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    Janell Ross

    Janell Ross

    Reporter - Politics, Business, Latino Voices, Black Voices

  • How A Gay, Black Politician's Death 'Robbed' Mississippi

    Anyone heading south down U.S. Highway 61 toward Clarksdale might not be surprised by the large tracts of verdant farmland. What comes into view is?Clarksdale, an 18,000-person town?where the descendants of African slaves make up nearly 80 percent of the population. More than 40 percent of Clarksdale's residents live on incomes below the poverty line, and were it not for the proliferation of dollar stores, churches would nearly outnumber functioning businesses.

  • How Friendly White People Drive Black Unemployment

    There's a comforting-to-white-people fiction about racism and racial inequality in the United States today: They're caused by a small, recalcitrant group who cling to their egregiously inaccurate beliefs in the moral, intellectual and economic superiority of white people. The reality: racism and racial inequality aren't just supported by old ideas, unfounded group esteem or intentional efforts to mistreat others, said Nancy DiTomaso, author of the new book, The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism. The way that whites, often unconsciously, hoard and distribute advantage inside their almost all white networks of family and friends is one of the driving reasons that in February?just 6.8 percent of white workers?remained unemployed while 13.8 percent of black workers and 9.6 percent of Hispanic workers were unable to find jobs, DiTomaso said.

  • Stop-And-Frisk Secret Recording By Teen May Get Time In Court Spotlight

    Lawyers behind a?federal class-action?suit brought against the New York Police Department and the practice known as stop and frisk are expected to introduce over the next month one of the few known recordings of?"Stop, Question and Frisk"?in action, community activists say. The recording, made secretly by a 15-year-old Latino boy who was stopped and frisked on an East Harlem Street in 2011, according to activists, has the potential to become a key piece of evidence in the proceedings that began last week to determine whether the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy relies on racial profiling. Plaintiffs' lawyers with The Center for Constitutional Rights have offered another secret recording, made by a Bronx police officer, which reveals NYPD Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack talking about reducing robberies by targeting black teens for stop and frisk.

  • Poll Shows Republicans' Big Chance With Latino Voters

    Warnings about the Republican Party’s future have been dire since the November elections. Find a way to attract minority voters –- particularly the nation’s fast-growing Latino population -– or?face losing the White House?and down-ballot races for decades. An analysis of a poll released this month by the independent polling firm Latino Decisions?found that neither Republicans nor Democrats should rest easy.

  • Fresh Questions About Controversial Police Tactic

    The city's controversial stop-and-frisk police tactic faces new scrutiny this week as a federal civil trial began in four men's class-action claim they were illegally stopped, and records for two police officers who fatally shot a Brooklyn teenager this month showed repeated lawsuits filed by people who claimed to have been illegally stopped and roughed up. Mayor Michael Bloomberg this week described the tactic, formally called "stop, question and frisk," as a key crime-reduction tool that no “rational” person would oppose. The tactic has led to mass demonstrations, City Council hearings and mayoral candidates calling for change.

  • Brooklyn Neighborhood Reels After Police Shooting Of Kimani Gray

    Dressed in a puffy black down jacket, gray hoody and indigo-colored jeans belted to expose a four-inch expanse of his plaid boxers, Malik Priestly stood outside the Tilden Educational Campus in the East Flatbush section of Central Brooklyn Saturday afternoon and paced. Priestly, 16, was trying to decide whether to go inside and do what he called “the good-kid” thing -- talk about the?shooting death of another black 16-year-old, Kimani Gray,?at the hands of two plain clothes New York City police officers this month. “My sister wanted to come up here,” said Priestly, who did not know Gray personally but often saw Gray around the neighborhood and even shared some of the same friends.

  • Sequester Set To Deepen Racial Inequality, Experts Say

    On Capitol Hill, there are two ways that people tend to talk about the sequester -- a slate of automatic federal spending cuts that are difficult but necessary, or a blunt tool that will inflict tremendous suffering.

  • Marco McMillian Funeral: Silence Speaks Volumes

    The swollen, partially charred body of her only son, Marco McMillian, lay inside, obscured by a gauzy white veil. McMillian’s own family, friends and fraternity returned again and again to McMillian’s decision to move back to his small Mississippi hometown and run for mayor, his high-wattage smile, his fondness for debate and habit of referring to family and friends as “my love.” But not one person spoke into a microphone Saturday about the precedent McMillian had already set before he died. McMillian-- a 33-year-old black man who died Feb. 26 and was believed to be the first openly gay politician to ever run for office in Mississippi -- came to national attention late last month after his body was discovered beside a levee.

  • Gay Rights Advocates, Family And Friends Of Marco McMillian Call For Hate Crime Investigation

    Although few hard facts have emerged about the alleged murder of Marco McMillian, the?black openly-gay mayoral candidate found dead in Mississippi last week, family members, friends and civil-rights advocates say that the crime does not appear to be a random act of violence. Over the weekend, McMillian's family?released a statement?indicating that the?33-year-old?politician's body was found after having been beaten, dragged and burned. Local officials have released few details about the crime or the condition of McMillian's body when it was found, but have indicated that they have not ruled out the possibility of a hate crime, despite the fact that Mississippi law includes no specific or additional punishments for crimes motivated by anti-gay bias.

  • Anti-Government 'Patriot' Groups Surge With Obama Hatred

    The number of anti-government “patriot” groups, including paramilitary hate organizations, reached an all-time high in 2012, fanned by President Barack Obama's reelection and talk of gun control following the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre, according to a?report issued Tuesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Patriot groups -- those dedicated to federal government overthrow in the belief it will confiscate weapons and impose socialism -- expanded in number and size for the fourth consecutive year, the law center said. “As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns,” wrote Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and a member of the Department of Homeland Security working group on violent extremism.

