Civil rights icon James Meredith fell outside the Mississippi Capitol at an event marking his 90th birthday
ByEMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press
Political activist and writer James Meredith sits in the shade as an event staffer holds an ice pack on his head after he fell outside the Mississippi Capitol at an event marking his 90th birthday, in Jackson, Miss., Sunday, June 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
The Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. — Civil rights icon James Meredith fell outside the Mississippi Capitol on Sunday at an event marking his 90th birthday, but he suffered no visible injuries.
Meredith tumbled forward onto an unsecured portable lectern as he stood to speak to about 200 people. Those around him quickly scrambled to stand him up upright and helped him back into the wheelchair he had been using. They also gave him ice packs and cold water as the temperature hovered at about 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius).
Meredith remained at the event until it ended about 45 minutes later. An ambulance crew checked him afterward, and Meredith then left in a sport utility vehicle with friends and family.
Suzi Altman, a documentary photographer who is close to the Meredith family, said hours later that Meredith was doing better and resting at home.
Meredith was already an Air Force veteran in 1962 when he became the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, after winning a federal court order. White mobs rioted on the Oxford campus as federal marshals protected Meredith.
In 1966, Meredith set out to promote Black voting rights and to prove that a Black man could walk through Mississippi without fear. On the second day of his planned walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, a white man with a shotgun shot and wounded Meredith on a highway.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement continued Meredith’s march in his absence, and Meredith recovered enough to join them for the final stretch. About 15,000 people rallied outside the Mississippi Capitol on June 26, 1966.
Washington — President Biden emphasized the power of democracies on Thursday as he hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House, boasting of the collaborations between the two nations on “nearly every human endeavor” while stressing that universal human rights remain vital to the success of both the U.S. and India.
In a news conference Thursday, Mr. Biden called the relationship between the U.S. and India “among the most consequential in the world” and “stronger, closer and more dynamic than at any time in history.” He underscored how two of the world’s most powerful democracies were cooperating on issues such as the climate, health care and space, saying that the U.S-India economic relationship was “booming.”
But standing alongside Modi, who has come under criticism from human rights advocates, Mr. Biden also emphasized the importance of press and religious freedoms. “The bottom line is simple,” he said. “We want people everywhere to have the opportunity to live in dignity.”
A question about his handling of human rights was the first Modi took from a journalist in a press conference since he became prime minister in 2014. A Wall Street Journal reporter asked Modi what steps he and his government are willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities and to uphold free speech.
“When you talk of democracy, if there are no human values and there is no humanity, there are no human rights, then it’s not a democracy,” Modi said, through a translator. “And that is why when you say democracy and you accept democracy and when we live democracy, then there is absolutely no space for discrimination. … That is why, in India’s democratic values, there is absolutely no discrimination, either on basis of caste, creed, age or any kind of geographic location.”
President Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hold a joint press conference at the White House on June 22, 2023 in Washington, D.C.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden and Modi devoted the state visit to launching new partnerships in defense, semiconductor manufacturing and more sectors as they look to strengthen their countries’ crucial — albeit complicated — relationship.
Thousands gathered on the White House South Lawn for the welcoming ceremony, listening to performances by violinist Vibha Janakiraman and the a cappella group Penn Masala. As Modi arrived, the crowd — including many members of the Indian diaspora — broke out in a chant of “Modi, Modi, Modi.”
“All eyes are on the two largest democracies in the world, India and America,” Modi said as the leaders met in the Oval Office. “I believe that our strategic partnership is important. I’m confident that working together will be successful.”
At the earlier welcoming ceremony, Mr. Biden said he believes the U.S.-India relationship “will be one of the defining relationships of the 21st century. Since I’ve become president, we’ve continued to build a relationship built on mutual trust, candor and respect.”
But as Mr. Biden fetes Modi, human rights advocates and some U.S. lawmakers are questioning the Democratic president’s decision to offer the high honor to a leader whose nine-year tenure over the world’s biggest democracy has seen a backslide in political, religious and press freedoms.
Biden administration officials say honoring Modi, the leader of the conservative Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is Diplomacy 101. The U.S.-India relationship will be vital in coming decades as both sides navigate an ascendant China and the enormity of climate change, artificial intelligence, supply chain resilience and other issues.
Still, Mr. Biden said at the start of his Oval Office meeting with Modi that he wanted the partnership to be “grounded on democracy, human rights, freedom and the rule of law.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the president intended to raise his concerns but avoid lecturing the prime minister.
“The question of where politics and the question of democratic institutions go in India is going to be determined within India by Indians,” Sullivan said. “It’s not going to be determined by the United States.” He said “our part is to speak out on behalf of universal values.”
President Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an arrival ceremony during a state visit on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, June 22, 2023.
Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Among the announcements to be made Thursday is an agreement that will allow U.S.-based General Electric to partner with India-based Hindustan Aeronautics to produce jet engines for Indian aircraft in India and the sale of U.S.-made armed MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones, according to senior Biden administration officials. The officials briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to preview agreements before they are announced.
The Biden administration also is coming out with plans to bolster India’s semiconductor industry. U.S.-based Micron Technology has agreed to build a $2.75 billion semiconductor assembly and test facility in India, with Micron spending $800 million and India financing the rest. U.S.-based Applied Materials is announcing it will launch a new semiconductor center for commercialization and innovation in India, and Lam Research, another semiconductor manufacturing equipment company, will start a training program for 60,000 Indian engineers.
On the space front, India will sign on to the Artemis Accords, a blueprint for space exploration cooperation among nations participating in NASA’s lunar exploration plans. NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization also agreed to make a joint mission to the International Space Station next year.
“We made critical and emerging technologies the pillar of our next generation partnership to ensure these technologies promote and protect our values, remain open, accessible, trusted and secure,” Mr. Biden added. “All this matters for America, for India and for the world.”
The State Department will also announce plans to open consulates in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, while India will reopen its consulate in Seattle.
At the welcoming ceremony, Modi called the Indian diaspora in America — the millions of immigrants and their children from the subcontinent living in the U.S. — “the real strength” of the U.S.-India relationship. He said the honor of a formal state visit — the first in the U.S. for India since Barack Obama honored Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, in 2009 — reflected the positive impact Indians are having worldwide.
Modi, the son of a tea seller who rose to be India’s premier, also recalled that the first time he visited the White House was three decades ago as a “common man.”
“I have come here many times but today for the first time, the doors of the White House have been opened for the Indian American community in such large numbers,” Modi said to an estimated crowd of 7,000.
Modi has faced criticism over legislation amending the country’s citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalization for some migrants but excludes Muslims, a rise in violence against Muslims and other religious minorities by Hindu nationalists, and the recent conviction of India’s top opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, for mocking Modi’s surname.
In 2005, the U.S. revoked Modi’s visa to the U.S., citing concerns that, as chief minister of Gujarat, he did not act to stop communal violence during 2002 anti-Muslim riots that left more than 1,000 people dead. An investigation approved by the Indian Supreme Court later absolved Modi, but the stain of the dark moment has lingered.
A group of more than 70 lawmakers wrote to Mr. Biden this week urging him to raise concerns about the erosion of religious, press and political freedoms during the visit.
“It is an important country to me, and we must call out some of the real issues that are threatening the viability of democracy in all of our countries,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who was born in India and helped organize the lawmakers’ letter. “If India continues to backslide, I think it will affect our ability to have a really strong relationship with the country.”
Mr. Biden and Modi have also had differences over Russia’s war in Ukraine. India abstained from voting on U.N. resolutions condemning Russia and refused to join the global coalition against Russia. Since the start of the war, the Modi government has also dramatically increased its purchase of Russian oil.
White House officials note that there are signs of change in India’s relationship with Russia, which has long been New Delhi’s biggest defense supplier.
India is moving away from Russian military equipment, looking more to the U.S., Israel, Britain and other nations. Modi recently met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and has spoken out about his worries about the potential use of nuclear weapons by Russia.
State visits typically are reserved for America’s closest allies, but they also have been used in the past as a carrot to try to strengthen relationships with countries with which the United States has had complicated relationships.
File: Nusrat Choudhury testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee at confirmation hearing, Apr. 27, 2022.
Screenshot Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
Civil rights lawyer Nusrat Chowdhury has been confirmed by the Senate as the first Muslim female federal judge in U.S. history.
Confirmed along party lines in a 50-49 vote Thursday, Chowdhury will assume her lifetime appointment in Brooklyn federal court in New York.
The confirmation drew praise from the American Civil Liberties Union, where she is the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to that post, she served from 2008 to 2020 at the national ACLU office, including seven years as deputy director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program.
In a tweet, the ACLU called her a “trailblazing civil rights lawyer.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who recommended her, said she makes history as the first Bangladeshi American, as well as the first Muslim American woman, to be a federal judge.
“Nusrat Choudhury is a shining example of the American Dream,” Schumer said in a statement. “She is the daughter of immigrant parents, a graduate of Columbia, Princeton, and Yale Law School, and has dedicated her career to making sure all people can have their voices heard in court.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, voted against the appointment, citing her support for criminal justice reform. He said in a statement that some of her past statements call into question her ability to be unbiased toward members of law enforcement.
