Race Relations

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Here's video.

By David Swanson

This article helps explain why I spend so much time trying to lobby other people's Congress Members, hoping that perhaps I share the same century with them. If you can return the favor and are inspired by this article to give Virgil Goode a call, here's his number: (202) 225-4711.

See quote from my old reporting below:

Former prosecutor said to lie about confession
BY FRANK GREEN, Media General News Service, Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Here's an article about yesterday's jury award of $2.25 million to Earl Washington, whom the state of Virginia came within days of killing for a crime he had been clumsily and obviously framed for. Washington is mentally retarded, poor, and black. White cops in Culpeper, Virginia, interrogated him and fed him information about the crime. They did not take notes for much of this interrogation, and then claimed that Washington knew things that only the killer could have known. But during the sections where they did take notes, they fed him information, and generally when they didn't, he got things wrong. He was guessing and trying to please them, but he still usually got things wrong. Will the state of Virginia rethink its rule barring admittance of exculpating evidence found later (such as DNA)? Or will it, as the Innocence Project is urging, require the videotaping of all interrogations? Time will tell. This was certainly a long time coming.

By David Swanson

A march had been planned for February 28, the eve of the scheduled March 1 evictions of Hurricane Katrina victims. FEMA moved the evictions to March 15, so activists have moved the march to March 14. A press conference on Capitol Hill will be followed by a march through Washington, D.C., past FEMA, past the Department of Homeland Security, and to the White House, where a permit has been obtained to rally in Lafayette Square Park until midnight. If Bush does not meet the marchers' demands, however, many plan not to leave.