexually assaulted. The police made an arrest in the case, but the school said this student had filed a false report, suspended her, and required her to attend a class called Sexual Harassment Is Preventable. Another student also said that Hawthorne administrators had required her to sign what she called an “NDA” after she reported a male classmate for exposing himself.Now, current and former students want the feds to step in yet again. Over the last year, multiple people have publicly accused the district of silencing students who try to speak up about sexual harassment and violence.Exactly fifty years ago on June 23, 1972, Congress passed Title IX. But the controversy in Charlotte suggests that many students still slip through the cracks of that landmark legislation’s lofty goal—particularly in elementary, middle, and high schools, which face widespread sexual violence but receive far less attention than Title IX cases in colleges.On the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the Biden administration announced that it would roll back large swathes of Trump-era changes to the law. But that process will take months and is certain to kick off battles over what, exactly, schools should do in sexual misconduct cases. Nearly 15,000 incidents of sexual violence were reported at K-12 schools in 2017-2018, the most recent year for which Department of Education data is available. That’s a 55-percent spike from the 2015-2016 school year, which saw about 9,600 reported incidents of sexual violence—and, likely, still an undercount. Compared to moneyed colleges, K-12 schools are also far less likely to be well-equipped to deal with sexual violence allegations, experts say, even though the victims they’re tasked with protecting are, overwhelmingly, children. But there’s also a darker truth at work here: Sexual assault is, particularly for girls, often dismissed as a part of growing up.Nikki Wombwell once felt lucky that she got to go to Myers Park. She had looked forward to high school; Myers Park had a good reputation, and she was excited about the theater program.Now, at 23, she’s one of the former students accusing Myers Park of mishandling her sexual assault report and trying to get Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to change. She knows much more about the dangers of school and the violence that students—children—can do to one another.“It's a lot easier to think of a college-level, 18, 19, 20-year old frat bro doing something like that. But when you have to face a 15-year-old child who … lives with his parents and is just a kid, is capable of rape—people don't like to think about that,” Wombwell told me. “They don't like to think about why our culture contributes to that sort of thing happening. There's a lot of ugly truth you have to look in the mirror to if you admit that.”For teens looking for an escape from teachers and parents, the woods around Myers Park High School provide the perfect cover. But, in the last few years, the woods have also become a symbol of the ghastly underbelly of high school. Wombwell is one of at least three former Myers Park students who have said that they were sexually assaulted in those woods. At 14, she started dating the student who would later assault her, she told me. He was 15 years old.“I don't think I have had a single first, sexually, that was completely consensual.”“He was very pushy the entire time we were together,” Wombwell said. “It was, ‘Oh, like, you let me kiss you, can I touch your breasts?’ Or like, ‘Oh, you know, it doesn't count if you're wearing underwear.’ And then it was, ‘Oh, we already did it with your underwear on. What's the difference?’ And then it was, ‘Oh, I did it to you. You have to do it to me.’ And it just kept escalating and escalating.”“I don't think I have had a single first, sexually, that was completely consensual,” she continued.She tried to break up with him, but a couple weeks later, in October 2014, he messaged her that he had brought a gun to school, Wombwell said in interviews and a lawsuit she later filed. If she didn’t have sex with him, he threatened to hurt himself, she said.“I met him after class and he took me to the woods, and that's when he raped me,” Wombwell said.Wombwell said she tried to tell school officials that she had been raped. But the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer tasked with serving Myers Park High School told her that what had happened didn’t constitute rape, according to Wombwell’s lawsuit. Its then-principal allegedly told her that, if she moved forward with a “formal” report and authorities couldn’t substantiate her account, she could be suspended for having sex on campus.No one ever told her about her rights under Title IX, Wombwell said.Title IX is probably best known as the law that requires schools to treat boys and girls’ sports teams equally. But it does so much more. Under Title IX, schools are required to not only to implement a formal grievance process for handling complaints of sex discrimination—which is what sexual harassment and violence is—but to also offer students who alleged sexual misconduct supportive measures, such as separating accused perpetrators from their victims. Schools are also tasked with protecting purported victims from retaliation.“Ultimately, Title IX, as a civil rights law, is about protecting access to education. And the reality is, that sexual harassment, including including sexual assault, has a very real impact on a lot of students and can make it very difficult for them to feel safe and supported to learn in school,” said Shiwali Patel, director of justice for student survivors and senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “Schools have to take steps to ensure that those students who have experienced sexual harassment feel safe, feel supported, feel like they can thrive academically.”If a school doesn’t follow Title IX, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is supposed to make them. Between 2015 and 2017, the office investigated Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools at least three times.In November 2015, the office concluded a “compliance review” of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and found that the district had violated Title IX because, among other things, its grievance process “did not provide for an adequate, reliable, and impartial investigation.”In 2017, the Office of Civil Rights released its finding of the investigation into the complaint by the student who said she had been sexually assaulted in the woods around Myers Park. In that case, the office generally found in the district’s favor, although it did uncover that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had violated Title IX when its officials failed to let the involved students know that they had closed the investigation and labeled it “mutual sexual contact.” In the third investigation, the results of which were also released in 2017, the Office of Civil Rights found once again that the district’s handling of the matter didn’t fully comply with Title IX. (Although the case involved an allegation of sex discrimination, it was not a sexual assault case.) If a school doesn’t follow Title IX, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is supposed to make them. Between 2015 and 2017, the office investigated Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools at least three times.Patel, who used to work for the Office of Civil Rights, told me that, in her opinion, her old employer “absolutely” needs to investigate Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools again.“When schools punish survivors who come forward, they're sending a strong message to the students, to the community, that not only will they tolerate sexual harassment, but that they're not going to take it seriously, that it's not safe to come forward as a survivor who's actively seeking support and help from the school,” Patel said. “It's very concerning.”As of February 2022, the district remained under federal monitoring, according to documents obtained by VICE News. The Office of Civil Rights didn’t respond to a VICE News request for an interview for this story, or to a list of questions.For years, Wombwell tried to bury what had happened. “I got really into every single extracurricular activity I could possibly be in,” she recalled. “I obsessed over school. I did everything I possibly could to not have a single second to think about it.”That worked, sort of, for a while. But then, Wombwell said, she was sexually assaulted in college. (About 26 percent of female college undergraduates, as well as almost 7 percent of male college students, experience sexual assault through incapacitation, physical force, or violence, according to RAINN, the nation’s premier anti-sexual assault organization.) Wombwell tried to kill herself. She dropped out. She went to a mental health facility. She never returned to school.Eventually, she came across a news story about the Myers Park student who alleged being sexually assaulted in November 2015 and realized just how similar their stories were. Known as “Jane Doe” in court papers, the student sued Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in 2018. In 2019, Wombwell sued Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, too.She spent more than a year in court, before settling in 2021 for $50,000. “It was made pretty clear to me throughout the process that I wasn't going to get policy change through the legal system and that only the Board of Education had the power to make that legal change,” Wombwell said. “If I wanted to get people reassigned or fired or whatever, that was going to have to happen through public advocacy, because it wasn't going to happen through the legal system. And that's what I cared about.”Wombwell signed her settlement agreement over Zoom, she told me, because she had checked in again to a mental health facility.“It still affects me every single day,” Wombwell said. “No amount of money can make up for that, to be honest.”More women came forward to say that, they, too, had been sexually assaulted by classmates at Myers Park.Wombwell went public in June 2021, revealing in news articles and on social media that she was Jill Roe. The floodgates seemed to burst: More women came forward to say that, they, too, had been sexually assaulted by classmates at Myers Park. One woman, Serena Evans, said she was raped in a school bathroom in 2016, when she was just 15 years old; when she tried to report it to a school administrator, he also threatened her with suspension if her allegation didn’t pan out, said Evans, who recently sued over her allegations. Evans and Wombwell have since joined forces to fight for change in the district.Doe’s lawsuit is ongoing. Myers Park’s then-principal was suspended, then reassigned after an investigation to another role in the district, where he makes more than $150,000. Two administrators at Hawthorne Academy have also been reassigned. VICE News reached out to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the officer named in Doe and Wombwell’s lawsuit, and other district officials with detailed lists of questions for this story. Only the attorney for the police officer responded, saying, in part, “Cases should be tried in courtrooms—not newsrooms.”In court papers, the defendants in Wombwell and Doe’s lawsuits have broadly denied wrongdoing. In those filings, Myers Park administrators said they didn’t take a statement from Doe about her allegations because her parents prohibited it, and didn’t take her to the hospital “or otherwise assist her in reporting a rape to law enforcement because she did not report a rape at that time.” The police officer said that he filed a noncriminal police report about Doe’s account, which “reflects what she told him.” That officer was ultimately dismissed from Wombwell’s lawsuit ahead of her settlement. A judge found that he had not acted with “deliberate indifference” or obstructed justice. That judge also determined that, as a police officer, he was entitled to qualified immunity. The principal also denied that he had done anything to discourage Wombwell from taking further action with her case.In an emailed statement last year, a spokesperson for the district told VICE News, “District and Board of Education leadership take allegations of sexual misconduct seriously.”“CMS [Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools] cannot provide information about matters involving student discipline or specific cases in which there are ongoing investigations, pending or settled litigation, or otherwise involve confidential student or staff data,” the spokesperson said, in response to a detailed list of questions. “Likewise, CMS cannot provide information about specific personnel matters such as employee suspensions.”Doe, Wombwell, and one of the Hawthorne Academy accusers have all shared a lawyer: Laura Dunn.Dunn radiates meticulousness and unflappability—qualities that make it easy to see why rape survivors, adrift and alone, may gravitate towards her, and why Buzzfeed News once bestowed her with the title “The Woman Students Call When They’ve Been Raped On Campus.” She is, quite literally, forever committed to the cause: Dunn has the numeral “IX” tattooed on her wrist, in reference to Title IX. Dunn also knows, firsthand, what it’s like to feel failed by the institutions meant to protect you. While a student at the University of Wisconsin, she reported being raped by two fellow student-athletes, as multiple news outlets have detailed. After a nine-month investigation, the school decided against punishment. Dunn then went to the Department of Education, which, two years after Dunn graduated, decided that the University of Wisconsin had not erred. Dunn became an advocate against campus sexual assault—and, seven years to the day Dunn says she was raped, then-Vice President Joe Biden invited her to an event unveiling guidance that urged schools to investigate misconduct more thoroughly and threatened them with consequences if they did not.“It was just really powerful to realize that, despite not getting any justice after fighting for seven years, I actually created justice for others,” Dunn recalled. In months of conversations about Title IX, there is only one time where Dunn gets emotional: when she talks about how, in 2017, under the Trump administration, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that she would be rescinding the Obama-era guidance. Her changes to Title IX, completed in 2020, “significantly weakened protections under Title IX,” Patel said.“It limited the definition of sexual harassment, so schools would have to ignore a lot of reports under their Title IX policies,” Patel said. “They're very specific that the assault has to have occurred within an education program or activity, despite the impact on the survivor’s education. So, for example, if someone is raped at an off-campus party and then they share a class with their rapist, that they're going to still face the same trauma and triggers, regardless of where the assault occurred. But the DeVos rule doesn't take that into account.”Although the Biden administration has proposed to roll back many of the changes enacted by DeVos, her rules remain in effect and will do so until the lengthy rollback process is completed. Plus, if Republicans win control of Congress in the November midterms, Title IX could once again become a political football. Last year, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Earnest Winston convened a task force meant to evaluate Title IX in the district. That task force issued recommendations in December. Then, in April 2022, the Board of Education fired Winston. An investigation had uncovered, among other things, concerns about the district’s handling of Title IX. Now, it’s not clear what, if anything, the district has done with the Title IX task force’s recommendations.In court papers, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education has defended its approach to sex discrimination cases.