ColorOfChange.org

Campaigns

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  Gov. Cuomo: Stop exploiting incarcerated labor for the production of hand sanitizer.

  In an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, New York Gov. Cuomo is exploiting the forced labor of incarcerated people to make hand sanitizer but is doing nothing to protect them. In his proud announcement that Corcraft, a state-run corporation operating in state prisons, is manufacturing hand sanitizer scented like a "very nice floral bouquet," he casually left out the fact that the people work for Corcraft are paid less than one dollar per day. And to add insult, people in prison may not even be able to use the hand sanitizer themselves because, according to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, anything with alcohol content is contraband.  The virus has already made its way into jails and prisons across the state and is wreaking havoc. Riker's Island has at least 40+ cases, an employee at Sing Sing prison tested positive, and the first incarcerated person to test positive is at Long Island county jail. And these are just the cases we know of. Incarcerated people need protection, not exploitation! People locked in prisons deserve safety and wellness just as much as every other New Yorker. Yet, instead of ensuring that, Cuomo has been doing everything to treat incarcerated people with complete disdain -- undeserving of basic rights and human dignity. He has refused to take up the vast majority of clemency petitions and expand parole and medical release for elderly incarcerated people personally blocked the passage of the HALT Solitary Confinement Act, allowed New York State to continue to operate under a Jim Crow-era voting law that prohibits incarcerated people from voting, and is currently championing rollbacks to recently enacted bail reforms that would expand the jail population.  Prisons and jails are places where a vulnerable population is forced into close quarters, healthcare is poor, and access to soap, sanitizer, toilet paper is limited at best. Inside a prison or jail, it is near impossible to contain an outbreak of infectious disease. This puts both incarcerated people and the people who work in jails at health risk.  We need your support to make sure Cuomo hears this message loud and clear. People locked in prisons and jails are extremely vulnerable in times like this--but with the power of people like you, we can ensure that they aren't forgotten nor exploited. Sign the petition.

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  Created by Color Of Change
• Shopping while Black is not a crime

  Black folks are being routinely stopped outside of Barneys NY by NYPD officers after making an expensive purchase at the luxury department store in New York City. The NYPD has become notorious for targeting Black and Latino residents — subjecting our communities to thousands of illegal and discriminatory stops, searches, and frisks each day that lead to unlawful arrests, constant harassment, and in some cases, serious injury or death. Please join us in urging NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to conduct a full investigation of the arrests made outside of Barneys and to release information about the racial breakdown of suspects arrested, the number of people actually charged, and details about Barneys' role in these incidents.

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  Created by Rashad Robinson
• Demand Comcast withdraw its Supreme Court challenge of our oldest civil rights statute.

  Comcast NBCUniversal is petitioning the Supreme Court to challenge the integrity of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, our oldest civil rights statute. Such a decision would strike down centuries of civil rights progress. Without this landmark legislation, grounds of racial discrimination in business matters will be lost in legal technicalities, causing tremendous harm to Black people, Black businesses, and Black economic equality. For more than 150 years, this law has been a bedrock protection from racial discrimination in employment, housing, banking, and consumer and business transactions. Now, Comcast is petitioning the Supreme Court to allow racial discrimination in business transactions as long as racism is not the only reason for denying someone a service Comcast is standing on the wrong side of history and siding with a Department of Justice that has been openly hostile toward the civil rights of Black people. Black people already face extensive barriers in accessing justice and economic equality in this country, and this challenge would serve only to let corporations off the hook for their discriminatory practices. Demand Comcast NBCUniversal drop its Supreme Court petition.

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  Created by Rashad Robinson
• The officer who killed Botham Jean must be FIRED and charged with murder.

