With a rise in hate violence across the country, a new report from the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and 16 leading civil rights organizations provides a groundbreaking analysis of state and federal hate crime laws. The report features a foreword by Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard and Board/Chair President of the Matthew Shephard Foundation. (Read the report.) The partners releasing the report […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Those words, written over 30 years ago by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, remind us that indifference can never bridge the divide of hate. And, today, they should serve as a call to action to all of us, and […]

Yesterday, the President of the United States defended white supremacy and virulent racism on national television. He derided the journalists who challenged or questioned his comments, and he created a false equivalence between anti-racism protesters and Neo-Nazis. This is not normal. And we cannot allow this to become the new normal. Trump did not make […]

“Perseverance in almost any plan is better than fickleness and fluctuation”—Alexander Hamilton When we adopted our NCLR tag line—”The audacity to fight for justice, the perseverance to win”—it was before President Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope” and years before the cultural phenomenon that is “Hamilton” ushered in a refreshed examination of Alexander Hamilton’s writings. […]

By a slim margin, this nation has elected a demagogue who trafficked in bigotry, stoked racist hatred and normalized misogyny. The election of Donald Trump as President threatens basic principles of human dignity and justice. Many of our most cherished values—inclusion, honoring difference, embracing equality, dismantling oppressive systems—are in jeopardy, but we will not be […]

“…Later that night I held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere” —Warsan Shire   Two days after a sniper killed five Dallas police officers, this poem, by expat Somali poet Warsan Shire, who came to world’s attention when […]

On July 30th, a 15-year old trans girl was stabbed on a metro platform in Washington, D.C. Though it has not yet been formally designated a hate crime, given the facts surrounding the incident, it seems clear that this young girl was attacked because of her gender identity. This is sadly the case for most […]

This week, CeCe McDonald was released early after being unjustly sentenced to forty-one months in prison in May 2012 after pleading guilty to reduced second-degree murder for the death of Dean Schmitz, one of the people who attacked her. In June 2011, CeCe was the victim of a racist and transphobic hate crime while on […]