Delvin Barnes, 37, is being brought to Philadelphia from Virginia for an initial appearance Wednesday on federal kidnapping charges.

Barnes is accused of grabbing a 22-year-old Philadelphia woman walking home from a bus stop on Nov. 2 and driving off with her as she kicked out his car window. Police found the two in his car three days later in Jessup, Maryland.

The victim, Carlesha Freeland-Gaither, fought her attacker and is now back with her family, authorities said.

Barnes will be tried in that case before he is prosecuted in the abduction and attempted murder of a 16-year-old Richmond girl. He was digging a grave for her when she escaped in early October, authorities said.

The Charles City County Sheriff’s Office called the trial strategy “a coordinated tactical maneuver.”

“Once he is tried on federal charges, he will be back here,” Capt. Jayson Crawley said.

After being arrested in the Philadelphia case, Barnes was taken to Virginia and questioned thoroughly about the teen’s abduction, Crawley said. He did not request a lawyer, he said.

Barnes is expected to be appointed a Pennsylvania lawyer at Wednesday’s hearing.

According to court documents, Barnes told police he didn’t know the Philadelphia victim, whose abduction was captured on surveillance video.

Barnes was released from prison a year ago after serving eight years for choking his estranged wife and assaulting her parents in Philadelphia.

In the Virginia case, he allegedly hit the girl in the head with a shovel, stuffed her in a trunk and took her to a mobile home, where he doused her in bleach and gasoline before she escaped.

“African-American voters are in many ways the most loyal voters to the Democratic party,” said Jason Husser, with Elon University. “This has been established for going on 100 years now.”

This election cycle is expected to be no different. Polling indicates that by a wide margin African-American voters will be heading to the polls this year for Kay Hagan, the incumbent Democrat. But new ads are trying to shake that stable base.

You can see two such ads here:
‘Elbert Guillory: Send Hagan Home’

‘Why?’

The ads are created by conservative outside interest groups and are aiming to influence the African-American vote.

“I suspect that the argument is that you don’t necessarily, the people behind this ad, don’t necessarily want to pull a ton of the African-American share of the vote,” saidKareem Crayton, with UNC Chapel Hill. “But they just want to bring it down enough that so in a tight race you have fewer votes for Kay Hagan and the Democrats than they expected.”

Although according to Crayton, this is a risky strategy.

“If it gets played too much, the African-American community could see it as an alarm bell to say this is an election that really matters,” said Crayton.

There are nearly one and a half million registered black voters in North Carolina. Meanwhile, many polls are saying Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis are still statistically tied heading into the final week of the campaign season and the fight is on, to win every voter possible.

Source:. Twcnews

Gay marriage recently became legal in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The government’s announcement follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month to decline to hear appeals from five states that sought to keep their marriage bans in place. It brings the total number of states with federal recognition of gay marriage to 32, plus the District of Columbia.

Couples married in these states will qualify for a range of federal benefits, including Social Security and veterans’ benefits.

“With each new state where same-sex marriages are legally recognized, our nation moves closer to achieving full equality for all Americans,” Holder said.

The attorney general said the government is working “as quickly as possible” to make sure same-sex married couples in these states receive the “fullest array of benefits” that federal law allows.

The Justice Department also has determined that it can legally recognize gay marriages performed this summer in Indiana and Wisconsin after federal courts declared marriage bans in the states unconstitutional. Subsequent developments created confusion about the status of those unions, but Holder said the U.S. government will recognize the marriages.

Source: Huffington Post

Returning to the accepting embrace of his home state of Illinois, Obama told voters that Republicans mean well, but “just have bad ideas.” He accused the GOP of recycling those ideas over and over, urging voters to take their future into their own hands by showing up Nov. 4 — and electing Democrats.

“The power to move our society, our government, it really is in your hands,” Obama said during a rally for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn that doubled as a homecoming for the president. “You’re the reason that I had the audacity to actually run for president of the United States.”

Obama’s rallies Sunday in Chicago and Maryland marked his first major foray into the 2014 midterm elections. Obama was supposed to rally last week in Connecticut for Gov. Dannel Malloy, but postponed that visit to focus on Ebola.

