Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • The Ferguson movement is on the cusp of revolutionizing political power in St. Louis

    Frustrated at the slow pace of criminal justice reform after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the grassroots group Action St. Louis formed to seize political power and make change happen from the inside of the system rather than pressuring for change from the outside. After years of organizing and politicking, it flipped key offices – St. Louis city and county prosecutors, the Board of Aldermen, and the mayor – outflanking the police union's candidates with officeholders committed to re-imagining public safety policy.

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  • Taharka Bros: Ice cream with a side of worker ownership

    Baltimore ice cream maker Taharka Brothers is six Black men, worker-owners, who lost most of their business accounts at the start of the pandemic. They saved their business, and their jobs, by starting home delivery and tapping into collectives that help worker-owned cooperatives with financing and business advice. Gratitude for a decent job, good working conditions, and pride of ownership help sustain such a business through tumultuous times.

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  • How two Black CEOs got corporate America to pay attention to voting rights

    A small group of prominent Black business leaders personally urged their corporate peers to oppose the restrictive voting laws being considered in dozens of states. Public statements framing voting rights as a moral, non-partisan issue led to hundreds of corporations - including Microsoft and Target – publicly opposing the bills, with some threatening to withhold investment and campaign donations in states that pass such laws. The Major League Baseball All-Star game was pulled from Georgia. Organizers believe White executives were more likely to listen to Black executives than Black grassroots activists.

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  • The forest sound detectives

    After remote Indigenous communities in Papau New Guinea set aside some of their land as conservation areas, they wanted to know if it was working. With the help from scientists and The Nature Conservancy, they were able to use bioacoustics or audio recordings of the rainforests to map out the biodiversity. Using 34 recording devices, they were able to record the forest, listen to them, analyze the sounds, and determine that these areas had a healthy biodiversity.

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  • New study identifies need for more attorneys to represent people facing housing legal woes

    The Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy uses limited funding to provide lawyers to renters facing eviction. Preventing homelessness is more cost effective than providing services for people experiencing homelessness, and avoiding eviction prevents long-term credit problems. The attorneys provide a level of security to renters by helping them navigate the complex legal system and connecting them to other public services. Some are advocating for a "right to counsel" law, like one recently adopted in Louisville and paid for with federal pandemic funds, which guarantees free lawyers to people facing eviction.

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  • National bail fund to expand in the Deep South

    Since 2018, The Bail Project has turned $41 million in donated money into cash bail to free more than 15,500 people in dozens of cities from pretrial detention. The project grew out of the work of Bronx Defenders, which saw over a decade the people it bailed out nearly all showed up for court dates and most did not get into new trouble while out of jail. Now the Bail Project is expanding with new offices in four Southern states, a reflection of the region's high incarceration rates and racial disparities. In the campaign to end cash bail as a penalty for poverty, bail funds serve as a stopgap.

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  • The Atlanta BeltLine Wants to Prevent Displacement of Longtime Residents. Is it Too Late?

    The Legacy Resident Retention program is helping longtime homeowners remain in their homes despite rising taxes and property values in Atlanta, Georgia. The program aims to mitigate gentrification and displacement as a result of the Atlanta Beltline development and has helped 21 families by covering the cost of increased property taxes.

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  • To Solve 3 Cold Cases, This Small County Got a DNA Crash Course

    Genetic genealogy's use in criminal cases has gone mainstream. As the cases of three murder victims in Indiana illustrate, the science of DNA evidence combined with genealogical research and detective work is rapidly ramping up, from a hobby to a curiosity and now to a major commercial and criminal-justice opportunity. Hundreds of missing persons have been identified from decades-old remains, or murder suspects identified from old biological evidence in cold cases. By creating a family tree of the victim or suspect, investigators can zero in on an identity more quickly and inexpensively than ever.

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  • ‘The fight has to change': Why Ferguson activists ditched police reform

    Decades of advocacy for more effective civilian oversight of police-misconduct investigations in St. Louis finally resulted in a new oversight board created in the wake of the death of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson. But that board has been rendered a "total failure" because the police found ways to keep steering investigations to their secret, internal investigative office and preventing prosecutors from working independently on investigations. A new mayor and a sympathetic prosecuting attorney promise to fix the structural flaws that have let the police continue to investigate themselves.

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  • After a century of dispossession, Black farmers are fighting to get back to the land

    In the U.S., a movement of Black farmers is trying to reclaim their legacy as agrarians. Only 1.7 percent of farms were run by Black farmers according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Black farmers are forming collectives, creating land trusts, creating conferences.

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