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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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A white supermajority of the Mississippi House voted after an intense, four-plus hour debate to create a separate court system and an expanded police force within the city of Jackson — the Blackest city in America — that would be appointed completely by white state officials.

If House Bill 1020 becomes law later this session, the white Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court would appoint two judges to oversee a new district within the city — one that includes all of the city’s majority-white neighborhoods, among other areas. The white state Attorney General would appoint four prosecutors, a court clerk, and four public defenders for the new district. The white state Public Safety Commissioner would oversee an expanded Capitol Police force, run currently by a white chief.

The appointments by state officials would occur in lieu of judges and prosecutors being elected by the local residents of Jackson and Hinds County — as is the case in every other municipality and county in the state.

Mississippi’s capital city is 80% Black and home to a higher percentage of Black residents than any major American city. Mississippi’s Legislature is thoroughly controlled by white Republicans, who have redrawn districts over the past 30 years to ensure they can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote. Every legislative Republican is white, and most Democrats are Black.

After thorough and passionate dissent from Black members of the House, the bill passed 76-38 Tuesday primarily along party lines. Two Black member of the House — Rep. Cedric Burnett, a Democrat from Tunica, and Angela Cockerham, an independent from Magnolia — voted for the measure. All but one lawmaker representing the city of Jackson — Rep. Shanda Yates, a white independent — opposed the bill.

“Only in Mississippi would we have a bill like this … where we say solving the problem requires removing the vote from Black people,” Rep. Ed Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton, said while pleading with his colleagues to oppose the measure.

For most of the debate, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba — who has been publicly chided by the white Republicans who lead the Legislature — looked down on the House chamber from the gallery. Lumumba accused the Legislature earlier this year of practicing “plantation politics” in terms of its treatment of Jackson, and of the bill that passed Tuesday, he said: “It reminds me of apartheid.”

Hinds County Circuit Judge Adrienne Wooten, who served in the House before being elected judge and would be one of the existing judges to lose jurisdiction under this House proposal, also watched the debate.

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, who oversees the Capitol Police, watched a portion of the debate from the House gallery, chuckling at times when Democrats made impassioned points about the bill. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the only statewide elected official who owns a house in Jackson, walked onto the House floor shortly before the final vote.

Rep. Blackmon, a civil rights leader who has a decades-long history of championing voting issues, equated the current legislation to the Jim Crow-era 1890 Constitution that was written to strip voting rights from Black Mississippians.

“This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again,” Blackmon said from the floor. “We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves.'”

The bill was authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, a Republican whose hometown of Senatobia is 172 miles north of Jackson. It was sent to Lamar’s committee by Speaker Philip Gunn instead of a House Judiciary Committee, where similar legislation normally would be heard.

“This bill is designed to make our capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, a safer place,” Lamar said, citing numerous news sources who have covered Jackson’s high crime rates. Dwelling on a long backlog of Hinds County court cases, Lamar said the bill was designed to “help not hinder the (Hinds County) court system.”

“My constituents want to feel safe when they come here,” Lamar said, adding the capital city belonged to all the citizens of the state. “Where I am coming from with this bill is to help the citizens of Jackson and Hinds County.”

Opponents of the legislation, dozens of whom have protested at the Capitol several days this year, accused the authors of carving out mostly white, affluent areas of the city to be put in the new district.

In earlier sessions, the Legislature created the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which covers much of the downtown, including the state government office complex and other areas of Jackson. The bill would extend the existing district south to Highway 80, north to County Line Road, west to State Street and east to the Pearl River. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people live within the area.

The bill would double the funding for the district to $20 million in order to increase the size of the existing Capitol Police force, which has received broad criticism from Jacksonians for shooting several people in recent months with little accountability. The new court system laid out in House Bill 1020 is estimated to cost $1.6 million annually.

