Archive | July, 2010

The Ever Miraculous Pete Seeger

Via Rolling Stone (sorry about the commercial; this is worth it). Pete Seeger may be 91 years old, but the iconic folk singer still has plenty to protest. On Friday night at New York’s City Winery, Seeger debuted a new song he wrote about the disastrous BP oil spill as part of a fundraising concert [...]

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Coroner Calls Death of Mississippi Man Homicide, Attributed Solely to Taser

UPDATE 7/28: The Bolivar Commercial has substantial new information the case. Jermaine Williams, a 30-year-old African-American man from Bolivar County, MS, died in police custody on July 23, 2010. Little has been released about the circumstances of his death—except that the local deputy coroner is calling it a homicide by taser. On Saturday, Bolivar County [...]

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Arizona Police Officer Says SB 1070 Violates the Constitution

Over at Cure This my Twitter friend los anjalis blogged this video of Phoenix, Arizona police officer Paul Dobson talking about his opposition to SB 1070. “This law is – pure and simple – a racist law,” Dobson says. Thanks to los anjalis for also transcribing important portions of Officer Dobson’s statement: So under SB1070 [...]

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Only an Expert

Picked up the new Laurie Anderson record yesterday. Most of the record is too beautiful for me to talk about in any way that would be interesting. This is work at a level where moods, emotions, ideas are conveyed with individual word choices and the sounds around them. So to share my enthusiasm a little [...]

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Darling, It’s Alright

Hot new video from Francis and the Lights. It’s best if you watch it full screen.

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Shock Treatment, Suspicious Blacks and Oscar Grant

I have been trying to wrap my mind around BART police officer Johannes Mehserle’s defense in the shooting death of 22-year-old black man Oscar Grant. Mehserle’s supposed weapon confusion is at the heart of why he was not convicted of voluntary manslaughter, let alone of second degree murder. The underlying logic of the defense seems to [...]

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Driving Driving Driving

Kimya Dawson’s song about the BP oil spill.

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Prison-Based Gerrymandering Ends in Delaware

Got this happy news in my inbox today, from the Prison Policy Initiative, about an important victory in the movement to end prison-based gerry mandering: On June 30, the Delaware Senate passed a bill ensuring that incarcerated persons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new state and local legislative districts are [...]

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