Though limited in his ability to help his party this year, Obama has sought to use his own policies, like a minimum wage hike, to frame an economic message that can lift up Democratic candidates across the country. In radio ads and other appearances, Obama has also sought to rev up the same voting blocs that helped elect him twice — including minorities, women and young people — in hopes they’ll show up this year even without Obama on the ballot.

Although Obama has raised money for Democrats this year at a feverish pace, he’s stayed away from appearing in public with candidates — due in large part to his sagging approval ratings in key states. Obama will rally in the coming weeks for another half-dozen Democratic candidates for governor, but is not venturing into the conservative-leaning states where Democrats are fighting their toughest Senate races.

“We’re in the fight of our lives for the soul of Illinois’ democracy. They may have more money,” Quinn said of his opponent, Republican Bruce Rauner. “But we’ve got President Barack Obama.”

Hours earlier, a much more muted Obama was at another rally — this one at a high school just east of Washington — seeking votes for Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown in his bid for the state’s top job.

Roughly 8,000 people packed a high school gymnasium — with more in an overflow crowd next-door — where Obama adopted his party’s mantra for this election season by claiming the midterms would come down to one thing: “Who is going to fight for you?”

“The Republican Party can keep telling you what they’re against,” Obama said, riffing off a long list: affordable health care, immigration reform, action on climate change, to name a few. “But the good news is Democrats keep telling you what things we’re for.”

Obama’s rally for Brown had the feeling of a gospel service, and a local pastor opened by noting that the slaves who helped build the White House could have never anticipated that one of their own would one day occupy the home, evoking chants of “amen” from the audience. One speaker suggested that Brown, if elected, would be a leader in the model of Obama himself, while others denounced Republican moves to tighten voting restrictions as an attempt to stifle the black vote.

Support for Obama still runs high in Democratic-leaning Maryland — and especially in Prince George’s County, a heavily African-American corner of the state and Brown’s home base. Roughly 9 in 10 voters in the county backed Obama in 2008. Just next to the high school where Obama held his rally sits Barack Obama Elementary School.

Illinois, too, is about as safe as territory gets for Obama these days. The president remains popular here, and Quinn has also gotten a boost from Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Michelle Obama.

But unlike in Maryland, where Brown has held a healthy lead over his opponent, the race in Illinois is tighter, in large part due to Quinn’s low popularity. Like Brown, Quinn is counting on black voters who still support Obama to turn out Nov. 4 to secure his re-election.

Source: Huffington Post

They obeyed. That’s when an officer, gun pointed at Peart, allegedly rooted through Peart’s pockets, pulled out his wallet, then pulled out his ID. “Happy birthday,” the cop quipped.

It was that incident — along with nine other times he says cops stopped and searched him for no reason — that spurred Peart, now 25, to join the class-action lawsuit against the police department’s use of stop, question and frisk. In 2011, the NYPD stopped New Yorkers nearly 700,000 times, and 87 percent of those stopped were black or Latino.

Last summer, Judge Shira Scheindlin delivered a landmark decision in that class-action lawsuit, Floyd vs. The City of New York. She ruled that the department’s use of the controversial tactic was unconstitutional, and amounted to an “indirect policy of racial profiling.” She ordered a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD, and also ordered a slew of other remedies, including a “joint remedial process” in which the plaintiffs and advocacy groups would have to work together to repair police-community relations, and a pilot program for putting body cameras on cops.

A series of legal maneuvers from the city’s police unions, however, have stalled the implementation of these remedies.

“It’s important that the remedies move forward,” Peart told reporters Wednesday during a rally outside the United States Court of Appeals in Lower Manhattan, where the police unions were set to argue in the Floyd case that they should be able to intervene in the implementation of the remedies. “For too long, stop-and-frisk has been plaguing our communities, and we’re ready for change,” Peart said, flanked by members of different advocacy groups, as well as a handful of New York lawmakers.

Public Advocate Letitia James said it was time to “enact justice for communities that have been affected by stop-and-frisk abuses.”

“What we‘re fighting for today,” she continued, “is the future of the joint remedial process and stop-and-frisk reform in New York City at the center of the healing process between law enforcement and communities of color all throughout the city.”

She also said the unions’ decision to stall the Floyd ruling was really just a maneuver in ongoing contract negotiations with the city.