After finishing law school, Chowdhury clerked in New York City for U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote and 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barrington Parker Jr.
She has served on the Presidential Task Force on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System.
Her appointment was consistent with President Joe Biden’s pledge to emphasize diversity in background, race and gender in his judicial nominations.
Two years ago, the Senate confirmed the nation’s first federal Muslim judge, Zahid Quraishi, to serve as a district court judge in New Jersey. Quraishi’s first day on the job at a New York law firm was Sept. 11, 2001. He would go on to join the Army’s legal arm and served two deployments in Iraq.
Ever since China abandoned its zero-COVID policy at the end of last year, Beijing has been involved in a flurry of engagements from East to West.
A summit in India’s Goa, military drills in Singapore and South Africa, visits by the German chancellor and the French president as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s own visits to Russia and Saudi Arabia are just a few examples of Beijing’s recent whirlwind diplomacy.
And while Western leaders have talked about decoupling or de-risking economic ties with China, the nation remains deeply integrated with the world economy and is the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries.
Long gone are the days when China was an isolated loner or the Chinese government seemed satisfied with observing world affairs quietly from the sidelines. Now, Beijing is reaching for the diplomatic status that matches its position as the world’s second-biggest economy.
In a speech at a United Nations conference held to mark the 50-year anniversary of the People’s Republic of China’s joining the UN, Xi addressed China’s diplomatic rise and spoke of Beijing’s commitment to a world order defined by the pursuit of peace, democracy and human rights as well as the rejection of unilateralism, foreign interference and power politics.
In mid-March, at a so-called dialogue meeting between global political parties in Beijing, Xi reinforced his commitment to the same principles.
In his keynote speech, Xi introduced the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) as a way of formalising these principles with the added purpose of encouraging countries to “fully harness the relevance of their histories and cultures” and “appreciate the perceptions of values by different civilizations and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others”.
With the previously proposed Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Security Initiative (GSI), the GCI appears to encapsulate – although in amorphous terms – much of the Chinese president’s overall vision for a new international order.
Yao Yuan Yeh teaches Chinese Studies at the University of St Thomas in the United States. According to him, such an order would partly supplant and partly remould the international system into a new set of structures that better align with the worldview of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“It would be a world order that does not constrain communist China but contributes to its rise,” he said.
An alternative narrative
The purpose of the dialogue meeting in March was, to some extent, to act as a Chinese counterpart to the Summit for Democracy that the United States held for a second time that month as part of an effort to rally the world’s democracies.
While leaders from Mongolia, Serbia and South Africa were invited to both events, the US summit mostly included traditional Washington allies, while the gathering in Beijing included leaders from Kazakhstan, Russia, Sudan and Venezuela.
The Chinese leadership and state media portrayed the CCP’s dialogue meeting as part of China’s vision of embracing countries across the world, which includes maintaining or even deepening diplomatic contact with nations like Russia and Myanmar.
The Chinese government’s willingness to engage with a variety of world actors has indeed been on display in recent months.
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang reads a letter from Xi Jinping at the Chinese Modernization and the World Forum in Shanghai in April [File: Ng Han Guan/AP Photo]
Chinese diplomacy played a role in the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March. Also in March, the Chinese foreign minister visited Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing, while Xi travelled to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In April, Xi held a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and, last month, his envoy attempted to build support for a Beijing-led plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. Beijing has also been mentioned as a potential peace broker in conflict-ravaged Sudan.
Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization, says the Chinese approach to international relations is defined by a live-and-let-live mindset.
“It is less defined by shared values and more defined by a shared future,” he told Al Jazeera.
That means that while Western countries sometimes condition interactions and cooperation on adherence to a set of values, China wants to base its engagements on the potential for development and future benefits, Mok said.
The policy largely follows a CCP conviction that development and prosperity do not have to lead to adopting these – so-called Western – values. The Chinese leadership has frequently criticised “certain countries” for supposedly imposing their principles onto others and lacking respect for the ways non-Western nations with different cultures and traditions run their affairs.
Beijing’s world order would be defined by multipolarity, according to Mok, who says China has no plan to be a dominant power.
“I don’t see a change in the world order being a case of a new boss simply replacing the old boss.”
Reconfiguring the existing world order
Although the Chinese leadership regularly opposes the imposition of Western values, this does not mean Beijing wants to discard democracy, human rights and the rule of law on the global stage, according to the Chinese government.
Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin toasted an ever-closer relationship between their two countries when Xi travelled to Moscow in March [File: Pavel Byrkin/Sputnik via AP Photo]
Using China as an example, Xi has claimed that China is “democratic” because the CCP and the state represent the people and run the country on behalf of the people to promote the will of the people. Chinese state media have insisted that liberal democracies neglect the needs of the people by measuring democracy “only” on the basis of electoral cycles.
“They see these values as more relative terms and have in their own view provided a more inclusive definition of them with freedom from hunger and freedom from fear for your life being seen as examples of more basic human rights,” Mok said.
The modern understanding of human rights can be traced back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which details a set of basic rights and freedoms seen as inherent, inalienable and applicable to all people.
Adopted in the early years of the UN, the rights were enshrined into the foundation of the international system. Since then, more than 70 human rights treaties have sprouted from the UDHR, many of which have been signed and ratified by China.
Trying to reinterpret the language on human rights and democracy is therefore not something to be taken lightly, according to Elaine Pearson, the director of the Asia division of the rights organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“It is not up to individual states to redefine human rights as they like,” Pearson told Al Jazeera.
“Totalitarian North Korea also calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea – simply saying something doesn’t make it true.”
HRW warned in 2020 that Beijing was trying to bring about change within the UN, not only by trying to redefine established principles but also by hampering investigations and diluting condemnations of human rights abuses around the world.
Its efforts come at a time when international NGOs and UN bodies have expressed deep concern about the violation of basic freedoms and rights in China.
Beijing has fired back at such concerns.
When a UN report was released last year detailing possible “crimes against humanity” by the Chinese state against the mostly Muslim Uighurs in the far western Xinjiang region, Beijing responded with a report of its own. It accused alleged anti-China forces in the US and other Western countries of feigning concern for human rights and claimed they wanted to use the Uighur issue to “destabilise Xinjiang and suppress China”.
A vote in October at the UN’s Human Rights Council to debate the issue, however, was narrowly defeated.
Following the vote, human rights group Amnesty International accused the council of failing to uphold its core mission: protecting the victims of human rights violations everywhere.
“The Chinese government has gained more global influence in recent years and has been able to turn that influence into a greater sway at established international institutions,” Liselotte Odgaard, a professor of China Relations at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, told Al Jazeera.
Additionally, Beijing has used its veto power in the UN Security Council to block resolutions and statements condemning the military coup in Myanmar and hinder new sanctions on North Korea, while abstaining from condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Besides developing a greater say in traditional global institutions, Beijing has also founded new institutions to further its credibility as an international player.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund have all been spearheaded by China, have headquarters in China and have been called alternatives to established global institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
But they should not necessarily be seen as an attempt by Beijing to replace existing international institutions, according to St Thomas’s Yeh.
As UN cases show, Beijing has channelled considerable effort into reshaping established institutions as well. At the same time, China is the second-biggest donor of funds to the UN and one of only five members of the security council with permanent veto powers.
“We are seeing Beijing working both inside and outside established structures, depending on what is most conducive to their goals,” said Yeh.
Pursuing the Chinese Dream
The ultimate goal is achieving the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation also known as the Chinese Dream – a vision closely associated with President Xi since his early days in office.
The Chinese Dream represents Beijing’s quest to regain its prestige – damaged in the ‘Century of Humiliation’ by the imperial powers in the late 19th and early 20th century – and turn China into an advanced, world-leading nation by 2049.
This includes developing China internally but also expanding the territory under the PRC into areas currently beyond its direct control that are nonetheless considered inalienable parts of the Chinese nation.
This includes disputed territory along the land border with India and Bhutan, the Senkaku islands (that China calls Diaoyudao) administered by Japan in the East China Sea as well as most of the South China Sea where Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have rival claims.
Above all else, however, China’s rejuvenation means unification with Taiwan and Beijing has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this goal.
When the Chinese military conducts large-scale exercises around Taiwan or when Chinese vessels intercept ships from other countries in the South China Sea, Beijing argues these are not breaches of China’s international pledges but examples of China upholding sovereignty over territory that rightfully belongs to the Chinese nation.
On the world stage, the Chinese government has repeatedly condemned violations of national sovereignty, foreign interference in other nations’ affairs and the unilateral use of economic sanctions.
But at the same time, it reserves the right to look past international rulings that go against it – such as the 2016 international court ruling that its historic claim to the South China Sea had “no legal basis” – and take action against those perceived to stand between Beijing and its path towards national rejuvenation.
When Lithuania in 2021 allowed the opening of a “Taiwan Representative Office” rather than the usual “Taipei Economic and Cultural Office” in Vilnius, Beijing was furious. Seeing such a naming convention as encouraging Taiwanese independence, it imposed severe economic sanctions on the Baltic state.