“The Board has adopted, implemented, and published adequate and effective policies to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination and to ensure prompt investigation and redress of complaints of sexual harassment or discrimination,” it said.There’s a term for what Wombwell, and the other Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools accusers, say happened to them: institutional betrayal.One 2013 study of institutional betrayal found that, out of more than 500 college students, nearly 70 percent experienced at least one “unwanted sexual experience.” Of those, 46 percent said that they had been betrayed by their institution in some way, such as by institutions’ creation of an environment where unwanted sexual experiences became common or likely. “When someone is harmed by their institution, they might be further dissuaded from reporting and get any help at all,” Patel said. “What's the point in coming forward then, if that's going to be the experience? And then that may send a message to other students, that discourages them from coming forward.”In other words, it’s exactly the kind of experience that Title IX and the Office of Civil Rights are supposed to safeguard against.“I think a lot of K-12 schools have intentionally hidden information about Title IX and people's rights. I challenge you to go on the website, pick any school district you want, try to find out what to do if you reported a sexual assault,” Dunn said. “My guess is you're going to go to the student code of conduct. You're not going to see any Title IX coordinator. Maybe there's a provision on sexual harassment. Maybe not. The schools have just basically looked the other way and have been allowed to for a long time.”“I think a lot of K-12 schools have intentionally hidden information about Title IX and people's rights.”For Wombwell and the other current and former students trying to change Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, their campaign can sometimes seem like a relentless series of institutional betrayals. In March, Wombwell, Evans, and their allies showed up at a meeting for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education, hoping to convince its members to take action on Title IX.Serena Evans said she was raped in a Myers Park school bathroom in 2016, when she was 15 years old. Evans is now fighting for change in the school district.(Cassandra Giraldo for VICE News)The Board of Education’s meeting amphitheatre was packed. Once the public comment section started, many of the speakers spent their time trying to convince the school board to stop teaching various books, such as The Girl Who Fell From the Sky and Maus. One student who spoke did bring up the recent sexual assault allegations. “It is my duty to say that some of our some of the rape victims, it seems, feel as though they're not heard and your job at the Board of Education is to make sure that they feel heard, respected, and welcome in their school,” he told the board.The plan had been for Wombwell and Evans to share their stories. Then, their allies would share anonymous testimonials, collected by a group started in part by the duo, of sexual assault and harassment at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.A few people managed to read the accounts. One shared the story of a student who said they were raped as a freshman. (“I reported it to the school because he went there too. They did nothing for me, regardless of me saying I felt unsafe on campus.”) Another read the account of a student who said they were first sexually harassed at school at 13 years old. (“I go to school with my assailants. They go about their day like normal. I sit next to boys who harassed and assaulted me for years.”)Then, a staffer told Board of Education Chair Elyse Dashew that board rules don’t let people read statements from individuals who aren’t signed up to speak. And when Wombwell’s fiancé got up to share an account, Dashew cut him off.“People sign up to speak for themselves,” Dashew said. “So anybody else who has their own testimonial or feedback—”“How do you expect a rape survivor to stand in front of the people that threatened them with suspension?” Evans interrupted. “Are you serious?”People in the crowd started clapping. “Every story matters!” someone shouted.Dashew tried to insist that Wombwell’s fiancé stop speaking. People started yelling. Finally, Dashew gave up. “OK, we'll break all the rules tonight,” she announced.Wombwell burst into tears. Evans wrapped her arms around her.“They will do anything they can to silence survivors instead of just actually doing the very reasonable basic things we're asking them to do,” Wombwell said minutes later, her voice shaking. “They care so much about their reputation and so little about their students.”“This is happening all over the country.”It was, perhaps, the last betrayal. Wombwell had next to no faith that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools would ever listen to her or her allies. She wants the Office of Civil Rights to investigate the district, again. She wants anybody who might have covered up sexual assault to lose their jobs. And she doesn’t want what happened to her to happen to anyone else, ever, anywhere.“This is happening all over the country,” Wombwell said. “Title IX policy needs to be updated. The changes that Betsy DeVos made to Title IX need to be undone, because they're horrific to survivors.”If she had been the only woman to come forward, Wombwell thinks she could have moved on from what happened in the woods, from how she was treated once she rushed out of them.“I think I've done enough healing that I could work on healing for myself and maybe radically accept the things that I have to let go of, to heal,” Wombwell said. “But seeing that it wasn't just me, it's still happening—I can't move on and let it keep happening. This is so much bigger than me. I have to do something about it. I just have to.”	Civil Rights Activism
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) on Sunday said conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who “misled” Americans during their confirmation hearings about whether or not they supported overturning Roe v. Wade should be impeached and face “consequences” for lying under oath. Ocasio-Cortez told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd the Supreme Court “dramatically overreached its authority” and created a “crisis of legitimacy” that President Biden should address. “If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue — without basis, if you read these opinions — rulings that deeply undermine the human civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” the lawmaker said. “There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and the hostile takeover of our democratic institutions,” she added. The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the 1973 precedent Roe v. Wade, giving states the ability to decide abortion laws for the first time in roughly 50 years. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who each voted in the majority to overturn Roe — were criticized for dodging the question of overturning the precedent during their respective confirmation hearings or saying they would not support overturning the case. Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said lying under oath is an impeachable offense and there should be consequences to deter it from happening again. “What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure a Supreme Court confirmation,” she said. Tags abortion rights Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Biden Chuck Todd	Civil Rights Activism
New York City’s jails are failing to safely and humanely house transgender inmates, according to a new report that’s calling for a “systemic overhaul” of the city’s Department of Correction policies. The 146-page report, which was years in the making, identified shortcomings in housing and mental health services for trans, nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming people in the city’s jails as well as the systemic misgendering of this population at every level of the criminal justice system. The report — which includes recommendations to reform intake and re-entry processes, as well as housing and mental health services — was the first issued by the Task Force on Issues Faced by Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, Non-Binary and Intersex People in Custody. The task force was convened in April 2019, following years of pleas from advocates. It consists of 19 members from more than a dozen government agencies and advocacy organizations. The task force first convened just two months before the high-profile death of Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, a trans woman who died at a jail on Rikers Island in June of that year. In the case of Cubilette-Polanco’s death, guards waited an hour-and-a-half before calling for help after she had an epileptic seizure, surveillance footage showed. This prompted a wrongful death lawsuit that resulted in the largest settlement ever over an inmate’s death at Rikers.The task force’s report, released Monday, shows the majority of transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the city’s jail system are kept in housing that’s not consistent with their gender identity, despite a policy adopted in 2018 allowing inmates to choose their housing based on their gender identity and the creation of a Special Considerations Unit, which houses inmates at heightened risk of sexual victimization. The report further recommends that people in custody are not transferred out of housing that aligns with their gender identity as a form of punishment. The new research also found that, during screenings, people who are transgender, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary or intersex are often not given special forms that could potentially place them in the SCU, resulting in severe underreporting of the amount of trans, nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming people in custody. While the task force said it could only be “reasonably certain” of the identities of 41 noncisgender inmates, 63% of them were in housing that was not consistent with their gender identity, the report found.Policies that make it possible for inmates to request housing that aligns with their gender identity are not consistently shared with those in police custody, according to the task force report, and because housing in the jail system is only arranged according to male and female gender identities, many inmates must “make a decision that cannot reflect their full gender identity.”“Housing [trans, nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming] people in the NYC jail systems leads to a dangerous deterioration of their well-being,” the report reads. The report also paints a picture of a task force in disarray, describing strained relations among its members and representative organizations, and stating that only a small number of them have diligently attended meetings. Trans, nonbinary, intersex, gender-nonconforming "and/or formerly incarcerated Task Force members spent significant time providing impromptu and unpaid ‘trans 101’ lessons to many other Task Force members when disrespectful and dismissive actions occurred,” the report’s authors wrote. The task force is mandated to keep meeting until 2024. A DOC spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News that while the agency recognizes transgender and gender-nonconforming inmates are at a higher risk of victimization, the city’s jail system is a “national leader” in housing transgender and gender-nonconforming inmates. “The task force did not share the final version of the report with the department, and not all of the opinions, conclusions, or recommendations in the report reflect the views of the agency or correctional best practices,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We remain committed to working with (the transgender, gender-nonconforming, nonbinary and intersex) community to improve outcomes for those who become justice involved.”Among dozens of recommendations, the task force calls for a significant culture change at the DOC. “The Department of Correction must realign itself with its own mission and set of values through a reconfiguration of staffing and accountability procedures,” the report says.Melania Brown, the sister of Cubilette-Polanco, said Wednesday that the report’s findings validate the activism work that she and others have done to highlight the experience of transgender inmates held in Rikers. Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco.Courtesy of Melania Brown“If they had done this three years ago, I truly believe my sister would have been alive today,” Brown said.Brown said Cubilette-Polanco, who was 27 and living with epilepsy and schizophrenia when she died, should have been properly evaluated for her mental health instead of being placed inside a restrictive housing unit at Rikers, where she died of an epileptic seizure. She had been arrested on misdemeanor assault charges and held on $500 bail dating back to a 2017 prostitution charge — a case that LGBTQ activists say was an example of the dehumanization transgender women face behind bars.“There are a lot of people to blame in my sister’s death,” Brown said, “and I believe it hasn’t gotten better for transgender and nonconforming humans. It’s still the same.” Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram.	Civil Rights Activism
A group of Democratic senators wrote a letter on Saturday urging President Biden to take action to protect abortion access across the country in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The 33 Senators called on Biden to use “the full force of the federal government to protect access to abortion in the United States.” “There is no time to waste,” the letter read. “Nearly half of the states already had laws in place to ban abortion or severely restrict access as soon as the Supreme Court decision came down.” Thirteen states had “trigger” laws in place that have gone into effect or are in the process of going into effect after Roe was overturned, removing federal-level abortion protections. Apart from those states, another nine also have laws or constitutional amendments banning or severely restricting abortion already in place, according to pro-choice research group the Guttmacher Institute. “Now is the time for bold action to protect the right to an abortion,” the letter said. The senators urged: “You have the power to fight back and lead a national response to this devastating decision, so we call on you to take every step available to your Administration, across federal agencies, to help women access abortions and other reproductive health care, and to protect those who will face the harshest burdens from this devastating and extreme decision.” The letter also raised concerns about potential further Republican action to restrict abortion nationwide, calling the Supreme Court decision and other actions to restrict abortion access “an unprecedented assault on women and the result of decades of activism by Republican extremists.” The senators who signed on to the letter included Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Tina Smith (Minn.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), Tom Carper (Del.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Dick Durbin (Ill.), as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)	Civil Rights Activism
