Page 20 - Florida Sentinel 4-25-17

National
Rev. Jesse Jackson Among
Memphis Black Lives Matters
Officials Asking For Temp
Chapter Raising Money To Bail Out
Shutdown Of Facebook Live
Women From Jail Before Mother’s Day
CHICAGO, IL —- Rev. Jesse Jackson and officials in Chicago are calling for a 30 day shut down of Facebook’s live streaming feature to give the company a chance to fig- ure out a way to to remove disturbing video instantly from the site.
Cook County Commissioner
Richard Boykin, Jackson and Father Michael Pfleger, a Chicago activist, are calling for the morato- rium, effective as soon as pos- sible, in order to give Facebook a chance to create a mechanism that would allow for instant removal of dis- turbing and offensive con- tent. The protest came in the wake of the murder of Cleve- land grandfather Robert Godwin, whose shooting was broadcast on the social network.
All three stood in front of Facebook's Chicago offices on Friday to seek a meeting on the issue.
Godwin murder suspect Steve Stephens had an- nounced on Facebook that he was going to kill someone, then posted video of him shooting Godwin, 74, on the
MEMPHIS, TN —- A cam- paign to raise bail money for women held in Shelby County jail in time for Mother’s Day raises a question forcing change in some cities.
Should the ability to pay bail or post bond determine who stays in jail before trial or con- viction?
The Washington-based Civil Rights Corps has brought about 20 class-action lawsuits around the country “trying to eradicate the notion that whether a person is in a jail cell or not should depend on how much money they have,” said Alec Karakatsanis, a lawyer and executive director of the nonprofit Civil Rights Corps.
“It's an incredibly significant problem plaguing virtually every jurisdiction in the coun- try,” Karakatsanis said. “There are about 450,000 to 500,000 human beings who, on any given night in this
The Memphis chapter of Black Lives Matter is attempting to help bail out 274 women who are still in jail because they cannot afford bail money.
Rev. Jesse Jackson is asking for Facebook Live shutdown after 74-year-old man was murdered and his death streamed by his killer.
street. The video of the Easter Sunday murder was reported but it took almost two hours for those reports to reach Facebook staff, who then dis- abled Stephens' account. Stephens killed himself in Erie, Pa., on April 18 as police closed in on him.
The moratorium would serve as "a time out" to help Facebook figure out how to prevent people from using it "as a platform to release their anger, their fears and their foolishness," Jackson said.
country, are in a jail cell solely because they can't make a monetary payment prior to being convicted.”
In Memphis, the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter is joining a national campaign led by Colo- rofChange.org and Movement for Black Lives Policy Table to raise bond money to bring Black mothers home the week before Mother’s Day, which is May 14.
The national goal is to raise $400,000, led by Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, while
the local chapter is aiming for $5,000, including a benefit hip-hop and R&B event April 26 at Coach’s Grillz & BBQ in Raleigh, said chapter spokesperson Erica Perry.
The chapter chose Shelby County Jail East, where women are held, for its Friday announcement.
At the end of February, 274 women were in Shelby County jail, including 67 for pretrial misdemeanors and 160 for pretrial felonies, according to Tennessee Department of Cor- rection data.
7 Black Fox News Employees Plan To Join Racial Discrimination Lawsuit
FL Teen’s Prom Dress In Honor
Sexual harassment is appar- ently not the only thing toxic about Fox News’ culture.
New York magazine reports there are mounting allegations that there was also blatant racial discrimination at the network, and, that this week, 7 Black Fox News employees plan to join an existing racial discrimination suit filed last month.
The original lawsuit, brought
Fox’s payroll staff to racial in- sults. Slater also allegedly de- manded that Black employees hold “arm wrestling matches” with white female employees in her office.
“Forcing a Black woman em- ployee to ‘fight’ for the amuse- ment and pleasure of her white superiors is horrifying,” the let- ter states.
Slater was let go in light of the lawsuit.
Of Those Who Died At The Hands
by 2 African American employ- ees, alleges that Fox News’s longtime comptroller, Judy Slater, subjected members of
Of Police Brutality Goes Viral
WEST PALM BEACH, FL — - Prom season is in full swing and the kids are showing up and showing out for their last hurrah before they begin their new lives on college campuses across the nation. However 17-year-old Milan Bolden- Morris is making headlines for her politically charged prom dress.
The Cardinal-Newman High School senior has gone viral for wearing a custom prom dress that features the faces of Trayvon Martin, San- dra Bland, Tamir Rice and other unarmed black men and women who lost their lives to police brutality.
Bolden posted a picture of her gown on Instagram and it didn’t take long for the Inter- net to catch on.
“Yes I’m black.
Yes I’m 17. Yes God is using
me to convey a message that’s bigger than me,” Bolden- Morris captioned. At the time of this post, the teen who
Black Inmate Is First Death Row Inmate In Decade To Be Executed In Arkansas
Milan-Bolden Morris is the Palm Beach’s top girls basket- ball player of the year.
has also been named Palm Beach Post’s Small Schools Girls Basketball Player of the Year, has earned nearly 12,000 likes because of her dress.
She will continue her bas- ketball career in Massachu- setts at Boston College.
GRADY, AR —- Amid rising controversy over the drugs used in its lethal-injection pro- tocol and a flurry of legal bat- tles in the last week attempting to stop its expedited execution plan, the state of Arkansas car- ried out its first execution in more than a decade Thursday night.
Ledell Lee, 51, was pro- nounced dead at 11:56 p.m. Central Time, just four min- utes before his death warrant would have expired.
The New York Times reports that Lee was put to death at the Cummins Unit, a prison in southeast Arkansas. He had re- ceived multiple reprieves at both the state and federal lev- els, but they were all over- turned.
Solomon Graves, a
Ledell Lee was executed by lethal injection on Thursday.
spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, said that Lee requested the Holy Communion in lieu of a last meal.
Whether or not Lee would actually be executed was up in the air all day and well into the night on Thursday. Lawyers
raised concerns about Lee’s intellectual capacity as well as the personal conduct and con- flicts of people involved in his trial. At one point, a state judge’s ruling had blocked the state from using one of its exe- cution drugs, leaving open the possibility that Lee might live past the midnight expiration of his death warrant.
Ultimately, the courts ruled that the execution could go on as scheduled, and Lee became the first prisoner to be exe- cuted in Arkansas since 2005.
Throughout it all, Lee main- tained his innocence in the bludgeoning death of a woman named Debra Reese, but a jury convicted him in 1995, and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 1997.
PAGE 20 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2017