Update: (9-28-16) On Tues., Sept., 27th, the Santa Monica City Council unanimously agreed not to appeal the jury verdict, but to instead pay Justin Palmer $1.1 million in damages and $1 million for attorneys' fees. CORRECTION AND CLARIFICATION: Though at first the plaintiff Justin Palmer named the City as a defendant in the case, the City was dismissed as a defendant prior to trial -- this after the City agreed to pay damages in the event the jury issued a judgement against one or both of the officers. While the City was not found legally liable for the one officer's conduct on the job, the City did accept responsibility for paying the judgement against him. We apologize for any confusion. Note, the plaintiff and defendants recounted different versions of the events preceding Palmer's arrest when police asked to see Palmer's identification. ---------------------------------------- The Coalition for Police Reform (CPR) in Santa Monica started this petition to urge the City to respect the jury verdict in the Justin Palmer civil rights trial and to focus on adopting best police practices while addressing issues of racial profiling, racial justice, and excessive use of police force. The Coalition anticipates continued dialogue with the City to promote greater understanding between police and the diverse communities they serve. CPR members responsible for this petition include Julie Alley, Joanne Berlin, Gina Frazier, Robbie Jones, Audrey Lyness, Sheri Walker, Michele Wittig, and Marcy Winograd.

For natural African-American men and women, dreadlocks are a common hairstyle. For reasons unknown, dreadlocks are seen as unprofessional, and now the US government is allowing employers to discriminate against people who have them. This action displays the failure of the American government to fully accept African-Americans and their culture. It seems that only hairstyles chosen by Caucasians seem never to come into question. Hair has never affected one's work ethic, so why should it affect the hiring process? If equality in the workplace is real, why doesn't that apply to all aspects of a person from race to hairstyle?

Recordings from body cameras and dashboard cameras should be used to make law enforcement more transparent and accountable to the communities they serve. However, North Carolina HB 972 blocks the release of law enforcement recordings.

Too much evidence of the lethal ramifications of racism has cost too many lives. Protests over deaths as a result of police brutality are increasing because not enough has been done to PREVENT the loss of more innocent black lives. The justice system has proven to remain on the side of injustice, seen in the paid administrative leave of officers who kill innocent black citizens while the families who have lost loved ones work harder to pay for funeral expenses for their killed family members. This is permitted throughout the country as we understand that police officers work in heightened tensions, and seek to preserve their lives as well. Let's bring value to Black Lives Matter and prove that they are included in "All Lives" through education and Undoing Racism workshops to expose all our citizens in public service to the vast disparities in privileges due to differences in skin tone.

Everyone from the Indians, Jewish and the Japanese has received Reparations for their being mistreated. It's time the African-Americans received their Reparations. Why are the African-Americans the only ones undeserving of Reparations when we have suffered the most, and still suffering today.

Lennon Lacy was an African American 17-year old West Bladen high school student from Bladenboro, North Carolina. On August 29, 2014, Lacy was found hanging by belts that were tied together from a swing set in a primarily white mobile home park near his home. There is no reasonable evidence that proves that Lacy committed suicide. Lacy played football for his high school and had his uniform laid out on his bed the night before his body was found. Lennon Lacy was in a relationship with Michelle Brimhall, a 31 year old Caucasian women. Brimhall reported that the town disagreed with their interracial relationship. The population in this town is 80% white and 18% black. His death was declared as asphyxia secondary to hanging. Lacy's mother, Claudia Lacy does not believe that her son committed suicide, but was murdered. Some questions that have been left unanswered are: (1) what happened to the new Jordan’s the teen had recently bought? (2) the shoes found on Lacy’s feet were a size 10.5 but Lacy wore a size 12, who did the size 10.5 shoes belong to and why were the laces missing? (3) what did Lacy use to reach the swing set, which was 6 ft tall? (5) the belts that Lacy were found hanging from did not belong to him so who did they belong to? (6) did the person who dug up and removed the flowers from Lacy’s grave have anything to do with his death? (7) why didn’t law enforcement and the FBI do a thorough investigation and why did they rule out foul play so quickly? After two years, despite all of these unanswered questions, law enforcement still claims that it was suicide. We demand justice for Lennon Lacy! If justice is never served and this case is left closed, we are being taught that racism and murder is allowable. I created this petition to District Attorney Jon David, Quintin McGee, ADA, Cortney Sanford , ADA, and the US Department of Justice. I urge you to sign this petition to demand that this case be reopened so that a thorough and unprejudiced investigation from law enforcement and FBI.