Many House members who represent Jackson on Tuesday said they were never consulted by House leadership about the bill. Several times during the debate, they pointed out that Republican leaders have never proposed increasing the number of elected judges to address a backlog of cases or increasing state funding to assist an overloaded Jackson Police Department.

Democratic members of the House said if they wanted to help with the crime problem, the Legislature could increase the number of elected judges in Hinds County. Blackmon said Hinds County was provided four judges in 1992 when a major redistricting occurred, and that number has not increased since then even as the caseload for the four judges has exploded.

In addition, Blackmon said the number of assistant prosecuting attorneys could be increased within Hinds County. In Lamar’s bill, the prosecuting of cases within the district would be conducted by attorneys in the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who is white. Blackmon said the bill was “about a land grab,” not about fighting crime. He said other municipalities in the state had higher crime rates than Jackson. Blackmon asked why the bill would give the appointed judges the authority to hear civil cases that had nothing to do with crime.

“When Jackson becomes the No. 1 place for murder, we have a problem,” Lamar responded, highlighting the city’s long backlog of court cases. Several Democrats, during the debate, pointed out that the state of Mississippi’s crime lab has a lengthy backlog, as well, adding to the difficult in closing cases in Hinds County.

Lamar said the Mississippi Constitution gives the Legislature the authority to create “inferior courts,” as the Capitol Complex system would be. The decisions of the appointed judges can be appealed to Hinds County Circuit Court.

“We are not incompetent,” said Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson. “Our judges are not incompetent.”

Democrats offered seven amendments, including one to make the judges elected. All were defeated primarily along partisan and racial lines. An amendment offered by Rep. Cheikh Taylor, D-Starkville, to require the Capitol Police to wear body cameras was approved. Lamar voiced support for the amendment.

Much of the debate centered around the issue of creating a court where the Black majority in Hinds County would not be allowed to vote on judges.

One amendment that was defeated would require the appointed judges to come from Hinds County. Lamar said by allowing the judges to come from areas other than Hinds County would ensure “the best and brightest” could serve. Black legislators said the comment implied that the judges and other court staff could not be found within the Black majority population of Hinds County. When asked why he could not add more elected judges to Hinds County rather than appointing judges to the new district, Lamar said, “This is the bill that is before the body.”

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commiepinkofag · 20 days

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Chisel. Chisel — First Amendment v American Fascism

[The Supreme] Court’s decision to leave the Fifth Circuit’s attack on the First Amendment in place could be temporary. As Sotomayor writes in her Mckesson opinion, when the Court announces that it will not hear a particular case it “expresses no view about the merits.” The Court could still restore the First Amendment right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in a future case. For the time being, however, the Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision remains good law in those three states. And that means that anyone who organizes a political protest within the Fifth Circuit risks catastrophic financial liability.

#black lives matter #racism #first amendment #right of assembly #capitalism #protest #activism #unconstitutional #fascism #lousiana #mississippi #texas #usa #us politics #supreme court #2024

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gwydionmisha · 10 months

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Supreme Court rejects challenge to Jim Crow-era Mississippi voting law

#Supreme Court #Mississippi #Voter Suppression #War on Democracy #News

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angry-gryphon · 2 years

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The issue with America is that, since it's founding, it has been institutionally messed up. From the writings of the constitution, 200 years on.

You can't expect a codified and entrenched document written by a few rich, white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men, of whom were also colonisers, to really consider any human beings besides those within their class and social demographic.

From the get-go, it started wrong. In it's initial writing, slaves were only ⅗ of a person, and only 7% of the population is considered. Women weren't even included in it.

Not only that, they only had around 13 states when shaping that document, now it's 50 - they had no concept of globalisation as it stands today, with guns that can fire 10 bullets a second; they had muskets and guns that could fire 1 bullet a minute.

