Police departments nationally scrambled furiously in the aftermath of the chokehold death of Eric Garner and the non-indictment of the officer that applied the hold to publicly declare that they do not use the chokehold. They waved and cited inter-department regulation after regulation to prove that they bar the use of the hold, don’t teach it to officers, and that many officers themselves say they wouldn’t know how to use it anyway. That’s not the end of the chokehold story. Periodic lawsuits brought by victims of the chokehold against departments at various times over the years show that some departments and officers do use the chokehold or a variant of it to subdue suspects. The U.S. Supreme…

Police departments nationally scrambled furiously in the aftermath of the chokehold death of Eric Garner and the non-indictment of the officer that applied the hold to publicly declare that they do not use the chokehold. They waved and cited inter-department regulation after regulation to prove that they bar the use of the hold, don’t teach it to officers, and that many officers themselves say they wouldn’t know how to use it anyway.

That’s not the end of the chokehold story. Periodic lawsuits brought by victims of the chokehold against departments at various times over the years show that some departments and officers do use the chokehold or a variant of it to subdue suspects. The U.S. Supreme Court made that possible. Nearly four decades ago it could have ended the chokehold use. It didn’t. In 1976, Adolph Lyon, a young African-American motorist was stopped by the LAPD. Lyon offered no resistance but was still wrapped in a chokehold by an officer. Lyon was severely injured as a result of the hold. He promptly sued and sought a court injunction against the hold.

The case appeared solid on several grounds. He could show a disparate use of the hold against African-Americans. The LAPD had used the chokehold with impunity for years, and in one span the majority of the 16 of the victims that died as a result of the chokehold were black. This appeared to fall under the purview of the constitutional provision barring cruel and unusual punishment. In sworn testimony officers made jokes and wisecracks about how some suspects placed in the chokehold danced, and squirmed uncontrollably. The officers admitted that they had no knowledge of the lethal effect of the hold and that their training officers did not bother to tell them of the life threatening danger of the hold.

The case meandered through the courts for years. Meanwhile, the LAPD publicly claimed that it had temporarily suspended the use of the hold pending a high court decision. But other police departments continued to use the chokehold with no legal or departmental restraints. The death toll continued to mount. One of them was the New York police department which also had a massive number of complaints about the hold and the injuries it caused.

In 1983, the court finally spoke. In a stunning majority opinion it flatly said that federal courts had no power to prohibit the use of the hold. It didn’t stop there. It added that “there was a real and immediate threat that Lyon would again be stopped… by an officer who would illegally choke him into unconsciousness.” Translated, a victim could be subject to its use again if stopped by a police officer and it posed no threat to him. This was an open license to continue to use the chokehold. In a blistering dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall blasted the absurdity of the legal logic behind use of the chokehold: “Since no one can show that he will be choked in the future, no one — not even a person who, like Lyons, has almost been choked to death–has standing to challenge the continuation of the policy.”

An exultant LAPD chief Daryl Gates claimed victory and said that it vindicated his contention that the chokehold was an appropriate tactic to be used. Gates then transformed himself into a medical anatomical scientist and claimed that maybe there was something in the physical make-up of blacks that was different from that of “normal people” that predisposed them to drop dead from the hold. Gates’s over the top racist, inflammatory gibe ignited a storm of protest, and a red faced Gates slightly back pedaled on it. The same year the LAPD officially barred the use of the chokehold. The NYPD followed suit and in the next decade other departments fell in line and officially banned the use of the hold.

In the three decades since the court refused to bar the use of the hold the record still is that there is nothing in law or public policy that officially precludes any police department from putting the chokehold or a variation of it back in its weapons arsenal. In fact, a decade after the LAPD officially barred the use of the hold it was back on the table again following the beating of black motorist Rodney King in 1991. The LAPD debated whether to reinstate the chokehold again on the grounds it was a less lethal way to subdue a suspect. Though it chose not to, surveys then found that the overwhelming majority of officers backed the use of the hold and said they saw no danger in its use.

