NEW YORK (AP) — The Boys Scouts of America is considering a dramatic change in its controversial policy of excluding gays as leaders and youth members.
Under the change being considered, the different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units would be able to decide for themselves how to address the issue — either maintaining an exclusion of gays or opening up their membership.
The announcement of the possible change came Monday after years of protests over the policy — including petition campaigns that have prompted some corporations to suspend donations to the Boy Scouts.
Under the proposed change, said BSA spokesman Deron Smith, “the Boy Scouts would not, under any circumstances, dictate a position to units, members, or parents.”
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press via thegrio.com
Posts published in “Justice”
In this June 9, 1963 file photo, James A. Hood and Vivian J. Malone of Alabama pose in New York. Alabama Gov. George Wallace said he would personally bar them from registering at the University of Alabama despite a restraining order. (AP Photo/John Lindsay, File)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — One of the first black students who enrolled at the University of Alabama a half century ago in defiance of racial segregation has died. James Hood of Gadsden was 70. Officials at Adams-Buggs Funeral Home in Gadsden said they are handling arrangements for Hood, who died Thursday.
Then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace made his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” in a failed effort to prevent Hood and Vivian Malone from registering for classes at the university in 1963. Hood and Malone were accompanied by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach when they were confronted by Wallace as they attempted to enter the university’s Foster Auditorium to register for classes and pay fees.
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Human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s insightful TED speech from 2012 eloquently discusses the injustices of our current incarceration system and encourages us all to help change it. If you haven’t seen it previously, GBN guarantees the above video is fully worth twenty three minutes of your time. To learn more about Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, click here.
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson; contributions by Gabriel Ryder
The University of Michigan has announced a four-month initiative called the Understanding Race Project. From January through April, the university will feature public exhibits, lectures, performances, symposia, and other events examining the role of race in American society. Among the lecturers who will be visiting campus to participate in the project are Angela Davis, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. During the spring semester, 130 courses dealing with racial issues will be offered students in a wide variety of disciplines.
“The Understanding Race Project is as broad and varied as the cultural and ethnic groups that constitute and sometimes divide the human family here and around the globe,” explains Amy Harris, co-chair of the project and director of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. She states that the goal of the project is “to learn more about how social constructs like race have defined substantial portions of our history and continue to impact our lives today.”
article via jbhe.com
January 1st, 1863, is the day that the 16th President of the United States of America, President Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, proclaiming that all slaves in the Confederacy were “forever free” because these Southern states refused to rejoin the Union and were in “rebellion” against the United States of America.
Ironically, the Union states were allowed to maintain their slaves because President Lincoln did not want to risk friction among them. Subsequently, freedmen fled to the North to join the Union Army, and slavery became the pivotal focus of the Civil War. The initial conflict began over various other reasons regarding states’ individual rights, such as taxation, the South demanding control over their own political and socio-economic infrastructure, as well as states’ resources.
Members of the “Wilmington 10” hold a brief communion service before boarding a prison bus on Feb. 2, 1976 in Burgaw, North Carolina, as they surrendered to start prison terms on convictions growing out of 1971 racial disorders in Wilmington, N.C. Four of the group shown from left are Connie Tindall, Rev. Ben Chavis, Jerry Jacobs and Anne Sheppard. (AP Photo)
After decades of claims that they were wrongly convicted, nine African-American men and one white women who were imprisoned for an arson fire in North Carolina that stemmed from racial unrest over integrated schools have been pardoned. North Carolina Gov. Bev Purdue, who is leaving office in just one week, issued the pardons Monday.
Purdue’s office issued a statement, saying she had spent “a great deal of time over the past seven months reviewing the pardon of innocence requests of the persons collectively known as the Wilmington Ten.”
Sam Covelli, the owner of several western Pennsylvania Panera Bread restaurants is paying for allegedly discriminating against African-American workers. The franchisee will pay Guy Vines, a former employee who is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit $10,000 and $66,000 in attorneys’ fees as part of the settlement. He’ll also pay out an extra 70 cents per hour to each member of the lawsuit for each year after their first year of employment with Covelli, according to a Courthouse News Service report.
Vines and other members of the class action lawsuit claimed they were forced to work in the kitchen because Covelli didn’t want black employees in public view, according to court documents. Vines’ attorney told the judge that about 200 to 300 black workers could be entitled to money.
In a January 2012 complaint, Vines claimed that he worked as a sandwich maker at Panera Bread from 2009 to 2011, but his manager said black workers like him were ineligible for promotion to management. The same manager also allegedly said “customers would not want to see an African-American working in the front of the store,” and feared he would lose his job for disobeying this rule.
Chief U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster in Pittsburgh made the following statement regarding the settlement.
“Here, the class members allege that they were flatly ineligible for promotion because of their race and regardless of their job performance, They allege that this prohibition, although not written down anywhere, was the rule at all of defendant’s restaurants, and that defendant’s managers disobeyed it at their peril. This question of law and fact applies evenly across the class and is sufficient to ensure that ‘the action can be practically maintained and that the interests of the absentees will be fairly and adequately represented.’”
He gave final approval last week after a fairness hearing.
Covelli Enterprises and Panera Bread did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
article by C. Daniel Baker via blackenterprise.com
According to nola.com, African-American residents of Mossville, Louisiana, a community just west of Lake Charles, have won a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on charges that the U.S. government violated their rights to privacy and racial equality in not forcing local chemical plants to stop polluting.
To quote the article:
Mossville is adjacent to 14 chemical plants and refineries that release millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land and water each year, according to federal and state records.
Its residents have filed a variety of lawsuits and complaints against the plants and the Environmental Protection Agency in attempts to recover damages and reduce pollution, which includes cancer-causing dioxin and vinyl chloride.
Tests by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registery in 2007 found chemicals in residents’ body fat that were the same as chemicals emitted by some of the nearby industries.
Several of the companies and their predecessors have been involved in releases of chemicals that have eaten the paint off cars, killed bushes and trees in people’s front yards, and polluted adjacent waterways.
“We believe that environmental protection should not be based on the color of our skin,” said Dorothy Felix, a petitioner in the case and a vice president of Mossville Environmental Action Now. “Our government can and must do better to protect our human rights.”
To read more, go to: https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/black-residents-of-mossville-win-hearing-in-legal-battle-over-industrial-pollution/article_548a59ef-7724-5181-8c78-ea324648f933.html.
or: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/toxic.town.mossville.epa/index.html