ColorOfChange.org changing the color of democracy

UPDATE: April 24, 2012. Mississippi’s department of corrections canceled its contracts with the GEO Group for all of the private prison facilities it had run in Mississippi. You can read more here.

Youth incarcerated at a privately-run correctional facility in Mississippi will no longer have to live in a nightmarishly abusive and violent environment. They will no longer be regularly subjected to beatings, sexual abuse, and long periods of solitary confinement. Earlier this week, a settlement was announced in a federal lawsuit that demands that children who are housed at the facility be moved elsewhere. The facility is run by the GEO Group, the nation's second-largest operator of private prisons.

On Thursday, Pat Buchanan used his column to announce that he has officially parted ways with MSNBC. He credited the more than 86,000 ColorOfChange members who flooded the network with emails and phone calls late last year. Buchanan writes:

A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it "exists to strengthen Black America's political voice," claimed that my book espouses a "white supremacist ideology." Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, "The End of White America."

We gave MSNBC props last month when the network suspended Buchanan. On Thursday, ColorOfChange had reason to celebrate once again.

More than 21,000 ColorOfChange.org members called on their elected officials to oppose the Senate PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and House Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and both bills have now been shelved indefinitely. This victory is an important one for Internet users and activists, and for our democratic process. But the fundamental struggle over what the Internet is for — and what we should be able to see and do online — is only going to get more intense.

Today a Cook County judge vacated the convictions of a group of men, known as the Englewood 5, who were falsely arrested and harshly prosecuted for crimes they did not commit. This decision and the Nov. 3 exoneration of the Dixmoor 5 in a separate but similar case show that evidence, hope, and tireless legal and community advocacy can overcome long-standing injustices.

When we saw this article in the Huffington Post we knew we had to share it. News like this is a powerful reminder of how significant our members' advocacy can be. We all know that the so-called war on drugs has proven to be an all out war on communities of color across the nation. But victories in the battle against discriminatory drug policies are slowly paying off. Today new federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine become permanent, and next week more than 1,000 federal inmates become eligible for immediate release. 

ColorofChange.org members consistently pressured Congress to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine offenses, so news of a halt in prison population growth is of particular importance to our community. Low-income Black and Latino communities have been devastated by discriminatory drug policies -- policies that have contributed to placing in one in nine Black men between the ages of 20 and 34 behind bars. Victories in the past year have begun to turn the tide. Before Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act in the summer of 2010, there was a 100-to-1 disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine offense. Now there's an 18:1 ratio.