Black Lives Matter-Ugliness of Racism.

[spaminator]

Alabama governor commutes death row inmate Rocky Myers’ sentence
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Published Feb 28, 2025 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Friday commuted the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers to life in prison, saying there were enough questions about his guilt that she couldn’t move forward with his execution.


Ivey said Myers, 63, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of being executed later this year. She noted that was the sentence jurors at his 1994 trial had recommended. The Republican governor said she is a staunch supporter of the death penalty but “I have enough questions about Mr. Myers’ guilt that I cannot move forward with executing him.”

“In short, I am not convinced that Mr. Myers is innocent, but I am not so convinced of his guilt as to approve of his execution. I therefore must respect both the jury’s decision to convict him and its recommendation that he be sentenced to life without parole,” Ivey said in a statement.

Myers was convicted of capital murder in the 1991 stabbing of Ludie Mae Tucker, 69, at her Decatur home. Myers, who lived across the street from Tucker, had long maintained he was innocent. A juror at his 1994 trial supported the push for clemency.


Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court granted the state attorney general’s request to authorize an execution date for Myers using nitrogen gas. The next step was for Ivey to set that date.

It was the first execution Ivey has stopped since she first took office in 2017. Ivey, who has presided over more than 20 executions, called it “one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make as governor.”

“But I pray that the Tucker family may, in some way, find closure and peace knowing this case is closed, and Mr. Myers will spend the rest of his life in prison,” Ivey said.

There were multiple questions surrounding Myers’ case, his attorney had argued.

No physical evidence at the scene connected him to the crime. Tucker identified her assailant as a short, stocky Black man but did not name Myers or a neighbor as the attacker even though they had met several times, according to Myers’ son. Jurors voted 9-3 that he serve life in prison.


However, the judge sentenced Myers to death under Alabama’s now-abolished system that let judges decide death sentences.

Ivey said there was “circumstantial evidence” against Myers, but it is “riddled with conflicting evidence from seemingly everyone involved.” Much of the state’s case involved a VCR taken from Tucker’s home and whether Myers was the person who brought it to a drug house to sell, according to court records.

“God is answering prayers,” juror Mae Puckett, who now believes Myers is innocent and had urged Ivey to intervene.

“Governor Ivey put it back into the jury’s hands,” Puckett wrote.

Kacey Keeton, a lawyer for Myers, had said that there were multiple failures in Myers case, including how an earlier attorney abandoned his case, causing him to miss a deadline to raise issues in federal court. Myers, who is a Black, was convicted by a nearly all-white jury.

“I’m not sure there are words enough to convey my joy, relief, and gratitude at learning of Gov. Ivey’s decision to commute Mr. Myers’s sentence,” Keeton wrote in an email.

“I have represented Mr. Myers since 2007. As evidence accumulated of his innocence and the many injustices he experienced over the course of his case, I held out hope that he would someday see some measure of justice, of mercy, of humanity.”

The last time an Alabama governor commuted a death sentence was in 1999.

Alabama governor commutes death row inmate Rocky Myers’ sentence

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Friday commuted the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers to life in prison

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Woman pleads guilty in cross-burning hoax during Colorado Springs mayoral campaign
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Colleen Slevin
Published Mar 11, 2025 • 2 minute read

A woman who was part of a group charged with setting a cross on fire in front of a defaced campaign sign for a candidate who became Colorado Springs' first Black mayor pleaded guilty on Tuesday in what authorities say was a hoax.
A woman who was part of a group charged with setting a cross on fire in front of a defaced campaign sign for a candidate who became Colorado Springs' first Black mayor pleaded guilty on Tuesday in what authorities say was a hoax.
DENVER — A woman who was part of a group charged with setting a cross on fire in front of a defaced campaign sign for a candidate who became Colorado Springs’ first Black mayor pleaded guilty on Tuesday in what authorities say was a hoax.