On Friday, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision finding a right to an early-term abortion in the Constitution, the three Democratic appointees — Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — wrote a forthright response casting the majority’s decision as a blow to women’s civil rights.“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” they wrote.“Today, the Court… says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of,” they continued. “A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”Citing laws that have already been passed in more conservative states and would now take effect, they warn of dire consequences in states that will now be free to ban abortion, including being forced to give birth to a child conceived in rape or incest, or when bringing a pregnancy to term risks the pregnant woman’s health.They also suggest that the reversal of Roe may lead to the revocation of more constitutional rights that have come from the same line of legal reasoning, including the right to contraception found in Griswold v. Connecticut. “Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat,” they wrote.Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor in 2021. (Photo illustratioin: Yahoo News; photos: Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool)Here are five key passages from the dissenting opinion:1. Some states will — in fact, some already have — ban abortion without exceptions.“[States] have passed laws without any exceptions for when the woman is the victim of rape or incest. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s — no matter if doing so will destroy her life. So too, after today’s ruling, some States may compel women to carry to term a fetus with severe physical anomalies — for example, one afflicted with Tay-Sachs disease, sure to die within a few years of birth. States may even argue that a prohibition on abortion need make no provision for protecting a woman from risk of death or physical harm. Across a vast array of circumstances, a State will be able to impose its moral choice on a woman and coerce her to give birth to a child.”2. Some states will — in fact, some already have — pass laws that punish women who get abortions, or others who get involved in a woman’s pregnancy.“Perhaps, in the wake of today’s decision, a state law will criminalize the woman’s conduct too, incarcerating or fining her for daring to seek or obtain an abortion. And as Texas has recently shown, a State can turn neighbor against neighbor, enlisting fellow citizens in the effort to root out anyone who tries to get an abortion, or to assist another in doing so.”3. Women’s rights are being curtailed, especially those of poorer women.Abortion rights protesters hold a youth rally in Washington Square Park in anticipation of Supreme Court overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision in New York City, U.S., June 3, 2022. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens. Yesterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involves…. As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A State can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, may be a nightmare. Some women, especially women of means, will find ways around the State’s assertion of power. Others — those without money or childcare or the ability to take time off from work — will not be so fortunate. Maybe they will try an unsafe method of abortion, and come to physical harm, or even die. Maybe they will undergo pregnancy and have a child, but at significant personal or familial cost. At the least, they will incur the cost of losing control of their lives. The Constitution will, today’s majority holds, provide no shield, despite its guarantees of liberty and equality for all.”4. This may be just the first in a series of decisions that roll back the right to privacy and gender equality.Abortion rights and anti-abortion demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., US, on Thursday, June 23, 2022. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)“And no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation…. The lone rationale for what the majority does today is that the right to elect an abortion is not ‘deeply rooted in history’: Not until Roe, the majority argues, did people think abortion fell within the Constitution’s guarantee of liberty. The same could be said, though, of most of the rights the majority claims it is not tampering with. The majority could write just as long an opinion showing, for example, that until the mid-20th century, ‘there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain [contraceptives].’ So one of two things must be true. Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure. Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other.”5. The majority argues that women’s rights today should be limited by what the Constitution’s authors thought in a more sexist time.Protesters march during a ShutDownDC demonstration in Washington, D.C., US, on Monday, June 13, 2022. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)“The majority’s core legal postulate, then, is that we in the 21st century must read the Fourteenth Amendment just as its ratifiers did. And that is indeed what the majority emphasizes over and over again…. If the ratifiers did not understand something as central to freedom, then neither can we. Or said more particularly: If those people did not understand reproductive rights as part of the guarantee of liberty conferred in the Fourteenth Amendment, then those rights do not exist. As an initial matter, note a mistake in the just preceding sentence. We referred there to the ‘people’ who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment: What rights did those ‘people’ have in their heads at the time? But, of course, ‘people’ did not ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Men did. So it is perhaps not so surprising that the ratifiers were not perfectly attuned to the importance of reproductive rights for women’s liberty, or for their capacity to participate as equal members of our Nation…. Those responsible for the original Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, did not perceive women as equals, and did not recognize women’s rights. When the majority says that we must read our foundational charter as viewed at the time of ratification (except that we may also check it against the Dark Ages), it consigns women to second-class citizenship.”	Civil Rights Activism
U.S. Updated on: July 7, 2022 / 4:06 PM / CBS/AP CBS News Live CBS News Minnesota Live Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 21 years in a federal prison for violating George Floyd's civil rights. Chauvin, who pleaded guilty in December, will also be required to pay restitution. His plea deal, which U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson accepted in May, called for a sentence of 20 to 25 years. Chauvin is already serving 22 1/2 years for his conviction in a state court on murder and manslaughter charges related to Floyd's May 2020 death. He will serve the state and federal sentences concurrently in a federal prison.Chauvin, who is White, killed Floyd by pinning the unarmed Black man to the pavement with his knee for 9 1/2 minutes, despite Floyd's fading pleas of "I can't breathe." Floyd's death sparked protests worldwide and forced a national reckoning over police brutality and racism. Prior to his sentencing Thursday, Chauvin wished Floyd's children "all the best in their lives" and that they have "excellent guidance in becoming good adults," CBS Minnesota reports. He did not offer an apology.Floyd's brother, Philonise Floyd, asked the judge for a life sentence, adding that he has had nightmares since his brother's death, according to CBS Minnesota. During the sentencing, Magnuson said that Chauvin "must be held responsible" for his actions, including destroying the lives of the other three officers involved in Floyd's death.Prosecutors pushed for the former police officer to serve all 25 years on the grounds that his actions during Floyd's death were cold-blooded and needless. They also argued that he had a history of misusing restraints — Chauvin's plea included an admission that he violated the rights of a then-14-year-old Black boy whom he restrained in an unrelated case in 2017.The defense instead asked for 20 years, saying Chauvin accepts responsibility for what he did and has already been sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison by a state court in Floyd's murder. Attorney Eric Nelson wrote that Chauvin's "remorse will be made apparent to this Court."In pleading guilty to violating Floyd's civil rights, Chauvin admitted for the first time that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck — even after he became unresponsive — resulting in his death. The former officer admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer. Chauvin is his murder conviction, arguing that jurors were intimidated by the protests that followed and prejudiced by heavy pretrial publicity. In: derek chauvin Death of George Floyd Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue	Civil Rights Activism
BOSTON (AP) — A tomahawk once owned by Chief Standing Bear, a pioneering Native American civil rights leader, has been returned to his tribe after being housed for decades in a museum at Harvard University.Members of the Ponca tribes in Nebraska and Oklahoma visited the Massachusetts university on June 3 for the ceremonial return of the artifact, the tribes said in a recent announcement.Standing Bear had originally gifted the pipe-tomahawk to one of his lawyers after winning the 1879 court case that made him one of the first Native Americans granted civil rights.The tomahawk changed hands several times before being acquired by Harvard in 1982.“This is a good homecoming and a good step in the many steps we have to do to get back to our identity, to our ways of our people,” Angie Starkel, a member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska who made the trip to Cambridge, said in a statement.Stacy Laravie, a descendant of Standing Bear who is also the historic preservation officer for the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, agreed.“We talk about generational trauma, but we don’t talk about generational healing, and that’s what we’re doing now,” she said in a statement. “This is healing.”Jane Pickering, director of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, said the tomahawk’s return reflects the institution’s desire to repair past harms.“The Peabody directly benefited from collecting practices that we acknowledge today ignored the wishes and values of families and communities,” she said in a statement.Harvard and the museum have faced criticism over the pace of repatriating Native American remains and other significant objects to tribes, as required under federal law.The museum and tribes have been working on the tomahawk’s return for more than a year; tribal members were slated to travel to campus before pandemic-related restrictions last year delayed it.The Ponca tribes say they will announce plans to exhibit the tomahawk at a later date.They were among many forcibly relocated from their homelands to other territories by the federal government in the 1800s.Standing Bear was arrested 1878 for leaving the tribe’s Oklahoma reservation in order to fulfill a promise he made to bury his eldest son back in their tribe’s homeland in Nebraska’s Niobrara River Valley.In his landmark federal trial, he successfully argued for the recognition of Native Americans as persons entitled to rights and protection under law.	Civil Rights Activism
Bay Area singer Kim Nalley says she’s listened to Nina Simone her whole life. As a teenager, she listened and danced to the singer and civil rights icon’s famous protest song “Mississippi Goddam.” And as part of a Juneteenth concert honoring Simone, she performed the song at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on Friday. As Juneteenth, which commemorates the abolition of slavery in the U.S., arrives Sunday, June 19, the celebration has grown more mainstream, with festivals and celebrations planned across the Bay Area and the country. Last year, President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. In California, a bill to make Juneteenth a paid holiday has passed the Assembly and moved to the Senate this month. The day has been celebrated by African Americans across the county in many ways, but music, a huge part of African American history and culture since slavery, has been a constant. Almost all Juneteenth celebrations in the Bay Area involve spirituals, civil rights songs and the melodies and rhythms of traditional Black music. “If anything is very African American, it’s music,” Nalley said. “There’s always music — drum, dance, voice. Always, for everything.” MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - June 16: Vocalist Kim Nalley sings during a rehearsal with her band members including Tammy L. Hall (piano) and Michael Zisman (bass) at Nalley’s home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - June 16: Kim Nalley Band bassist Michael Zisman plays during a rehearsal at Kim Nalley’s home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - June 16: Kim Nalley Band drummer Leon Joyce Jr. plays during a rehearsal at Kim Nalley’s home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - June 16: Kim Nalley Band pianist Tammy L. Hall plays during a rehearsal at Kim Nalley’s home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - June 16: Kim Nalley Band guitarist Greg Skaff plays during a rehearsal at Kim Nalley’s home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA - June 16: Vocalist Kim Nalley sings during a rehearsal with her band at her home in Mill Valley, Calif., on Thursday, June 16, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) Music will also be a big part of the proceedings on Sunday, when the African American Community Service Agency (AACSA) will hold its 41st annual Juneteenth in the Streets Festival in San Jose, featuring headlining singer Tamar Braxton. Music brings people together and addresses “the ebbs and flows of the community,” said Milan Balinton, the organization’s director. Brigette LeBlanc, vice chairwoman of the San Francisco African American Chamber of Commerce, feels the same way when she hears “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye. The song makes her recall everything from the hustle and bustle of African Americans in their community to talking about revolution and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. “Music is always giving you history. It can be a melody that makes you laugh or cry. Sometimes artists put the pain of what’s happening into the lyrics,” said LeBlanc, whose group organized Nalley’s concert — dubbed “Juneteenth: A Musical History of Freedom” — in collaboration with the SFJAZZ Center. But as Nalley notes, her tribute to Simone is more than historical. “Nina taught me to sing not just about the history of black folks, but to also sing about what’s going on now,” said Nalley. “It must be revolutionary. It must be current.” The first time Nalley sang a tribute to Simone was after the civil rights hero died in 2003. The nightclub where Nalley performed — Jazz at Pearl’s in San Francisco — was filled with regular patrons, as well as people who had never set foot in a club, and there were people lined up outside, pressing their noses against the window. When Nalley sang “Mississippi Goddam” the audience both inside and outside the club chanted the lyrics together. “It’s really amazing how Nina speaks to such a wide range of people. It’s not just a Black thing. It strikes you to your core,” said Nalley. “She’s always singing about the truth of injustice.” For Pope Flyne, 73, music and rhythm are part of the language of life. He has played the African drums since he first got one as a toy, and has been teaching African drumming for years. He’ll lead a drumming workshop at the Juneteenth Community Celebration at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose on Sunday. Growing up in Ghana, he was often around sailors who worked on cargo ships and traveled overseas, bringing back all kinds of music. In Africa, drums were used as a way of communicating, Flyne says. Drummers learned the meaning of drum beats across various villages, so they were able to translate messages and stories back and forth, from an invitation to a celebration to a declaration of war. He believes Juneteenth should be seen as not a rally per se but an event in which people speak out and bring enlightenment to others. The deep connection between the holiday and music, he says, is rooted in the fact that people are attracted to music like “moth to flame.” Tom Wiggins, 70, knows firsthand how music can address joy and tragedy. He is the longtime leader and drummer of the St. Gabriel’s Celestial Brass Band, which has performed at weddings, funerals, even for Alzheimer’s patients. The band performed at Saturday’s Juneteenth celebration at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Like many, the recent mass shooting in Buffalo has been weighing on Wiggins’ mind. He thinks music also serves as a means for the community to heal and to take action. “Look at this country with the racial hatred and injustice. It never went away,” he said. “The music takes the raw edge off the emotion. It doesn’t make it go away, but it gives an aching heart a bit of a breather.” “We have music to celebrate and we have music to grieve. There’s music when we’re free to sing and dance and music when we were working. We sang in jails and we sang in marsh meadows,” Nalley said. “You can’t always eat, but you can always sing and dance.”	Civil Rights Activism
