Descendants of enslaved people ask Louisiana court to stop “pre-construction” on land likely containing ancestral graves 

The Descendants Project, an organization that advocates for descendants of enslaved people, filed a motion requesting a temporary restraining order yesterday to prevent “ground-penetrating activities” on land likely containing ancestral graves. A Denver-based company, Greenfield Louisiana, is seeking to build a massive grain terminal in Wallace, a historic Black community in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” The Descendants Project is challenging the decades-old corrupt rezoning ordinance that Greenfield is using. 

Over the weekend, less than three weeks after the court refused to dismiss the lawsuit, people who live next to the site received notices warning of “pre-construction activity” that would produce “hammering noise.” Greenfield did not notify the Descendants Project of its decision to begin operations on the land, which abuts two landmarked former plantations.  

“People who live several streets away from the site received a notice of construction, but those of us who live right next door to the site did not. Again, Greenfield is erasing our historic Black and descendant community and the possible sacred burial grounds of our ancestors,” said Joy Banner, who founded the Descendants Project with her sister, Jo.

Continue reading in the Descendants Project press release on our website.

Jailed Palestinian lawyer urges ICC to investigate Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity in Jerusalem 

A recently reimprisoned Palestinian lawyer and activist is urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring urgency to its investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israeli officials, particularly the forcible transfer and expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. In a new submission to the ICC, Salah Hammouri recounts years of harassment and abuse by the Israeli government for his activism, detailing new tactics that include the stripping of his residency from East Jerusalem, forced separation from his wife and children, and now imprisonment with the threat of deportation.

“Today, I stand at the most difficult crossroads of my life, from injury to exile, detention without charge, and more. The occupation doesn’t stop at killing, detaining, and displacing us,” said Salah Hammouri. “It persecutes our dreams and assassinates them.”

On March 7, Israeli forces raided Mr. Hammouri's home and took him into custody, placing him in “administrative detention,” by which the Israeli government holds people without charging them. His detention came one day after he published a piece in Jacobin magazine describing his mistreatment by Israeli authorities since he was a teenager and the October 2021 revocation of his residency for so-called “breach of allegiance” to Israel, the occupying power. His administrative detention has been extended for three months, which could be renewed repeatedly, as has been Israel’s practice.

Read more in the Press Center on our website. We are also co-sponsoring an event this afternoon at 1 p.m. titled "Palestine & the ICC Paralysis: Is Justice still Possible for Palestinians?" that aims to call upon all stakeholders to invite the ICC Prosecutor to ensure that accountability in Palestine is pursued without any further delay. RSVP for the event on the Eventbrite page.

Our latest submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Review of the United States 

On Monday, May 16, we submitted a List of Themes to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to inform the Committee’s upcoming review of the U.S. in August 2022. The submission outlines key concerns with regard to the laws, policies, and practices that impact racialized communities, including Indigenous, Black, brown, Muslim, and immigrant communities in the U.S. 

The submission places an emphasis on the underlying policies, practices, and ideologies that allow the U.S. to perpetuate systematic inequality, exclusion, and discrimination against racialized communities. 

In examining the political decisions emanating from the logics of organized abandonment and mass punishment, the systemic disenfranchisement of racialized communities, and the U.S.’ refusal to repair historic injustice, our expectation is that the Committee will interrogate and require the U.S. to explicitly address the root causes of racial discrimination: white supremacy, colonialism, and racial capitalism. As the U.S. continues to fail to abide by its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), we call on this Committee to support the demands of those most impacted by structures of oppression for rights-based laws and policies that dismantle oppressive systems of power—including structural racism, gender oppression, and settler colonialism—and for the accountability necessary to begin to build a just society.

Visit the CERD treaty page on our website to see this and previous submissions we’ve made regarding U.S. government compliance with the CERD treaty. You can also head straight to the PDF of our May 2022 submission.

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