November, 19 2021, 12:35pm EDT
Acquittal in Kyle Rittenhouse Murder Trial Reveals Racist Double-Standard in the Legal System, Underscores Need for Systemic Change
Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, issued this statement after a Kenosha County jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of murder:
"Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal doesn't just add insult to injury in this horrific case; it sends a dangerous and twisted message about how the legal system coddles white defendants accused of unconscionable crimes. For too long, the system -- judges, lawyers, police officers -- has accepted this as the norm, but we cannot tolerate this kind of negligence anymore; it's literally killing us.
WASHINGTON
Rashad Robinson, President of Color of Change, issued this statement after a Kenosha County jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of murder:
"Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal doesn't just add insult to injury in this horrific case; it sends a dangerous and twisted message about how the legal system coddles white defendants accused of unconscionable crimes. For too long, the system -- judges, lawyers, police officers -- has accepted this as the norm, but we cannot tolerate this kind of negligence anymore; it's literally killing us.
"Throughout the trial, we've seen the structural inequities within the legal system on full display. From dismissing the underage weapons charge to politicizing the straightforward facts of Rittenhouse's case, Kenosha County Judge Bruce Schroeder presented a case study in how the judiciary upholds systems of white supremacy. And he's no anomaly. His behavior underscores how the entire legal apparatus perpetuates the existence of two criminal justice systems: one for white people and another for Black people.
"But it's not just the legal system. Behind Rittenhouse's outrageous violence lies an entire network of politicians, news outlets, tech companies, and others that allow for, and even encourage, acts of domestic terrorism. These are the same voices that vilify Black protesters fighting for racial justice and defend state-sanctioned police violence against them. Rittenhouse is one person, but his actions are intrinsically tied to a web of white supremacist rhetoric and the nation's longstanding history of anti-Black violence. That's why a single verdict does not make or break our movement: because it's not just Rittenhouse who's standing trial; it's the whole system.
"Now, as the Kenosha community and communities across the nation respond to this verdict, Wisconsin governor Tony Evers must remember that these protesters deserve protection. It is irresponsible to condemn and target protesters without addressing the issues and inequities that they are protesting. This case laid bare the privilege and double-standards that belie our legal system, and we will not allow racism -- whether in the form of physical violence or in the form of legislation that criminalizes and vilifies protesters -- deter us in our fight for justice."
Color Of Change is the nation's largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by over one million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.
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Rights Group Warns US Allies Against Complicity in 'Criminal' Trump Boat Bombings
"The UK, Canada, and other allied nations who partner with the United States on counternarcotics efforts have ample evidence that the US is unlawfully killing people at sea," said Human Rights Watch.
Dec 09, 2025
A leading human rights organization on Tuesday pushed allies of the United States to more forcefully condemn and take steps to stop President Donald Trump's deadly boat strikes in international waters, attacks that experts have characterized as extrajudicial killings.
"The UK, Canada, and other allied nations who partner with the United States on counternarcotics efforts have ample evidence that the US is unlawfully killing people at sea,” Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in a statement. “The rules-based international order depends on countries speaking out against violations, even when they’re committed by powerful friends.”
HRW specifically urged countries at risk of complicity to closely examine their maritime cooperation and intelligence-sharing with the Trump administration, which claims—without evidence—that every vessel targeted was involved in drug smuggling operations that posed a threat to the US.
"The UK, France, and the Kingdom of the Netherlands have significant influence in the Caribbean due to their overseas territories in the region," the group said. "All three governments are also participants in Campaign Martillo, a multinational counternarcotics detection, monitoring, and interdiction operation that includes US Navy and Coast Guard vessels, along with military and law enforcement units from a dozen other nations, including Canada."
"Australia and New Zealand, which are part of the 'Five Eyes' intelligence sharing community with the United States, UK, and Canada where the governments share all signals and geospatial intelligence by default, may also find themselves implicated in the strikes and should take steps to evaluate their own risks," HRW added.
While officials from the nations named by HRW have criticized and distanced themselves from the Trump administration's strikes, their comments have largely been vague and tepid—especially when compared to the responses of some South American leaders. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, for instance, said her country "is not involved in these US actions" and that "it is for the United States to articulate the legal basis of its actions."
HRW also pointed to Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand's statement that “the United States has made clear that it is using its own intelligence” to target the vessels in international waters.
"It is not sufficient to accept the US government’s assurances that it is not leveraging shared intelligence for its unlawful strikes," said HRW. "In contrast, when asked directly about the legality of the strikes, [Ahmed] declined to address the matter, saying instead that 'it is within the purview of US authorities to make that determination.'"
Last month, the UK reportedly suspended some intelligence sharing with the US due to the boat strikes. But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the CNN reporting a "fake story," and the UK's foreign secretary cited Rubio's comment when asked about the report.
HRW said major US allies "should make public any internal legal assessments as to whether the US strikes are violating international law, use their bilateral relationships to raise concerns directly with US officials, and push for individual criminal accountability for those responsible."
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Israeli Raid on UNRWA Compound Slammed as 'Dangerous Precedent'
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
Dec 08, 2025
United Nations officials and others strongly condemned Monday's raid by Israeli authorities on a facility run by the UN's office for Palestinian refugees in occupied East Jerusalem—an act one rights group decried as part of an ongoing effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate" the lifesaving agency.
Israeli police and other officials forcibly entered the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) compound early Monday, pulling down a UN flag on the facility's roof and replacing it with an Israeli one. Israeli officials said the raid was ordered over unpaid taxes.