NEW YORK (AP) — Parades celebrating LGBTQ pride kick off in some of America’s biggest cities Sunday amid new fears about the potential erosion of freedoms won through decades of activism.The annual marches in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere take place just two days after one conservative justice on the Supreme Court signaled, in a ruling on abortion, that the court should reconsider the right to same-sex marriage recognized in 2015.That warning shot came after a year of legislative defeats for the LGBTQ community, including the passage of laws in some states limiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity with children.As anti-gay sentiments resurface, some are pushing for pride parades to return to their roots — less as blocks-long street parties but overtly civil rights marches.“It has gone from being a statement of advocacy and protest to being much more of a celebration of gay life,” Sean Clarkin, 67, said of New York City’s annual parade while enjoying a drink recently at Julius’s, one of the oldest gay bars in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.As he remembers things, the parade was once about defiance and pushing against an oppressive mainstream that saw gays, lesbians and transgender people as unworthy outsiders.“As satisfying and empowering as it may be to now be accepted by the mainstream,” Clarkin said, “there was also something energizing and wonderful about being on the outside looking in.”Dan Dimant, a spokesman for Heritage of Pride, the nonprofit that organizes New York City’s parade, said this year’s march will still be festive, with floats and “people dancing and celebrating.”“Pride is many things to many people. And for many people, it’s a protest. And to many people, it’s a celebration. We create experiences for members of our community to experience pride and the way that resonates with them,” Dimant said.New York’s first Pride March, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, was held in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, a spontaneous street uprising triggered by a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan.San Francisco’s first march was in 1972 and had been held every year since, except during the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.Celebrations are now global, taking place throughout the year in multiple countries, with many of the biggest parades taking place in June. One of the world’s largest, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was held June 19.In the United States, this year’s celebrations take place amid a potential crisis.In a Supreme Court ruling Friday striking down the right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage and a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalizing gay sex.More than a dozen states have recently enacted laws that go against the interests of LGBTQ+ communities, including a law barring any mention of sexual orientation in school curricula in Florida and threats of prosecution for parents who allow their children to get gender-affirming care in Texas.Several states have put laws in place prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in team sports that coincide with the gender in which they identify.According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released earlier this week, members of LGBTQ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment. Two-thirds of respondents said they have been harassed, a little more than half of whom said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation.In recent years, schisms over how to commemorate Stonewall have opened, spawning splinter groups, including in New York City, holding their own events intended to be more protest-oriented.In New York City, the Queer Liberation March takes place at the same time as the traditional parade, billing itself as the “antidote to the corporate-infused, police-entangled, politician-heavy Parades that now dominate Pride celebrations.”More of that spirit could rub off on the major parades this year, though many fans of the marches see them as a combination of activism and celebration.New Yorker Vincent Maniscalco, 40, who has been married to his husband for five years, said he thought the marches are an opportunity to both spotlight civil rights issues and bring “individuals together of all walks of life to celebrate their authentic self. And I think the New York City Pride Parade does a very excellent job of that.”	Civil Rights Activism
The only Latino officer in a police department in Ohio has filed a discrimination civil rights complaint alleging he was "constantly harassed" by the department's chief at the time over his ethnicity and religion.In a virtual news conference Tuesday, Officer Audali "A.J." Torres of the Sheffield Lake Police Department spoke out about the "racist and religion-based abuse" he endured while working under then-Chief Anthony Campo after joining the department part-time in 2013.Campo left the department last summer after being placed on administrative leave following a “racial harassment“ incident against a Black officer.On June 2021, surveillance footage from the police station captured Campo printing and placing a note reading “Ku Klux Klan” on top of Officer Keith Pool’s yellow raincoat. Pool was the only Black officer in the department at the time.Torres, a self-described "devout Roman Catholic," had taken the job to help pay for his annual church mission trips to El Salvador, according to the complaint filed on Feb. 8. Based on his religious affiliation, Torres had reached an “understanding with the city” to have Sundays off to attend church.Sheffield Lake Police Officer A.J. Torresvia Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & WiseBut this made Campo "angry," Torres said in the complaint, describing that the chief threatened to reduce his hours and take away his benefits, and often mocked him over his religious practices.Campo would also photoshop images of Torres and hang them on the department's main bulletin to mock him, according to the complaint. One image showed Torres' face in a jar of salsa. Another image shows Torres with two children on one of his church mission trips to El Salvador and photoshopped speech bubbles implying Torres was a pedophile.During the news conference, Torres said these “attacks hurt me.""I'm going public so people understand this racist conduct is unacceptable," he added.Efforts to reach Campo for comment this week via email and phone were unsuccessful. Then-Police Chief Anthony Campo placed a "Ku Klux Klan" sign on a black officer's raincoat in Sheffield Lake, Ohio.WKYCPool also filed a discrimination civil rights complaint against Sheffield Lake after the June 2021 incident.At the time, Sheffield Lake Mayor Dennis Bring condemned Campo's actions, telling NBC affiliate WKYC of Cleveland, "There’s no one word to explain how disgusting this is.”Despite Bring's remarks against Campo, city officials tried "to minimize his revolting racial and religious discrimination" in responding to both complaints, said Kevin Conway, a lawyer representing both Torres and Pool.According to Conway, the city's response to Torres’ complaint "repeats verbatim much of its response" to Pool’s complaint filed last November.The responses described Campo’s conduct as “perhaps inappropriate and in poor taste” but “not so offensive to the reasonable person that it would materially affect the terms and consequences of employment,” Conway's firm said in a news release Tuesday. In both cases, the city denied that Campo’s conduct was “severe or pervasive,” characterizing it as merely “banter.” Bring and the city of Sheffield did not respond to requests for comment.“The city’s position reveals how Mr. Campo got away with racial harassment for so long," said Ashlie Case Sletvold, another lawyer for Pool and Torres. Campo was Sheffield Lake’s police chief for eight years."City officials were never willing to hold him accountable," Case Sletvold said.The Ohio Civil Rights Commission now has one year to make a determination in both cases. This could potentially result in a hearing by the civil rights branch of the Ohio Attorney General's Office, a commission spokesperson said.The commission's spokesperson declined to comment directly on the complaints filed by Pool and Torres.Pool, who joined the news conference Tuesday to support Torres, said he wants "accountability" and for the Sheffield Lake Police Department to implement diversity and inclusion equity training for the first time."Nobody, no matter who you are, deserves to be subjected to this treatment," Pool said.Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.Nicole Acevedo is a reporter for NBC News Digital. She reports, writes and produces stories for NBC Latino and NBCNews.com.	Civil Rights Activism
UK and US leaders have criticised China’s erosion of freedoms and rights in Hong Kong, as the territory marks 25 years since its handover from Britain.After Xi Jinping began his first visit to the city since 2017, British prime minister Boris Johnson and US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Beijing had failed to respect the “one country, two systems” arrangement agreed under the deal that ended British colonial rule in 1997.Vowing not to “give up” on Hong Kong, Johnson said: “It’s a state of affairs that threatens both the rights and freedoms of Hongkongers and the continued progress and prosperity of their home.”Blinken said Friday was supposed to be the halfway mark of 50 years of promised autonomy under one country, two systems, “yet it is now evident that Hong Kong and Beijing authorities no longer view democratic participation, fundamental freedoms, and an independent media as part of this vision.”“Authorities have jailed the opposition … raided independent media organisations … weakened democratic institutions, delayed elections,” Blinken said. “They have done all of this in an effort to deprive Hongkongers of what they have been promised.”Saying a strict security law imposed in Hong Kong by Beijing in 2020 had led to an “erosion of autonomy,” he said: “We stand in solidarity with people in Hong Kong and reinforce their calls for their promised freedoms to be reinstated.”On Thursday, Xi told crowds in Hong Kong – during a highly choreographed visit where opportunities for dissent have been stifled and media coverage heavily restricted – that the region had “risen from the ashes”.“My heart and that of the central government have been with our compatriots in Hong Kong,” he said, according to a translation by the South China Morning Post. “In the past few years, Hong Kong has gone through various severe challenges one after another, and has defeated them.“After the wind and rain, Hong Kong has risen from the ashes, and showed strong vibrancy.“As long as we stick to the ‘one country, two systems’ framework, Hong Kong will certainly have a brighter future and will make new and bigger contributions to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people,” he said.On Friday, Xi will swear in the next chief executive of the territory, John Lee, a former security head who oversaw the crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.The day began with a flag raising ceremony at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre The brief ceremony lasted about 20 minutes and took place amid a typhoon warning. While Hong Kong activists have rallied outside the flag raising ceremony in the past, they were warned by national security police not to protest this year.A woman pushing a baby cart walks past police check point outside the West Kowloon High Speed Rail Station ahead of President Xi Jinping’s arrival Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty ImagesLee has pledged to unite the city for “a new chapter”, while also promising an even more aggressive approach to counter “fearmongering and badmouthing” by critics.Johnson said he would seek to continue to hold China to its commitments, so that Hong Kong is “once again run by the people of Hong Kong, for the people of Hong Kong”. He said Britain’s immigration route for holders of British national (overseas) passports last year had attracted 120,000 applications.British foreign secretary Liz Truss echoed Johnson’s comments, and said: “Authorities have stifled opposition, criminalised dissent and driven out anyone who can speak truth to power.“The United Kingdom’s historic commitment to Hong Kong and its people endures. That is why we continue to challenge China for breaching the legally binding commitments it signed up to under the Joint Declaration.“We have called out their conduct on the world stage and stood together with our G7 partners in condemning the steady erosion of political and civil rights and Hong Kong’s autonomy.”Australia also criticised China for curbing the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong.“Australia remains deeply concerned by the continuing erosion of Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and autonomy, two years since the imposition of the National Security Law,” foreign minister Penny Wong said.	Civil Rights Activism
When the news presenter Lukwesa Burak first started working at the BBC, she was told that her afro-textured hair was “too ethnic”.Ten years later, a photograph of the black British broadcaster wearing sweeping braids as she presented the news went viral on Twitter.“Yes, I had braids while reading the news and yes, even on a national bulletin. Times have changed!” she tweeted last week.The image of the 48-year-old presenter prompted an outpouring of support, particularly from parents and teachers who wanted to instil confidence in black children.Thank you for all the messages & DMs. Yes, I had braids whilst reading the news and yes, even on a National bulletin. Times have changed! Thanks again 😘 pic.twitter.com/b4kVj7MSET— Lukwesa Burak (@LukwesaBurak) June 25, 2022 From workplaces to schools, natural black hair and protective hairstyles such as braids, locs and twists have been discriminated against and considered unprofessional or distracting.Speaking to the Guardian, Burak said Eurocentric beauty standards had created pressure for black youth and black women especially to adopt a “European look”. “Once they’re teenagers, a lot of black girls especially are chemically treating their hair to straighten it,” she said.Burak first wore her hair natural in a small afro a decade ago, when she was at Sky News, but says there is still an unspoken pressure in the news industry to wear your hair straight. “If you were to look back at black, mixed race or even Asian presenters, once they’re in front of the camera, often that hair is straightened.”Burak is not the only black British news presenter to wear natural or protective hair styles in front of the camera.Charlene White, who became the first black woman to present ITV News at 10, credited the former ITV news presenter Joyce Ohajah as a “trailblazer” for wearing braids on camera 15 years ago.White, who is also a co-host on the daytime chatshow Loose Women, which had its first all-black panel last May, recently discussed with her co-panellist Kéllé Bryan how braiding protects black women’s natural hair and allows it to recover from damage. “It’s an education for an audience who probably haven’t heard these conversations regarding black hair,” she said.Both Burak and White raised concerns about black and mixed-race students who continue to be penalised or excluded for their hairstyles in school.In 2020, schoolgirl Ruby Williams won £8,500 in an out-of-court settlement against a secondary school in Hackney, east London, after she was repeatedly sent home because of her afro hair. Instances like these, and the vitriol of online trolls, emboldened White to appear on-screen with a myriad of hairstyles: natural, protective and others.“I understand the impact that could have not just on little girls up and down the country, but grown black women as well, who are routinely told the style they wear their hair in is not presentable, professional, or suitable for an office or senior working environment,” White said.Fifty years ago, the British news industry was not so accommodating towards black journalists.When Barbara Blake Hannah became Britain’s first black female TV reporter in 1968 for Thames Television, she appeared on camera with straightened hair. “Everyone expected black hair to be straightened, so I didn’t get any comments from viewers about my hairstyle,” she said. But nine months in, Blake’s contract was abruptly terminated because of racist complaints from viewers. The decision coincided with the civil rights era “black is beautiful” movement in the US. “Having been racially profiled because of the colour of my skin, which included the fact that I had negro hair, even if it was straightened, that’s what led me to grow my natural hair,” said Blake, who now wears floor-length plaited dreadlocks. Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BSTSome change has crept in since Blake’s days as a reporter, particularly after the Black Lives Matter movement reignited conversations about race in the media.Nonetheless, Burak still received some negative responses to her tweet. “The rules are there to look more professional,” one user replied.“I don’t care how many negative vibes you’re going to send to me,” Burak said of online trolls. With a mixed-race teenaged daughter of her own, she wants young black and mixed-race youth to be proud of their natural hair. “I’m going to keep doing it, and that’s all that matters to me.”	Civil Rights Activism
