The Forgotten Agenda of Race in the Obama Administration: Profiling, Immigration Detention and Mass Incarceration
This panel will discuss police abuse, racial profiling in stop-and-frisks, the Rockefeller drug laws and mandatory sentencing, immigration sweeps and detention, and opportunities for organizing online and offline. What, if any, steps has the Obama administration taken to address these problems, and what legislative and economic actions should our government take? How do the issues intersect in their effect on people of color? What political, legislative and organizing opportunities are there to challenge these policies?
Vince Warren became the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2006. Vince oversees CCR’s cutting edge litigation and advocacy work which includes combating the illegal expansion of presidential power and policies such as illegal detention at Guantanamo, rendition, torture and warrantless wiretapping; holding corporations and government officials accountable for human rights abuses; and, challenging racial injustice and mass incarceration. CCR has filed war crimes suits against Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level US officials in European courts under their universal jurisdiction laws, represents hundreds of victims of the “war on terror” in U.S. courts.
Pam Spaulding is the editor and publisher of PamsHouseBlend.com, honored as Best LGBT Blog in the 2005 and 2006 Weblog Awards. A regular contributor to the progressive blogs Pandagon and The Bilerico Project, Spaulding has also guest blogged on Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory on Salon, and Americablog. She received the 2006 Distinguished Achievement Award from The Monette-Horwitz Trust for making significant contributions toward the eradication of homophobia, and was honored with the 2009 Women's Media Center Award for Online Journalism. Pam's House Blend was also credentialed to cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
