LDF News and Media Today:
A sampling of Race, Justice, Equality and Democracy in the news.
Congress keeps up pressure on Iqbal, Twombly

Also scheduled to testify at the Judiciary hearing are two critics of the Iqbal decision, John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Stephen Burbank of the University of Pennsylvania [...]

By Lee A. Daniels
They were criminals, all 400-plus of them, according to the duly enacted laws of the states of the Old Confederacy – lawbreakers, ‘race mixers,’ and disturbers of the peace.  Government officials and editorialists across the South called them “communists,” “socialists,” and “outside agitators.” They were beaten, with the connivance of the police, by Ku Klux Klan thugs in Alabama. They were jailed in Mississippi, first in the city jail in Jackson, and then, in the notorious Parchman state penitentiary. Their very lives were in danger.

They were the Freedom Riders.

By Mark Lassiter
On Tuesday, December 1, a potentially historic mayoral election will take place in Atlanta, Georgia. The November 3 election led to a runoff between City Councilor Mary Norwood, a white woman running as an Independent, though some say she’s Republican; and Georgia State Senator Kasim Reed, a Democrat who has the support of both the local hip-hop stars and the old-school civil rights veterans.

By Deborah Rudacille
The Montgomery County Conservation Corps combines job training with intensive counseling and character-building. But it is the promise of earning a GED that gets most corps members in the door.

LDF News and Media Today:
A sampling of Race, Justice, Equality and Democracy in the news.

Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice
In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption. Civil liberties groups [...]

Nine years ago this week, Carlos Lavernia was exonerated through DNA testing in Texas. He was convicted based in part on an eyewitness identification in a flawed lineup. The victim testified at trial that Lavernia was the only man in the lineup who “anywhere near resembles” the perpetrator. In order to reduce misidentifications, it’s critical that lineup participants resemble the witness descriptions of the perpetrator.

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Everywhere I turn these days I keep seeing or hearing the words, “No More Excuses.” From black self-help book titles to black pundits on CNN, these three words have become the mantra of post-racialism in the Age of President Obama. Whether intended or not, the mantra fuels the belief that because of individual black achievements, we have finally reached the promised land of a color-blind, equal-opportunity America.

By TaRessa Stovall
Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,  a writer since age 7, was challenged to give the talk of her life in under 20 minutes. The result is nothing less than spellbinding.

LDF News and Media Today:
A sampling of Race, Justice, Equality and Democracy in the news.

The Demise of the Death Penalty in the USA:
The Politics of Capital Punishment and the Question of Innocence

1,1821 executions have taken place in the US since the restoration of capital punishment in 1976 following a moratorium [...]

By TaRessa Stovall
In a victory not only for a gifted athlete, but for humanity as a whole, Caster Semenya, the gifted South African teen track star who was mired in controversy over confusion about her gender, was found “innocent of any wrong” doing by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and allowed to retain her 800m gold medal, title and prize money.