What Can Be Done to Stop the Brutal Targeting of Trans Women? What Can Be Done to Stop the Brutal Targeting of Trans Women?
At least six transgender women have been killed in the United States since January. A new partnership wants to help stem the tide of violence.
Feb 19, 2015 / Dani McClain
Women in New York State Prisons Don’t Have Enough Sanitary Pads, Not to Mention Other Daily Indignities Women in New York State Prisons Don’t Have Enough Sanitary Pads, Not to Mention Other Daily Indignities
A new report offers the most extensive study of reproductive healthcare in a state prison system to date.
Feb 13, 2015 / Dani McClain
This Is How Black Girls End Up in the School-To-Prison Pipeline This Is How Black Girls End Up in the School-To-Prison Pipeline
Harsh discipline is said to put black boys at risk, but black girls are suspended six times more than white girls. A new report asks why.
Feb 5, 2015 / Dani McClain
If You Read That ‘NYT’ Story About Two Teens in Oakland, Keep This in Mind If You Read That ‘NYT’ Story About Two Teens in Oakland, Keep This in Mind
What the story about a fire set to a gender-nonconforming teenager in Oakland leaves out about race, gender expression and violence.
Jan 30, 2015 / Dani McClain
On the ‘Roe’ Anniversary, Let’s Remember: How We Talk About Abortion Rights Matters On the ‘Roe’ Anniversary, Let’s Remember: How We Talk About Abortion Rights Matters
A new guide for journalists argues that we get an inaccurate picture of reproductive health issues when we use language carelessly.
Jan 22, 2015 / Dani McClain
‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’ Reveals the Radical Ordinary Women of 1960s Feminism ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’ Reveals the Radical Ordinary Women of 1960s Feminism
The film shies away from the big names and big institutions and offers a history of women’s rights organizing from the ground up.
Jan 16, 2015 / Dani McClain
Congressional Republicans Want to Ban Abortion, but There’s Still Hope for Women’s Health Congressional Republicans Want to Ban Abortion, but There’s Still Hope for Women’s Health
A new report points to states for the way forward.
Jan 9, 2015 / Dani McClain
Why Is No One Talking About the NYPD Shooter’s Other Target? Why Is No One Talking About the NYPD Shooter’s Other Target?
Before Ismaaiyl Brinsley killed two police officers, he shot Shaneka Thompson. That matters more than law enforcement’s blame game.
Dec 23, 2014 / Dani McClain
Why #BlackLivesMatter Actions Aren’t Stopping Why #BlackLivesMatter Actions Aren’t Stopping
Policy experts and activists explain what’s keeping people in the streets and what the movement should consider next.
Dec 16, 2014 / Dani McClain
It’s 1963 Again It’s 1963 Again
Last August, some observers drew comparisons between the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. The announcement on December 3 that a Staten Island grand jury had chosen not to indict the policeman who choked Eric Garner to death might indicate that we are closer to 1963—when a series of devastating setbacks and the subsequent widespread outrage transformed the civil rights struggle. There was a perfect storm this past month: the continuing fallout from a grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson in Ferguson; the identical outcome in the Garner case; a Cleveland newspaper’s efforts to discredit and sling mud at the parents of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy also killed by police. This moment has the potential to catapult change, just as a series of events did eight years after Till’s death. The 1963 murder of four black girls at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church hit Americans square in the chest, reminding them of the Jim Crow system of justice in which black people had no rights that whites were bound to respect. The little girls were killed in September of that year in a place already dubbed “Bombingham” for the level of violent racist backlash against the city’s small progressive steps. Martin Luther King Jr. had been jailed there in the spring. Medgar Evers had been assassinated that summer in Mississippi. We find ourselves at a similar moment fifty years later—with “Again?” on our lips and a familiar feeling of horror at the video of Officer Daniel Pantaleo choking Garner to death, the unsparing force he uses against a man gasping over and over again, “I can’t breathe.” With the killings of Brown, Garner, Rice, unarmed New Yorker Akai Gurley and others, we are all reminded that black life is still devalued, and that police officers are too often treated as if they were above the rule of law. It is all coming so quickly: these announcements that a trial isn’t even necessary to determine a police officer’s guilt or innocence; these exonerations through other means. As a result, people are taking to the streets in Ferguson, New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and beyond. Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! To turn that outrage into progress, we should start to think big. A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker and other brilliant strategists of yesteryear knew that a successful struggle requires goals, not just reaction. Right now, activists from organizations like Millennial Activists United, the Ohio Students Association, Dream Defenders and Make the Road New York are demanding that the federal government prosecute police officers who kill or abuse people; that independent prosecutors be appointed at the local level and charged with prosecuting officers; and that the Justice Department deny funding to police departments that use excessive force or racial profiling. Several activists met with President Obama on December 1 to push these goals. This is beginning to look like playing offense. It’s worth noting that the public outcry in response to the rapid-fire events of 1963 is credited with making passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act inevitable. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom had taken place not even a month before the Birmingham church bombing, showing the world that a critical mass of people were mobilized in the service of fundamental change. If the history of this country’s most revered period of revolutionary change is any guide—and if a policy program is developed to channel all this growing energy—then we’re just getting started.Dani McClain Read Next: Gary Younge on “black-on-black” crime
Dec 10, 2014 / Dani McClain