But even as Beijing touts “non-interference” for itself and others, it has itself been accused of engaging in interference abroad.
In Canada, a leaked intelligence report revealed in early May that Chinese authorities had allegedly been involved in an intimidation campaign against a Canadian MP and his family in Hong Kong after he sponsored a successful motion declaring the Chinese treatment of the Uighurs a genocide.
Previous Canadian intelligence leaks have led to allegations that Beijing attempted to interfere in the Canadian general elections of 2019 and 2021 to secure the defeat of anti-Beijing candidates.
Chinese diplomatic staff have also been accused of election interference in Denmark, while consular staff in Manchester, England’s second-biggest city, were accused of employing physical violence to disrupt a demonstration outside the Chinese consulate.
In all these cases, Chinese officials have denied engaging in any sort of tampering, claiming instead that forces with “hidden agendas” were “fabricating lies” to “smear” China. At the same time, the Chinese government says it reserves the right to defend its sovereignty and act against those that attempt to interfere in China’s domestic matters.
As Xi allegedly told US President Biden regarding US engagement with Taiwan during a phone call last year: “Those that play with fire get burned.”
ATLANTA — The voice of Martin Luther King Sr., a melodic tenor like his slain son, carried across Madison Square Garden, calming the raucous Democrats who had nominated his friend and fellow Georgian for the presidency.
“Surely, the Lord sent Jimmy Carter to come on out and bring America back where she belongs,” the venerated Black pastor said as the nominee smiled behind him. “I’m with him. You are, too. Let me tell you, we must close ranks now.”
Carter then shared a moment with Coretta Scott King, clasping hands and locking eyes with the widowed first lady of the Civil Rights Movement, their children looking on.
For the Kings, closing the 1976 convention affirmed their continued reach — and their pragmatism — eight years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. For Carter, it marked the evolution of a white politician from the Old Confederacy: As a local leader and state senator who aspired for more, he had mostly avoided controversial stands during the civil rights era. During all their years in Atlanta, he never met the movement’s leader.
“Carter never did anything racist himself. But he didn’t participate,” biographer Jonathan Alter said. “And King was right there.”
Yet the alliance Carter later forged with the King family endured as he grew into a governor, president and global humanitarian who advanced racial equality and human rights.
“He was one of the few presidents who really was an advocate for the Black community out of a pureness of heart,” said the Rev. Bernice King, who leads the King Center that her mother founded.
Now 98, Carter is receiving hospice care in Plains, Georgia. King, just 39 when he was gunned down in 1968, would have been 94.
Certainly, King would have expanded his own legacy with a longer life span — after civil rights victories for Black Americans he turned his focus to challenging Western militarism and rapacious capitalism — and there’s no way to know what kind of relationship King might have had with Carter once the Georgia Democrat reached high office.
As it was, Carter used the most visible decades of his public life to reflect King’s values and often his rhetoric, while playing a central role in memorializing King as an American icon.
Carter opened government contracts to Black-owned businesses and appointed record numbers of Black citizens to executive and judicial posts. He steered more public money to historically Black colleges and opposed tax breaks for discriminatory private schools. He echoed King’s emphasis on peace, expressing pride long after his presidency that he never started a shooting war.
Carter quoted many of the same theologians King cited in his practice of nonviolent resistance, and he would join King in 2002 as a Nobel Peace Prize winner. As a former president, Carter tracked King’s later economic observations, declaring the U.S. an oligarchy, rather than a fully functioning democracy, because of wealth inequality and money in politics.
That record, Bernice King told The Associated Press, cements Carter as a “courageous” and “principled” figure who built on her father’s work, while having “genuine” relationships with her mother and grandfather.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter welcomed the Kings to the White House to present Coretta with a posthumous Medal of Freedom for her husband, making him one of the few Black Americans to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor at that point. Carter helped establish government observances of King’s birthday and enabled the federal historic site encompassing King’s birthplace, burial site and the family’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.
The former president even served as private mediator for King’s children, helping settle an extended dispute over their parents’ estate. “I appreciate his efforts” ending the highly publicized fight, Bernice King said.
Barely 5 years old when her father was killed, the younger King said she does not “know for sure” when the families’ friendship began. She thinks her mother made the first overture, after Carter became Georgia governor in 1971.
“My mother was the kind of leader who made sure that she connected with the people she felt could assist her in the work that she was doing to continue my father’s legacy,” King said.
It had not been obvious before Carter reached statewide office that he could be such a partner.
During the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, as Martin Luther King Jr. worked with President Lyndon Johnson on the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Carter was a one-term state senator. He supported Johnson’s election in 1964 and never aligned with segregationist colleagues in Atlanta, but Carter didn’t speak out in favor of the federal laws during his two campaigns for governor, nor did he appear at Ebenezer, just a few blocks from the Georgia Capitol.
When King was assassinated, Carter did not attend the funeral. In 1970, he won the governor’s race as a conservative Democrat, avoiding explicit mentions of race while assuring voters of his general preference for “local control” over federal intervention.
A “code-word campaign,” Alter called it.
Then, at his inauguration, the 46-year-old Carter issued a surprise edict: “The time for racial discrimination is over.”
Bernice King assessed his declaration as “very profound at the time.”
Within a few years, Carter stood with the King family in the Georgia Capitol as Coretta unveiled a portrait of King, while Ku Klux Klan members protested outside.
King Sr. had no trouble reconciling Carter’s earlier maneuverings before reaching the governor’s seat.
“He had never been characterized as a ‘cracker’ lawmaker, the way so many rural statesmen had been,” the elder King wrote in his autobiography.
He said Carter “achieved an unusual reputation” among Black constituents with his “willingness to meet with people and work long hours on issues and needs.”
Such attention showed the way for Democrats as expanded voting rights finally allowed Black voters to flex political power. Every Democratic president since then has depended on strong Black support to win the nomination and general election. President Joe Biden has recognized the dynamics by pushing the national party to put more diverse states, including Georgia, earlier in the nominating process.
Political calculations aside, Bernice King said her grandfather and Carter shared “real kinship” as two Baptists raised in small-town Georgia. The senior King once described their conversations as “one country boy to another.”
Carter paid the elder King an in-person visit to ask for his support at the outset of his presidential bid. Never a party loyalist, the elder King initially told Carter he would support his White House bid only if Republican Vice President Nelson Rockefeller did not run again. King’s reasoning: Carter was a longshot, while Rockefeller, a civil rights liberal, was already a heavyweight.
When it became clear Rockefeller would not be President Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976, King endorsed Carter. It was an invaluable imprimatur for a white Southern governor from the same generation as segregationists like Alabama’s George Wallace and Georgia’s Lester Maddox.
King vouched for Carter in Black churches across the country and to the nearly all-white national press corps, particularly after Carter mangled federal housing policy discussions by defending “ethnic purity” in American neighborhoods.
Carter tried to clean up his remarks with more explanations, saying he would “oppose very strongly and aggressively” any “exclusion of a family because of race or ethnic background” but still saw it as “good to maintain the homogeneity of neighborhoods if they’ve been established that way.”
Carter eventually followed with an apology.
Bernice King said her grandfather saw Carter’s word choices as “an innocent mistake” and urged journalists and voters to see Carter’s values and full record.
During the first half of Carter’s long life, “he had to navigate in a society, in a culture where, as a white person, you were expected to hate and see Black people in a very demeaning way,” Bernice King said. Considering the whole of his life, she said, “I think he managed that very well.”
Along the way, Carter learned something the King siblings and cousins always understood about their grandfather and that “booming” voice.
“When Granddaddy opened his mouth,” Bernice King said, “you paid attention.”
Medan, Indonesia – On the morning of May 21, 1998, Indonesia’s then-leader Soeharto stood in the Presidential Palace and addressed the nation.
For weeks, protesters had filled the streets amid soaring prices of fuel, cooking oil and rice as a result of the Asian Financial Crisis.
The unrest had spread to cities across the country. Shops and businesses of the country’s ethnic Chinese were attacked and there were violent clashes between protesters – mainly students – and security forces. On May 12, four students had been shot dead during a demonstration at Trisakti University in Jakarta. In all, more than 1,000 people had been killed and there were reports of rapes of ethnic Chinese women.
After 30 years in power, the military strongman sometimes called the Smiling General, announced he was resigning with immediate effect.
Indonesian President Soeharto announcing his resignation as his Vice President BJ Habibie looks on at the presidential palace in Jakarta [File: Agus Lolong/AFP]
Standing next to Soeharto was his vice president, BJ Habibie, who would take over the top job and allow Indonesians freedoms that had been denied during Soeharto’s decades in power – a time when activists disappeared and the military was deployed in the restive regions of Aceh and Papua.
The administration of the charismatic Soekarno, who led Indonesia to independence from the Dutch in 1945, became increasingly chaotic and in 1965, an abortive coup attempt led to the killing of millions of suspected Communists.
Amid the chaos, Soeharto’s emergence in 1968 was initially greeted with optimism. Many hoped his New Order administration would bring calm and prosperity.
But despite its early promise, the New Order modernisation eventually came to embody a highly-centralised government that focused on consolidating power, and an emboldened military designed to support Soeharto and his determination to stay in the presidential palace, whatever the cost.