“I believe that this is nothing more than a ruse, an excuse for negotiations related with the labor contract which is at dispute right now with [Mayor Bill de Blasio's] administration,” she said. “I think they are using tactics to get the attention of the administration to stall any efforts at progress.”

The unions’ main objection to the Floyd decision has been that officers themselves wouldn’t be involved in the joint remedial process, but attorney Jonathan Moore told The Daily News in July that Scheindlin’s ruling “gives the unions a seat at the table.”

Pat Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, told The Huffington Post in a statement Wednesday that “our challenge has always been about protecting the rights and safety of our members while they work to protect our communities.”

“We have serious concerns about how these remedies will impact our members and the ability to do their jobs,” he continued. “The PBA is fighting to give voice to our members and to make every effort to ensure that their rights are protected.”

Moore, however, pointed to the fact that some cops testified against the department’s use of stop-and-frisk during the Floyd trial. “I don’t think these police unions are speaking for the majority of police officers, because the rank-and-file officers want this reform,” Moore said.

“We have a leadership in this city now that has a greater respect for civil rights,” Moore added, referring to de Blasio’s administration, “after 20 years of living in the desert under Giuliani and Bloomberg. I think there’s a new day in this city on some level, and we want a union leadership that reflects that change. And at this point all they reflect is the old way of doing things, which is, ‘Policemen can never do anything wrong.’”

“Had these reforms been implemented, it’s very likely that Eric Garner would not have died on Staten Island three months ago,” Moore continued. Garner, 47, died after police put him into a prohibited chokehold during an arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes. Moore, who now represents Garner’s family in a lawsuit against the city, said the 120th precinct in Staten Island would’ve been one of the precincts to have received body cameras as a result of the Floyd ruling.

“Had those cameras been implemented and officers been trained with them, I think it’s a fair assumption to say that they would not have acted the way they did,” Moore said. “In this case, justice delayed is not only justice denied, it’s people being killed.”

After Scheindlin’s ruling last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg appealed the decision. An appeals court later removed Scheindlin from the case altogether, but in January of this year, de Blasio took office, dropped Bloomberg’s appeal, and used Scheindlin’s ruling as a basis for a sweeping settlement to reform the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk.

In July, another federal judge blocked police unions from intervening in that settlement. The unions appealed that decision, which resulted in Wednesday’s hearing before another panel of federal judges.

Meanwhile, the number of police stops has continued to drop dramatically under de Blasio. There have been only 27,527 stops so far this year, a steep decline from the nearly 700,000 such stops in 2011. In two Brooklyn precincts where the tactic was the especially prevalent, the number of police stops has dropped a staggering 99 percent.

For Peart, however, numbers can be deceiving. “Just because the numbers are down,” he said Wednesday, “doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

Source: Huffington Post

The arrests were the only incident in an otherwise peaceful weekend of demonstrations in the city to protest the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson in August. The shooting sparked sometimes violent demonstrations in the predominantly black suburb.

Early Sunday morning, about 200 protesters gathered in Shaw, a south St. Louis neighborhood where last week another black 18-year-old was killed by a white police officer, St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said. The protesters, some wearing masks, marched toward a QuikTrip convenience store and tried to force open its doors, Dotson said.

“The people who were left there were people who made a conscious decision they wanted to be arrested,” Dotson said.

At least one officer was hit by a rock but was not seriously injured, and officers used pepper spray to get those arrested to comply with police, Dotson said. Police were charging those arrested with unlawful assembly then releasing them Sunday.

Community activists and organizers of the weekend of protests did not respond to Associated Press requests Sunday for comment on the police version of events.

The planned demonstrations began Friday afternoon with a march outside the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office, where protesters renewed calls for prosecutor Bob McCulloch to charge Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson officer, in the Aug. 9 death of Brown. A grand jury is reviewing the case and the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation.

Since Brown’s death, three other fatal police shootings of black males have occurred in the St. Louis area. The most recent involved an off-duty St. Louis officer who was working for a private neighborhood security patrol when he shot and killed 18-year-old Vonderrit D. Myers on Wednesday night.

The white officer, whose name hasn’t been released, fired 17 rounds after police say Myers opened fire. Myers’ parents say he was unarmed, and many speakers at a weekend rally echoed those doubts.