  Amber Guyger, a white female officer, killed Botham Shem Jean in his own apartment in Dallas and her story isn't adding up. Apparently, she thought she had entered her own apartment when she killed him. But so many questions remain unanswered: How do you mistake someone else's apartment for your own? Was she drunk or on drugs? How did she get into the apartment? Did she know Botham personally? And making it even more unbelievable, the officer's story keeps changing. At first, she said that the door to Botham's apartment was locked. Now she's telling investigators that she yelled at Botham to show his hands after she walked into HIS apartment. However, the attorney representing Botham's family has received witness accounts from neighbors saying that they heard "knocking down the hallway followed by a woman's voice that they believe to be officer Guyger saying, 'Let me in. Let me in.'" So many questions remain unanswered and Amber Guyger is only getting more time to re-work her story. We need answers and transparency now.  When police kill Black people they almost always get away with it and are protected under the "blue code of silence." And this is no different. Any other person, especially if they were Black, would have been arrested immediately and charged with home invasion and murder. But the Dallas Police Department gave Guyger THREE days to craft her story before she was arrested or even publicly identified. She was released immediately after her arrest on manslaughter charges. She's free. And she's still on Dallas Police Department payroll. Dallas District Attorney, Faith Johnson, is in charge of this case and has the power to make the final decision on the charges that Amber will face for killing Botham. In a press statement, she alluded to the inadequacy of manslaughter charges and said, "The grand jury will decide if the charges should be different. Believe me, we will make sure justice is done in this case." So we need to turn the pressure up on DA Johnson and make sure she keeps her promise by ensuring Amber Guyger is charged with murder and that the Dallas Police Department gets Amber Guyger off the force.

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  Created by Rashad Robinson
• Demand No Guns in Schools

  More guns in our schools won't make them safer--especially for Black children who are already criminalized and violated inside and outside of schools. At a young age, Black students are already heavily policed by the presence of police officers in the school buildings, metal detectors, and a system of punitive discipline that funnels them through the school-prison pipeline. Imagine what could happen when the same teacher that disproportionately punishes Black children for their behavior is armed with a gun. That reality is too much to bear. This ridiculous and dangerous response is sadly not new. After the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, resulting in the death of 20 children and six adults, the NRA introduced a new strategy to exploit school shootings to benefit the gun industry by driving up gun sales. According to NCES statistics, Trump's plan would require arming up to 700,000 more people in schools with guns. This terrible idea has nothing to do with safety, it's about making money--and exploiting of the families who've lost their loved ones in tragedy. Bills are popping up in state legislatures already to approve measures that would arm teachers. That's why we all must stand together and show these lawmakers, and Trump, that we will not allow gun companies get rich while putting our children in danger. Sign the petition?

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  Created by Rashad Robinson
• Take 'em ALL down: Remove every Confederate symbol in America

  Last night white nationalists marched through Charlottesville communities and the University of Virginia campus, rallying around a statue of the Confederacy and carrying torches evoking a history of violent racial terrorism. The next day in Charlottesville they killed in the name of their white supremacist symbols. Peaceful protesters were rammed by a car killing someone. Emboldened by Trump and compelled to act by the movement to remove these symbols of hate white supremacists are now acting to intimidate us from removing these symbols of white supremacy. Since Dylann Roof massacred churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME, we have been organizing around the nation to remove symbols of the Confederacy from any place of honor in America. In response, white supremacists are rallying around Confederate statues and using them as a pretext to commit terrorism and murder. White supremacists terrorists are working to intimidate us from confronting and reckoning with the legacy of the Confederacy. We cannot allow these white supremacist terrorists to intimidate us from confronting and working to dismantle systemic white supremacy. Confederate statues are a symbol of white supremacy and its current political power. Terrorists in Charlottesville understood this and were willing to kill in the name of their symbol, we must be determined to persist in the face of this white supremacist terror. We must work to end the influence of today's White supremacists, removing all Confederate statues would be the first step in sending the message that we are no longer honoring white supremacy at a societal level. We've already seen progress in Tampa and New Orleans, where Confederate symbols are being removed by Black-led organizing in the face of sustained white supremacist opposition. Join with me today and pledge to work to remove all Confederate statues in America.

  55,624 of 75,000 Signatures

  Created by Rashad Robinson
• Tell Greyhound to Stop Aiding Trump's Deportation Machine!

  U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents board Greyhound buses to racially profile and target passengers of color and passengers with accents. This is in blatant violation of the 4th amendment against illegal searches.