Since his surprise resignation, Indonesia has embraced democracy, if imperfectly, and has had five different presidents chosen through free and independent elections.
President Joko Widodo was elected for a second term in 2019. Indonesia will choose its next president in 2024 [File: Edgar Su/Reuters]
The economy has also recovered from the 1998 crisis and is now the second-fastest growing in the G20, behind India and ahead of China. Indonesia hosted the group’s annual gathering in Bali last year as its current president, Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, also tried to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
There have been challenges, however, and concerns that legislation including the new Criminal Code and the Omnibus law – as well as the rise of hardline religious groups – could erode the hard-won freedoms of the past 25 years. There have also been accusations that some of the corruption, cronyism and nepotism that blighted the Soeharto years still runs rife across the country.
On the anniversary of one of Indonesia’s most significant historical moments and with the next presidential elections set to take place in February 2024, Al Jazeera asked activists, academics and human rights advocates how the country has changed in the 25 years since Soeharto’s dramatic fall from power.
Andreas Harsono, researcher at Human Rights Watch Indonesia
“We were not naive when we were trying to topple the Soeharto rule in the 1990s but we really did not anticipate that we would see the rise of Islamism and religious zealots in post-Soeharto Indonesia with Shariah-inspired discriminatory regulations against gender, sexuality, and religious minorities.
“There have been 45 anti-LGBT regulations and at least 64 mandatory hijab regulations, out of over 700 rules in post-Soeharto Indonesia. Obviously, the biggest one is the new Criminal Code.”
Damai Pakpahan, feminist activist
“Indonesia changed dramatically for at least the first five years post 1998. A lot of laws and policies changed that focused on women and the women’s agenda. We got the Law on the Elimination of Sexual Violence in 2004 under former President Megawati Soekarnoputri and, in 2007, we got the Anti-Trafficking Law during the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presidency.
“We also had the Presidential Directive on Gender Mainstreaming in 2000 under President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur). We also changed the age for marriage from 16 for women and 18 for men to 19 years old for both women and men in 2019, after lobbying from feminist groups. Last year, we got the new Sexual Violence Eradication Law.
“Women’s interests are heard by the state now at a legal level. But we are also facing a backlash where women and girls are not able to freely choose what they want. The rise of conservative Islam has forced some women, girls and even babies to wear hijab. We also have a backlash in the form of discriminatory or unconstitutional local laws around Indonesia which mostly target women and minority rights.”
Yohanes Sulaiman, lecturer in international relations at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani
“At the time, I was in Madison, Wisconsin in the United States. I remember more about when I found out about 9/11 but, if I’m not mistaken, I read about the fall of Soeharto online.
“Back in those days, when people had demonstrations or public protests, the cities were eerily quiet in Indonesia. Shops would close down and students were told to go home quickly and quietly. We feared the military a lot. They were basically the kings as they were in power.
“Nowadays, I think they are far less arrogant, more approachable and more respectful of the law. When I was a kid, I saw an officer who was stuck in a traffic jam. He simply got out of his car, slapped a traffic policeman and told him to get his car moving. I was flabbergasted. I think the status of Chinese has changed a lot too and to some degree for the better. I think people are less discriminatory nowadays, though of course except for the usual suspects.”
Ian Wilson, lecturer in politics and security studies at Murdoch University
“I was doing my PhD at Murdoch University in Perth and watched Soeharto’s resignation on TV on campus in excitement, but also in apprehension. We just saw this wave of people say ‘No, we’ve had enough’. It happened so quickly.
“There was no fundamental electoral democracy in Indonesia pre-1998 and we have seen big structural reform in that area which has been imperfect but important. More regional autonomy has meant that a new generation of Indonesians have grown up with a different set of political expectations about power. There is an expectation now that the government should be clean and serve the public good.
“While there has of course been some democratic backsliding, public support for electoral policy has remained high and people support public elections. This prevents the wishes of political parties to capture the system so they can control it. It is harder now for elites to push things forward. The next few years after the elections in 2024 will be fundamental for Indonesia.”
NEW YORK — Two years ago, signing a bill intended to punish Twitter and other major social media companies, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted the platforms as “suppressing ideas” during the COVID-19 pandemic and silencing conservative voices.
What a turnaround.
The new Elon Musk-owned version of Twitter helped DeSantis launch his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday. Though it was marred by technical glitches and skewered by the candidate’s critics, the forum nevertheless underscored Twitter’s unmistakable shift to the right under Musk, who bought it for $44 billion and took over in October.
“The truth was censored repeatedly, and now that Twitter is in the hands of a free speech advocate, that would not be able to happen again on this Twitter platform,” DeSantis said during the Twitter Spaces event.
Musk, co-hosting the event, responded to the praise by saying, “Twitter was indeed expensive, but free speech is priceless.”
While Musk has promoted his platform as a haven for free expression, the site has been flooded with extremist views and hate speech since he bought it and fired or laid off roughly 80% of its staff.
That is raising alarms that Twitter — heavily used by candidates and government agencies, including those providing voting information — will become an open forum for conspiracy theories, fake content and election misinformation as a bitterly divided country heads into the 2024 presidential election.
Many Republicans have hailed Musk’s takeover of Twitter as creating one of the last mainstream online spaces where they can share their views without fear of removal. Prominent figures in conservative media, like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the podcasts hosts of The Daily Wire, say they plan to start streaming content on the site.
Democrats and anti-hate watchdogs, meanwhile, say Musk’s partisan comments and policy changes have effectively given a megaphone to far-right extremists.
Since Musk bought Twitter, he has overhauled the site’s verification system, removing safeguards against impersonation for some government accounts and political candidates. He also has personally indulged in far-right conspiracy theories on the site, reinstated accounts with a history of extremist rhetoric and gutted the team that had been responsible for moderating the content flowing across the platform.
That has coincided with a deluge of conspiracy theory rhetoric, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which reported that QAnon hashtags surged 91% on Twitter between May 2022 and May 2023, with about three-fourths of those messages posted after Musk’s takeover.
Several believers of the baseless QAnon theory, centered on the idea that former President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against “deep state” enemies and pedophiles, have committed acts of violence, including the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Musk’s decision to reinstate influential Twitter accounts with a history of spreading extremist views also has created spaces in their tweet reply threads where users are sharing antisemitic tropes, conspiracy theories and other types of hate, the ADL reported Wednesday.
The group’s vice president Yael Eisenstat, who leads its Center for Technology and Society, said Musk’s content moderation choices have “served to silence marginalized voices” by giving harassers and internet trolls free reign.
“It is one thing to say we want free speech on the platform,” she said. “It’s another thing to say we are going to allow extremists — conspiracy theorists — to contribute to normalizing this kind of rhetoric and antisemitism and racism.”
Twitter didn’t provide comment after repeated requests. It sent automated replies instead, as it does to most media inquiries.
Musk’s free speech rhetoric also has attracted conservatives who have been knocked off other platforms — or fired, in the case of Carlson.
Shortly after his ouster, Carlson went on Twitter May 9 to announce that he would be doing some version of his show on that platform. It’s still not clear what that would entail, or when he would start.
“There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech,” Carlson said in a two-minute message viewed more than 132 million times. “The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter, where we are now.”
Free speech and truth aren’t the same thing, however, and Carlson had been accused of spreading misinformation on his Fox show, most recently about the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
DeSantis has been a frequent guest on Fox News, and on the night of his presidential campaign announcement he appeared on the network for an interview — after the Twitter event.
Though DeSantis’ Twitter launch was severely delayed with site crashes and strained servers, his choice to debut his campaign on the platform illustrates that Fox will have more competition as a Republican kingmaker. His campaign said it had taken in $1 million online in the first hour after the announcement. Fox’s ratings have declined dramatically during its 8 p.m. Eastern hour, which Carlson used to fill.
The Daily Wire, whose podcast hosts include popular conservative influencers such as Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens, said Tuesday that it would bring its shows to stream on Twitter starting next week.
Doug Heye, a Republican strategist and former Republican National Committee communications director, said Twitter is “certainly going to be an increasing part” of GOP campaign strategies for the 2024 presidential primary.
“And that’s all because of what Elon Musk has said over the past few months as he’s taken Twitter over and sought to make it a space more friendly to conservatives,” he said.
Musk has leaned into Republican politics, tweeting in 2022 that Democrats “have become the party of division & hate.” While he has tweeted support for both DeSantis and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who also entered the GOP field this week, he said Tuesday he was not yet endorsing any particular presidential candidate.
Even as Democrats wince at the direction Musk has taken Twitter, most are staying put — at least for now. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that when looking to the future, just slightly more Democratic users than Republicans said it’s unlikely they will be on Twitter in a year.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said he has been experimenting with the Twitter alternative BlueSky as a “more casual, fun and positive environment” than Twitter. But he also has continued to use Twitter to communicate with his constituents.
Jimmy Williams, a longtime Democratic political consultant, said he would advise Democrats not to “cede the space.” Indeed, Musk said Wednesday that his forum would be available to any politician.
“Twitter’s a two-way street,” Williams said.