The Supreme Court had so little written about them (1,000 words roughly) that they easily have the most flexibility in power; literally gave themselves the power of Judicial Review when they set the precedent for it. No wonder AOC, a democratically elected official (and woman, minority, and ethical human being), says that limitations should be placed on the power of Judicial Review, created by the unelected body that uses it, which can essentially override any branch of government if the case is brought to them.

It's in my personal belief that the Supreme Court is the most powerful branch of government in the US. And by that, should they really be unelected individuals who can sit in that position for life (or until impeachment and retirement)? Should there not be more consideration for who is elected to it? Justice Jackson, (when she takes her seat), arguably had one of most frustrating Senate hearings of the Justices so far; asking her about critical race theory, what defines a woman, rambling about religion, a very partisan environment with very little said and asked about the actual job, when the only thing her job entails, or should, is specific cases; not a political agenda. She is easily the most qualified to sit on the court, having been in pretty much every legal court she can sit on, yet had some of the most irrelevant questions asked. Meanwhile, Republican Amy C-Barret could falsify an entire constitutional notion (super precedent; literally does not exist) and literally have such poor knowledge of the freedoms granted by the constitution that she didn't even know them all — yet be rushed through in 27 days and still be considered "well qualified" by the ABA (American Bar Association). Incorrect, she didn't even know the freedoms by heart, how is she well qualified to then literally interpret those freedoms case by case? Clearly the very appointment process is in need of work, especially since it is just 9 people determining the rights and law of millions, and some of it's members cannot even remember the basic freedoms.

The only branch that could overpower the SC is Congress, via constitutional amendment, yet they haven't. First, there's only been 27 amendments (2 of which were just about alcohol), and second, who then interprets that? SC. But honestly, do you not agree that the elected branch, particularly the law makers, should be in charge of such a highly political topic such as abortion? The Supreme Court is not meant to be political, yet here we have arguably the most political court to date.

The US has been broken from the start. The Founding Fathers had no concept of how today would look and therefore a document they wrote centuries ago has become fossilised, and the document itself was not perfectly functional, but in a country that salutes the flag in schools and is rife with propaganda, do we really expect it to improve?

If your rights are literally dependent upon whether an unelected judge can look at the words written centuries ago, words written by men who only considered <10% of the population when writing it, do you not think it's a broken system? You literally have to hope that each of those individual judges is nice enough to interpret it liberally enough that they permit your rights by majority.

But even those of a conservative, strict constructionist and originalist approach to the constitution, at least in regards to abortion, are blatantly wrong if they also support owning guns. The original meaning of the 2nd amendment is that the people of a militia have the right to bear arms, of which were basically muskets to protect a regularly invaded country — not every single average citizen with AK-47s. Yet, they support owning guns across the board; but not abortion? Abortion, an interpreted right brought in by a liberal, loose and living interpretation? But they support guns for everyone, which is arguably also a loose approach too, as if they truly interpreted the original words and context to it's writing then that average American should not have a gun, only a militia.

It's all backwards, really. The US system is riddled with so many imperfections that you would truly have to abandon the constitutional system as it is to fix it. Don't even get me started on elections.

I hope, as someone who supports human rights and common sense (one enables the other), that there is some way to legalise abortion across the whole US again; constitutional amendment, re-examining of the Mississippi Case (the recent ruling that abortion is not constitutional and the legality is thus to be determined by the individual states, overruling their previous ruling in Roe v Wade), etc. Some way, some how, I hope you get your rights, and I'm sure there are constitutional loopholes found by experts who may be able to aid in that.

But those same arguments against the constitutionality of abortion can be applied to aspects such as same sex marriage, voting rights, interracial relationships and even segregation. It starts here. It doesn't end here. Justice Thomas already wants to reassess same sex marriage (Obergefell v Hodges) and contraception. Either get a democrat leaning court, constitutional amendment via Congress, or remove the whole system, because that's your only way out.

I really wish common sense...was actually common among people. Or just, like, basic decency and critical thinking skills.

Rant temporarily over.

