Oklahoma is sending police officers into the classroom as a bandaid for its teacher shortage. In January, Governor Kevin Stitt issued an executive order allowing state employees, including police officers, to fill in for substitute teachers at public schools at least through May 17. The day Stitt’s order went into effect, an Oklahoma police department...
A pair of speckled wood thrushes chirp and chase each other through a Charleston thicket one waning summer afternoon while, below, under clouds of cigarette smoke, about 15 cops flock at the back of a redbrick neighborhood police station. Their occasional guffaws punctuate the air, heavy with humidity. The year is 1996, and the mood resembles a middle school locker...
At the U.N.’s COP27 climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt earlier this month, world leaders met to discuss and debate various proposals to minimize the effects of climate change. Some of these discussions bore fruit, leading to advancements on agricultural innovation, carbon offsets, conservation, methane abatement, and net-zero standards. Other noteworthy...
This story is published in collaboration with The Appeal. For more reporting that explores criminal legal issues and injustices, sign up for The Appeal’s newsletter. There is nothing romantic about the police state. And yet, in some of the biggest hits of the rom-com world, white cops are the underdogs, just looking for the right person to love who loves them...
To Spelman College President Dr. Helene D. Gayle and the Spelman College Board of Trustees, We, the undersigned Alumni of Spelman College, are writing this open letter with the hopes to: Inform our international community about the critical situation in Atlanta; Urge the college president and the members of the board to use their influence in the Atlanta political...
The struggle to Stop Cop City is not just a battle over the creation of a $90 million police urban warfare center. It’s not just a fight to protect the 381 acres of forest land, known as one of the “four lungs” of Atlanta, currently under threat of destruction. It’s not just a conflict over how the city invests the over $30 million it has...
This letter mentions state-sanctioned murder. Remix, I’ve been mentally and emotionally exhausted these last few weeks for some familiar and new reasons that I can only explain by addressing you directly. A few weeks ago, I took you across the street to the vacant baseball field to play soccer. When I kicked the ball in one direction, you would grin at me...
Mass media has continued the work to delineate between peaceful and violent protesters with sprinklings of the outside agitators to maintain a ruse of democracy and progress while fooling you into thinking protesters threaten them. Violent protesters are simply people who protest. The very dignity of a protest is measured only by its capacity to be violent, and any...
I remember the very day I unknowingly began the process of homemaking inside the Peachtree-Pine shelter operated by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. It was July 1, 2014, when I started volunteering 10+ hour days providing case management services to Atlanta’s unhoused and stranded. At the time, Peachtree-Pine was the largest shelter in the...
This story was originally published by Truthout. An attorney for three activists opposed to a planned $72.8 million police training center that opponents have dubbed “Cop City” tells Truthout her clients are facing felony charges of intimidation of an officer and misdemeanor stalking after two of them placed flyers on mailboxes in Bartow County, Georgia...