Terence Crutcher needed help. But instead, he got a bullet. On Friday night, Terence, a father of four, was on his way home from class at Tulsa Community College when his car stalled in the middle of the road. Someone called the police. And instead of helping him, officers jumped out of their vehicles with guns drawn while helicopters circled in the sky filming the entire incident. The officers in the helicopter can be heard on video saying, "That looks like a bad dude, too. Probably on something." Terence died because he was Black. There's no other reason for someone to be killed by police when they are unarmed, walking slowly away with their hands up. He posed absolutely no threat. To make matters worse, after Officer Betty Shelby killed him, Tulsa Police let Terence Crutcher bleed out on the street. He died in the hospital a few hours later. This kind of continued disregard for Black life is enraging. Officer Betty Shelby killed someone. She should not be on administrative leave, sitting at home collecting a paycheck. Terence Crutcher's family and local activists in Tulsa are calling for Officer Shelby to be arrested and criminally charged. Let's join them and make sure this officer is held accountable.

I feel the officers involved in killing this man, violated his rights to due process and this man didn't pose a threat to the officers who taised and shot him dead. I feel the officers involved shouldn't be paid when they were put on administrative leave.

Although his administration signed the UNCRC, President Bill Clinton never pushed the Senate for ratification. Nor did George W. Bush. At a debate on youth issues a month before the 2008 election, then candidate Obama said: “It’s embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land. I will review this and other treaties to ensure the United States resumes its global leadership in human rights.” (At the time there were only two countries that had not ratified because South Sudan was not yet an independent nation. These two nations have since ratified the treaty.) It is now 2025. Thirteen years have passed. Unfortunately, President Obama has not acted, despite this campaign pledge. President Trump has not acted, as well. The Convention outlines the basic human rights that children everywhere should enjoy, among them the rights to survival, to develop to the fullest and to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation. How am I affected? I am a German citizen who is the father of two young children who are US citizens. Because of US immigration law, I must periodically return to my home country. While I was abroad, in 2014, I was neither able to write to my children or to talk to them via telephone or Skype for over nine months. I am back in Germany again, only to find myself in the same situation. No contact for three months now. Among many essential rights outlined in the convention, there are two articles who could help my girl and my boy since they emphasize the importance of frequent contact between children and their parents: Article 9 (Separation from parents): Children have the right to live with their fit parents. Children whose parents do not live together have the right to stay in contact with both parents, unless this might hurt the child. Article 10 (Family reunification): Families whose members live in different countries should be allowed to move between those countries so that parents and children can stay in contact, or get back together as a family. There is a troubling lack of awareness of and education on child protection issues. However, these issues do not receive any media attention in the U.S. Our leaders like to say the U.S. is the world leader on human rights. That claim is undermined by its failure to join the rest of the world in ratifying this convention. This needs to stop. We owe it to our children. President Obama, please ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child .. because it is the most successful human rights treaty in human history! https://www.facebook.com/UNCRCPetitionUS/ https://www.twitter.com/UN_CRC/