Deanna West, one of three people indicted in the 2023 incident, pleaded guilty in Denver federal court to one count of being part of a conspiracy to set the fire and then spread false information about it in the run-up to the election of Mayor Yemi Mobolade.

In exchange, prosecutors said they would drop an additional charge related to setting the fire.

Prosecutors say that after staging the cross burning, a photo and video of it were sent to media and civic organizations making it seem like an attack on Mobolade.

Prosecutors didn’t explain why West and the two others charged, Derrick Bernard and Ashley Blackcloud, staged the hoax.

But lawyers for Bernard and Blackcloud said in court filings that the government’s evidence shows they were trying to help Mobolade win by generating outrage. They argued that the actions were a kind of political theater, which they say is free speech protected by the First Amendment.


Both are asking for charges against their clients to be dropped because they say no one was threatened by the cross set on fire in the middle of the night, which no one other than the defendants apparently saw.


According to the indictment, Bernard communicated with Mobolade before the cross-burning on April 23, 2023, and after Mobolade won election in a May 6, 2023, runoff election.

About a week before the cross-burning, Bernard told the then-candidate in a Facebook message that he was, “mobilizing my squadron in defense and for the final push. Black ops style big brother. The klan cannot be allowed to run this city again.”

They spoke for about five minutes on the telephone three days after the incident.

Mobolade has denied having any knowledge, warning or involvement in the crime.

A city spokesperson, Vanessa Zink, on Tuesday referred a reporter to a video statement that Mobalde posted on social media in December, shortly after the three were indicted. In it, the mayor said he knew Bernard as a “local media personality.”

Mobalde also showed a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice saying he had been identified as a victim or potential victim during the investigation into the cross burning. He said he willingly provided all communications sought by investigators.

Woman pleads guilty in cross-burning hoax during Colorado Springs mayoral campaign

Deanna West pleaded guilty in Denver federal court.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Certification of $2.5-billion Black class-action lawsuit against feds denied
Author of the article:Catherine Morrison, Canadian Press
Published Mar 17, 2025 • 1 minute read
A Federal Court judge has dismissed a motion to certify a proposed class-action lawsuit that was launched by Black public servants in 2020.
OTTAWA — A Federal Court judge has dismissed a motion to certify a proposed class-action lawsuit that was launched by Black public servants in 2020 who alleged there was systemic racism within the public service.


In an “order and reasons” document, Justice Jocelyne Gagne says the case doesn’t sufficiently meet the class-action requirement that the claims raise common enough issues.

Gagne also says the scope of the plaintiffs’ claim “simply makes it unfit for a class procedure.”

Filed in 2020, the class action sought $2.5 billion in damages because of lost salaries and promotions, says the Black Class Action Secretariat, a group created as a result of the lawsuit.



Headed by Nicholas Marcus Thompson, the organization is seeking long-term solutions to address systemic racism and discrimination in the public service, including compensation and the appointment of a Black equity commission.


Gagne said the court acknowledges the “profoundly sad ongoing history of discrimination suffered by Black Canadians” and that plaintiffs have faced challenges in the public service.

However, she said the plaintiffs didn’t present an adequate litigation plan and that they failed to present a ground for the court to assert jurisdiction over the case.

The document also said that several class actions against individual federal departments and agencies allege racial discrimination, which “overlap significantly with the present action.”

Proposed class members, the judge said, “would therefore be included in the class definition of these other class proceedings.”

Certification of $2.5-billion Black class-action lawsuit against feds denied

A Federal Court judge has dismissed a motion to certify a proposed class-action lawsuit that was launched by Black public servants in 2020.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Louisiana puts man to death in first nitrogen gas execution, his lawyer says
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Sara Cline
Published Mar 18, 2025 • Last updated 17 hours ago • 5 minute read

031825-Louisiana-Execution
This undated photo shows Louisiana death row inmate Jessie Hoffman Jr., who was convicted in the 1996 murder of Mary "Molly" Elliott. Photo by Caroline Tillman /AP
ANGOLA, La. (AP) — Louisiana used nitrogen gas to put a man to death Tuesday evening for a killing decades ago, marking the first time the state has used the method as it resumed executions after a 15-year hiatus.


Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, authorities said, adding the nitrogen gas had flowed for 19 minutes during what one official characterized as a “flawless” execution.

Witnesses to the execution said Hoffman appeared to involuntarily shake or had “some convulsive activity.” But the three witnesses who spoke — including two members of the media _ agreed that, based on the protocol and what they learned about the execution method, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Witness Gina Swanson, a reporter with WDSU, described the execution from her viewpoint as “clinical” and “procedural.” She said there was nothing that occurred during the process that made her think, “Was that right? Was that how it was supposed to go?”


Hoffman declined to make a final statement in the execution chamber. He also declined a final meal.

It was the fifth time nitrogen gas was used in the U.S. after four executions by the same method — all in Alabama. Three other executions, by lethal injection, are scheduled this week — in Arizona on Wednesday and in Florida and Oklahoma on Thursday.

Hoffman convicted of New Orleans murder
Hoffman was convicted of the murder of Mary “Molly” Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive who was killed in New Orleans. At the time of the crime, Hoffman was 18 and has since spent much of his adult life at the penitentiary in rural southeast Louisiana, where he was executed Tuesday evening.

After court battles earlier this month, attorneys for Hoffman had turned to the Supreme Court in last-ditch hopes of halting the execution. Last year, the court declined to intervene in the nation’s first nitrogen hypoxia execution, in Alabama.


Hoffman’s lawyers had unsuccessfully argued that the nitrogen gas procedure — which deprives a person of oxygen _ violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The man’s lawyers, in a last-ditch appeal, also argued the method would infringe on Hoffman’s freedom to practice religion, specifically his Buddhist breathing and meditation in the moments leading up to death.

Louisiana officials maintained the method is painless. They also said it was past time for the state to deliver justice as promised to victims’ families after a decade and a half hiatus — one brought on partly by an inability to secure lethal injection drugs.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 in declining to step in.

Hours earlier at a hearing Tuesday, a 19th Judicial District Court Judge Richard “Chip” Moore also declined to stop the execution. He agreed with the state’s lawyers who had argued the man’s religion-based arguments fell under the jurisdiction of a federal judge who had already ruled on them, according to local news outlets.


Execution method deprives body of oxygen
Under the Louisiana protocol, which is nearly identical to Alabama’s, officials had earlier said Hoffman would be strapped to a gurney before a full-face respirator mask fitted tightly on him. Pure nitrogen gas was then pumped into the mask, forcing him to breathe it in and depriving him of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions.

The protocol called for the gas to be administered for at least 15 minutes or five minutes after the inmate’s heart rate reaches a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer.

Two media witnesses to Tuesday’s execution said Hoffman was covered with a gray plush blanket from the neck down. In the chamber with Hoffman was his spiritual adviser. Ahead of the execution and after the curtains closed to the viewing room, witnesses said they could hear Buddhist chanting.


The gas began to flow at 6:21 p.m. and Hoffman started twitching, media witnesses said. His hands clenched and he had a “slight head movement.” Swanson said she closely watched the blanket over Hoffman’s chest area and could see it rise and fall, indicating that he was breathing. She said his last visible breath appeared to be at 6:37 p.m. Shortly after, the curtains between the chamber and witness viewing room closed. When they reopened, Hoffman was pronounced dead.

Seth Smith, chief of operations at the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, witnessed the execution and also acknowledged Hoffman’s movements. Smith, who has a medical background, said he perceived the convulsions to be an “involuntary response to dying” and that Hoffman appeared to be unconscious at the time.


Nitrogen gas was first used in Alabama
Each inmate put to death using nitrogen in Alabama had appeared to shake and gasp to varying degrees during their executions, according to media witnesses, including an Associated Press reporter. Alabama state officials said the reactions were involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation.