#usa #us #supreme court #mississippi case #roe v wade #constitution #congress #same sex marriage #supreme court justices #amy coney barrett #justice thomas #aoc #I don't hate the USA - I just wish that it made sense #women's rights #human rights #women's rights are human rights #sorry for any typos #im half asleep #and tired

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justajoshe · 19 days

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"This case is designed to stomp out activities protected by the first amendment, and to make our society, somehow, even more fascistic!"

#politics #protest #speech #youtube #shorts #news #texas #fascisim #mississippi #2016 #2024 #first amendment #court case #supreme court

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uselectionnews · 7 months

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"Inside Biden’s decision to secretly send longer-range U.S. missiles to Ukraine," by Lara Seligman, Paul McLeary and Alexander Ward in Politico.

"The Supreme Court’s very brief, very revealing new decision about guns, explained," Ian Millhiser in Vox.

"Inside Biden’s ‘Hug Bibi’ Strategy," by Franklin Foer in The Atlantic.

"A Democrat Just Suggested George W. Bush for House Speaker?," by Molly Olmstead in Slate.

"Deputy fatally shoots man who served 16 years for wrongful conviction," by Praveena Somasundaram in The Washington Post.

"Black Voters Have New Power in Mississippi. Can They Elect a Democrat?," by Nick Corasaniti in The New York Times.

#ukraine #russia #supreme court #second amendment #benjamin netanyahu #wrongful conviction #mississippi

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psychedelicpharmaceutical · 10 months

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So you guys know how the Supreme Court ruled that businesses have a right to deny members of the LGBTQ service?

Lorie Smith, the website designer who started this whole thing, cited one of the “requests” for a wedding website by a guy named Stewart. She used this as evidence before the Supreme Court as reason to deny LGBTQ people service.

… yeah it was fraudulent. “Stewart” the guy who supposedly make this request is a real person. But he’s a straight man whose been married to a woman for years. He never put in the website request.

The Supreme Court just made it a hell of a lot easier to discriminate against an already marginalized community over FRAUDULENT EVIDENCE.

#im so angry #and I could talk about how misinformation #disinformation #bots and trolls muddy the legal system #and how horrorfying it is that the Supreme Court accepted evidence from the internet without verification #and what this means for the future of digital law #but I’m so tired and angry #and part of the reason it’s legal is because of fradulant evidence #it’s such a far cry from justice #with the roe vs Wade ruling #student debt #affirmative action #the Mississippi that that disenfranchises black voters being called ‘just’#and so much more #notice which demographics are not being targeted negatively

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reasoningdaily · 1 year

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Mississippi to Require Lawyers for Defendants Before Indictment — ProPublica

Poor defendants in Mississippi are routinely jailed for months, and sometimes even years, without being appointed an attorney due to the state’s notoriously dysfunctional public defender system. The Mississippi Supreme Court now says this practice must end.

The state’s highest court approved a mandate on Thursday that criminal defendants who can’t afford their own attorney must always have one before an indictment.

Across the state, defendants facing felony charges lose their appointed attorneys after their initial court appearances, where a judge rules whether they can be released from jail before trial. In many counties, defendants aren’t appointed new lawyers until they’re indicted, a process that can take years. Justice system reformers call this gap the “dead zone.”

In the Mississippi Delta’s Coahoma County, Duane Lake spent almost two years behind bars without bond and without an attorney while waiting to be indicted on triple murder charges following a brutal killing. After he was indicted, he spent four more years in jail before he was acquitted at trial in November 2021.

There are others like him, trapped in a system that leaves defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys with no advocate to ask a judge to reduce their bonds or dismiss their cases as they wait in jail to be indicted. Meanwhile, prosecutors face no deadlines to bring cases before a grand jury.

“There is no other state where a defendant can be sitting in jail without an attorney for months or years while charging decisions are made,” said David Carroll, executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, which studies how states provide indigent criminal defense.