Demonstrators stood outside Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis, where the Cardinals were playing the San Francisco Giants this weekend in the National League Championship Series of professional baseball. Fans were unimpeded by the protesters Saturday and none picketed the stadium Sunday night.

Source: Huffington Post

“I feel like the school district that I’m in, they don’t know how to handle everything that comes with the non-gender conforming or the kids that are minorities,” Price, who attends high school in northern California, told The Huffington Post. “They just know how to get rid of us.”

As a queer youth of color, Price faces unique challenges. Research shows that over 80 percent of LGBTQ students were verbally harassed at school over their sexual orientation in 2011. Another report released earlier this year by the Office of Civil Rights shows that black and Hispanic students are suspended from school at substantially higher rates than their white peers.

Two issue briefs released Wednesday expand upon these problems, demonstrating how issues surrounding school discipline uniquely impact LGBTQ and gender non-conforming youth of color. The reports were co-authored by Crossroads Collaborative at the University of Arizona, which researches youth and sexuality, and the Gay Straight Alliance Network, the national organization that connects school-based Gay Straight Alliances.

The groups began conducting their research in early 2012 through a series of surveys and focus groups, finding that LGBTQ and gender non-conforming youth of color reported often feeling singled out by school authorities and feeling blamed when they spoke up about bullying. The term gender non-conforming youth can include any student who does “not conform to stereotypical expectations of what it means to be and to look like a male or a female,” according to one of the reports.

“Our research shows that LGBTQ youth of color in particular face persistent and frequent harassment and bias-based bullying from peers and school staff as well as increased surveillance and policing, relatively greater incidents of harsh school discipline, and consistent blame for their own victimization,” the report says.

Price, for one, says that she feels as though she has faced disproportionate discipline in school due to her status as a minority and a member of the LGBTQ community. Price says that she began feeling discriminated against as early as elementary school, where she was one of only a few African-American students.

“I was a plus-size, big African-American girl, and I did not fit that female look. It wasn’t shirts and dresses, it was hoodies,” said Price, who has since switched districts. “And then instead of my school trying to figure out things from my point of view, it was them trying to figure out things from the white person’s point of view … [Their solution was] just to get rid of me and have me at school for less days.”

The report notes that these harsh disciplinary practices contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline for LGBTQ students of color. It states that while LGBTQ students only make up 6 percent of the general population, they constitute 15 percent of the population in juvenile detention. And while only 16 percent of students enrolled in school are black, data from the Office of Civil Rights show that 31 percent of those subjected to school-related arrests were black.

Zami Hyemingway, a researcher for Crossroads Collaborative and founder of the Arizona GSA Network, told The Huffington Post that he thinks schools could reverse this cycle by implementing transformative justice practices and getting rid of zero-tolerance policies. A set of recommendations issued by GSA Network and The Advancement Project in conjunction with the briefs argues the same.

“A lot of the things that were reported were not surprising to me, which is really really sad,” Hyemingway told The Huffington Post.

“I was hoping all the things I heard when I was in high school and in college … I was hoping it died down a bit,” he said. “But looking at the surveys, it was just very clear that there’s lots of work to be done still.”

Source: Huffington Post

“Ebola has very clear symptoms that inevitably worsen over time, inclusive of fever, bleeding from the eyes and a growing rash that consumes over 75 percent of the human body. Based on the clinical presentation of the patient, the medical team was able to rule out Ebola, the patient will be treated for other illnesses,” Dr. Joxel Garcia, director of the department, said in a press release.

On Oct. 3, hospital officials had announced that a patient was being tested for Ebola.

“In an abundance of caution, we have activated the appropriate infection control protocols, including isolating the patient,” said hospital spokeswoman Kerry-Ann Hamilton in a statement. “Our medical team continues to evaluate and monitor progress in close collaboration with the CDC and the Department of Health.”

The patient, who had recently travelled to Nigeria, was admitted to the hospital in stable condition. For privacy reasons, no further details are being shared at this time, Hamilton told the AFRO Oct. 3, but periodic updates will be released as more information becomes available.