Alabama first used nitrogen gas to put Kenneth Eugene Smith to death last year, marking the first time a new method had been used in the U.S. since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma specifically authorize execution by nitrogen hypoxia, according to records compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center. Arkansas was added to the list on Tuesday.


Seeking to resume executions, Louisiana’s GOP-dominated Legislature expanded the state’s approved death penalty methods last year to include nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution. Lethal injection was already in place.

On Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation allowing executions using nitrogen gas, making hers the fifth state to adopt the method. Arkansas currently has 25 people on death row.

Over recent decades, the number of executions nationally has declined sharply amid legal battles, a shortage of lethal injection drugs and waning public support for capital punishment. That has led a majority of states to either abolish or pause carrying out the death penalty.

On Tuesday afternoon, a small group of execution opponents held a vigil outside the rural southeast Louisiana prison at Angola, where the state’s executions are carried out. Some passed out prayer cards with photos of a smiling Hoffman and planned a Buddhist reading and “Meditation for Peace.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she expects at least four people to be executed this year in the state. Following Hoffman’s execution, she said justice had been delayed for far too long and now Hoffman ”faces the ultimate judgment, the judgment before God.”

Louisiana puts man to death in first nitrogen gas execution, his lawyer says

Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday evening using nitrogen gas.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Are maps racist? U of T seems to think so
Author of the article:Justin Holmes
Published Mar 30, 2025 • Last updated 6 hours ago • 5 minute read

This 90-year-old artwork, a map of the University of Toronto campus, has been in storage for a decade. A former warden of the venue where it once hung calls it “problematic.”
This 90-year-old artwork, a map of the University of Toronto campus, has been in storage for a decade. A former warden of the venue where it once hung calls it “problematic.” Photo by University of Toronto
Where is the Map Room’s map?


A freedom-of-information request has revealed details about the decade-long absence of a piece of Ontario’s history that once hung in a room in Hart House, an arts and events venue on the University of Toronto campus.

The reason? Kings, silhouettes, white men and the mere concept of mapping are “problematic,” according to the documents and emails provided to The Toronto Sun.

One document says the map was commissioned in 1937 by a notable U of T alumnus: Vincent Massey, then Canada’s high commissioner to Britain. (He would later become governor general.)

The ornate work, by heraldic designer Alexander Scott Carter, depicts buildings on campus and notable U of T figures of the day, and contains a brief timeline. Look past the Old World flourishes and you’ll see the map is bounded by Bloor St. to the north and College St. to the south.


The map’s most contentious feature appears to be a depiction of 17 men lining up before a monarch, possibly King George V or VI. One email quoted a panel that once stood adjacent to the map, which said the men are “well-known campus figures of the time,” and the one in front is John Strachan, the first bishop of Toronto. Above the kneeling man is an image of John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada and Toronto’s founder.

The document, which derides the Map Room as originally “a space for largely white settler men to gather and socialize,” casts the map in a different light.


“The lands that comprised the university are laid out as if insignia, its various buildings and select people, located, almost symbolically as prized possessions, over the land. At the bottom, 17 of the founders, principals and chancellors of the university, whose names are emblazoned on either side of the map, line up to kneel before the seated figure of the British king, as if to seek his permission to manifest what has been mapped,” it says.


In a “long overdue” move, one draft of that document says, “the map was removed, ostensibly for repair but not to return.”


The emails include drafts of an invitation to aboriginal artists for consultation sessions in spring 2023. The sessions were held in hopes of creating an alternate artwork – as the invitation puts it, “a decolonial form of mapping.”

“All the invitees to this gathering are Indigenous artists (or) arts professionals. Art Museum and Hart House staff will present to take notes and assist,” the invitation says.

Attendees were promised $600 each for three hours of work.

“You’ll note how integral settler-colonial ideas of land ownership and relations to property are to the nature of ‘mapping’ itself – Doctrine of Discovery, Columbus, and so on. … These ideas are foundational to the building of the university itself,” the invitation says.