Several years ago, at the request of a task force appointed by the Mississippi Legislature, the Sixth Amendment Center evaluated the state’s indigent defense services. In a highly critical report, the group proposed a number of reforms, including stronger state oversight of how local governments provide public defenders.

The Legislature shelved the report and the task force’s recommendations, even as criminal justice reformers identified defendants like Lake who sat in jail for years facing charges that didn’t hold up.

But in February, a three-member committee of the Mississippi Supreme Court requested public comments on a proposed change to the state’s rules of criminal procedure. It would require that defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys be represented the entire time they’re awaiting indictment.

The Supreme Court approved the rule change Thursday. It takes effect in July.

“This landmark change in Mississippi’s public defense system marks the end of the dead zone and is a huge step toward a criminal legal system that doesn’t unfairly punish people who are unable to afford an attorney,” said Cliff Johnson, who as director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Mississippi office has long argued for such a change.

But researchers like Pam Metzger, director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University in Texas, say simply requiring the assignment of an attorney will do little to improve legal representation for poor defendants.

“It’s giving you a warm body and briefcase,” she said of the rule. “But it doesn’t deal with what in my view is the real problem,” which is that people spend too long in jail before they’re indicted.

Current and former public defenders have also cautioned that Mississippi’s decentralized justice system will make it hard to implement the Supreme Court’s new rule.

The amended rule prevents an appointed attorney representing an indigent client at any stage of criminal proceedings from withdrawing until another attorney is appointed. Right now, this provision applies only after an indictment.

It was proposed in May by Russ Latino, who was then executive director of the conservative think tank Empower Mississippi. His request sat for nearly 10 months until the Supreme Court’s criminal procedure committee invited feedback and set a March 15 deadline for responses.

A raft of ideologically diverse legal activists, attorneys and policy advocates responded by urging the court to adopt the amendment.

“No just or useful purpose is served by allowing such incarceration without benefit of legal counsel,” wrote Brad Pigott, who served in the 1990s as one of Mississippi’s U.S. attorneys. “Certainly no legitimate law enforcement purpose is thereby served.”

”We’ve Got People Languishing in Jail”

Across Mississippi, some people without attorneys have spent months or longer in jail waiting for an indictment.

After prisoners in eastern Mississippi’s Lauderdale County jail filed complaints, a federal judge ordered the county in 2016 to provide him with a list of all people held in jail without indictments and without lawyers.

“Something needs to be put in place to make sure someone doesn’t fall through the cracks in this way,” said U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, according to an Associated Press story.

On the state’s Gulf Coast, an autistic teenager was arrested in 2018 on burglary charges and spent more than 270 days in jail because his family didn’t post a $10,000 bond. The charges were ultimately dropped after a grand jury declined to indict him.

The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, in southeast Mississippi’s Pine Belt region, reported that 24 of 31 prisoners in the jail as of the end of September had not been indicted, including 13 who had been in jail 90 days or longer. Only six of these 13 had lawyers as of September, according to the report.

One person without a lawyer had been jailed for about six months awaiting indictment on a drug possession charge, according to the report.

Of those 13, only one is still in jail and hasn’t been indicted as of this week, said Kassie Coleman, the district attorney for Wayne County.

Gregory J. Weber, a part-time public defender in Madison County, said he sees delays with many cases, particularly drug charges.

“We’ve got people languishing in jail and nothing is being done,” Weber said in an interview before the Supreme Court acted. For defendants with a private attorney, “something usually is done about it. There is a bond reduction, or they get into drug court and they plead. So we’ve definitely got a problem with people falling through the cracks.”

Lawyers Aren’t Only Factor in Long Jail Stays

Even as Carroll, of the Sixth Amendment Center, called the change an important first step, he cautioned that because indigent defense is handled by local court systems, “the state still has no oversight function to make sure that the court rule gets implemented.”

