Portside

Larry Krasner's victory for Philadelphia District Attorney is huge! Krasner has been the main defense attorney for #BlackLivesMatter and Occupy and has freed 80 prisoners on wrongful conviction charges. He ran to end stop-and-frisk, end cash bail, and treat drug law violators via the public health rather than criminal justice system. A huge victory for the movements against police brutality and mass incarceration - for progressive and racial justice movements nationwide.

Matthew Segal, the legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, called the decision "a powerful ruling" that demonstrates what role courts can play in addressing community concerns about policing.

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Police in South Florida shot an unarmed black caretaker Monday as he tried to help his autistic patient. I was thinking as long as I have my hands up . they're not going to shoot me, he told local television station WSVN from his hospital bed. Wow, was I wrong. Police then handcuffed him and left him bleeding on the pavement for about 20 minutes.

The media—led by the New York Times—took an inconclusive study focused on a limited number of cases and made it a national story undercutting the notion that racial bias exists in police shootings.

It happened again this week, as it has happened more than 100 times so far this year. Police in Louisiana and Minnesota shot and killed two more black men. Stop asking us to be calm. Stop asking us to wear the mask. Stop asking us to take whips, nooses and now police bullets without emotion. In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, "We are sick and tired of being sick and tired." Two years after Ferguson, police induced murders are continuing...#BlackLivesMatter

We lost one of the great social justice warriors of our time, Michael Ratner. While a law student at Columbia University in 1968 this empathy and compassion helped him find his political focus during student protests against the Vietnam War. "[E]vents like this created the activists of the generation and I never looked back; I declared that I was going to spend my life on the side of justice and non-violence."

If you are not severely and wholeheartedly dealing with racism, you are not going to get to the bottom of this issue . . . CPD's own data gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color . . . at every step of the way, the police oversight system is riddled with legal and practical barriers to accountability.