NAACP New Bedford

NAACP New Bedford joins ACLU-MA and BCCJ in calling for shutdown of ICE programs in Bristol County

Bristol County for Correctional Justice, the NAACP New Bedford Branch, and the ACLU of Massachusetts jointly call upon the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation and the chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary committees to take steps to support the termination of DHS’s 287(g) contract and IGSA with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office. The letter calls for the immediate termination of all immigration-related contracts between the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office (“BCSO”) and the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”). These contracts include an Intergovernmental Service Agreement (“IGSA”) to house federal civil immigration detainees in BCSO facilities, as well as a 287(g) agreement, through...

Confronting Discrimination Fall River

Confronting Discrimination Fall River meets every first and third Tuesday @ 11am to discuss why violence and discrimination still persist today and what we can do about it. The next virtual meeting will be held via Zoom on Tuesday, May 18 @ 11am and features guest speaker Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, Executive Director of the Lawyers for Civil Rights. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84281031712?pwd=eUt0UEtETElTN0JmeXhjcVE3N3BGZz09 Meeting ID: 842 8103 1712 Passcode: UNFRCD

#SayHerName: Mikayla Miller

Mikayla Miller was a promising 16-year-old African American honors student-athlete at Hopkinton High School. She was a kind-hearted young lady who had dreams of attending an HBCU to study journalism. Her mother had just bought her a car. She had never been arrested or suspended from school. She was reportedly jumped by older white teenage boys on April 17 and found dead on April 18th, her body tied to a tree with a belt wrapped around her neck. Hopkinton has a Black population of 0.1%. Police have refused to investigate Mikayla's suspicious death as a murder, telling her mother that...

Schools

Statewide survey on Discipline and School Exclusion During COVID-19

The Chapter 222 Coalition, an alliance of educational advocates and attorneys and Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ), a non-profit statewide advocacy organization, are concerned that schools may be excluding and disciplining students, particularly students of color and students with disabilities, during the pandemic. We are also concerned about schools filing 51A “child neglect” reports with the Department of Children and Families (DCF), and Child Requiring Assistance (CRA) truancy cases in juvenile court, if children are not able to access online school. If these things happen, we want to hear about them so that we can seek systemic and policy change...

Massachusetts Eviction Diversion Initiative

In order to better inform Spanish and Portuguese speakers about the Massachusetts Eviction Diversion Initiative (EDI), the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) is partnering with NeighborWorks to host Spanish and Portuguese language virtual town halls on emergency rental assistance, free legal representation, and mediation services available to tenants and income-eligible landlords impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in Fall River and New Bedford. The following town halls and resources are available through the Eviction Diversion Initiative. Even those who have already received assistance through RAFT / ERMA may be eligible for additional assistance under the recently launched Emergency...

Takeaways from the Chauvin trial

The Derek Chauvin Trial For many Black Americans anxiety surrounded the Derek Chauvin trial. The former police officer was charged with killing George Floyd, who died after Chauvin pinned Floyd's neck by the knee for more than nine minutes while onlookers begged the officer to stop and Floyd cried out for his mother. Our nation and most specifically the Black community have rarely seen white male officers held accountable for killing black people. So there was apprehension, fear, and anger that no matter how indisputable the charges and the evidence, our fractured criminal justice system would falter. Chauvin's guilty conviction...

Legislation

NAACP New Bedford strongly opposes H.1234

The NAACP New Bedford Branch strongly opposes a bill now before the Massachusetts legislature, H.1234, which would re-classify "Big Gig" drivers (Lyft and Uber) as independent contractors and no longer treat them as company employees. For many years the NAACP has regarded legislation of this sort as hostile if not destructive to working people. Real jobs with collective bargaining rights provide not only working wages for working families but the right to democratize workplaces. The National Employment Law Project has found that Black workers comprise nearly one quarter of all workers in the gig economy. They and all workers deserve...

Statement of NAACP New Bedford Branch on Criticism of Police Profiling Report

Statement of NAACP New Bedford Branch on Criticism of Police Profiling Report April 23, 2020 The NAACP New Bedford Branch was pleased to be one of eight community co-sponsors of the unveiling of Citizens for Juvenile Justice's report on racial profiling by the New Bedford Police. It is not surprising that the report coincided with the conviction of George Floyd's killer in Minneapolis. Americans have had enough of bad policing, and that includes New Bedford, a city that paid out $1.4 million in settlements for two wrongful police killings. Although it is clear to a growing number of Americans, Black,...

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

4/27/21 - 6/1/21 Tuesdays- 5:30pm -7:00pm Facilitated by Andrea M. Garr-Barnes, MSW, Equity and Inclusion Practitioner & Facilitator 50 Person Max Capacity Register by April 22 at: http://bit.ly/communityreadingcircle Binding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. With sly humor and a poet’s searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and...

Police

CFJJ addresses NBPD criticisms of its report on racial profiling

Citizens for Juvenile Justice response to issues raised by the New Bedford Police Department Download this in PDF format April 20, 2021 Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CfJJ) stands by its analysis in "We Are The Prey: Racial Profiling and the Policing of Youth in New Bedford." While we appreciate that the New Bedford Police Department (NBPD) has brought up different manners of expressing the data, we take their statement as an invitation to conduct additional analysis of the existing data (some of which we have done below), and as reason for the Department to publicly release more detailed data on...