Five states have abridged early voting this year, including Florida, which canceled voting on the Sunday before the election. This directly targets black voters; black churches have traditionally helped increase turnout in a “Souls to the Polls” effort that, according to Time, resulted in African Americans accounting for one-third of the early votes cast on Sundays.
Transcript
On March 8, 2011, Governor Beverly Perdue established the five-member, Governor’s Task Force to Determine the Method of Compensation for Victims of North Carolina’s Eugenics Board. The following is the testimony of Elaine Riddick who was sterilized at the tender age of 14 when she became pregnant after being raped by a much older neighbor. Not only was she sterilized but she was deemed promiscuous.Elaine Riddick: I had to have a child at the age of 14 and when I had my son, they went into me at the same time they gave me a cesarean birth and they took my child they sterilized me. What do you think I’m worth? What do you think I’m worth?
Reporter: Elaine Riddick was just 13 when a neighbor raped her, then she endured what she refers to as her second rape. State officials declared Riddick feebleminded and unfit to have children.
Elaine Riddick: The main reason, reasons is because I was poor and out and Black. I believe that with all of my heart.
Reporter: Based on the pseudo science of eugenics, over 30 states passed laws regarding the sterilization of so-called defectives. The goal was to rid society of certain undesirable traits.
Charmaine Fuller Cooper (victim advocate): Some of those traits that they listed were epilepsy, feeblemindedness, promiscuity, criminal mentalities.
Reporter: Researches believe that as many as one hundred thousand Americans were victimized. By the time that North Carolina ended its own eugenics program in 1974, it had taken away the reproductive rights of 7,600 people - most like Riddick were poor. Tony Riddick still lives close to his mother’s town in the coastal plane. He says she doesn’t come home often.
Tony Riddick: They used to call it little Korea, yeah little Korea. The reason why is cause it was very violent you know, coming up. She grew up in a very very abusive home. My mother’s life and my life by any measure would have been, should have been, could have been totally written off, but the fact of the matter is God still prevails and I’m grateful for that, very grateful.
Reporter: Riddick’s mother would be grateful for justice. She drove from her adopted home in Georgia to testify before a North Carolina task force considering compensation for sterilization victims.
Elaine Riddick: There’s nothing that the state of North Carolina can do to justify what they did to me, what they did to these other victims. You know, it’s not my grandmother’s fault that she uneducated. It’s not my mother’s fault that she was abused by her husband. It wasn’t my fault that my environment that I was raised in - that I was brought up in this kind of environment; I had nothing to do with that. I was a victim. God said, be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth in his image you know. I always told everybody, “how can you ever get to see the image of God when you are killing it off”?
Reporter: Riddick is tired of feeling like the victim but she’ll have to wait until next February to see if the tar heel state will give her and 2, 000 other eugenics survivors justice.
The Latino population in the Chicago area contributed more in tax revenue than the cost incurred by local governments to deliver public services, a newly released study found. Latinos contributed almost $1.2 billion more in tax revenues than the cost of public services such as education, health care and other services like public safety, according to “The State of Latino Chicago 2010: The New Equation” report released today.
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Today in studies that concur with my world view. (via sexartandpolitics) |
Fifty-three percent of the 1.5 million people held in U.S. prisons by 2007 were the parents of one or more minor children. This percentage translates into more than 1.7 million minor children with an incarcerated parent.
African American children are seven and Latino children two and half times more likely to have a parent in prison than white children. The estimated risk of parental imprisonment for white children by the age of 14 is one in 25, while for black children it is one in four by the same age.
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| — | Judith Greene and Patricia Allard, Children on the Outside: Voicing the Pain and Human Costs of Parental Incarceration | Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance |
The Workers’ Collaborative unites native-born, African American and immigrant workers to oppose the denial of access to employment on any unfair grounds, whether they be immigration-related excuses, or immoral racial barriers, or background checks which are inhumane and degrading. We believe that deauthorizing any worker from employment not only is immoral but pushes that worker into an underground, often exploitive working situation which lowers the standards for all workers. We support policies which promote equal rights and full employment for all workers. Immigration reform is an important step towards stopping the criminalization of poor workers, especially those of color.
Chicago Workers’ Collaborative is an Illinois non-profit organization that unites low-wage workers so we can receive the proper respect and treatment in exchange for our important labor. We educate about workplace rights, provide critical services to our members, and mobilize to gain full access to employment for all workers, especially immigrants and African Americans. The CWC presently is working on the following initiatives:
- Collaborating with the Illinois Department of Labor and the Illinois Attorney General’s office to improve enforcement of state labor laws.
- Growing the membership of our Chicago and Northwest Suburban Worker Service Centers by providing critical Assistance to our members.
- Aiding our worker members to locate the best legal assistance for employment-related issues.
- Working with law enforcement authorities in arresting the perpetrators and helping the victims of human traffiicking.
- Bringing together African-American and Latino workers to end the criminalization of our people, including Comprehensive Immigration Reform, so we may all work and participate in our community as equals.
“Did you know HIV/AIDS is:
- The leading cause of death among black men ages 35-44?
- The leading cause of death among black women ages 25-34?
- Is manifesting 66% of its cases in African American women?
- If black Americans made up their own country, it would rank above Ethiopia (420,000 to 1,300,000) and below Ivory Coast (750,000) in HIV population. (Source: CNN.com)”
SOUL - Southsiders Organizing for Unity and Liberation: HIV/AIDS
STOP is a community organization that builds the power of residents on the Southside of Chicago to impact the forces and decisions that affect our lives. We fight for human rights to racial and economic justice through organizing, popular education, and leadership development amongst people most directly affected by issues like gentrification, displacement, incarceration and criminalization of youth of color and health cuts.
For the past five years, STOP has fought back against the war on the poor through tenant, youth and healthcare organizing, action research and education, alliance building, and collaborating with tenant associations, youth and community organizations, and labor unions from around the city and nation. Our accomplishments include stopping the displacement of over 600 low income and working class black residents, bringing immediate redress to human rights violations occuring in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center and stopping the closure of four southside mental health clinics.
For the past five years, STOP has fought back against the war on the poor through tenant, youth and healthcare organizing, action research and education, alliance building, and collaborating with tenant associations, youth and community organizations, and labor unions from around the city and nation. Our accomplishments include stopping the displacement of over 600 low income and working class black residents, bringing immediate redress to human rights violations occuring in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center and stopping the closure of four southside mental health clinics.
“Gender JUST (Gender Justice United for Societal Transformation) is a multi-racial, multi -ethnic, and multi-generational grassroots organization of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer, and Allied (LGBTQA) young people, LGBTQA people of color, and LGBTQA grassroots folks developing leadership and building power through organizing.
The goals of Gender JUST are to hold LGBTQA communities accountable around race, class, gender, age, religion, disability, size, and all factors necessary for a multi-dimensional and powerful movement & to move the LGBTQA struggles forward by organizing through a racial, economic, and gender justice framework.
Gender JUST organizes around the call for a world where all races, classes, sexual orientations, and gender identities are free to express their gender and sexuality, without institutional barriers, economic or legal consequences, or fear of repercussion.
[A]n African-American prisoner with mental illness, who had smeared himself with feces was forced into a tub of water so hot that it caused third-degree burns. The skin peeled off parts of his body, and a prison nurse overheard a guard say, “looks like we’re going to have a white boy before this is through.
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| — | Jean Casella and James Ridgeway, Case Closed on Supermax Abuses at Pelican Bay « Solitary Watch |
