Ferguson school district must change board election method

A Missouri school district that includes students from Ferguson must change its board member election method after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal.

The Supreme Court let stand a July ruling from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals panel sided with a federal judge who in 2017 ordered the Ferguson-Florissant School District to adopt cumulative voting, saying the district's at-large election method violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the NAACP and black parents and residents of the suburban St. Louis school district alleged that the at-large system, in which people vote only once for a candidate, was racially biased against black candidates.

Cumulative voting allows people to cast as many votes as there are candidates and to use all of their votes on one candidate if they choose.

ACLU attorneys said they are eager to work with the district to implement a new system for use in the April school board election.

"With a new electoral system in place, all residents' voices will be heard and their votes will be given equal weight," Julie Ebenstein, an attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.

A statement from the school district said that while it was disappointed, it has been working with the ACLU and county election officials "to implement the court-mandated election procedures" in time for the April 3 election.

The lawsuit against the school district was filed in 2014, when six of the seven board members were white, even though about four-fifths of the district's 11,000 students were black.

The current racial makeup of the board is four white and three black members. Two of the board members — one white and one black — have terms that expire in April.

[SOURCE: YAHOO]

Michael Brown's mother announces run for Ferguson City Council

The mother of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager who was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, four years ago, said Friday that she is running for city council in the St. Louis suburb.

Lezley McSpadden announced her candidacy along Canfield Drive, near the exact spot where her son, who was black, was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by a white police officer.

"Almost four years ago to this day, I ran down this very street, and my son was covered in a sheet," McSpadden said, fighting back tears. "I learned to walk again, and this is one of my first steps."

McSpadden said she plans to focus on three issues: community policing, economic equality and access to health care for Ferguson's young children.

She said she anticipated that some people might ask why she was qualified to seek elected office.

In response, she said: "If a mother had to watch her son lay on the street for four hours, and watch our community be completely disrespected by the people we elected, what would you do?

"You would stand up and you would fight, too."

[SOURCE NBC NEWS]

BET Exclusive: Obama Talks Race, Racism and How Far America Has to Go

President Obama sat down for an interview with BET in which he discussed race, racism, the interactions of young black men and the police, and the Eric Garner case. Watch that interview below:

Lebron James weighs in on violence after Ferguson grand jury decision

[SOURCE] LeBron James said the decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the officer responsible for the shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, "hit home for me" and spoke out about the violent aftermath of the announcement Monday night.

"That's not the answer," James said Tuesday on reports of rioting in Ferguson. "What does that do? What does that actually do? Just hurt more families, hurt more people, draw more attention to things that shouldn't even be going on instead of people going to the family's household and praying with them. And saying, 'Things are going to be great.' You know, 'Mike Brown is in a better place now,' and 'Trayvon Martin is in a better place now.' That's where it should be. I mean, burning down things and shooting up things and running cars into places and stealing and stuff like that, what does that do? It doesn't make you happy."

James also said that the Brown case only touches on larger societal problems that must be addressed.

"I think that news itself, the issue is much bigger than that," James said. "It's not just one instance. It's not just Mike Brown or Trayvon Martin or anything that's going on in our society. I think it's much bigger than that. Like I said last night, violence is not the answer and retaliation is not the solution. My prayers and best wishes goes out to the families of anyone that loses a loved one, especially a kid today."