The automaker is facing at least 10 lawsuits alleging widespread race discrimination or sexual harassment, including one by a California civil rights agency.A huge logo greets workers heading to the assembly line at Tesla Motors, on Feb. 19, 2015, in Fremont, Calif.Michael Macor / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images fileJuly 1, 2022, 11:50 AM UTCFifteen Black former or current employees at Tesla filed a lawsuit against the electric car maker on Thursday, alleging they were subjected to racial abuse and harassment at its factories.The workers said they were subjected to offensive racist comments and behavior by colleagues, managers, and human resources employees on a regular basis, according to the lawsuit filed in a California state court.The harassment, which occurred mostly at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory, included using the terms “nigger”, “slavery” or “plantation” or making sexual comments such as “likes booty,” the lawsuit said, adding that the automaker’s “standard operating procedures include blatant, open and unmitigated race discrimination”.Some of the plaintiffs were assigned to the most physically demanding posts in Tesla or passed over for promotion, according to the lawsuit.It said that Montieco Justice, a production associate at Tesla’s Fremont factory, was immediately demoted upon returning to Tesla after taking an authorized leave of absence as a result contracting COVID-19.Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.The automaker is facing at least 10 lawsuits alleging widespread race discrimination or sexual harassment, including one by a California civil rights agency.It previously has denied wrongdoing and says it has policies in place to prevent and address workplace misconduct.On Monday, a federal judge in California ordered a new trial on the damages Tesla owes to a Black former factory worker who accused the company of race discrimination, after he turned down a $15 million award. This month, a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit accusing CEO Elon Musk and the company’s board of directors of neglecting worker complaints and fostering a toxic workplace culture.	Civil Rights Activism
Fears over police violence and attacks by anti-abortion activists have been growing following a wave of incidents at demonstrations against the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which upheld the constitutional right to an abortion.Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people have gathered at protests objecting to the ruling. The protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful but some have seen incidents of police violence – including attacks on protesters – and an incident of a car driving dangerously through marchers.Law enforcement cracked down on protests in multiple states, wielding batons and forcibly removing protesters from public spaces and firing teargas in Arizona.Over two dozen pro-choice activists were arrested in New York City as protests took place in Washington Square Park, Union Square and in front of the NewsCorp building in midtown, home to Fox News studios.Pro-choice supporters hold signs at a rally outside the South Carolina statehouse. Photograph: Meg Kinnard/APIn Arizona, police fired rounds of teargas into protesters from inside the state Capitol building. Police later issued a statement saying they were concerned protesters would gain access to the building.In Greenville, South Carolina, six protesters were arrested following a clash with police that left some injured. In one video widely circulated on social media, a police officer is seen threatening a woman with a Taser and throwing an elderly man to the ground.Allen Chaney, a spokesperson for South Carolina’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union told the Guardian: “The ACLU of South Carolina strongly condemns violence against peaceful protesters. It should be the case that you can show up and peacefully protest in this country without fear of violence or wrongful arrest.”Protesters get ready to march to the governor’s mansion in Des Moines, Iowa. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/APMeanwhile, a pickup truck ploughed through protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, hospitalizing one woman. The Cedar Rapids police department declined to comment on the incident. The state recently passed a law making it legal for drivers to hit protesters with vehicles in certain circumstances. Other states in the US have passed similar laws.In Los Angeles, California, the Full House actor Jodie Sweetin was surrounded by police officers and pushed to the ground in front of fellow pro-choice protesters.In a statement following the event, Sweetin said: “Our activism will continue until our voices are heard and action is taken. This will not deter us, we will continue fighting for our rights. We are not free until ALL of us are free.”Journalists reporting in Los Angeles were also involved in violent incidents at the hands of police. Reporter Tina Desiree Berg was grabbed by a police officer, despite wearing a press badge around her neck. Samuel Braslow, another reporter for the Beverly Hills Courier, was also filmed being pushed by police.Police hold a pro-choice demonstrator to the ground in Los Angeles, California. Photograph: Vishal P Sing/ReutersThe Los Angeles police department issued a statement to the Guardian: “The LAPD is aware of the video clip of a woman being pushed. The force used will be evaluated against the LAPD’s policy and procedure.“As the nation continues to wrestle with the latest supreme court decision, the Los Angeles police department will continue to facilitate First Amendment rights, while protecting life and property.”In response to the arrests, private companies such as Live Nation Entertainment and the clothing retailer Patagonia offered to bail their employees out of jail, if arrested while peacefully protesting.The company issued a statement that said: “Patagonia supports choice.”“Caring for employees extends beyond basic health insurance, so we take a more holistic approach to coverage and support overall wellness to which every human has a right.”	Civil Rights Activism
Activists rallied in Washington DC last July asking governments to recognize East Turkestan as an occupied country. The Uyghur population in the Chinese Xinjiang province have been subject to brutal repressive tactics from the Beijing government.Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)Hackers are targeting members of the ever-repressed minority Uyghur community in western China by trying to get users to download a fake app version of a book released by a prominent Uyghur activist.In a report released Monday by the cybersecurity firm Cyble, cybersecurity researchers said the Android app-based malware is designed to look like the personal memoir of World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa titled The China Freedom Trap. The malware had an icon designed to look like the cover page, and opening the app reportedly displayed a pdf of the cover page and introduction of the book. In reality, the application contained spyware with the capacity to steal users’ text, call, and contact data. The malicious spyware could also take screenshots and pictures of the device in-use.The researchers did not identify who created the malicious app, though they did say it seemed designed to confuse and inject infectious software into the Uyghur community and into the devices of potential supporters. Researchers did not say how many times the malicious app could have been downloaded. Otherwise, the app was designed to “take advantage of the Uyghur-Chinese conflict to target unsuspecting individuals.”The WUC also warned its followers about the malicious software on Tuesday. Gizmodo reached out to the WUC for further comment, but we did not immediately hear back.The app was distributed outside the Google Play store (though unlike Apple, Android devices allow users to access apps not available on the official store) and even included a letter to Isa sent by then-U.S. ambassador Michael Kozak and former international religious freedom ambassador Sam Brownback in 2018.G/O Media may get a commissionDolkun Isa is the president of the World Uyghur Congress.Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP (Getty Images)Isa’s book is a biography of the WUC president’s work defending the Turkik Uyghur community against repressive tactics by the Chinese government. According to a press release published when the book was first released, Isa wrote that Beijing has tried multiple ways to “disrupt and discredit” him and Uyghur activism, including an attempted extradition to China.The timing also shows quick timing on the part of the malware developers. The China Freedom Trap was released a little more than a month ago, so the malware could have been released anywhere between then and now. Cyble wrote the spyware was first spotted by MalwareHunterTeam, which tweeted about the supposed malware toward the end of last month. Certificate data shows the app could be dated back to July.The Chinese government has been cited multiple times for extreme human rights abuses on the long-suffering Uyghur ethnic population, located mainly in the western Chinese Xinjiang province. A long-anticipated UN report released last week gave enormous credence to reports of reeducation centers, family separations, and prison sentences targeting the predominantly Muslim community.Past reports show China has dug deep into its surveillance and hacking capabilities to target both the Uyghur community and those advocating for the minority group. Reports from 2019 showed Chinese-affiliated hackers had wormed their way into telecom systems across multiple countries that play host to transient Uyghur populations in order to better track some individuals whereabouts. Beijing has poured massive GPS resources into enforcing a kind of “police state” on the ethnic minority.	Civil Rights Activism
After the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade on Friday, calls increased for tech companies to take a stand about the use of online data to incriminate individuals seeking or providing abortion services.Abortion and civil rights advocates have warned that there are few federal regulations on what information is collected and retained by tech firms, making it easy for law enforcement to access incriminating data on location, internet searches and communication history.Such data has already been used to prosecute people for miscarriages and pregnancy termination in states with strict abortion laws, including one case in which a woman’s online search for abortion pills was brought against her in court. This kind of legal response may now become more widespread, said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of advocacy group the Center for Countering Digital Hate.“These companies need to think very long and hard about the ways in which their platforms will be weaponized to criminalize people looking to access abortion healthcare, and they need to ensure that it doesn’t happen,” he said.Despite these growing calls, no major tech companies as of Friday afternoon had made public statements on how they will handle such data and respond to related law enforcement requests moving forward.Facebook and WhatsApp parent company Meta did not respond to request for comment. Ride share firms Uber and Lyft did not respond to request for comment. Google and Apple did not respond to request for comment.Smaller companies are also being targeted with questions over their data practices, as frantic calls to delete period tracking apps went viral following the supreme court decision. Some of those companies, unlike the tech giants, have taken public stands.“At this fraught moment, we hear the anger and the anxiety coming from our US community,” period tracking app Clue said in a statement. “We remain committed to protecting your reproductive health data.”Digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has advised companies in the tech world to preemptively prepare for a future in which they are served with subpoenas and warrants seeking user data to prosecute abortion seekers and providers.It recommends companies allow pseudonymous or anonymous access, stop behavioral tracking, and retain as little data as possible. It also advocated for end-to-end encryption by default and refrain from collecting any location information.“The best thing to do for tech companies is to not have this data when people come knocking through subpoenas or other legal actions,” said Shirin Mori, a data privacy expert at EFF.Experts are also encouraging individuals seeking abortions to use heightened data security practices, including encrypted communications and disabling location tracking. The Roe decision has highlighted a longstanding privacy crisis affecting users of the most commonly used tech services, said Ahmed.“This is very clarifying the extent to which the cost for these free services is held in the data that we willingly give them, which can now be weaponized against us,” he said.The threat of the fall of Roe, from when the decision was first leaked earlier this year, has intensified calls for federal data privacy legislation. Last week legislators including Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill that would would bar “data brokers from selling or transferring location data and health data”.“Data brokers profit from the location data of millions of people, posing serious risks to Americans everywhere by selling their most private information,” Warren said in a statement at the time. “With this extremist supreme court poised to overturn Roe v Wade and states seeking to criminalize essential health care, it is more crucial than ever for Congress to protect consumers’ sensitive data.”Johana Bhuiyan contributed reporting.	Civil Rights Activism