In addition to Thomas Eric Duncan in Texas, the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., the unidentified individual being examined at Howard University is not the only U.S. patient presently reported as being examined for the possibility of Ebola. In Georgia, another case for Ebola is under investigation at the Cobb County Jail, reports WSBTV-Atlanta. A DUI suspect who was arrested Thursday night has developed a fever. The inmate told jail officials that he recently travelled to Africa. No new inmates are being accepted into the jail, as the unidentified man is being examined and treated.

Dunn’s parents were in the courtroom for the verdict. Davis’ parents, Ron Davis and Lucia MacBath, both let out a quiet gasp upon hearing the jury forewoman’s words and then hung their heads and cried.

Dunn did not appear to have an immediate reaction, but later, he turned around and somberly shook his head toward his father.

Dunn, 47, was charged with murder after shooting into an SUV full of teenagers at a Jacksonville, Florida, gas station following a squabble over the music emanating from the teens’ vehicle.

Outside the courtroom, Davis’ mother expressed her gratitude for a verdict she said represented justice not only for her son but for “Trayvon and for all the nameless faces and children and people that will never have a voice.” She was referring to Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager killed earlier the same year by a neighborhood watch captain who was acquitted in the death.

“Words cannot express our joy but also our great sorrow because … we know that Jordan has received his justice,” she said. “We know that Jordan’s life and legacy will live on for others, but at the same time, we’re very saddened by the life that Michael Dunn will continue to live. We are saddened for his family, for his friends and the community that will continue to suffer by his actions.”

The victim’s father said the verdict made Jacksonville “a shining example that you could have a jury made of mostly white people, white men,” that delivers justice in a racially charged case.

“Hopefully,” Davis said, “this is a start where we don’t have to look at the makeup of a jury anymore.”

Prosecutor Angela Corey said Dunn faces a life term along with a minimum of 25 to life for using a firearm.

“It’s a vindication for justice,” she said of the verdict.

“We believe that we have to have as much justice as we can to assure that Michael Dunn will never ever walk out of a prison.”

Duval County Judge Russell Healey set a tentative sentencing hearing for October 17 but said he would wait until Tuesday to ensure the date worked for Dunn’s defense attorneys.

“This has been going on for two years, and everyone has acted graciously. I ask that you continue to do that,” Healey said before the verdict was read. “Remember, we must respect the verdict of the jury. They did not volunteer to do this.”

Dunn has said he shot at the vehicle because he thought Davis had a weapon and feared for his life, but the prosecution has alleged Dunn was the aggressor and pointed out he kept firing even after the teens fled.

Three of the 10 shots that Dunn fired struck Davis, one of them cutting through his liver, a lung and his aorta.

Investigators say Davis never had a weapon, nor was one found in the teens’ SUV or the surrounding area.

A jury found Dunn guilty of four charges in February, commanding at least 60 years in prison, but the jury was hung on the murder charge related to Davis’ November 2012 death.

Jurors began deliberating on the new charges just before 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, after Healey dismissed two of the three alternates and provided instructions for the charges jurors were to consider.

The first charge to consider, Healey said, was first-degree murder, which would require that Dunn premeditated killing Davis.

If the jury didn’t feel the state proved first-degree murder, it was instructed to move on to second-degree, which would mean Dunn killed Davis via a criminal or depraved act.

The third charge was manslaughter, which would require a finding that Dunn unlawfully caused Davis’ death.

Juror: ‘Race was never a factor’

Killing Davis was lawful, Healey told the jury, if Dunn acted in the heat of passion or if he unintentionally caused Davis’ death. The jury could also find Dunn not guilty if he was in danger, acted in self-defense and exacted a justifiable use of force, the judge instructed.

Dunn was convicted in February on one count of shooting into a vehicle and three counts of attempted second-degree murder — one each for Davis’ friends, Leland Brunson, Tommie Stornes and Tevin Thompson, who were in the Dodge Durango with Davis that day.

Juror: ‘I believed he was guilty’

The Satellite Beach, Florida, man hasn’t been sentenced on those charges, but prosecutor Eric Wolfson said at the time of the conviction that each attempted second-degree murder charge carries a minimum sentence of at least 20 years. There’s also a 15-year sentence possible on the conviction for shooting at the teenager’s vehicle, Wolfson said.

Source: CNN