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Associated Press media writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.
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SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah-based group that organizes drag performances is suing a city over the denial of permits for an all-ages show it aimed to host in a public park in April.
The group, Southern Utah Drag Stars, and its CEO Mitski Avalōx accuse the city of St. George of “flagrant and ongoing violations of their free speech, due process, and equal protection rights” and, in a complaint filed in federal court on Tuesday, are asking for damages and for St. George to reverse its decision and authorize a drag show at the end of June.
“This is the latest offense in a larger pattern of attacks discriminating against gender-diverse and LGBTQ+ people and their rights in Utah and throughout the country,” said Emerson Sykes, an attorney with the ACLU, which is representing the group.
The lawsuit marks the most recent development in a fight over drag shows in St. George, Utah, a conservative city 111 miles (179 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. Since HBO filmed a drag show in a public park for an episode of its series “We’re Here” last year, the city has emerged as a flashpoint in the nationwide battle over drag performances as they’ve garnered newfound political scrutiny in Republican-controlled cities and states.
Public events like drag queen story hours and the all-ages event that Avalōx intended to put together have been increasingly targeted in legislatures throughout the country. This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a ban on minors from attending drag shows and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a ban on people dressed in drag from reading books to children at public schools and libraries.
In Utah, a proposal from a St. George Republican to require warning notices for events like drag shows or pride parades in public places stalled after advancing through the state House of Representatives in March. The proposal stemmed from the pushback that resulted from the June 2022 HBO-produced drag show in St. George. City officials issued permits for the event over the objection from some council members and community activists. City Manager Adam Lenhard resigned months later over the incident after writing councilmembers that he could not legally deny the show permits, according to emails obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune.
Anti-drag activists in Utah and throughout the United States have cast the artform, which often involves dressing and acting exaggeratedly as another gender for entertainment, as sexually deviant and a subversive attempt to influence children.
Avalōx, who goes by she and they pronouns, founded Southern Utah Drag Stars after the fallout, hoping to showcase drag for members of the LGBTQ+ community in a rural place where such forms of entertainment are often lacking.
“I made it my mission to continue to do these events and not just one month out of the year, but to do so people that were like me when I was little … can see that there are queer adults that get to live a long and fulfilled life,” Avalōx said in an interview. “My biggest ambition was to provide a public space where people can go to a park and enjoy a show that’s meant for everyone.”
Avalōx said that Drag Stars intended to host a show in a St. George city park in April and were told by a city events coordinator that they could start advertising before obtaining a permit. The city council later denied the group’s permit, citing an ordinance that forbids advertising before permit approval.
St. George declined to comment on the lawsuit but its city attorney at the time defended its enforcement of the ordinance and the events coordinator denied approving a request from Avalōx to begin advertising.
In their complaint, Avalōx and lawyers with the ACLU frame St. George’s decision to deny them event permits as part of a broader nationwide assault on drag performers and, accuse the city of “flagrant and ongoing violations of their free speech, due process, and equal protection rights.”
They argue that St. George invoked an ordinance that had never been enforced in a manner that was selective and discriminatory toward the LGBTQ+ community.
“The City has employed its unfettered discretion under the ordinances to discriminatorily enforce them,” they argue in the complaint.
The complaint also says city councilwoman Michelle Tanner has been “stoking conflict” and broadly fostering an anti-LGBTQ climate in St. George, including by accusing those who perform in drag in front of children of “predatory behavior.”
ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Education has found that a suburban Atlanta school district’s decision to remove some books from its libraries may have created a hostile environment that violated federal laws against race and sex discrimination.
The legal intervention by the department’s Office of Civil Rights could curb efforts to ban books in other public school districts nationwide, especially when bans are focused on books that include content about LGBTQ and nonwhite people.
The Forsyth County school district settled the complaint, agreeing to explain the book removal process to students and offer “supportive measures” to students who may have been harmed. Forsyth County will also include questions about the issue in its yearly school climate survey of middle and high school students next year.
The federal intervention came after months of contention over books in the 54,000-student district. Forsyth is Georgia’s most affluent county, a rapidly growing suburb about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of downtown Atlanta.
Forsyth County in January 2022 removed eight books, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” but allowed seven to return after further consideration. It excluded only “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir about growing up as gay Black man by George M. Johnson.
Federal officials wrote in a letter Friday that Forsyth County erred not so much in the removals, saying “the district limited its book screening process to sexually explicit material.” Instead, officials found that the problem was how district officials talked about removals at school board meetings.
“Communications at board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment,” the department wrote.
One student came to a board meeting to warn “about the school environment becoming more harsh in the aftermath of the book removals and his fear about going to school,” the letter says.
Becky Woomer of the Forsyth Coalition for Education, which has opposed book removals, said the findings back up fears that the school district was endorsing anti-gay views.
“Having those views validated, yeah, I think it harms students,” Woomer said. “And when the books were put back on the shelves, it was done silently. So there was never this sense as a school community ‘OK, we messed up, we’re sorry.’”
Jennifer Caracciolo, a spokesperson for Forsyth County schools, said a statement to students will help dispel those impressions.
“It’s more about making sure we communicate with the students,” she said.
Protests over books viewed as inappropriate had been led by a conservative group, Mama Bears of Forsyth County. Members read sexually explicit passages from school books until the school board chairman ordered them to stop in March 2022, noting board policy prohibits profane remarks. Members of the group argued that if the books were inappropriate to be read at a board meeting, they were inappropriate for children.
The board then banned one member, Alison Hair, from attending board meetings. Hair and Mama Bears Chairwoman Cindy Martin sued in federal court, winning a ruling in February that the ban violated their First Amendment rights. The group then resumed reading books at meetings.
Martin on Monday said the settlement would let the federal government “continue to find ways to infiltrate the public school system with their radical agendas,” saying federal officials had found no legal violations.
“This is not about books,” Martin wrote in an email. “This is about the federal government using bully tactics against our school system to indoctrinate our children into the LGBTQ ideology.”
Book challenges have continued in Forsyth County under a 2022 Georgia law that allows parents to challenge material they consider obscene. The district last month agreed to not let any students check out one book, “The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy” by B.T. Gottfried, without a parent’s signature.
The book challenges in Republican-dominated Forsyth County followed conservative claims that the district was teaching harmful material on race. That controversy sometimes centered on district efforts to include nonwhite students in what was once an entirely white county. White mobs drove out the county’s entire Black population in 1912.
Georgia is just one state that has made it easier to challenge books. The American Library Association reported more than 1,200 challenges to books nationwide in 2022, by far the most since the ALA began keeping data 20 years ago
Last week, authors, parents, publisher Penguin Random House and writers’ group PEN America sued Florida’s Escambia County school system, saying the school board was removing and restricting books even though a review committee recommended keeping them.
In December, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights said it was investigating a school district in Granbury, Texas, after more than 100 books, including some LGBTQ themes were pulled from shelves.
Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency is defending its use of a surveillance tool that was used to send threatening text messages to Palestinian protesters at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site two years ago
ByJOSEF FEDERMAN Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency is defending its use of a sophisticated surveillance tool that was used to send threatening text messages to Palestinian protesters during unrest at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site two years ago.
A leading civil rights group has asked Israel’s Supreme Court to halt the practice, saying the threatening messages exceeded the authorities of the Shin Bet. It has also noted that the messages were sent erroneously to people uninvolved in the unrest.
In a May 4 submission, the Shin Bet asked the court to dismiss the case. It said the tracking technology was a legitimate tool within the scope of its authority.
It described the misfired messages as an isolated error, said it had identified “several specific flaws in the manner of sending the messages” and updated its guidelines to prevent similar mistakes in the future.
It described the tool as “proportionate, balanced and most reasonable.”
The messages were sent to hundreds of Palestinians in May 2021 at the height of one of the city’s most turbulent periods in recent years. At the time, Palestinian protesters were clashing with Israeli police at the Al Aqsa Mosque in violence that helped fuel an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip.
Using mobile-phone tracking technology, the Shin Bet sent a text message to people it believed were involved in the clashes and told them “we will hold you accountable” for acts of violence.
The recipients included both Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem, who hold Israeli residency rights, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel. While some recipients had participated in the clashes, others, including people who lived, worked or prayed in the area, received the message erroneously and said they were surprised or scared. Jewish Israelis in the area are not known to have received the message.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has warned that such mass messages could have a “chilling effect” on Israel’s Palestinian minority and says the Shin Bet should properly investigate anyone suspected of breaking the law.
Two of the group’s attorneys, Gil Gan-Mor and Gadeer Nicola, issued a joint statement accusing the Shin Bet of using “intrusive surveillance tools” to intimidate citizens and convey that they are under surveillance.
“Sending a threatening text message to a citizen is not an option in a democratic country,” they said.
California’s reparations task force began voting Saturday on recommendations for how the state may compensate and apologize to Black Californians for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies.
The nine-member committee, which first convened nearly two years ago, was given final approval at a meeting in Oakland to a hefty list of proposals that will then go to state lawmakers to consider for reparations legislation.
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who is cosponsoring a bill in Congress to study restitution proposals for African Americans, at the meeting called on states and the federal government to pass reparations legislation.
“Reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they have the potential to address longstanding racial disparities and inequalities,” Lee said.
The panel’s first vote approved a detailed account of historical discrimination against Black Californians in areas such as voting, housing, education, disproportionate policing and incarceration and others.
Other recommendations on the table ranged from the creation of a new agency to provide services to descendants of enslaved people to calculations on what the state owes them in compensation.
“An apology and an admission of wrongdoing just by itself is not going to be satisfactory,” said Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, a reparations advocacy group.
An apology crafted by lawmakers must “include a censure of the gravest barbarities” carried out on behalf of the state, according to the language of the draft recommendation.
These could include a formal, posthumous condemnation of former Gov. Peter Hardeman Burnett, the state’s first elected governor and a white supremacist who encouraged laws to exclude Black people from California.
After California entered the union in 1850 as a “free” state, it did not enact any laws to guarantee freedom for all, the draft recommendation notes. On the contrary, the state Supreme Court enforced the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people, for over a decade until emancipation.
“By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding,” the document says.
The task force could vote for a public apology acknowledging the state’s responsibility for past wrongs and promising the state will not repeat them, issued in the presence of people whose ancestors were enslaved.
California has previously apologized for placing Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II and for violence against and mistreatment of Native Americans.
More than 100 residents and advocates gathered at Mills College of Northeastern University in Oakland, a city that is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party. They shared frustrations over the country’s “broken promise” to offer up to 40 acres and a mule to newly freed enslaved people.
Many said it is past time for governments to repair the harms that have kept African Americans from living without fear of being wrongfully prosecuted, retaining property and building wealth.
Elaine Brown, former Black Panther Party chairwoman, urged people to express their frustrations through demonstrations.
Saturday’s meeting of the task force marked a crucial moment in the long fight for local, state and federal governments to atone for discriminatory policies against African Americans. The proposals are far from implementation, however.
“There’s no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact,” said Roy L. Brooks, a professor and reparations scholar at the University of San Diego School of Law.
Some estimates from economists have projected that the state could owe upwards of $800 billion, or more than 2.5 times its annual budget, in reparations to Black people.
The figure in the latest draft report released by the task force is far lower. The group has not responded to email and phone requests for comment on the reduction.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a former Democratic assemblymember, authored legislation in 2020 creating the task force with a focus on the state’s historical culpability for harms against African Americans, and not as a substitute for any additional reparations that may come from the federal government.
The task force voted previously to limit reparations to descendants of enslaved or free Black people who were in the country by the end of the 19th century.
The group’s work has garnered nationwide attention, as efforts to research and secure reparations for African Americans elsewhere have had mixed results.
The Chicago suburb of Evanston, for example, has offered housing vouchers to Black residents but few have benefited from the program so far.
In New York, a bill to acknowledge the inhumanity of slavery in the state and create a commission to study reparations proposals has passed the Assembly but not received a vote in the Senate.
And on the federal level, a decades-old proposal to create a commission studying reparations for African Americans has stalled in Congress.
The efforts of California’s task force “should be encouraging” for advocates nationwide, said Mary Frances Berry, a University of Pennsylvania history professor and the author of a book about a formerly enslaved woman’s fight for reparations.
“The fact that California was able to move this far in order to come up with a positive answer to the question of reparations is something that should … have influence on people in other parts of the country,” Berry said.
An adult entertainment industry group has filed a lawsuit challenging a new Utah law that requires porn websites to implement age verification mechanisms to block minors from accessing sexually explicit materials
BySAM METZ Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — An adult entertainment industry group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new Utah law that requires porn websites to implement age verification mechanisms to block minors from accessing sexually explicit materials.
The law, which took effect Wednesday, made Utah the second state to require adult websites to verify the age of those who want to view their pages — either through an independent contractor or digital ID. Lawmakers likened the requirement to those for alcohol or online gambling and argued that stronger protections were needed to shield kids from pornography, which is ubiquitous online.
The Free Speech Coalition — along with an erotica author and companies that manage adult websites and are party to the suit — argues that Utah’s new law unfairly discriminates against certain kinds of speech, violates the First Amendment rights of porn providers and intrudes on the privacy of individuals who want to view sexually explicit materials. The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to bar enforcement of the law until their legal challenge is resolved.
They contend that the age verification law “imposes a content-based restriction on protected speech that requires narrow tailoring to serve a compelling state interest.”
It is currently illegal to show children pornography under federal law, however that law is rarely enforced.
Utah’s new law is the conservative state’s latest effort to crack down on access to pornography and dovetails with lawmakers’ other efforts to restrict how children use the internet, including social media sites. It comes less than a year after Louisiana enacted a similar law and as additional states consider such policies as filters or age verification for adult websites.
The Utah law builds off years of anti-porn efforts by the Republican-controlled Legislature, where a majority of lawmakers are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It comes seven years after Utah became the first state to declare pornography a public health crisis and two years after lawmakers passed a measure paving the way to require internet-capable devices be equipped with porn filters for children. Provisions of the law delay it from taking effect unless at least five other states pass similar measures.
The age verification law is facing strong pushback, including from one of the biggest porn sites, Pornhub, which disabled access to its site in Utah earlier this week.
The Free Speech Coalition has filed similar challenges before. In 2002, its case against a federal child pornography statute made landed before the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down provisions for overly interfering with free speech.
An adult entertainment industry group has filed a lawsuit challenging a new Utah law that requires porn websites to implement age verification mechanisms to block minors from accessing sexually explicit materials
BySAM METZ Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — An adult entertainment industry group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a new Utah law that requires porn websites to implement age verification mechanisms to block minors from accessing sexually explicit materials.
The law, which took effect Wednesday, made Utah the second state to require adult websites to verify the age of those who want to view their pages — either through an independent contractor or digital ID. Lawmakers likened the requirement to those for alcohol or online gambling and argued that stronger protections were needed to shield kids from pornography, which is ubiquitous online.
The Free Speech Coalition — along with an erotica author and companies that manage adult websites and are party to the suit — argues that Utah’s new law unfairly discriminates against certain kinds of speech, violates the First Amendment rights of porn providers and intrudes on the privacy of individuals who want to view sexually explicit materials. The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to bar enforcement of the law until their legal challenge is resolved.
They contend that the age verification law “imposes a content-based restriction on protected speech that requires narrow tailoring to serve a compelling state interest.”
It is currently illegal to show children pornography under federal law, however that law is rarely enforced.
Utah’s new law is the conservative state’s latest effort to crack down on access to pornography and dovetails with lawmakers’ other efforts to restrict how children use the internet, including social media sites. It comes less than a year after Louisiana enacted a similar law and as additional states consider such policies as filters or age verification for adult websites.
The Utah law builds off years of anti-porn efforts by the Republican-controlled Legislature, where a majority of lawmakers are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It comes seven years after Utah became the first state to declare pornography a public health crisis and two years after lawmakers passed a measure paving the way to require internet-capable devices be equipped with porn filters for children. Provisions of the law delay it from taking effect unless at least five other states pass similar measures.
The age verification law is facing strong pushback, including from one of the biggest porn sites, Pornhub, which disabled access to its site in Utah earlier this week.
The Free Speech Coalition has filed similar challenges before. In 2002, its case against a federal child pornography statute made landed before the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down provisions for overly interfering with free speech.
Legendary singer and actor Harry Belafonte, who broke barriers and became a civil rights icon, has died at the age of 96. Vladimir Duthiers takes a look back at his extraordinary life.
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Florida is expanding its restrictions against teaching students about sexual orientation and gender identity to include high school students. CBS News anchors Lana Zak and Errol Barnett spoke with CBS News Miami’s Najahe Sherman about what this means for the LGBTQ+ community in Florida.
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CONWAY, N.H. — Bakery owner Sean Young was thrilled when high school art students covered the big blank wall over his doorway last spring with a painting of the sun shining over a mountain range made of sprinkle-covered chocolate and strawberry donuts, a blueberry muffin, a cinnamon roll and other pastries.
The display got rave reviews, and Young looked forward to collaborating with the school on more mural projects at his roadside bakery in Conway, New Hampshire.
Then the town zoning board got involved, deciding that the pastry painting was not so much art as advertising, and so could not remain as is because of its size. Faced with modifying or removing the mural, or possibly dealing with fines and criminal charges, Young sued, saying the town is violating his freedom of speech rights.
The painting could stay right where it is if it showed actual mountains, instead of pastries suggesting mountains, or if the building wasn’t a bakery.
“They said it would be art elsewhere,” Young told The Associated Press in an interview. “It’s just not art here.”
“The town should not have the right to police art,” he said.
The controversy has residents of this town of 10,000 grappling with big questions about creativity and liberty as it tries to preserve its rural character. Like other White Mountain communities that draw skiers, nature lovers and shoppers, Conway is under development pressure, making the sign dispute fraught with worries that any concession to commerce could change what they hold dear.
Many — including the zoning board members — applauded the students’ colorful work, but said rules must be followed, even if they’re old and outdated. At about 90 square feet (8.6 square meters), the mural is four times bigger than the sign code allows.