The Sixth Amendment Center has found that in counties without full-time public defender’s offices — which is most of them — the payment structure discourages public defenders from doing extensive work on behalf of their clients.

In most counties, attorneys are paid a flat fee, no matter how many indigent clients they are assigned. That incentivizes attorneys to spend little time on indigent clients so they can take on those who can pay, the center argued.

Nor does the new rule spell out how defendants will be transferred between appointed counsel working for different court systems and different local government bodies. “I think it needs to be delineated much more clearly about when the handoff occurs and who is responsible for that person,” Weber said.

But better payment structures and effective administrative procedures won’t change a key factor in long jail terms: Prosecutors have unlimited time to indict and prosecute someone after they’ve been arrested.

“We’re really focused in Mississippi on the charging time,” said Metzger, who has studied this phase of criminal proceedings in courts across the country.

She said it would be more effective to institute deadlines for indictment, mandatory bail hearings and early disclosure of evidence.

Even when lawyers are appointed early on, such as in Yazoo County, defendants still spend months or years in jail.

Defense attorneys in the county have filed almost 100 motions since 2019 seeking to reduce bonds or dismiss charges. Many of those defendants had spent a year or more in jail while waiting to be indicted.

John Paul Thornton was arrested by Yazoo City police on Dec. 3, 2018, and charged with two counts of commercial burglary involving a local dollar store. Over a year later, Thornton was still in jail and had not been indicted.

Belinda Stevens, an attorney who works part-time as a public defender in Yazoo County, filed a motion on Thornton’s behalf in January 2020, seeking a dismissal of the case and claiming that his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been denied. Stevens didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A month later, prosecutors dropped the case. A judge signed an order, and Thornton walked free the next day after 436 days in jail.

#MISSISSIPPI #Some Are Jailed in Mississippi for Months Without a Lawyer. The State Supreme Court Just Barred That.#prisoners #defendants rights #criminals in criminal justice positions

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wilwheaton · 8 months

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Frederick Douglass, who was born into Southern slavery, described the South as “a little nation by itself, having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs.” Fewer than 2000 families — six-tenths of one percent of the Southern population — owned more than 50 enslaved people and ruled the oligarchy that we call the Confederacy with an iron fist. The 75 percent of white people in the South during that era who did not own any enslaved persons generally lived in deep poverty. Women had no rights, queer people were routinely tortured and murdered, education for both enslaved Africans and poor whites was generally outlawed, religious attendance was often mandated, and hunger and disease stalked all but those in the families of the two thousand morbidly rich planter dynasties. Modern-day Red states are doing their best to recreate that old Confederacy, right down to state Senator Kathy Chism’s new effort to return the Confederate battle flag to Mississippi's state flag. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence have both emphasized their presidential pledges to restore the names of murderous Civil War traitors to American military bases, celebrating their armed defense of the “values” of the Old South. Today’s version of yesteryear’s plantation owners are called CEOs, hedge and vulture fund managers, and the morbidly rich. They use the power of political bribery given them by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — with Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking Citizens United vote on behalf of his sugar daddy Harlan Crow — to lord over their Red states, regardless of the will of those states’ citizens.

Why are red state 'welfare queen' oligarchs allowed to mooch off of blue states?

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baked-octopus · 2 years

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https://www.plancpills.org

#abortion #Texas #louisiana #oklama #Idaho #supreme court #scotus #abortion rights #health care #government #politics #mississippi

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don-lichterman · 2 years

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Explainer-What's at Stake in U.S. Supreme Court Abortion Case? | U.S. News®

Explainer-What’s at Stake in U.S. Supreme Court Abortion Case? | U.S. News®

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide in the coming weeks whether to dramatically curb abortion rights when it rules on a case from Mississippi, potentially paving the way to about half of the 50 U.S. states banning or heavily restricting the procedure. Here is a summary of what’s at stake and how the court could rule in the decision expected by…

