By The Editors

As 2012 looms, and TheDefendersOnline.com takes its traditional two-week hiatus for the holidays, we look back on a year full of astonishing events. Abroad England exploded in a brief spasm of widespread rioting that was driven by poverty and racial alienation. In Norway a lone gunman spurred by a different kind of racial alienation, killed nearly 80 of his countrymen teenagers as well as adults in a stunning murderous rampage. Across the Middle East, tens of thousands of ordinary people staged largely nonviolent “uprisings” against their countries’ repressive governments, driving from power dictatorial rulers in Egypt and Libya. But the single most powerful news event was the killing byU.S. commandos of Osama bin Laden during a daring raid on his secret compound in Pakistan. All of these events had their repercussions within the U.S., given the fierce partisanship between Democratic and Republican parties and the polarization that has been a constant of the political landscape since President Obama’s election. That is the framework in which the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has continued its work long the social-justice front, work that is reflected in the few articles from several of this year’s issues we’ve chosen re-post here as a reminder that the struggle to maintain and expand the rights won in the past goes on.

– The Editors

• Supreme Court Will Decide Fairness of Cocaine Sentencing Rules By The Editors
• Life Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Trying Juveniles as Adults Doesn’t Reduce Juvenile Crime By Kenneth J. Cooper
• Georgia Remains Center of Death Penalty Controversy By George E. Curry
• Black firefighter hopefuls who sued 16 years ago turn out for physical testing By Ronnie Reese via the Chicago Tribune
• Housing and Race: The Continuing Crisis By John Payton
• Black America: What Will ‘Catastrophe’ Look Like?’ By Lee A. Daniels
• Civil Rights Organizations Settle Hurricane Katrina Housing Discrimination Case against HUD and Louisiana”
• There’s Something Wrong With This Picture: Blacks/Latinos Hit Particularly Hard as Mortgage Crisis Lingers By Doug Miller
• LDF Takes A Stand for Teacher Quality and Equity in ESEA Reauthorization
• Study: Whites More Likely to Gain Grants and Scholarships By The Editors
• Making The Numbers and Letters Count By Kenneth J. Cooper
• NYT Ltr To Editor: A New Way to Achieve Civil Rights? By John Payton
• We Worked With Martin
• LDF Successfully Defends the Constitutionality of the Heart of the VRA
• Law Ending Prison-Based Gerrymandering Upheld in N.Y.
• Autism in the Black Community: Why African Americans Should Hear the Cry for Help” By Tarice L.S. Gray
• The Problem We All (Still) Live With By Lee A. Daniels