November, 02 2018, 12:00am EDT
NAACP Wins in NC Racial Gerrymandering Case
Legislature ordered to fix racial gerrymandering violation in next session
Raleigh
The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP obtained yet another ruling that the North Carolina legislative map violates legal requirements. Today, a three-judge panel of the North Carolina General Court of Justice, Superior Court Division, ruled that four districts in the North Carolina House of Representatives (Districts 36, 37, 40 and 41) violate the prohibition in the North Carolina Constitution on mid-decade redistricting. The four districts in question were redrawn, along with several other North Carolina legislative districts, following a 2016 ruling by a federal court that several districts in the 2011 North Carolina legislative map constituted racial gerrymanders in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal protection guarantee.
"This is an important victory for the NAACP as we fight to ensure that communities of color have a full opportunity to elect representatives who will protect their interests in state legislatures across the country" said Bradford M. Berry, NAACP General Counsel.
Following the remedial phase of the federal case, the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP filed suit in state court arguing that redrawing Districts 36, 37, 40 and 41 was unnecessary to remedy the violations found by the federal court, and therefore unlawful under the North Carolina Constitution. Today, a three-judge panel of the North Carolina court agreed.
"From the time of Reconstruction and beforehand, opponents of a true democracy have attempted to silence and suppress Black political power, and each time we've stood strong and fought back - today is one of those times," said Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, NAACP North Carolina State President. "We are committed to this fight of making democracy real for all of us and stand ready to do battle against those who seek to shrink this ideal."
The North Carolina State NAACP partnered with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice on this legal victory.
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
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Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
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Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
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"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
Israel's overall behavior in the war is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
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