The emails show the idea of this alternate map – and the shelving of the Carter map – originate with John Monahan, former warden of Hart House.

In a December 2018 email, Monahan said he wants “a pre-existing map of these lands that reflects their Indigenous character,” or to have one created, to serve as the room’s “dominant map.” Only then can the original go up – on a “side wall” with a panel to address its “most problematic” elements.



One of those would be a shield at the left that features three heads in silhouette. In a 2019 email, Monahan calls them “blackamoor heads,” referring to a motif in European heraldry.


“It is precisely because of the presence of the three blackamoor heads … that I believe we need a didactic that acknowledges it, ‘calls it out’ as anachronistic, and recognizes that the university has been complicit in various forms of repression and oppression, up to and including slavery,” Monahan wrote.

Barbara Fischer, chief curator of the U of T Art Museum, also referred to the “blackamoor heads” as a problem in a 2024 email, referencing a 2011 controversy that saw another artwork removed from Hart House. However, that wooden shield, according to the U of T newspaper the Varsity, depicted a figure with exaggerated facial features and a headband, not the map’s blank silhouettes.

Those heads, “in addition to the colonial construction – deference to King George V, all male figures, etc. – these concerns led John (Monahan) and Sarah (Robayo Sheridan, a former Art Museum curator) to suspend the return of the map to the Map Room, and I agreed,” Fischer wrote.


Blackamoors
Are these heads in silhouette, or anachronistic blackamoors? The Map Room map at left, a since-removed shield at right. Photo by University of Toronto photos
In response to questions, the U of T issued a Sun a one-sentence statement: “The A.S. Carter map was removed for conservation purposes and is currently stored with the art collection at the Art Museum, while we take the opportunity to rethink the Map Room space and mandate.”

The U of T’s freedom of information office confirmed to the Sun that the map was removed in 2015 and Indigenous artists were consulted about the map.

In the decade since its removal, complaints have been made.

Minutes from a September 2023 meeting of the Hart House board of stewards show a member expressed concern about the removal of the map, as well as a crucifix from the building’s chapel.

In June of that year, alumni discussed over email a “heated discussion with three art committee members … led by Barbara Fischer about the map.”


In August 2023, an email – the identity of its author has been redacted – was shared by an alumnus with U of T officials, including new Hart House warden David Kim.

“I hope (Hart) House can provide a more fundamental value for students, instilling the values of our liberal intellectual heritage – stress the lowercase ‘l.’ The practical example is the current challenge our society faces in defining freedom of speech, which is necessary for freedom of thought,” the email said.

“Labels have become a shortcut for true thought in our current culture. Once something can be pigeonholed intellectually, then thought stops. That is dangerous.

“Unfortunately, Hart House is not immune to the tendency. The case of the map’s disappearance from the Map Room is a troubling example.”

jholmes@postmedia.com

http://thevarsity.ca/2011/11/22/offensive-image-taken-down-from-hart-house

Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806) | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Ontario’s first Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, is featured twice in the main lobby of the provincial Legislative Building. His portrait hangs on the east side of the lobby, and he is also shown in the First Legislature of Upper Canada painting that hangs on the west wall. As the...

ola.org

Are maps racist? U of T seems to think so

U of T‘s Hart House is keeping a piece of art out of sight for fear that kings, silhouettes and the concept of maps are all “problematic.”

torontosun.com

 

[petros]

Are maps racist? U of T seems to think so
Author of the article:Justin Holmes
Published Mar 30, 2025 • Last updated 6 hours ago • 5 minute read

This 90-year-old artwork, a map of the University of Toronto campus, has been in storage for a decade. A former warden of the venue where it once hung calls it “problematic.”
This 90-year-old artwork, a map of the University of Toronto campus, has been in storage for a decade. A former warden of the venue where it once hung calls it “problematic.” Photo by University of Toronto
Where is the Map Room’s map?