Following a longstanding democratic tradition of New England town meetings, residents deliberated how to define a sign before ultimately voting down changes last week. The local newspaper said the proposed wording wasn’t clear. Ultimately, a judge may have to resolve what remains an open debate in town.
“Those kids put their heart in it,” retiree Steve Downing said. He thinks the painting should stay.
“Everyone has to comply with the ordinance,” said Charlie Birch, a former U.S. Forest Service worker. “And even though it was done by the students, which was well done, and I give them a lot of credit for it … if you have the ordinance, ‘One for all,’ that’s where we are. You can’t really make any exceptions, otherwise everybody else will want the exception.”
Art teacher Olivia Benish, who worked with three students on the project, apologized to the board in September for not doing “due diligence” to make sure the mural would comply. She didn’t respond to requests for an interview. But she told the board members that there has to be a way to give students the opportunity to create positive public works of art “without upsetting the law and the powers that be,” according to the town minutes.
The lawsuit Young filed in January argues that the town is unconstitutionally discriminating against him. He asked a judge to prevent the town from enforcing its sign code.
And now other businesses have been drawn into the controversy.
Long before the pastry painting was installed, the town had allowed other murals at a local shopping center, but in December the town found that three of those artworks are, indeed, signs that violate size limits. They go before the zoning board on Wednesday.
Young, who is being represented by the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, asked for $1 in damages. Meanwhile, he’s selling T-shirts as a high school art department fundraiser, saying “This is Art” with the artwork on the front, and “This is a Sign” of a roadside “Leavitt’s Country Bakery” sign on the back.
“As Conway officials have confirmed, the town does not consider a painting to be a “sign” if it does not convey what town officials perceive to be a commercial message,” the lawsuit says. “But the town’s perception is that any mural depicting anything related to a business is a ‘sign.’ This is governmental discrimination based on the content of the speech” and the speaker’s identity, it said.
The lawsuit says the town’s sign definition is “incredibly broad,” with no mention of murals in the code: A sign in Conway is “any device, fixture, placard, structure or attachment thereto that uses color, form, graphic, illumination, symbol, or writing to advertise, announce the purpose of, or identify the purpose of any person or entity, or to communicate information of any kind to the public, whether commercial or noncommercial.”
Board member Luigi Bartolomeo said he thinks the pastry painting is art, not advertising. He read the definition out loud at the board’s meeting in August, and said he agrees with a local attorney who called it “unconstitutionally vague.”
“I think it’s a very badly written piece of code here,” said Bartolomeo, who recently retired. But Board Chairperson John Colbath said the board has to work with the ordinance, which was approved by voters, and that there is a process to change that.
“If they had done a seasonal mural on the wall — covered bridges and sunflowers and what have you — and it did not represent what your business is in, then it would be more likely to be a well-respected piece of art and not construed as a sign,” Colbath said at the August meeting.
He said to Young, “I understand the art thing — and you look and you see a mountain — but the general public sees donuts on the front of the bakery.”
“I think most of the people said it’s art,” Young responded.
In its denial of Young’s appeals, the board concluded that the bakery won’t be negatively affected without the display.
“This supposed distinction between murals and signs shouldn’t matter,” attorney Betsy Sanz of the Institute said in a news release. “After all, nothing in the First Amendment distinguishes between art and commercial signs — or commercial speech of any kind.”
The town and Young agreed in February to pause court proceedings — and any potential fines or charges — pending a vote on a revised definition that would allow the painting to stay. But it failed in last week’s elections, with 805 to 750 voting against it, according to the town clerk’s office. The judge now wants to hear from both sides by May 10.
“We’re ready to keep going,” Young said.
Town Manager John Eastman declined an interview, referring questions to town lawyer Jason Dennis, who said he would soon meet with town officials to discuss next steps.
The Conway Daily Sun offered its analysis in an editorial last week: “Voters smartly concluded that the proposed new definition of signs would only further complicate enforcement. That said, it is not a stretch to conjecture that most voters are fine with the murals at Leavitt’s Country Bakery and Settlers Green. We suggest the town figure out a way to back off enforcement until a clearer definition can be written, one that accommodates ‘art.’”
CONWAY, N.H. — Bakery owner Sean Young was thrilled when high school art students covered the big blank wall over his doorway last spring with a painting of the sun shining over a mountain range made of sprinkle-covered chocolate and strawberry donuts, a blueberry muffin, a cinnamon roll and other pastries.
The display got rave reviews, and Young looked forward to collaborating with the school on more mural projects at his roadside bakery in Conway, New Hampshire.
Then the town zoning board got involved, deciding that the pastry painting was not so much art as advertising, and so could not remain as is because of its size. Faced with modifying or removing the mural, or possibly dealing with fines and criminal charges, Young sued, saying the town is violating his freedom of speech rights.
The painting could stay right where it is if it showed actual mountains, instead of pastries suggesting mountains, or if the building wasn’t a bakery.
“They said it would be art elsewhere,” Young told The Associated Press in an interview. “It’s just not art here.”
“The town should not have the right to police art,” he said.
The controversy has residents of this town of 10,000 grappling with big questions about creativity and liberty as it tries to preserve its rural character. Like other White Mountain communities that draw skiers, nature lovers and shoppers, Conway is under development pressure, making the sign dispute fraught with worries that any concession to commerce could change what they hold dear.
Many — including the zoning board members — applauded the students’ colorful work, but said rules must be followed, even if they’re old and outdated. At about 90 square feet (8.6 square meters), the mural is four times bigger than the sign code allows.
Following a longstanding democratic tradition of New England town meetings, residents deliberated how to define a sign before ultimately voting down changes last week. The local newspaper said the proposed wording wasn’t clear. Ultimately, a judge may have to resolve what remains an open debate in town.
“Those kids put their heart in it,” retiree Steve Downing said. He thinks the painting should stay.
“Everyone has to comply with the ordinance,” said Charlie Birch, a former U.S. Forest Service worker. “And even though it was done by the students, which was well done, and I give them a lot of credit for it … if you have the ordinance, ‘One for all,’ that’s where we are. You can’t really make any exceptions, otherwise everybody else will want the exception.”
Art teacher Olivia Benish, who worked with three students on the project, apologized to the board in September for not doing “due diligence” to make sure the mural would comply. She didn’t respond to requests for an interview. But she told the board members that there has to be a way to give students the opportunity to create positive public works of art “without upsetting the law and the powers that be,” according to the town minutes.
The lawsuit Young filed in January argues that the town is unconstitutionally discriminating against him. He asked a judge to prevent the town from enforcing its sign code.
And now other businesses have been drawn into the controversy.
Long before the pastry painting was installed, the town had allowed other murals at a local shopping center, but in December the town found that three of those artworks are, indeed, signs that violate size limits. They go before the zoning board on Wednesday.
Young, who is being represented by the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, asked for $1 in damages. Meanwhile, he’s selling T-shirts as a high school art department fundraiser, saying “This is Art” with the artwork on the front, and “This is a Sign” of a roadside “Leavitt’s Country Bakery” sign on the back.
“As Conway officials have confirmed, the town does not consider a painting to be a “sign” if it does not convey what town officials perceive to be a commercial message,” the lawsuit says. “But the town’s perception is that any mural depicting anything related to a business is a ‘sign.’ This is governmental discrimination based on the content of the speech” and the speaker’s identity, it said.
The lawsuit says the town’s sign definition is “incredibly broad,” with no mention of murals in the code: A sign in Conway is “any device, fixture, placard, structure or attachment thereto that uses color, form, graphic, illumination, symbol, or writing to advertise, announce the purpose of, or identify the purpose of any person or entity, or to communicate information of any kind to the public, whether commercial or noncommercial.”
Board member Luigi Bartolomeo said he thinks the pastry painting is art, not advertising. He read the definition out loud at the board’s meeting in August, and said he agrees with a local attorney who called it “unconstitutionally vague.”
“I think it’s a very badly written piece of code here,” said Bartolomeo, who recently retired. But Board Chairperson John Colbath said the board has to work with the ordinance, which was approved by voters, and that there is a process to change that.
“If they had done a seasonal mural on the wall — covered bridges and sunflowers and what have you — and it did not represent what your business is in, then it would be more likely to be a well-respected piece of art and not construed as a sign,” Colbath said at the August meeting.
He said to Young, “I understand the art thing — and you look and you see a mountain — but the general public sees donuts on the front of the bakery.”
“I think most of the people said it’s art,” Young responded.
In its denial of Young’s appeals, the board concluded that the bakery won’t be negatively affected without the display.
“This supposed distinction between murals and signs shouldn’t matter,” attorney Betsy Sanz of the Institute said in a news release. “After all, nothing in the First Amendment distinguishes between art and commercial signs — or commercial speech of any kind.”
The town and Young agreed in February to pause court proceedings — and any potential fines or charges — pending a vote on a revised definition that would allow the painting to stay. But it failed in last week’s elections, with 805 to 750 voting against it, according to the town clerk’s office. The judge now wants to hear from both sides by May 10.
“We’re ready to keep going,” Young said.
Town Manager John Eastman declined an interview, referring questions to town lawyer Jason Dennis, who said he would soon meet with town officials to discuss next steps.