It is both stirring and terrifying how dependent we are on the honor of people otherwise entirely unknown and uncelebrated.Of that, Tuesday’s testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee by poll workers, local politicos, and others who faced down Donald Trump’s anti-American onslaught provided incontrovertible proof — vivid, dramatic, and moving.It also gave us a measure of how deep into darkness this country has descended, where civil servants who are doing their jobs are hounded and threatened by despicable mobs, set upon them by a former president and his craven cohort. Where it now takes near-superhuman resolve in some states to be an elections worker who believes in everyone’s right to vote.It should not have required immense courage for Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers to refuse demands by Trump that he validate the Big Lie of a stolen election and help overturn the will of the voters. But there was Bowers on Tuesday afternoon, looking very much like the brave hero of a Frank Capra movie, recounting his efforts to withstand the relentless pressure, despite the price exacted for his integrity: Ostracized by colleagues, he and his family have been hounded by mobs who still harass him in unspeakable terms, descending upon his home each week.Get Metro HeadlinesThe 10 top local news stories from metro Boston and around New England delivered daily.Georgia’s top two elections officials told similar stories of resistance and repercussions for refusing to go along with a scheme that was clearly illegal, including vile threats against themselves and their loved ones.But Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were the heartbreakers of the day. The two elections workers, proud and dedicated women, had their lives destroyed by Trump and his unhinged attorney Rudy Giuliani, who pretended election-night video showed the women — who are Black — stealing the election from Trump by handing off USB drives “like vials of heroin and cocaine.” What they were handing off were ginger mints.Here, of course, we see the racism that so often underlies Trumpism. Moss described a torrent of bigoted threats, including one telling her she was lucky it was “2020, and not 1920,” when she might have been lynched for her supposed transgressions. Freeman had to flee her home. Both women say they are now virtual shut-ins, terrified of being attacked in public.“There is nowhere I feel safe,” Freeman said. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one, but he targeted me … a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of a pandemic.”Moss, who loved helping older Georgians vote because she knew some of her forebears did not have that right, is no longer an elections worker. All of the permanent employees who counted votes that election night have also quit, she told the House panel.And here we arrive at the most dispiriting part of the gut-wrenching tale unwinding on Capitol Hill. Trumpism has sent this country hurtling back to the civil rights era, when working in the service of democracy was a dangerous vocation. Across the country, decent poll workers and elections officials are walking away from jobs, just like Moss did, or are being unseated by cultists on the MAGA right.It’s possible that those who led the effort to overturn the election and set a violent mob loose on Jan. 6 will face consequences for what they’ve done. But even if that unlikely moment comes to pass, what they’ve unleashed in this country is a crisis no indictment can contain. They have made this America great again for marauders whose menace turns even routine action by government workers into acts of courage. They have blown a gaping hole through our democracy.Too few Americans grasp the seriousness of this predicament — and that includes some at the center of this tragedy. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended democracy in Georgia in the wake of the 2020 election, nonetheless stands behind measures that will make it harder for likely Democratic voters to cast ballots there. Bowers, the God-fearing Arizona speaker, told the Associated Press he would vote for Trump again if he was the nominee in 2024.Really? After everything Trump put Bowers and his family — put this country — through?This is no Frank Capra movie. If only it were.Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeAbraham.	Civil Rights Activism
UPI Photo President Biden participates in a virtual meeting with leaders of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex, in Washington, DC, on Friday, June 17, 2022. Today, the Biden administration will surely celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination law that protects students from sex discrimination with a promise to all students of access to a safe, fair and equal education. This celebration will happen against the backdrop of LGBTQ youth facing bullies not just among their classmates, but on school boards, in state government and in extremist groups calling for violence at Pride events. A White House celebration of this important anniversary (which coincides with Pride month) that comes without newly proposed regulations authorizing the Department of Education and the federal government to use every legal tool available to protect LGBTQ students from bullying, harassment and violence will ring hollow. I often think about my own experience as a gay boy in North Carolina, where the fear of being outed kept me alone and hopeless. I saw how my own LGBTQ students struggled still in the decade I spent teaching high school history after graduating from college. I understand, all too well, the price young LGBTQ people pay when they can’t be themselves and when the adults in their lives — including at school — don’t protect them. And what I, and many other LGBTQ people, know from personal experience is backed by data. According to the Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network’s 2019 National School Climate Survey, over 80 percent of LGBTQ students reported verbal harassment because of their sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity and almost 15 percent reported physical assaults. Schools should be safe places for all students. When LGBTQ students feel unsafe at school, the outcomes are serious. LGBTQ students, miss school more often, have lower GPAs, and are less likely to go to college. These problems are compounded for LGBTQ youth of color. Mental health issues are also more common amongst LGBTQ youth who do not feel safe at school and they sometimes manifest in dangerous and life-threatening ways. Forty percent of the youth surveyed in The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Health reported seriously considering suicide in the prior year alone. The Biden administration has apparently prepared an updated Title IX rule that we have been waiting for since April. Considering the existing data and the frightening and incessant attacks on transgender and queer youth, it’s clear that the safety of LGBTQ young people in our nation’s schools is urgent. So I ask, what are you waiting for, Mr. President? We need an updated rule now that reverses the Trump-era regulations that weakened Title IX protections against sex-based harassment. We need a rule that confirms that Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination unequivocally fully protects all students, including LGBTQ students, in educational programs and activities. During my own youth and my days as a teacher, the bullies who tortured LGBTQ youth were other classmates. Today, the bullies are still at school, but now they are also adults who hijack school board meetings to ban books that are validating lifelines for isolated youth. Other bullies hold official positions in state government where they propose and pass laws that censor discussion of LGBTQ topics and regulate whether transgender youth can play on teams and what restrooms they can use. Today, they wield their power with outrageous cruelty, ordering investigations of parents who help their transgender children access medically necessary health care, causing the threat of child abuse charges and separation from their families to loom ominously. Still, other bullies are white nationalists who plan violent riots to disrupt Pride events, wreaking terror in spaces where our communities go for safety, community and joyous celebration. On the 50th anniversary of one of the most important civil rights laws for students, President Biden and his administration can make a loud and resounding statement of support for our youth by finally issuing a proposed rule that includes LGBTQ students in the full protections of Title IX. Doing so would give substance to his Day One promise that he sees them and that their safety matters. Or, the date can pass, still with no action, leaving our vulnerable youth to continue to wait and weather this storm without the protections Congress promised them half a century ago. I urge the president to choose the safety and well-being of LGBTQ youth. Then we can all truly have a happy Pride month. Kevin Jennings founded the first school-based Gay-Straight Alliance, founded the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and served as an assistant deputy secretary of education for President Obama. He is currently the CEO of Lambda Legal.	Civil Rights Activism
The Justice Department announced today that it has filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona challenging voting restrictions imposed by House Bill 2492 (2022), a recently-enacted law set to take effect in January 2023. The United States’ complaint challenges provisions of House Bill 2492 under Section 6 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and Section 101 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “House Bill 2492’s onerous documentary proof of citizenship requirement for certain federal elections constitutes a textbook violation of the National Voter Registration Act,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “For nearly three decades, the National Voter Registration Act has helped to move states in the right direction by eliminating unnecessary requirements that have historically made it harder for eligible voters to access the registration rolls. Arizona has passed a law that turns the clock back on progress by imposing unlawful and unnecessary requirements that would block eligible voters from the registration rolls for certain federal elections. The Justice Department will continue to use every available tool to protect all Americans’ right to vote and to ensure that their voices are heard.” “The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona is dedicated to protecting voters in the state,” said U.S. Attorney Gary M. Restaino for the District of Arizona. “We are proud to join the Civil Rights Division in bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all eligible citizens in Arizona have the opportunity to register to vote and exercise their fundamental right to participate in our elections.” The United States’ complaint contends that House Bill 2492 violates the NVRA by requiring that applicants produce documentary proof of citizenship before they can vote in presidential elections or vote by mail in any federal election when they register to vote using the uniform federal registration form created by the NVRA. This requirement flouts the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Ariz., Inc., 570 U.S. 1 (2013), which rejected an earlier attempt by Arizona to impose a similar documentary proof of citizenship mandate on applicants seeking to vote in federal elections. The United States’ complaint also contends that House Bill 2492 violates Section 101 of the Civil Rights Act by requiring election officials to reject voter registration forms based on errors or omissions that are not material to establishing a voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot. The United States’ complaint asks the court to prohibit Arizona from enforcing the provisions of House Bill 2492 that violate the NVRA and the Civil Rights Act. DOJ Facebook Comments	Civil Rights Activism
In a landmark settlement, a Maine assisted living facility has agreed to establish policies and procedures to ensure it is a welcoming place for LGBTQ seniors, after a 79-year-old transgender woman levied an accusation of discrimination.When Marie King filed her complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission in October, alleging that the Sunrise Assisted Living facility in the town of Jonesport refused her admission as a resident because she is transgender, it was believed to be the first complaint of this kind in U.S. history.The settlement does not set a binding legal precedent. But legal experts nevertheless expect it to raise awareness that nursing homes and other assisted living facilities must abide by various state and federal laws barring them from discriminating against transgender people. The settlement also provides a roadmap for how such facilities can better serve the needs of LGBTQ seniors.This development comes as more openly transgender adults are expected to enter their senior years — demographic growth in line with the overall increase in people older than 65, according to the Williams Institute. Research indicates that trans seniors are more likely than the general older population to need housing in assisted living facilities, in part because they are more prone to be alienated from family members, be in poorer health and live on lower incomes. Marie King, 79, filed a complaint in March alleging that a long-term care facility in Maine discriminated against her for being transgender.Susan R. SymondsAt a video conference meeting based in Augusta on Monday, the Maine Human Rights Commission approved the terms of the settlement negotiated by the commission, the Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and the Adult Family Care Homes of Maine, which runs nine assisted living facilities in the state, including Sunrise.“I’m thrilled to see this positive outcome,” King said in a statement issued through her attorneys at GLAD. “I believe the new policies will keep others from experiencing mistreatment and will help people understand that transgender people are only seeking to be treated with dignity and respect like anyone else.”Adult Family Care Homes of Maine did not admit guilt as a part of the settlement and continues to deny having discriminated against King. It has pledged to adopt a comprehensive policy barring discrimination against transgender people. The company will also require all of its staff attend a training, conducted by SAGECare, an LGBTQ+ cultural competency program run by SAGE, on serving this population. The nonprofit organization focuses on improving the lives of LGBTQ+ seniors.Chris Erchull, a staff attorney at GLAD, said that many staffers of such facilities lack the education and awareness pertaining to transgender adults and their needs, and are unsure how to comply with the law. “This is a groundbreaking case because it spells out for people what the minimum requirements of the law are and how to make sure that they comply with it,” Erchull said.“By no means do I think this is an isolated incident,” Karen L. Loewy, senior counsel at Lambda Legal, said of King’s case.The Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law, estimates there are at least 771,000 LGBTQ adults over 65 in the United States, including 171,100 transgender seniors.“Our research has shown that LGBT older adults face barriers to receiving formal health care and social support that heterosexual, cisgender adults do not,” said Ilan Meyer, a Williams Institute researcher. “Hopefully, other residential facilities will also implement policies consistent with this settlement.” Nearly half of U.S. states, including Maine, bar discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in both housing and public accommodation — legal categories that apply to assisted living facilities.In the spring of 2021, a social worker at Pen Bay Medical Center, where King was receiving medical care, sought a placement for her at Sunrise. Initially, a social worker at the long-term care facility said there were vacancies. But according to King’s complaint, when the Sunrise social worker learned she was transgender, she said they could not admit her because they did not want to place her with a cisgender woman roommate. On March 14, 2022, the Maine Human Rights Commission voted 3 to 2 that King had reasonable grounds to claim that Sunrise discriminated against her on the basis of her gender identity, transgender status and sex, all of which are protected under the Maine Human Rights Act. This opened the door for the commission to potentially file a lawsuit. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is in the process of conducting its own investigation to determine if Sunrise’s alleged refusal to admit King as a resident violated the sex discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Courts have interpreted the 2010 law as barring discrimination based on gender identity in health care settings that receive federal funds, including assisted living facilities.Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton decision established protection for LGBTQ people against workplace discrimination.In an emailed statement to NBC News, John K. Hamer, an attorney at Rudman Winchell in Boston, which represents Adult Family Care Homes of Maine, said that the Sunrise social worker told King’s social worker that Sunrise “was not an appropriate place for Ms. King” because of the possibility that a cisgender woman roommate “was not comfortable having a transgender roommate.”“However,” Hamer stated, “Sunrise Assisted Living would not have denied Ms. King residency based on her transgender status had she applied for residency. Ms. King just never applied.”He added that Sunrise “is happy to work with GLAD to enhance its existing policies and to provide training to ensure that such a miscommunication does not happen again.”As a part of the settlement, the facility has agreed to provide a $1,000 payment to King and an $8,500 payment to GLAD for attorneys fees.Aaron Tax, managing director of government affairs and policy advocacy at SAGE, said that the details of King’s case “speak to the need for comprehensive, explicit national civil rights protections” for LGBTQ older people. Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign, pointed to survey data indicating that 70% of Americans support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans. She said that the Maine settlement “really represents what people think should be happening: that LGBTQ folks have access to remedies when they experience discrimination.”	Civil Rights Activism
Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, a new documentary about the former congresswoman turned gun control activist, opens on the National Mall dotted with bouquets like a somber orchard – 40,000 white flowers for lives lost to gun violence in the US in 2019, 5,000 orange ones for the increase in 2020. She walks with a limp and a cane, the result of partial paralysis on her right side following an attempted assassination in 2011. Her face, altered by the injuries from a gunshot wound to the head and several life-saving surgeries, bears a grim recognition. Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, directed by RBG film-makers Betsy West and Julie Cohen, is as much about America’s unrelenting and preventable epidemic of gun violence, for which Giffords is both a dauntless activist and grim statistic, as well as Giffords’s improbable recovery. It has been 11 years since a gunman opened fire at one of her constituent meet-and-greets, killing six and leaving Giffords in critical condition with a bullet through the left hemisphere of her brain, where language function resides.In the years since, Giffords relearned to walk, to speak and to communicate with aphasia – a condition which limits one’s ability to use or understand language, which affects over 2 million Americans (including the actor Bruce Willis), often as a result of strokes or brain tumors. She returned to Congress to advocate for long overdue gun reform in the wake of Sandy Hook, which ultimately did not pass; she has traveled the country on behalf of her foundation, Giffords, working to pass gun control legislation and counter-program the NRA. She bikes, plays the French horn and sings along perfectly to pop songs. And, as the film captures first-hand, she returned to the campaign trail in support of her husband of 15 years, the former astronaut Mark Kelly, during his successful bid for US Senate from Arizona in 2020.“This is a film, obviously, about an activist who is working to try and solve this horrible epidemic of gun violence in our country,” co-director West, sitting next to Cohen and Giffords in the latter’s Tucson living room, told the Guardian via Zoom. “But it is also, at its core, a tremendously personal story. A comeback story, of somebody who really faced such a challenge, the worst thing that could possibly happen short of being killed. And coming back from that, how did that happen? How did she do it?” Giffords said she had learned, through 11 years of recovery and disability, “to be grateful for friends and family, and to live every day to the fullest”. (Because of Giffords’s aphasia, which limits her ability to spontaneously communicate verbally, the Guardian agreed to questions ahead of time.)Most Americans are probably somewhat familiar with the day that changed Giffords’s life: on 8 January 2011, Giffords, then 40, was hosting a meet-and-greet outside a Safeway in her hometown of Tucson when Jared Loughner, a 22-year-old with a history of paranoid schizophrenia, opened fire. Despite a history of erratic, disruptive behavior, Loughner passed a background check and legally purchased a Glock semi-automatic weapon six weeks prior. Earlier that morning, a salesperson at a Tucson Walmart, concerned by Loughner’s agitated behavior, lied and said the store was out of the ammunition he asked for; Loughner then went to another Walmart, purchased eight boxes of 9mm ammunition for $83, and went to the Safeway.He killed six people: Christina Taylor-Greene, nine; Dorothy “Dot” Morris, 76; federal judge John Roll, 63; Phyllis Schneck, 79; Dorwan Stoddard, 76; and Gabe Zimmerman, Giffords’s 30-year-old community outreach director. Giffords, shot through the head, was saved by immediate first aid from staffer Daniel Hernandéz Jr; within the hour, doctors at University medical center in Tucson removed a large portion of her skull to ease pressure on her brain.The film picks up during her immense recovery process at Memorial Hermann medical center in Houston, where she traveled for rehab, via home video shot by Kelly. “I thought at some point, whether it was a year or 10 years later, Gabby was going to want to see what she went through,” Kelly says in the film. The footage is raw, at once hopeful and dispiriting. Nineteen days after the shooting, head shorn from surgery, Giffords smiles on command and manages a slight thumbs up. Three weeks out, she struggles to form the mouth shape to blow air into a pinwheel. Thirty days after the shooting, she’s able to say her name and sing along to some lyrics from songs (music, the film explains, is an important part of aphasia therapy as it uses parts of the brain outside the language center.) Five weeks out, she’s able to complete sentences but perseverating, for unknown reasons, on the word “chicken”; unable to say “happy birthday” to her husband without adding “chicken”, she breaks down in sobs.A decade later, Giffords and Kelly watch, on camera, these videos from the early days of recovery with a sense of humor, able to laugh now at the randomness of “chicken”. There’s a throughline of determination and awe for the long road of Giffords’s recovery, from surgery to the daily rhythms of therapy. At one point, the film-makers interweave footage of Kelly’s docking of the Endeavor space shuttle at the International Space Station – a tricky hours-long procedure which requires manually flying two vehicles within 2in of each other – to the doctors in Houston who perfectly reconstructed and fit a prosthetic for the missing part of Giffords’s skull. (The two extremely risky and precise operations occurred on the same day.) Flash forward to 2020, Giffords is in a Zoom meeting with her longtime speech therapist, Fabi Hirsch, in which the two practice, word by slow word, lines for a Kelly campaign ad: “Marriage is a commitment.” Later, following Kelly’s victory, she advises on his maiden speech in their kitchen: slow down, shoulders back, slow down. The two have a “symbiotic relationship”, West said. “They help each other a lot.” Giffords described Kelly as her “best friend” with a wry sense of humor.Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. Photograph: Shannon Finney/Getty Images for Briarcliff EntertainmentCohen and West wondered if a film on gun control activism, in a country that repeatedly fails to pass meaningful reform at the federal level, where the supreme court recently struck down state-level concealed carry laws, would be too much of a downer. “Is it going to be so depressing that it wouldn’t be fun to watch?” Cohen said of their concerns. “And the answer to that concern is Gabby herself. Making this film was so much fun.”Given the intransigence of the issue – it has taken nearly three decades and two more recent devastating mass shootings (in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York) for Congress to pass a law just to meaningfully strengthen background checks this summer – does Giffords ever want to give up? “No way, Jose,” she answered. “Move ahead to not look back.”“We want people to think seriously about the epidemic of gun violence and the possibility of making some change, of not just giving up,” Cohen added of the film. “We want people to understand more about aphasia and learn a little bit about the brain, but the main thing we want is for people to come out of this theater feeling really motivated and really, really good. That’s how we felt, spending time with Gabby, and that’s how we want all audiences to feel.”“For me it has been really important to move ahead, to not look back,” Giffords said. “I hope others are inspired to keep moving forward no matter what.” Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down is now out in US cinemas with a UK date to be announced	Civil Rights Activism
Littlefeather was asked by Best Actor winner Brando to turn down the award in 1973 due to the treatment of Native Americans. Sacheen Littlefeather made history in 1973 when she turned down the Academy Award for Best Actor on behalf of “The Godfather” winner Marlon Brando. Almost 50 years later, Indigenous activist Littlefeather is now also cementing her record on Hollywood representation: She’s now one of the few people in history to ever receive a formal apology from the Academy. “As you stood on the Oscars stage in 1973 to not accept the Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, in recognition of the misrepresentation and mistreatment of Native American people by the film industry, you made a powerful statement that continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity,” a letter signed by former Academy President David Rubin stated, as addressed June 18. Littlefeather will also be the guest of honor at “an evening of healing and Indigenous celebration” hosted by the Academy Museum in Los Angeles on September 17. The letter continues, “The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified. The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.” The abuse targeted at a then 26-year-old Littlefeather included being booed and heckled onstage at the Oscars, as well as racial slurs, threats of arrest (including from show producer Howard Koch if she went over the 60-second time limit), and physical violence. At the time, Littlefeather paraphrased Brando’s eight pages of prepared remarks due to the time limit. “[Brando] very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award,” Littlefeather said onstage in 1973. “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry — excuse me — and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.” Littlefeather’s reference to the protest at Wounded Knee also in part “resulted in her being professionally boycotted, personally attacked and harassed, and discriminated against for the last 50 years,” an Academy statement read. “Regarding the Academy’s apology to me, we Indians are very patient people—it’s only been 50 years! We need to keep our sense of humor about this at all times. It’s our method of survival,” Littlefeather said in the Academy announcement. “I never thought I’d live to see the day for this program to take place, featuring such wonderful Native performers and Bird Runningwater, a television and film producer who also guided the Sundance Institute’s commitment to Indigenous filmmakers for twenty years through the Institute’s Labs and Sundance Film Festival. This is a dream come true. It is profoundly heartening to see how much has changed since I did not accept the Academy Award 50 years ago. I am so proud of each and every person who will appear on stage.” Per Littlefeather, Western genre star John Wayne had to be physically restrained from storming the stage, presumably to assault her. She also said that the federal government threatened to shut down any productions she was part of that would nationally air. The full apology statement from the Academy will be read during the Academy Museum event honoring Littlefeather, who will be in conversation with producer Bird Runningwater (Cheyenne/Mescalero Apache/N.M.), co-chair of the Academy’s Indigenous Alliance. Runningwater first reached out to Littlefeather, along with Academy Inclusion Advisory Committee member Heather Rae, to record an episode for the Academy Museum podcast as well as partake in the visual history for the Academy Oral History Projects, to be released in September. An Evening with Sacheen Littlefeather will be free to the public via online reservations and will also include land acknowledgments by Virginia Carmelo (Tongva/S. Calif.) and performances by traditional vocalist and singer Calina Lawrence (Suquamish/Wash.), the San Manuel Bird Singers (San Manuel/Calif.), Michael Bellanger (Ojibiway/Minn. and Kickapoo/Okla.) and the All Nation Singers and Dancers and Steve Bohay (Kiowa/Okla.), and the Sooner Nation Singers and Dancers, as well as remarks from Rubin and incoming Academy president Janet Yang, Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Assemblymember James Ramos (Serrano/Cahuilla/So. Calif.). Academy Museum director and president Jacqueline Stewart and Earl Neconie (Kiowa/Okla.) will emcee the evening. As for Native American representation onscreen, Littlefeather told THR, “At long last, somebody is breaking down the doors. And I’m so very happy this is happening – even though I don’t swear like they do on ‘Reservation Dogs.'” Below, read the Academy’s full statement of reconciliation to Sacheen Littlefeather: June 18, 2022 Dear Sacheen Littlefeather, I write to you today a letter that has been a long time coming on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with humble acknowledgment of your experience at the 45th Academy Awards. As you stood on the Oscars stage in 1973 to not accept the Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando, in recognition of the misrepresentation and mistreatment of Native American people by the film industry, you made a powerful statement that continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity. The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified. The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration. We cannot realize the Academy’s mission to “inspire imagination and connect the world through cinema” without a commitment to facilitating the broadest representation and inclusion reflective of our diverse global population. Today, nearly 50 years later, and with the guidance of the Academy’s Indigenous Alliance, we are firm in our commitment to ensuring indigenous voices—the original storytellers—are visible, respected contributors to the global film community. We are dedicated to fostering a more inclusive, respectful industry that leverages a balance of art and activism to be a driving force for progress. We hope you receive this letter in the spirit of reconciliation and as recognition of your essential role in our journey as an organization. You are forever respectfully engrained in our history. With warmest regards, David RubinPresident, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.	Civil Rights Activism