Scientology avoids specifying a stance on homosexuality through the tightly constructed loopholes and semantics of its late founder L. Ron Hubbard. Throughout my involvement in the church from age ten to the end of college, I was told by multiple staff members this is because it is not legal for Scientology to claim it addresses or seeks to alter any specific trait. I knew repeated accounts of Scientologists saying “Don’t you ever want to learn the real reason behind why you’re gay?” when recruiting openly gay people. To anyone who has been indoctrinated in the Church, it is very clear that Scientology is inextricably homophobic and negates homosexuality at the core. One of Scientology’s explicit, urgent goals is to bring everyone on the planet up to a state of spiritual existence referred to as “Clear”, achieved primarily through the practice of Scientology auditing. Auditing is Scientology’s signature (pseudoscientific) therapeutic practice of recalling traumatic events until the emotional weight is dissipated, meant to raise a persons level on the “Emotional Tone Scale” or “Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation”.  Scientology’s fundamental criterion for human behavior, “The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation”, irrefutably characterizes the sexual behavior of a “Clear” as heterosexual, and classifies homosexual behavior as the byproduct of aberration, or a lower undesirable spiritual state on the chart. You can find “The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation” pictured and explained on Scientology’s website and the internet, or in books like “Self-Analysis”, available at such retail stores as Barnes and Noble. Every row in "The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation" corresponds to numbered ascending and descending levels of spiritual existence or “tone levels”. Every column describes a different category of behavior, such as “Emotion” and “Sexual Behavior”. In Scientology each "tone level" is usually referred to by its number and/ or emotion, (Content is 3.0, Anger is 1.5, etc.) since Scientology teaches that you can most easily spot a persons position on the “tone scale”/“Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation” by observing their emotional state. The "tone level" associated with homosexuality, “1.1, Covert Hostility” is characterized in the sexual behavior column by the term “Irregular Practices”. It is widely known in Scientology that "Irregular Practices"  is basically synonymous with “homosexuality”.  To confirm for someone unfamiliar with "The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation" that "1.1" is without argument how Scientology categorizes homosexuality, here are some excerpts from the writings of late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard:  “Homosexuals don't practice love; 1.1s can’t."    and  “Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized; for here is the level of the contagion of immorality, and the destruction of ethics; here is the fodder which secret police organizations use for their filthy operations. One of the most effective measures of security that a nation threatened by war could take would be rounding up and placing in a cantonment, away from society, any 1.1 individual who might be connected with government, the military, or essential industry…” (1) Scientology and all of L. Ron Hubbard’s writings on which Scientology is based functions as a model of infallibility; a source of applicable, unfaltering technology. There is not room for dissent or interpretation in Scientology. Dissent or interpretation in Scientology are at best considered mistakes to be corrected and at worst justify vicious organized attack from the church. There are no “Versions” of Scientology that validate homosexual behavior. Scientology only allows for one version of Scientology, and it is one in which homosexuality is defined as a byproduct of “aberration” that Scientology auditing explicitly aims to restore. As a child, I poured over “The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation” starting at age twelve or thirteen, through signing up for “The Volunteer Ministers Course”. Substantial auditing was beyond my family’s price range, but in my case indoctrination with “The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation” was enough to shape my thinking as a kid. “The Hubbard Chart of Human Evalution” additionally posits that though everybody has a chronic “tone level” with corresponding columns generally predicting each aspect of behavior, "tone level" acutely fluctuates throughout the day or over time, since each “tone level” corresponds with a different emotion and people experience varying emotions in different situations. According to Scientology, whatever emotional tone you acutely experience, your will accordingly exhibit the corresponding behaviors. Recognizing same sex attraction in myself as a seventh or eighth grader, I asked the course supervisor “So, according to a persons mood, you could feel same sex attraction without being chronically 1.1?” The course supervisor thought for a second and said “Does it make sense according to the chart”? And by the screwed up logic of “The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation”, it does.  "The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation” erases the concept of homosexuality as anything more than a changeable byproduct of existing in a lower spiritual state. For a developing queer child attempting to modify their behaviors in accordance to Scientology’s “Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation”, or simply trying to exist in a religious context that erases the validity of their instincts, the detriment is clear.  Despite being a rigid system of highly engineered totalitarian indoctrination that readily qualifies as a cult, Scientology manages to steamroll its way into the definition of a religion. It is nevertheless important to protect the right to individual religious beliefs.  Scientology auditing, however, is not a belief, but a practice. Auditing is a practice that is taught and executed with deliberate precision and uniformity, and for which the...

38 water protectors have been arrested and are facing charges for opposing the Dakota Access Bakken oil pipeline in Sioux treaty territory in North Dakota. The pipeline company uses attack dogs and mace to continue building while destroying sacred sites with bulldozers. Support these protectors of Mother Earth, our water, and climate; learn how to live without fracked oil and gas; drop the charges by September 20!

We are concerned about the following audition notice and request that the EEOC and DFEH take administrative action: "All ethnicities are welcome to audition. Historically we have used performers whose facial features make them appear conventionally Caucasian. So if you fit this description, please send us your information. If you don’t, your amazing voice and stage presence could change our minds, so please send us your information." - Beach Blanket Babylon (San Francisco) ≈ 26 August 2016 Such a blatantly race-based employment preference violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), both of which prohibit discrimination based upon race and color. Under U.S. law, race is never a bona fide occupational qualification, and Beach Blanket Babylon’s preference for Caucasian talent combined with its own admission within the notice that an auditioner’s race is not essential for the role(s) in question leave no room for ambiguity. We further request that the EEOC and DFEH initiate investigations into systemic violations of Title VII and FEHA at all levels of California’s entertainment industry. Discriminatory employment practices are industry standard and disparately impact all but White males on and behind camera and stage.