  • Gay Black Politician's Alleged Murder Raises Painful Questions In Mississippi

    In the days since?Marco McMillian’s body was recovered near a Mississippi Delta levee, people around the state and the world have begun to wonder if the openly gay, African American mayoral candidate was killed because of his sexuality, his political ambitions or none of the above. McMillian did not live, run for office or die in the Mississippi of 1964, where?three civil rights workers were kidnapped and murdered?by white supremacists opposed to the trio’s plans to register African American voters. Law enforcement officials investigating McMillian’s death?do not yet know what motivated Lawrence Reed, 22, to allegedly kill him.

  • Shelby County Goes To Supreme Court: Alabama Community Challenges Voting Rights Act

    Bryan Stevenson knows that when most people take the 40-minute tree-lined drive from Birmingham, heading south on Interstate 65 to the sliver of the city and other bedroom communities that sit inside Shelby County, Ala., they probably look around and see something akin to living, breathing Southern progress. After all, Stevenson notes, Shelby County and its network of small towns -- burgeoning suburban bedroom communities with names like Columbiana, Calera, Chelsea and Indian Springs Village -- may owe the construction of their major roadways, bridges and industries to the free, all-black prison labor system that operated in the area well into the 1950s.

  • Immigrant Votes Count In NYC's 2013 Mayoral Race

    A full 40 percent of the people who call New York City home and 30 percent of all its registered voters were born abroad. Immigrants are “woven into the fabric of New York City,” an “essential source of labor,” “innovation,” and amount to the city’s “lifeblood,” candidates contacted by The Huffington Post said. Jackie Vimo, the director of advocacy at The New York Immigrant Coalition, describes what unites those from Eastern Europe living in Brooklyn with those from Southeast Asia who have relocated to Queens: the struggles to find economic opportunity, suitable work and pay and places to live and educate themselves and their children.

  • Denver Works Against Its School-To-Prison Pipeline

    Ask Ricardo Martinez, co-executive director of the Denver-based parent and student activist group?Padres & Jóvenes Unidos, and he will tell you that it’s not unheard of for kids at the city’s high schools and some junior highs to end up in handcuffs if they are caught chewing gum in class or talking back to a teacher. Denver police officials insist it’s not quite that simple -- but they too have grown concerned. On Tuesday, Padres & Jóvenes Unidos (Parents and Youth United) scored a victory in their long-running fight to lower the number of students moving between area schools and the juvenile justice system.

  • Parents Prep For New Legal Battle On What Would Have Been Slain Teen's 18th Birthday

    Before his son died, Ron Davis had had just one distant brush with Florida’s gun laws. Right around the time Davis retired from Delta Airlines in 2006, an airport security guard with a moonlighting gig at a local bank suggested that he apply for one of the state's new concealed-carry permits and take on some part-time security work. What’s more, just a year earlier Florida had passed the country’s first Stand Your Ground Law, which protects legal gun owners who don’t retreat if faced with a potentially dangerous confrontation.

  • Some Minorities Sympathize With Cop Killer's Frustration, But Disavow Murder Spree

    One of the last ideas attributed to Christopher Dorner, the now infamous former Los Angeles police officer suspected of killing four people before a?shootout and fire left him dead, amounts to a stock line from a Hollywood action flick. “What would you do to clear your name?” Dorner, 33 , asked in?an invective-filled manifesto?placed on his Facebook page before?he was killed in a showdown with law enforcement officers Tuesday. Dorner’s answer produced?almost unimaginable violence?that the ex-cop and former Navy reservist himself described as “evil.” But for many Americans -- particularly black Americans, who have experienced job losses, reputation dings and life turmoil after reporting alleged wrongdoing by others -- Dorner’s concerns were all too real.

  • New York Immigrants Watch State Of The Union, Hope Congress Really Heard Obama

    On Tuesdays inside the Make the Road office in Jackson Heights in the New York City borough of Queens, Lorenzo Montenegro usually needs his glasses. Make the Road is a nonprofit organization that works to engage, empower and protect the nearly 40 percent of New York City residents who live in the United States, but were born abroad.

  • Obama's State Of The Union Address Will Mention Immigration Reform

    When President Barack Obama stands before Congress Tuesday and offers his vision for the country’s future, most expect him to mention controversial topics that include gun control, entitlement program changes and immigration reform. “I think inside the immigration reform community, we feel we already had our State of the Union, which was the president’s speech in Las Vegas,” Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of America’s Voice, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates comprehensive immigration reform and played a role in pushing the Obama administration to implement a?temporary relief program for young undocumented immigrants?last year.

  • New York City Homeless Have Their Own Shelter Plans

    Ronald Miller has a plan. Miller, 56, hasn’t had a reliable place to sleep in eight years. During the winter, Miller tries to keep the card loaded with at least $1 at all times so that when the temperature falls, he can head underground and, with a bit of luck and a few donations, hop on a subway.

  • Future of Immigration Reform Rests In Immigrant-Dependent Cities

    By the time Evelyn Sabando started seeing walk-in clients at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, 15 people were already seated in her office waiting room. The woman and her mother have lived in Atlantic City for 21 years. Sabando, a?government-certified Board of Immigration Appeals representative, has spent the last 23 years working with the nonprofit?Camden Center for Law and Social Justice.