Juneteenth may be the country’s newest federal holiday, but for many Black Americans, June 19 has long been associated with homegrown community celebrations, if not at least understood as a day to symbolize freedom. “For Black folks, there has been a long tradition of commemorating Juneteenth,” said Amara Enyia, policy and research coordinator at Movement for Black Lives. But now that Juneteenth is a federal holiday, complete with offices and schools closing in recognition of it, the inevitable has also taken shape: commercialism. Box stores from coast to coast are lining shelves with Juneteenth products. Walmart caught the most flack recently for stocking a Juneteenth Great Value brand ice cream flavor, the label touting a trademark symbol. The move prompted questions about who can even own the idea of Juneteenth, and the appropriateness of corporations cashing in on what could be considered a bittersweet holiday, commemorating the end of enslavement and the beginning of a generations-long struggle for civil rights. ‘We cannot, at this stage, afford symbolism’ In Galveston, Texas, the home of Juneteenth, residents began marking the day when members of the Union Army arrived upon the southern reaches of Texas in 1865 to both inform enslaved people that they were henceforth entitled to a wage for their labor, and to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation among slaveholders. Black people have led their own celebrations for the holiday since its inception. Their celebrations have since reached everywhere the Black diaspora has spread. Juneteenth’s popularity has waxed and waned over the decades, but was thrust back into the public interest with racial justice movements demanding more political capital, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Last year, President Joe Biden signed legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, answering the calls from Black activists. This year, some attempts to celebrate the day have gone sour, very publicly. Many were angry to see the trademarked Juneteenth ice cream on shelves, developed with the help of a corporation that creates artificial flavors, and a children’s museum apologized after its Juneteenth menu included a watermelon salad. A Juneteenth soul food celebration in Arkansas was canceled after a leaked poster for the event revealed none of its featured hosts were Black. “Companies that are having these picnics for their employees and feeding them fried chicken and watermelon — who made that call?” Torrina Harris of Galveston quipped.Ultimately, said Enyia, “it is a testament to this country and the way our systems are set up to where the automatic knee-jerk default or response is profit-making or profit-seeking.” The impulse, when it comes to many holidays, is to focus more on the “bright side” — in this case, emancipation, freedom — which lends itself to digestible celebrations and commemorative products. Doing so brushes aside the thing Black people were being emancipated from: centuries of slavery. But, Enyia said, the inherent nature of the holiday is also “a reminder of how this country has treated Black people. It’s a reminder of the history of this country.”Angela Tate, a curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, points out that throughout all the generations of Juneteenth community-led celebrations, which have taken place in big cities, small towns and rural communities, Black people have tended to pair the bitter and the sweet. “African Americans have always used these moments of memory to think about where the community has come from and what we’re pursuing and striving toward, as well as taking the time to pass down history and culture,” she said last year. “Juneteenth is a moment to think about freedom being conditional freedom and it is something that we must continuously strive and fight for.”But major companies looking for a way to participate in Juneteenth celebrations “do not understand or are not interested in addressing the substantive issues that these holidays — this holiday in particular — can shed light on,” Enyia said. Harris, a board member of Vision Galveston, a nonprofit organization, agreed that celebrating Juneteenth should go much deeper than ticking off a box. Getting involved in organizing a Juneteenth celebration or presenting a product should also prompt questions like, “Are you actually giving decision-making power that also influences how funds are distributed? Are you giving decision making power to people who are representative of the community that this holiday is meant to honor?”In the same way that LGBTQ Pride Month has become synonymous with rainbow flags throughout the month of June as advocates continue to demand equity and action for queer people, Enyia draws similar parallels for companies eyeing Juneteenth. “We cannot, at this stage, afford symbolism,” she said. Celebrating Juneteenth, past and presentHistorically, local communities created their own stages for celebrating Juneteenth. In some places, afternoon-long festivals with food and music would be paired with readings of African American poetry, and readings of seminal speeches from Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass. The 2020 documentary “Miss Juneteenth” illustrated the joyous ways Black communities celebrate themselves each year. Now that it's a federal holiday, part of figuring out how to mark the day as a nation comes with educating the public about it. More Americans say they have at least some knowledge about Juneteenth than they did last year, according to a Gallup poll published Thursday. Eleven percent of respondents said they knew nothing at all about Juneteenth this year compared with 28% last year, despite 45 states and Washington, D.C., having had some formal recognition of Juneteenth before Biden signed the bill into law. With greater understanding has also come more support for recognition: This year, 45% of respondents said they thought Juneteenth should be a federal holiday, and 25% said they were not sure or were unfamiliar with Juneteenth. That’s compared with 35% who last year said it should be a federal holiday, and 40% who said they were not sure or unfamiliar with the holiday. And despite many of the laws that have swept through states restricting race-conscious education, 63% said they supported making Juneteenth part of history curriculums in public schools, up from 49% last year. The shifting tide is exactly what Opal Lee, who has long lobbied for federal recognition of Juneteenth as a holiday, has been working toward for decades. Still, she warned against resting “on our laurels,” she told D magazine. “There is still work to be done. Our educational system doesn’t tell the truth and we need the truth told.”Lee is one of many activists and organizers who say Juneteenth is not only for celebration but for action. A coalition of organizations are demanding that Biden create a federal commission by executive order to study reparations and the long-term effects of slavery. Enyia, of the Movement for Black Lives, said that action is especially important for bolstering policies that will benefit Black people and contribute toward their liberation — whether it’s overhauling policing and public safety on a local and federal level or policies that would expand economic opportunities like student loan forgiveness. For Lee, who has spent much of her 95 years marching on roads across the country to advocate for Juneteenth as its own federal holiday, Juneteenth is a moment for work, but it’s also a moment for all Americans to celebrate their liberties. “It’s important that people recognize it is not a Black thing, that it’s not just a Texas thing, but that it’s about freedom for everybody — and we’re not free yet.” Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.CORRECTION (June 20, 2022, 11:15 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article mischaracterized Vision Galveston’s work. The group does not organize Juneteenth events; it is a civic organization geared toward Galveston, Texas residents.	Civil Rights Activism
Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television and America’s first Black billionaire, wants a check. He wants it from the government. And he wants it to come with an apology for slavery, Jim Crow, and hundreds of years of racism.The 75-year-old media magnate owns several homes, heads an asset management firm, and was the first Black person to own a majority stake in an NBA team. He doubts that check will ever come, but he sees a new kind of reparations—being called by a different name so as not be “divisive” or “controversial”—happening already. The new “reparations” is critical race theory education, it’s the housing grant program in Evanston, Illinois, it’s the $5 billion of targeted support and debt relief for Black farmers, and it’s the $50 billion in corporate pledges in the wake of George Floyd’s murder dedicated to combating systemic racism and inequality. (Even though just $250 million, or 0.5%, has actually materialized so far.)“That’s what’s happening to the reparations—it’s been cut up into small pieces of things that look and feel like, ‘We want to end systemic racism, we want to end police brutality and shootings and to provide financing to Black small business owners,’” Johnson tells VICE News.“And then people can say, ‘Well, we really don’t need reparations because when you put all of these things together, it’s reparations. It’s just not one big bill or asking this country to stand up and apologize, and you’re not asking people to pay out of their paychecks.”But that’s the problem, Johnson says. He calls the current approach “placebo paternalism.”“Reparations had two components: The first was atonement, and the other was monetary,” he adds. “With no doubt whatsoever, it was supposed to come from the government representing the people of the country. It was reimbursement, or recompense if you will, for the harm.”The fight for reparations has evolved significantly since The Atlantic published Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” in 2014. It has grown from a struggle to raise awareness and build sympathy for the cause, to a campaign that seeks to calculate exactly what is owed and how it should be distributed and demand full payment.Andre Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is leading a research project that will quantify the economic harm caused by slavery and its centuries-long legacy of racism. He views the recent compensatory actions more as steps in the right direction toward a government reparations program than a substitute for or a diversion from one.“The injury around racism occurred at federal, state, and local levels as well as other institutions—colleges, companies, churches—so each has a responsibility to address past wrongs,” Perry says. “We can’t wait for the federal government to issue reparations. In fact, for me, reparations won’t come from Washington, it’ll go to Washington.”“It will be because things are moving at the local level that eventually a president will respond with national policy,” he says.So far the response from Washington has been minimal, but minimal is an improvement over decades of derision and silence.Support for reparations most recently has been bolstered by commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and Black congressional leaders now are pushing for a vote on HR 40, or the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.The bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in April for the first time since it was introduced in 1989 by Rep. John Conyers. However, President Joe Biden has reportedly expressed diminished expectations for congressional action.“We are still in a mode of building more will for education, for engagement for the work to actually help people better understand the problem,” says Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy organization that backs reparations proposals nationwide.“HR 40, when it’s passed, will not actually provide reparations for anyone, but what it will do is move us on the road to be more truthful and in direct conversation about what happened. We’re also seeing local communities have these conversations, seeing a reparations mindset to some advocacy work to repay Black people.”Much of that education needs to be dedicated to ensuring that reparations is an investment program rather than a charity program, Johnson argues, and that means wealthy and famous Black Americans like himself—he also names Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James — also should be paid.It just makes good business sense to put capital in the hands of those who have shown they know how to put it to work, he says, if a government program is to be a successful economic stimulus that repairs Black communities.That’s why he’s less sanguine about the current state of things: The much-ballyhooed corporate donations and local programs are treated as charity rather than investment, Johnson says, and charity is meant to pacify rather than incentivize.“If you’re a successful Black business, the idea is you’ve had enough,” Johnson says. But “no one ever asks if [a white-owned business] is too rich to benefit from investing in a football stadium” or receiving other benefits like preferential tax treatment or liquidity injections from the Federal Reserve.He is continuing to push for a $14 trillion reparations proposal he says would provide enough to close the yawning Black/white wealth gap that exists through home ownership, wages, and occupational attainment, among other imbalances. Though he’s not exactly optimistic.“Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism and for that reason Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth and therefore we as a country now must atone by paying Black people of all stripes —the rich ones, the poor ones, and the middle—out of our pocket,” Johnson says.Still, he’s working to get his proposal in front of legislators and backing a $30 billion tax incentive program, the Better Opportunity and Outcomes for Socially Disadvantaged Talent (BOOST) Act, to help grease the wheels of change.And he wants his check. It’s due.This series is supported by JPMorgan Chase. VICE News retains complete editorial autonomy.Get the latest from VICE News in your inbox. Sign up right here.By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.	Civil Rights Activism
Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, the first woman of color elected to Congress, now has a portrait to honor her legacy at the U.S. Capitol.A painting of the late congresswoman was unveiled in Statuary Hall Thursday in a ceremony celebrating her trailblazing efforts in the fight against sexual discrimination in sports and education.The portrait will be displayed as part of a series of portraits that recognize members of Congress who've increased diversity and representation in the House. Other portraits include former Reps. Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress, and Florence Kahn, the first Jewish woman in Congress."By force of her personality, the power of her brilliance, her persuasiveness, nobody could ever say no, to Patsy Mink, that's just the way it was. You could but you'd be wasting time because eventually, you'd be saying yes," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, talking about Mink's legislative work.Most notably, Mink, first elected in 1964, was key in ensuring what's become known simply as Title IX -- was signed into law.The law states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."Following Mink's death, caused by viral pneumonia, in 2002 at age 74, Title IX was renamed the "Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act" in tribute.Lawmakers, also commemorating the 50th anniversary of Title IX Thursday, spoke about the opportunities the legislation provided for women while also acknowledging that work remained, such as fighting for pay equity, ending campus sexual harassment, and securing access to health care for women."Of course, we still have a way to go for true equity, and we need to strengthen Title IX and protect the rights of every student to a welcoming and supportive school environment by working to build on the progress Congresswoman Patsy Mink worked so hard to secure," Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii said.Mink's daughter, Dr. Gwendolyn Mink also used Thursday's ceremony as a call to action for Congress to continue to push toward equal opportunity."My mother held the view that justice requires eternal vigilance. We can't rest on our laurels. We must never greet accomplishment with complacency," Mink said."I think she would hope that her portrait would help inspire that rededication as a reminder to vigilance, a call to activism, and an inspiration to keep doing the work of U.S. democracy."Members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus also tearfully told stories about the importance of her representation in Congress and what her portrait will symbolize for people who visit the Capitol."Growing up, I never thought I would be in elected office, let alone a member of Congress. It's because I never saw anyone who looked like me in such positions. So, it never even occurred to me that it was a possibility. But think of how different this will be with the installation of this portrait. So many young girls will see it as they walk through the halls of the U.S. Capitol. And they will see a shining example of what Asian American women and women of color can do as trailblazers in Congress," caucus chair Rep. Judy Chu said.	Civil Rights Activism