Social and Economic Justice

The shooting that maimed twenty people on Mother’s Day in New Orleans has been classified as “strictly an act of street violence” by the FBI. This hurts my heart. Calling the violence inflicted upon our lives “street violence” disregards the precious value we hold as human beings. [...Read more]

Crossposted from Colorlines. News reports say that BP has entered into a settlement with the Department of Justice for criminal penalties for the 2010 BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. According to The Washington Post, BP has agreed to pay $4 billion over five years for their role in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drill, which led to 11 workers dying and a lot of Gulf fisherfolk put out of work. [...Read more]

Yesterday, a crowd of about 3,000 - 4,000 crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; Today, the Civil Rights activists continue on a week-long, 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery.  These marchers, some of them veterans of the original 1965 march for voting rights that took the same route, are not just comme [...Read more]

Crossposted from Facing South. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management faces a civil rights complaint for [...Read more]

Press release from Survivors Village. New Orleans -- Survivors Village, a community group of former St. Bernard public housing residents and their allies, joined forces today with recently evicted Occupy NOLA protestors to successfully disrupt a Sheriff’s sale of foreclosed properties. [...Read more]

By Linda Tran, via Justice Roars.  An article recently posted on the Education Week website offers an impo [...Read more]

By Elon James White, originally published on Colorlines. Recently I was invited to be a part of a delegation of labor leaders heading down to Alabama to speak out against one of the worst immigration laws in the country [...Read more]

Houston resident Aurelia Suchilt was detained two times, for more than two months each, in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities due to mistakes in bureaucratic paperwork.  Iconic immigrant's rights activists Maria Jimenez (right, photo by Joshua Cogan) says women like Aurelia are leading the defense of people detained by ICE.  Listen to these interviews, and more, in a radi [...Read more]

We here on the Gulf Coast have fishermen and oystermen that are not licensed and bonded. They are subsistence fishermen who catch food for themselves and their families, and to sell informally to the community.  That means, in short, they're not qualified to apply for BP funds through the claims process.  By not reporting their income, they cannot apply for compensation and other resources. [...Read more]

By Julianne Hing, originally posted on Colorlines.com on 10/18/11. Families are fleeing Alabama, teachers are comforting the panicked children who are still in school, [...Read more]