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#Abortion #Case #Collections: US #Court #ExplainerWhats #Mississippi #News #Reuters #stake #supreme #U.S. News®#United States #women&x27;s health

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reportwire · 2 years

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Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves Confirms Pregnant People in His State Are Shit Out of Luck

Over the weekend, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves did the morning-show rounds to discuss the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade. Reeves, you see, is eminently qualified to comment on the expected eradication of pregnant people’s rights, given that (1) it is a Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that will reverse nearly 50 years of precedent if the draft opinion is…

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#abortion #Mississippi #Roe v. Wade #supreme court

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gwydionmisha · 2 years

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#The Supreme Court #Mississippi #Abortion #Choice #News

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action · 2 years

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Supreme Court overturns Roe V. Wade, ending federal abortion rights.

Abortions will be banned immediately in:

Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming

These states have laws to protect the right to an abortion:

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Washington DC, Vermont

Click here for details on where abortion stands in your state.

Here is what you can do:

Donate to an abortion fund to provide help for those whose rights have been stripped or jeopardized.

Find a local protest or call your representative to make your voice heard.

Consider purchasing abortion pills or emergency contraception. For information on your rights to self-managed abortion, visit reprolegalhelpline.org

#abortion rights #roe v wade #signal boost #reproductive rights

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justinspoliticalcorner · 21 days

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Ian Millhiser at Vox:

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.

It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South. For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016. The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”

Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case — such as if Mckesson had “authorized, directed, or ratified” the decision to throw the rock. Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”

The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again. Indeed, as Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who dissented from his court’s Mckesson decision, warned in one of his dissents, his court’s decision would make protest organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protesters and agitators.” So, under the Fifth Circuit’s rule, a Ku Klux Klansman could sabotage the Black Lives Matter movement simply by showing up at its protests and throwing stones.

The Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision is obviously wrong

Like Mckesson, Claiborne involved a racial justice protest that included some violent participants. In the mid-1960s, the NAACP launched a boycott of white merchants in Claiborne County, Mississippi. At least according to the state supreme court, some participants in this boycott “engaged in acts of physical force and violence against the persons and property of certain customers and prospective customers” of these white businesses. Indeed, one of the organizers of this boycott did far more to encourage violence than Mckesson is accused of in his case. Charles Evers, a local NAACP leader, allegedly said in a speech to boycott supporters that “if we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna break your damn neck.”

With SCOTUS refusing to take up McKesson v. Doe, the 5th Circuit's insane anti-1st Amendment ruling that effectively bans mass protests remains in force for the 3 states covered in the 5th: Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

#SCOTUS #Deray McKesson #Protests #Black Lives Matter #5th Circuit Court #Texas #Louisiana #Mississippi #1st Amendment #Counterman v. Colorado #NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware #McKesson v. Doe

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intheholler · 9 months

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On Appalachian and Southern Stereotypes

After seeing some people leap at the opportunity to insult and further harm us under my posts, even by obviously leftist accounts, I wanted to address some of the most popular stereotypes of our region.

Not as an excuse. There are many negative, violent and otherwise harmful features of the American South. We have a horrific history especially in terms of the violence we inflicted and continue to inflict upon the Black community that cannot be forgotten, and, as a culture, we do need to pay our dues.

But maybe this will help y’all apply some nuance to the situation and understand that we aren’t all your enemy.

Stereotype 1: Everyone is a Republican Racist

Absolute horse shit, my friends. There are people like me all over the south and in the hollers. We just get drowned out by the fascists, and it is all by design.

In my home state of North Carolina alone, they are working tirelessly to make it impossible for young, often liberal (if not outright leftist) voices to be heard. They specifically target regions with heavy POC populations.

As recently as May of this year, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned their own previous ruling which once made gerrymandering illegal. This allows Republicans free range to draw their congressional lines wherever benefits them most.

Meanwhile, Roy Cooper, our Democratic governor, has been in office since 2017.

