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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents

In historic move, Asheville, North Carolina approves reparations for Black residents

Asheville Citizen Times reports: In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. “Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body…

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White supremacist ideas have historical roots in white American Christianity

White supremacist ideas have historical roots in white American Christianity

NPR reports: When a young Southern Baptist pastor named Alan Cross arrived in Montgomery, Ala., in January 2000, he knew it was where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had his first church and where Rosa Parks helped launched the famous bus boycott, but he didn’t know some other details of the city’s role in civil rights history. The more he learned, the more troubled he became by one event in particular: the savage attack in May 1961 on a…

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The best way to respond to our history of racism? A Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The best way to respond to our history of racism? A Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò writes: The killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks are the latest in a continuing pattern of violence inflicted by state agents and citizens, mostly white, against Americans of African descent. Their deaths have stoked strong denunciations and calls for justice and change, to do something, anything, to put an end to such incidents. But to date, there has been very little interest in real change from the highest levels of political leadership. Through…

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‘State-sanctioned violence’: U.S. police fail to meet basic human rights standards

‘State-sanctioned violence’: U.S. police fail to meet basic human rights standards

The Guardian reports: Police in America’s biggest cities are failing to meet even the most basic international human rights standards governing the use of lethal force, a new study from the University of Chicago has found. Researchers in the university’s law school put the lethal use-of-force policies of police in the 20 largest US cities under the microscope. They found not a single police department was operating under guidelines that are compliant with the minimum standards laid out under international…

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What makes Monday’s gay rights ruling so historic

What makes Monday’s gay rights ruling so historic

Charles Kaiser writes: More quickly and more permanently than any other American institution, the United States Supreme Court has the capacity to set the tone for the treatment of any minority group, often for decades to come. It was a string of Supreme Court cases that transformed the status of black Americans, for example, most famously in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The L.G.B.T.Q. legal establishment has spent the last generation following the model set by the black…

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Conservative Christians see ‘seismic implications’ in Supreme Court ruling

Conservative Christians see ‘seismic implications’ in Supreme Court ruling

The New York Times reports: For conservative Christian groups, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling protecting the rights of gay and transgender workers was not only the latest sign that they are losing the American culture wars over sexuality. It also caused widespread concern that it could affect how they operate their own institutions. Many faith-based organizations, like schools or nonprofits, do not allow L.G.B.T. people to work there, citing religious beliefs that sex should only be between a man and a…

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The Harvey Weinstein verdict is a watershed — and a warning

The Harvey Weinstein verdict is a watershed — and a warning

Rebecca Solnit writes: When I was young I had no words. I read voraciously, I loved books, stories, language. I was trying to become a writer, and so I lived for words and by words. I poured out my thoughts and some of the hopes and fears that were beginning to take shape in long conversations with friends. But words failed me when I needed them most. I was a young woman in the 1980s, long before all the contemporary…

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Google exec pushed company to commit to human rights. Then Google pushed him out

Google exec pushed company to commit to human rights. Then Google pushed him out

The Washington Post reports: For years, Google tasked Ross LaJeunesse with executing its plan to protect human rights in China, after Google announced a decade ago it would stop censoring search results there to safeguard security and free speech. LaJeunesse took the mission to heart: He later devised a human rights program to formalize Google’s principles supporting free expression and privacy. He began lobbying for it internally in 2017 — around the time when the tech giant was exploring a…

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Pharmaceutical companies cashing in on a captive market

Pharmaceutical companies cashing in on a captive market

Max Blau writes: Alkermes, which manufactures drugs for conditions that are disproportionately found behind bars—such as schizophrenia and alcohol and opioid addiction—is among several companies that have embraced the criminal-justice system as a source of customers. Starting in the early 2010s, Alkermes promoted Vivitrol, a treatment for opioid-use disorder, to correctional facilities. The treatment, generically known as naltrexone, had previously been used for alcohol-use disorder, but the drug floundered. When Alkermes recast it as a solution to the opioid epidemic,…

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Trump administration considering drastic cut in refugees allowed to enter U.S.

Trump administration considering drastic cut in refugees allowed to enter U.S.

The New York Times reports: The White House is considering a plan that would effectively bar refugees from most parts of the world from resettling in the United States by cutting back the decades-old program that admits tens of thousands of people each year who are fleeing war, persecution and famine, according to current and former administration officials. In meetings over the past several weeks, one top administration official has proposed zeroing out the program altogether, while leaving the president…

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The search for China’s missing million Uyghurs

The search for China’s missing million Uyghurs

Morgan Meaker writes: When Aiziheer Ainiwaer talks about his father, Ainiwa Niyazi, he paints him as a comedian and the joker of his friendship group. He describes how the 57-year-old teacher always had the room in stitches with his impersonations of famous pop stars. But at home, the father-of-two would be more serious. “My father constantly used to tell us we should study and be well educated,” says Aiziheer. Throughout Aiziheer’s childhood, that mantra resulted in regular trips to the…

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UN human rights chief ‘deeply shocked’ by migrant detention center conditions in Texas

UN human rights chief ‘deeply shocked’ by migrant detention center conditions in Texas

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The Washington Post reports: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Monday that she is “appalled by the conditions” being forced upon migrants after they cross the southern U.S. border and admonished the federal government for failing to find noncustodial alternatives. “Any deprivation of liberty of adult migrants and refugees should be a measure of last resort,” she said, adding that where detention is necessary, it should be for the shortest period and under conditions that satisfy…

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