A freedom-of-information request has revealed details about the decade-long absence of a piece of Ontario’s history that once hung in a room in Hart House, an arts and events venue on the University of Toronto campus.

The reason? Kings, silhouettes, white men and the mere concept of mapping are “problematic,” according to the documents and emails provided to The Toronto Sun.

One document says the map was commissioned in 1937 by a notable U of T alumnus: Vincent Massey, then Canada’s high commissioner to Britain. (He would later become governor general.)

The ornate work, by heraldic designer Alexander Scott Carter, depicts buildings on campus and notable U of T figures of the day, and contains a brief timeline. Look past the Old World flourishes and you’ll see the map is bounded by Bloor St. to the north and College St. to the south.


The map’s most contentious feature appears to be a depiction of 17 men lining up before a monarch, possibly King George V or VI. One email quoted a panel that once stood adjacent to the map, which said the men are “well-known campus figures of the time,” and the one in front is John Strachan, the first bishop of Toronto. Above the kneeling man is an image of John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada and Toronto’s founder.

The document, which derides the Map Room as originally “a space for largely white settler men to gather and socialize,” casts the map in a different light.


“The lands that comprised the university are laid out as if insignia, its various buildings and select people, located, almost symbolically as prized possessions, over the land. At the bottom, 17 of the founders, principals and chancellors of the university, whose names are emblazoned on either side of the map, line up to kneel before the seated figure of the British king, as if to seek his permission to manifest what has been mapped,” it says.


In a “long overdue” move, one draft of that document says, “the map was removed, ostensibly for repair but not to return.”


The emails include drafts of an invitation to aboriginal artists for consultation sessions in spring 2023. The sessions were held in hopes of creating an alternate artwork – as the invitation puts it, “a decolonial form of mapping.”

“All the invitees to this gathering are Indigenous artists (or) arts professionals. Art Museum and Hart House staff will present to take notes and assist,” the invitation says.

Attendees were promised $600 each for three hours of work.

“You’ll note how integral settler-colonial ideas of land ownership and relations to property are to the nature of ‘mapping’ itself – Doctrine of Discovery, Columbus, and so on. … These ideas are foundational to the building of the university itself,” the invitation says.


The emails show the idea of this alternate map – and the shelving of the Carter map – originate with John Monahan, former warden of Hart House.

In a December 2018 email, Monahan said he wants “a pre-existing map of these lands that reflects their Indigenous character,” or to have one created, to serve as the room’s “dominant map.” Only then can the original go up – on a “side wall” with a panel to address its “most problematic” elements.



One of those would be a shield at the left that features three heads in silhouette. In a 2019 email, Monahan calls them “blackamoor heads,” referring to a motif in European heraldry.


“It is precisely because of the presence of the three blackamoor heads … that I believe we need a didactic that acknowledges it, ‘calls it out’ as anachronistic, and recognizes that the university has been complicit in various forms of repression and oppression, up to and including slavery,” Monahan wrote.

Barbara Fischer, chief curator of the U of T Art Museum, also referred to the “blackamoor heads” as a problem in a 2024 email, referencing a 2011 controversy that saw another artwork removed from Hart House. However, that wooden shield, according to the U of T newspaper the Varsity, depicted a figure with exaggerated facial features and a headband, not the map’s blank silhouettes.

Those heads, “in addition to the colonial construction – deference to King George V, all male figures, etc. – these concerns led John (Monahan) and Sarah (Robayo Sheridan, a former Art Museum curator) to suspend the return of the map to the Map Room, and I agreed,” Fischer wrote.


Blackamoors
Are these heads in silhouette, or anachronistic blackamoors? The Map Room map at left, a since-removed shield at right. Photo by University of Toronto photos
In response to questions, the U of T issued a Sun a one-sentence statement: “The A.S. Carter map was removed for conservation purposes and is currently stored with the art collection at the Art Museum, while we take the opportunity to rethink the Map Room space and mandate.”