The Conway Daily Sun offered its analysis in an editorial last week: “Voters smartly concluded that the proposed new definition of signs would only further complicate enforcement. That said, it is not a stretch to conjecture that most voters are fine with the murals at Leavitt’s Country Bakery and Settlers Green. We suggest the town figure out a way to back off enforcement until a clearer definition can be written, one that accommodates ‘art.’”
CONWAY, N.H. — Bakery owner Sean Young was thrilled when high school art students covered the big blank wall over his doorway last spring with a painting of the sun shining over a mountain range made of sprinkle-covered chocolate and strawberry donuts, a blueberry muffin, a cinnamon roll and other pastries.
The display got rave reviews, and Young looked forward to collaborating with the school on more mural projects at his roadside bakery in Conway, New Hampshire.
Then the town zoning board got involved, deciding that the pastry painting was not so much art as advertising, and so could not remain as is because of its size. Faced with modifying or removing the mural, or possibly dealing with fines and criminal charges, Young sued, saying the town is violating his freedom of speech rights.
The painting could stay right where it is it if showed actual mountains, instead of pastries suggesting mountains, or if the building wasn’t a bakery.
“They said it would be art elsewhere,” Young told The Associated Press in an interview. “It’s just not art here.”
“The town should not have the right to police art,” he said.
The controversy has residents of this town of 10,000 grappling with big questions about creativity and liberty as it tries to preserve its rural character. Like other White Mountain communities that draw skiers, nature lovers and shoppers, Conway is under development pressure, making the sign dispute fraught with worries that any concession to commerce could change what they hold dear.
Many — including the zoning board members — applauded the students’ colorful work, but said rules must be followed, even if they’re old and outdated. At about 90 square feet (8.6 square meters), the mural is four times bigger than the sign code allows.
Following a longstanding democratic tradition of New England town meetings, residents deliberated how to define a sign before ultimately voting down changes last week. The local newspaper said the proposed wording wasn’t clear. Ultimately, a judge may have to resolve what remains an open debate in town.
“Those kids put their heart in it,” retiree Steve Downing said. He thinks the painting should stay.
“Everyone has to comply with the ordinance,” said Charlie Birch, a former U.S. Forest Service worker. “And even though it was done by the students, which was well done, and I give them a lot of credit for it … if you have the ordinance, ‘One for all,’ that’s where we are. You can’t really make any exceptions, otherwise everybody else will want the exception.”
Art teacher Olivia Benish, who worked with three students on the project, apologized to the board in September for not doing “due diligence” to make sure the mural would comply. She didn’t respond to requests for an interview. But she told the board members that there has to be a way to give students the opportunity to create positive public works of art “without upsetting the law and the powers that be,” according to the town minutes.
The lawsuit Young filed in January argues that the town is unconstitutionally discriminating against him. He asked a judge to prevent the town from enforcing its sign code.
And now other businesses have been drawn into the controversy.
Long before the pastry painting was installed, the town had allowed other murals at a local shopping center, but in December the town found that three of those artworks are, indeed, signs that violate size limits. They go before the zoning board on Wednesday.
Young, who is being represented by the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, asked for $1 in damages. Meanwhile, he’s selling T-shirts as a high school art department fundraiser, saying “This is Art” with the artwork on the front, and “This is a Sign” of a roadside “Leavitt’s Country Bakery” sign on the back.
“As Conway officials have confirmed, the town does not consider a painting to be a “sign” if it does not convey what town officials perceive to be a commercial message,” the lawsuit says. “But the town’s perception is that any mural depicting anything related to a business is a ‘sign.’ This is governmental discrimination based on the content of the speech” and the speaker’s identity, it said.
The lawsuit says the town’s sign definition is “incredibly broad,” with no mention of murals in the code: A sign in Conway is “any device, fixture, placard, structure or attachment thereto that uses color, form, graphic, illumination, symbol, or writing to advertise, announce the purpose of, or identify the purpose of any person or entity, or to communicate information of any kind to the public, whether commercial or noncommercial.”
Board member Luigi Bartolomeo said he thinks the pastry painting is art, not advertising. He read the definition out loud a t the board’s meeting in August, and said he agrees with a local attorney who called it “unconstitutionally vague.”
“I think it’s a very badly written piece of code here,” said Bartolomeo, who recently retired. But Board Chairperson John Colbath said the board has to work with the ordinance, which was approved by voters, and that there is a process to change that.
“If they had done a seasonal mural on the wall — covered bridges and sunflowers and what have you — and it did not represent what your business is in, then it would be more likely to be a well-respected piece of art and not construed as a sign,” Colbath said at the August meeting.
He said to Young, “I understand the art thing — and you look and you see a mountain — but the general public sees donuts on the front of the bakery.”
“I think most of the people said it’s art,” Young responded.
In its denial of Young’s appeals, the board concluded that the bakery won’t be negatively affected without the display.
“This supposed distinction between murals and signs shouldn’t matter,” attorney Betsy Sanz of the Institute said in a news release. “After all, nothing in the First Amendment distinguishes between art and commercial signs — or commercial speech of any kind.”
The town and Young agreed in February to pause court proceedings — and any potential fines or charges — pending a vote on a revised definition that would allow the painting to stay. But it failed in last week’s elections, with 805 to 750 voting against it, according to the town clerk’s office. The judge now wants to hear from both sides by May 10.
“We’re ready to keep going,” Young said.
Town Manager John Eastman declined an interview, referring questions to town lawyer Jason Dennis, who said he would soon meet with town officials to discuss next steps.
The Conway Daily Sun offered its analysis in an editorial last week: “Voters smartly concluded that the proposed new definition of signs would only further complicate enforcement. That said, it is not a stretch to conjecture that most voters are fine with the murals at Leavitt’s Country Bakery and Settlers Green. We suggest the town figure out a way to back off enforcement until a clearer definition can be written, one that accommodates ‘art.’”
LOS ANGELES — Two former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies are accused of violating the civil rights of a skateboarder in 2020 and perpetrating a coverup, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
A grand jury handed down the indictment last month, and both ex-deputies surrendered to authorities Thursday when it was unsealed.
Miguel Vega and Christopher Hernandez are accused of throwing the skateboarder — identified as “J.A.” in court papers — in the back of their cruiser and detaining him without cause in Compton in April 2020. He was still in the patrol vehicle when they engaged in a pursuit and crashed the car, injuring the skateboarder. Prosecutors say the duo then conspired to coverup the 23-year-old man’s unlawful detention.
Vega, 32, and Hernandez, 37, are charged with conspiracy, deprivation of rights under color of law, witness tampering and falsification of records. Vega is charged with another falsification of records count. Their attorneys did not respond to an emailed request for comment Thursday.
The Sheriff’s Department said it helped federal agencies with a criminal investigation that led indicting the men, who “are no longer members of the department.”
“The Sheriff’s Department is committed to holding employees accountable for their actions and expects them to exhibit the highest moral and ethical standards when serving our communities,” a statement said.
The same ex-deputies were involved in the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old man later that year during a foot chase. Authorities say Vega shot Andres Guardadofive times in the back after the deputies chased him on foot. Guardado’s killing sparked protests, and his family settled a lawsuit with the county for $8 million.
The federal indictment was first reported Thursday by the Los Angeles Times. Vega and Hernandez were scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon.
The deputies remained on active duty until December 2020, the LA Times reported.
“The indictment alleges that these two deputies violated a young person’s constitutional rights by willfully and illegally detaining him without just cause,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a news release. “Officers who abuse their power must be held accountable, and my Office is committed to prosecuting violations of civil rights by those who violate their oaths and victimize those who they were sworn to protect.”
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately have a comment after the indictment was unsealed.
On April 13, 2020, Vega and Hernandez approached two young Black men outside a Compton skatepark. J.A., who was inside the enclosed park, yelled at the deputies to leave the men alone. The deputies pulled J.A. through an opening in the fence and threw him into the back of the cruiser, prosecutors said.
“Vega and Hernandez did not handcuff J.A., did not secure J.A.’s seatbelt, did not tell J.A. that J.A. was under arrest, and did not inform J.A. of J.A.’s rights at any time,” according to the indictment.
Vega, the driver, told J.A. that they would drop him off in gang territory as Hernandez, from the passenger seat, told the skateboarder he would be beaten. Then Vega, with J.A. still in the backseat, began pursuing a bicyclist down an alley, where the deputy crashed the vehicle, prosecutors said.
J.A. suffered a cut above his right eye in the collision. Vega pulled him out of the cruiser and told him to leave, but the deputy later reported a suspect with a gun, describing J.A.’s clothes, had fled the area. Neither deputy said the skateboarder had been inside the patrol vehicle during the crash, according to the indictment.
Vega then told a sergeant that J.A. was suspected of being under the influence of a controlled substance. Prosecutors said Hernandez later directed another deputy to write him a citation for being under the influence of methamphetamine after J.A. was taken to the hospital for his cut.
Prosecutors also allege Vega and Hernandez falsified incident reports later in the month, inaccurately claiming, among other things, J.A. had threatened to harm people in the skatepark.
