Boston NAACP Political Action and Criminal Justice Committees

Practically every film student (our own Karen Holmes Ward included) is tasked to sit through D.W. Griffiths’ 1915 epic ‘The Birth of a Nation.’ The powerful yet virulently racist film was lauded by the press and was the first film screened in the White House. During its release, a largely overlooked battle was being waged right in Boston by a man named William Monroe Trotter. His fight is being chronicled in the documentary ‘Birth of a Movement’ which can be seen on PBS on February 6.

http://www.wcvb.com/article/cityline-the-birth-of-a-nation-vs-william-m-trotter/8587753

CityLine: The Birth of A Nation Vs. William M. Trotter William Monroe Trotter's fight against censorship and racism in the cinema is chronicled in the documentary Birth of a Movement.

NAACP Action Alert

Tell your senators: Jeff Sessions is a threat to our rights
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The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. That means they have the last word on police brutality and voter suppression — two issues Senator Sessions has refused to admit exist. Our lives truly hang in the balance.

For nearly 20 years, every single year, Senator Sessions has received an F on our federal legislative civil rights report cards. He has voted against our policy positions nearly 90 percent of the time. He cheered when the Voting Rights Act was gutted and has shamelessly voted against federal hate crime legislation four times between 2000 to 2009.

We can stop him from taking away our rights. Contact your senators RIGHT NOW and urge them to vote to REJECT Sessions' nomination on January 10.

http://action.naacp.org/page/speakout/reject-senator-jeff-sessions?utm_medium=email&utm_source=NAACP&utm_content=2+-+Senate+hearing+scheduled+for+January+10%0A&utm_campaign=20170103sessionspetition&source=20170103sessionspetition

NAACP Send a letter to your Senators today and urge them to reject Sessions for Attorney General.

Missouri dooms countless children to the school-to-prison pipeline The school-to-prison pipeline is about to get worse.

In 2017, the legacy media’s legitimacy crisis will come to a head.

The recent presidential election revealed what people have felt for some time: Media fragmentation and democratized platforms have undermined social trust in institutions.

Politicos may argue about whether the left or right is in greater disarray, but the media will be as convicted as political bodies.

Democratized platforms have not always respected how much people crave expertise, even as they resent it.

Media that manages to inspire trust have a moment to capitalize on the “post-fact” landscape.

Which leads me to my next assessment:

In 2017, the media who gets the “post-fact” media platform right will be the platforms that take diversity seriously.

The impulse after this election is to double-down on heterogeneity and to eschew “identity politics,” a weaponized term that really just means people whose visible identities delimit their civil liberties.

That impulse is short-sighted.

Diverse newsrooms don’t just better understand racial, ethnic and sexual minorities.

Diverse newsrooms better understand working-class whites, immigrants, and middle-class white elites.

Diverse newsrooms have thinkers who can hold two competing ideas at the same time, and research shows that people from a variety of backgrounds that have different experiences of race, class, and gender best understand the nuances of white, middle-class normativity.

The successful media platform in our post-fact reality will be a diverse media platform that challenges our assumptions smartly, inspiring trust again in media.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/12/a-path-through-the-medias-coming-legitimacy-crisis/

A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis "Democratized platforms have not always respected how much people crave expertise, even as they resent it."

'Moonlight,' 'Birth of a Nation' and 'Loving' score big with NAACP Image Award nominations The 48th NAACP Image Awards nominations were announced Tuesday with Oscar contender “Moonlight” and Nate Parker’s embattled “The Birth of a Nation” each scoring six nods, with “Loving” nabbing five.

Bostonians of the Year 2016: Kylie Webster-Cazeau and Meggie Noel - The Boston Globe The student-activists shook up Boston Latin and put race relations back on Boston’s list of priorities.

The Linguistic Overlap of Color Theory and Racism Tomashi Jackson found that the language Josef Albers used to describe color perception mirrored the language of racialized segregation.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced, in partnership with the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) and the City Clerk's Office, that beginning [December 02] Boston.gov is now the official source of record for all public meetings, hearings, and notices.

This information is now available at Boston.gov/public-notices.
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Residents are able to access public notice information on any device.

In addition to the website, residents will also be able to access this information on the first floor of City Hall, via a digital display.
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The City has also released the code for this project to the City's public GitHub repository. This will allow other cities to utilize Boston's code should they wish to replicate the initiative. It also allows members of the community to help the City improve the application, in keeping with the City's decision to open source Boston.gov.

https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-now-official-record-public-meeting-information

Boston.gov is now the official record for public meeting information The change makes City Hall meetings more transparent and accessible.

Governor Baker Makes 9C Budget Cuts to Housing Programs - December 7, 2016 | Citizens' Housing And Planning Association On December 6th, Governor Baker announced 9C budget cuts. The Governor cut $98 million from the $39.25 billion state budget in response to softening revenues. These cuts included $53 million in earmarks, $17 million from administrative accounts, $6 million from MassHealth, and $21 million from oth...

Making Art with Failed Banks On the eighth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers, Michael Mandiberg opens an exhibition that revolves around the logos of defunct institutions.

History

Remembering Fred Hampton: An Interview with Historian Craig Ciccone December 4, 1969 was the date that Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated by members of the Chicago ...

3,200 students on vocational education wait lists - The Boston Globe It is evidence of growing demand for the specialized training that can help students find their way into well-paying careers in health care and manufacturing.