The U of T’s freedom of information office confirmed to the Sun that the map was removed in 2015 and Indigenous artists were consulted about the map.

In the decade since its removal, complaints have been made.

Minutes from a September 2023 meeting of the Hart House board of stewards show a member expressed concern about the removal of the map, as well as a crucifix from the building’s chapel.

In June of that year, alumni discussed over email a “heated discussion with three art committee members … led by Barbara Fischer about the map.”


In August 2023, an email – the identity of its author has been redacted – was shared by an alumnus with U of T officials, including new Hart House warden David Kim.

“I hope (Hart) House can provide a more fundamental value for students, instilling the values of our liberal intellectual heritage – stress the lowercase ‘l.’ The practical example is the current challenge our society faces in defining freedom of speech, which is necessary for freedom of thought,” the email said.

“Labels have become a shortcut for true thought in our current culture. Once something can be pigeonholed intellectually, then thought stops. That is dangerous.

“Unfortunately, Hart House is not immune to the tendency. The case of the map’s disappearance from the Map Room is a troubling example.”

jholmes@postmedia.com
View attachment 28479View attachment 28480

http://thevarsity.ca/2011/11/22/offensive-image-taken-down-from-hart-house

Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806) | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Ontario’s first Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, is featured twice in the main lobby of the provincial Legislative Building. His portrait hangs on the east side of the lobby, and he is also shown in the First Legislature of Upper Canada painting that hangs on the west wall. As the...

ola.org

Are maps racist? U of T seems to think so

U of T‘s Hart House is keeping a piece of art out of sight for fear that kings, silhouettes and the concept of maps are all “problematic.”

torontosun.com

That's fucked.

 

[spaminator]

Prosecutor makes offers to 10 New York prison guards charged in inmate’s death
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Hill
Published Mar 31, 2025 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read

UTICA, N.Y. — A special prosecutor said Monday he made offers to resolve criminal cases against 10 New York prison guards indicted in the beating death of a handcuffed man.


Six correctional officers were charged with murder last month in the December death of Robert Brooks, 43, whose brutal beating at Marcy Correctional Facility was captured on body-worn cameras. Three other prison employees were charged with manslaughter and another with evidence tampering.

The offers were publicly revealed during a pretrial court conference by Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, who declined to provide details afterward. The individual defendants will appear in court in April to either accept or reject the offers.

The prosecutor’s offer to David Walters, charged with second-degree manslaughter, was to plead guilty to the existing charge with a recommendation for a mid-range sentence, his attorney Nick Passalacqua said.

“We’ve not been made an offer as I define it. We’ve been asked to plead guilty to the charge,” Passalacqua said, adding that he believed other defendants received similar offers.


Other attorneys declined comment after court.

Walters was due back in court April 30.

Fitzpatrick also told defence attorneys that he talked to federal prosecutors looking into Brooks’ death about the offers.

“They are actively pursuing the matter. I have suggested to them that the dispositions I have offered would satisfy the case completely,” Fitzpatrick said in court. “They have not agreed to that, but they did respond in a favourable manner indicating they would consider that.”

The body-worn camera video shows officers beating Brooks the night of Dec. 9 while his hands were cuffed behind his back. Officers are seen striking him in the chest with a shoe, lifting him by the neck, and dropping him. Brooks died the next day.

Brooks had been serving a 12-year prison sentence for first-degree assault since 2017. He had been transferred from a nearby facility to the prison 320 kilometres northwest of New York City shortly before the videotaped beating.

Three other prison employees have reached plea agreements, Fitzpatrick has said.

Fitzpatrick also is investigating the death of Messiah Nantwi on March 1 at nearby Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy. A court filing by the attorney general’s office said there is “probable cause to believe” that as many as nine correctional officers either caused or could be implicated in his death.

Prosecutor makes offers to 10 New York prison guards charged in inmate’s death

A special prosecutor said he made offers to resolve criminal cases against prison guards indicted in the beating death of a handcuffed man

torontosun.com