Gerrymandering is a real problem, and it reflects the worst of us. But it does not reflect all of us.

We are a working class, pro-union people.

We are coal miners and mill workers and farmers.

We took up arms against the government and fought for our labor rights during the Coal Wars as recently as the 1920s.

We bled for labor rights at the Battle of Blair Mountain.

It’s a myth that you keep perpetuating that we are all closed minded, bigoted regressionists. It diminishes the efforts of everyone from the coal miners to people like me while we try to make the region a better place.

It actually only worsens what you say that you wish you could “saw off into the ocean.”

That's my home you're talking about.

Stereotype 2: Everyone is Obese

36.3% of the overall population of the Southeast is obese. This is true.

Have you considered why that may be? For starters, Southerners are more likely to be uninsured compared to individuals living in the rest of the country.

"Among the total nonelderly population, 15% of individuals in the South are uninsured compared to 10% of individuals in the rest of the country."

Partially because they didn't even expand the same Medicaid benefits to us. and partially because we are just so fucking poor.

17% of the American South is below the poverty line, compared to 13% in the Midwest, 13% in the West, and 13% in the Northeast.

Percentages under 5% may not seem like much, but when you consider 1% of the total United States population is around 3,140,000 people, yeah, that adds up real quick.

How does this relate? Well...

Mississippi has 19.58% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 39.1% obesity rate.

West Virginia has 17.10% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 40.6 % obesity rate.

Kentucky has 16.61% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 40.4% obesity rate.

Are you seeing the trend?

We, generally speaking, are more likely to be unable to afford to feed ourselves wholesome foods, and we are less likely to be able to afford medical insurance--two things that are obviously important to maintaing good health and a "healthy" weight.

By the same token...

Stereotype #3: We're All Uneducated

The South and Appalachia are some of the lowest ranked in terms of educational funding and spending per pupil in the entire country. We don't even break the top 30 on the list, y'all.

49. Tennessee at $8,324 per pupil 47. Mississippi at $8,919 per pupil 45. Alabama at $9,636 per pupil 42. Kentucky at $10,010 per pupil 36. North Carolina at $10,613 per pupil 35. South Carolina at $10,719 per pupil 33. Georgia at $10,893 per pupil 32. West Virginia at $10,984 per pupil

The top three best-funded states, by comparison, receive between $18k and $20k per pupil.

In terms of higher education, student loans are a death sentence for everyone but especially impoverished kids just looking for a way out. It just isn't feasible for most of us. And that's if we even tested well after going to shitty schools our whole lives. If we had better education, we'd have better literacy in all things, including critical thinking, allowing us to better see through the bullshit we are taught. But we don't. And you aren't helping the ones who are trying in spite of that.

Stereotype 4: Bad Teeth

Quickly going to touch on this one--when we consider a lack of access to affordable, healthy food, shitty medical insurance in general and our poverty rate, this one is kind of obvious. Even so:

“Dental coverage was significantly lower than the national average in the South Atlantic (45.6%), East South Central (45.6%), West South Central (45.9%), and Pacific (48.0%) regions.”

Every time you make a toothless hillbilly joke, ask if poverty is really the butt of the joke you want to be making.

These are just the most pervasive of them, imo. And they can all be underlined by extreme poverty which is absolutely by design.

It also contributes to why it isn’t so easy to “just leave” as we are so often dismissively told to do. Moving is expensive.

And why should we have to, anyway? Why should we have to flee our homes?

Why, for those who feel safe enough and/or have no other choice, should we not stay and fight to better the region?

And why can’t you other leftists get behind us and help us in our fight instead of perpetuating harmful stereotypes? We're your people, too.

Just some food for thought. And I hope some of y’all take a big ol bite.

#i am already exhausted #if you wanna discuss or for some reason argue any of these points my asks are open but i'm hopping off of here for now #appalachia #appalachian culture #appalachian mountains #southern usa #txt

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