"They call it 'debt collection'—we call it erasure," Claudia Webbe, a socialist former member of British Parliament, said on social media. "Over 70,000 dead in Gaza, they now seek to kill the memory of the living. The occupation must end."
Police vehicles including motorcycles, trucks, and forklifts entered the compound, while communications were cut and furniture, computer equipment, and other property were seized from the facility, according to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," Lazzarini said in a statement.
"To allow this represents a new challenge to international law, one that creates a dangerous precedent anywhere else the UN is present across the world," he added.
Secretary-General António Guterres was among the other senior UN officials who condemned Monday's raid.
“This compound remains United Nations premises and is inviolable and immune from any other form of interference,” he said.
“I urge Israel to immediately take all necessary steps to restore, preserve, and uphold the inviolability of UNRWA premises and to refrain from taking any further action with regard to UNRWA premises, in line with its obligations under the charter of the United Nations and its other obligations under international law," Guterres added.
In late 2024, Israeli lawmakers approved a ban on UNRWA in Israel over disproven allegations that some of its staffers were Hamas members who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. Those accusations led to numerous nations suspending financial support for UNRWA, although most of the countries have since restored funding. Israel has also sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since early 2024.
Israeli forces have killed more than 370 UNRWA staff members since October 2023 and destroyed or damaged over 300 of the agency's facilities in Gaza. Lazzarini and others have also accused Israeli forces of torturing UNRWA staffers in a bid to force false confessions of Hamas involvement.
In October, the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—found that UNRWA has not been infiltrated by Hamas as claimed by Israeli leaders.
Others also condemned Monday's raid, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called the action part of an effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate a United Nations agency providing vital services to millions of Palestinian refugees."
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Report Tracks Trump 'War on Free Speech' and Urges Systemic Resistance
“Trump’s censorship playbook," said the report's author, "is to lie, distort reality for the public, and deploy a cadre of henchmen to carry out Trump’s threats of reprisal.”
Dec 08, 2025
The US advocacy group Free Press on Monday released a report examining how President Donald Trump and "his political enablers have worked to undermine and chill the most basic freedoms protected under the First Amendment" since the Republican returned to the Oval Office in January, and called on all Americans to fight back.
For Chokehold: Donald Trump's War on Free Speech & the Need for Systemic Resistance, Free Press analysed "more than 500 reports of verbal threats, executive orders, presidential memoranda, statements from the White House, actions by regulators and agencies, military and law enforcement deployment and activities, litigation, removal of website language on .gov websites, removal of official history and information at national parks and museums, and discontinued data collection by the federal government."
"While the US government has made efforts throughout this nation's history to censor people's expression and association—be it the exercise of freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress—the Trump administration's incessant attacks on even the most tentatively oppositional speech are uniquely aggressive, pervasive, and escalating," the report states.
The five recurring attack methods that Free Press identified are: making threats of retribution against would-be opponents; emboldening regulators to exact penalties; supercharging the militarized police state; leveraging heavyweight corporate capitulation; and ignoring facts, removing information, rewriting history, and lying on the record.
"Trump's censorship playbook is responsible for the administration's central retaliatory ethos and inspires a set of strategies that loyal actors in government use to silence dissent and chill free expression," said the report's author, Free Press senior counsel Nora Benavidez, in a statement. "This playbook is to lie, distort reality for the public, and deploy a cadre of henchmen to carry out Trump’s threats of reprisal."
Big new report out today @freepress.bsky.social chronicling the Trump regime's war on free speech and free expression. Heroic and harrowing work by @attorneynora.bsky.social and the team. Seeing all of the attacks together is astounding.
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— Craig Aaron (@notaaroncraig.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Free Press compiled a timeline of "nearly 200 of the most potent examples," including Trump's blanket pardon for the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists shortly after beginning his second term, the White House taking control of the presidential press pool in February, the president's alarming speech to the US Department of Justice in March, and the administration blocking the Associated Press from the Oval Office in April over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
In May, Trump, among other things, signed an executive order to defund National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service. In June, he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles. In July, he sued Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over reporting on the president's ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In August, he deployed the National Guard in Washington, DC.
In September, under pressure from Brendan Carr, Trump's Federal Communications Commission chair, ABC temporarily suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. In October, the Pentagon's new press policy—which journalists across the political spectrum refused to sign—took effect (the New York Times, which faces a defamation lawsuit from Trump, sued over it last week). In November, Trump threatened to sue to BBC over its documentary about January 6, 2021.
The administration has also targeted foreign scholars and journalists for criticizing US policy, from federal support for Israel's genocidal assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to the president's pursuit of mass deportations. The report stresses that "no one is safe from attack in Trump’s quest to control the message, though the administration targets the press most of all."
Today Free Press released a report examining the Trump's efforts to weaken the First Amendment.Analyzing nearly 200 attacks on free speech, it's sobering. But the report also charts a path to resist the censorship campaign w/ collective action. Our statement: www.freepress.net/news/report-...
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— Free Press (@freepress.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 2:45 PM
The publication also pushes back against "Trump's claims that he's protecting people and defending free speech," and acknowledges that "the administration's censorial tactics are amassing tremendous resistance across political and geographic lines, with a majority of people worried about the government's attacks on free speech."
Benavidez emphasized that "if only one person speaks out against injustice, their speech is notable, but it is also more vulnerable to attack and subversion under this administration."
"If more people speak out against injustice, the collective drumbeat can more easily withstand government reprisals," she continued. "Democracies erode little by little; would-be dictators need to scare only some of us, and the rest will follow. The very reason we must speak out together is so we can leverage our collective power."
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