North Carolina is one of two states in the nation where all 16- and 17-year-olds are prosecuted as adults --even for low-level, non-violent offenses. Black youth are more likely to be arrested for minor offenses and treated more harshly than white youth at all stages of the justice system. They bear the brunt of policies that prosecute youth as adults.
Below is the email we sent to North Carolina ColorOfChange members today. We're asking them to call on their state legislators to vote this month to stop prosecuting children in the adult criminal justice system. Please take a look and pass along to someone you know in North Carolina. Together, we can get the state legislature to do what's right and raise the minimum age.
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Today, Sybrina Fulton released a powerful Mother's Day message calling for a nationwide reform of Shoot First Laws.
More »“This will be my first Mother’s Day without my son, Trayvon. I know it will be hard, but with my faith, family, and the outpouring of national support, I will get through,” says Ms. Fulton.
In order to meaningfully diversify media ownership and ensure access to local programming for communities of color, the Federal Communications Commission must approve hundreds of new community radio licenses in urban centers. African Americans live in cities in significantly higher percentages than the total population, but we are able to tune in to just 7 community radio stations — out of more than 800 in the nation — in our largest 50 urban centers.
The FCC is responsible for ensuring that the public airwaves serve all of the public. But until now, the big commercial media outlets — the ones that monopolize most of what we hear on urban radio — have successfully pressured the FCC to keep community radio out of their most lucrative markets. Click here to tell the FCC today: our cities need community radio!
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The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards -- a policy group advocating teacher standards and performance-based pay policies for educators -- has announced that it left the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on April 18, 2012.
The group joins more than a dozen major corporations that have announced they've cut ties with the right-wing policy group in the wake of the ColorOfChange campaign calling on ALEC's corporate sponsors to stop funding voter suppression. If you haven't already, please join us.
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Are voter ID laws racist? This question takes center stage in this video segment produced by True the Vote 2012, a Tea Party affiliated group focused on "...examining the registry, recruiting, training and mobilizing election workers and poll watchers." True the Vote is an outgrowth of the Tea Party Patriots, a Houston-based group whose goals are akin to those of Jim Crow-era pollwatchers. The group uses voter intimidation tactics, driven by its unfounded belief that voter fraud runs rampant and threatens democracy.
As you'll see in the clip, a staffer from the conservative Media Research Center asks a series of Black respondents, "Do you think you should have to show ID when you go to vote?" Unsurprisingly, the majority of the respondents say yes. What's wrong with having to prove you are who you say you are?
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