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  Created by Rashad Robinson
• Stop Vigilante Justice against Black Children

  District Attorney Faith Johnson is caving to the outrage of a lynch mob. Six black kids are the target of this hatred. We demand that this vigilantism end immediately The District Attorney’s Office recently announced that it will seek to try the teens accused of car theft and robbery as adults, after the victims demanded “aggressive” retribution and organized more than two thousand people in Dallas around one goal: trying and locking up children as adults. Vengeance doesn't work as criminal justice policy. And it is not going to make our community safer. We know that kids tried as adults are more likely to commit new crimes, commit them more frequently, and commit more violent offenses than kids treated like the kids they are. Children are fundamentally different from adults. Research shows that kids who commit even serious crimes can and frequently do grow out of intransigent behavior as their brains mature. It is not a matter of leniency - youth need a system designed to rehabilitate youth. DA Johnson’s decision is not about justice or community safety. Rather, it is about obeying the demands of those who have the power and social capital to demand we throw away the lives of children. If these children were rich or white, would the outrage be as swift and the demands so damning? It is District Attorney Faith Johnson’s job to recognize and follow the course of action that protects everyone and best serves the interest of our community, not to respond to the demands of her rich constituents at the expense of black children. Racist mob action has no place in our justice system. D.A. Johnson must do her job and take a principled, common-sense approach to community safety, one that treats children like children. We demand that D.A. Johnson withdraw her motion to transfer these children to adult court.

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  Created by Rashad Robinson
• Facebook: Fire Joel Kaplan for leading a racist smear campaign

  A damning new report from The New York Times revealed that Facebook executive Joel Kaplan is leading a smear campaign targeting Color Of Change and other civil rights groups critical of the company. Facebook has been seeding right-wing hit pieces and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories based on racist tropes in response to our efforts to ensure the safety of Black users on the platform. Kaplan hired a Republican public relations firm for the express purpose of undermining Color Of Change and other organizations who have held them publicly accountable for their harmful practices. Facebook’s choices fed into the same far-right conspiracy theory that resulted in a pipe bomb in George Soros’s mailbox, along with a slew of hit pieces against our organization and staff by Breitbart and other outlets that cater to dangerous figures. Through this investigative journalism we’ve learned that while we sat across the negotiation table with Facebook for years, Facebook’s leaders were giving oxygen to the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of white nationalists to undermine our work. We have been working for years to ensure the safety of Black users by demanding protections for Black leaders doxxed by white supremacists on Facebook; working to ensure Facebook has transparent and just moderation policies; and demanding that Facebook put an end to racially targeted digital voter suppression. While we were operating in good faith to protect our communities, Facebook and Joel Kaplan were using the hateful tactics of the same far-right actors they were enabling on their platform. As long as Kaplan is working at Facebook, we cannot trust Facebook to combat hate on their platform, address online voter suppression efforts and disinformation campaigns, or properly conduct the public civil rights audit currently under way. Demand Facebook immediately fire Joel Kaplan for his role in leading a racist and anti-Semitic smear campaign against Color Of Change and other civil rights groups

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  Created by Rashad Robinson, Color of Change
• #Free21Savage: Stop the Deportation of She'yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph!

  The hundreds of ICE assaults and detention of Black immigrants is an endemic in the United States, and is too often carried out with the assistance of local law enforcement. On February 3rd in the early afternoon, organizers were alerted to the arrest and detention of rapper, father, community activist and friend She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph -21 Savage. The circumstances of Mr. Abraham-Joseph's detention stand as a testament to the consistent and historically under-reported harassment and targeting of Black immigrants. The US' violent history of criminalizing Blackness intersects with its deadly legacy of detaining and deporting Black and Brown immigrants. This needs to stop today! There are around 4.2 Million Black immigrants in the U.S. - 619,000 are undocumented. Mr. Abraham-Joseph has been in the United States since he was a young child. Atlanta is his home. He has no current or prior criminal convictions and he is beloved by his friends, fans and family. It is shameful that he and so many Black immigrants are separated from their families on a daily basis as part of the US's heartless and racist immigration policies. Demand that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stop the deportation of She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph - 21 Savage NOW!

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  Created by Rashad Robinson