The double tragedy in the Garner slaying was, of course, his senseless death but also that his death does not alter the fact that the chokehold still remains on the official books as a weapon that police officers can use. For that thank the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.

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The Chokehold Is Still Alive and Well Courtesy of the Supreme Court

Shonda Rhimes received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment breakfast on Wednesday, and in a speech that jumped from humility to Beyoncé, she inspired everyone from executives to stars to us teary-eyed reporters. As the writer and producer of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How To Get Away With Murder,” Rhimes told the room, “I haven’t broken through any glass ceilings.” She continued and explained why: This moment right here, me standing up here all brown with my boobs and my Thursday night of network television full of women of color, competitive women, strong women, women who own their bodies and whose …

Shonda Rhimes received the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment breakfast on Wednesday, and in a speech that jumped from humility to Beyoncé, she inspired everyone from executives to stars to us teary-eyed reporters.

As the writer and producer of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How To Get Away With Murder,” Rhimes told the room, “I haven’t broken through any glass ceilings.”

She continued and explained why:

This moment right here, me standing up here all brown with my boobs and my Thursday night of network television full of women of color, competitive women, strong women, women who own their bodies and whose lives revolve around their work instead of their men, women who are big dogs, that could only be happening right now.

Think about it.

Look around this room. It’s filled with women of all colors in Hollywood who are executives and heads of studios and VPs and show creators and directors. There are a lot of women in Hollywood in this room who have the game-changing ability to say yes or no to something.

15 years ago, that would not have been as true.

The rest of the speech, which is just as powerful, was posted by Rhimes to Medium. Head there to read it in full, or watch the complete version below:

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Watch Shonda Rhimes’ Totally Empowering Women In Entertainment Speech

“I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.” Fifty years ago, on December 10, 1964, my father, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke these words on a stage in Oslo, Norway as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent philosophy and strategy. Five days ago, as this nation and world were reeling from a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who choked Eric Garner on a Staten Island street until he was gasping for …

“I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.”

Fifty years ago, on December 10, 1964, my father, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke these words on a stage in Oslo, Norway as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent philosophy and strategy.

Five days ago, as this nation and world were reeling from a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who choked Eric Garner on a Staten Island street until he was gasping for breath, many were outraged and “moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger.” They did so, and are continuing to do so, in hopes of establishing “a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.”

A half-century later, my father’s words are still powerful, still relevant. Justice, racial equality, and the Beloved Community that he often described are still, to paraphrase Victor Hugo, ideas whose time has come. In fact, their time is long overdue.

This begs the question, “Why have we not made more progress towards the manifestation of global justice, racial equality, and the Beloved Community within this great world house that we inhabit?” Simple: We have not fully embraced the answer that my father shared in his Nobel acceptance speech, in which he stated “Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time… nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”

Nonviolence… not passive, but powerful. Nonviolence… not just to mend, but to make for social transformation. Nonviolence… an antidote for what ails the global community and a lifestyle for humanity to aspire to and embrace.

Like my father, I believe that nonviolence is the antidote to what he called “the triple evils of racism, poverty and militarism.” These three evils were consuming our hopes for community in 1964, and, fifty years later, we remain divided because of their festering effects. The challenge remains. We are still in danger of non-existence because of our lack of determined, nonviolent attention to these triple evils.

“Sooner or later” said my father in Oslo, “all of the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method, which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

As this quote from his Nobel acceptance speech conveys, my father considered nonviolence to be a transformative way to live together in peace and prevent our self-destruction. He also deemed nonviolence the love-centered method for addressing human conflict. Nonviolence is therefore pro-active and re-active. It is a revolutionary map for navigating our behavior, thoughts and words, even between nations.

Imagine if nonviolence permeated our faith and families, our entertainment and our education systems. Consider all of the possibilities for positive global progress if we utilized nonviolence as the central value of our culture, encompassing our law enforcement and labor practices, which currently include people in numerous nations working for inhumane wages in unhealthy conditions. As you imagine and consider, think about this: It starts with you. It starts with me.

These notions often seem lofty because we desire that someone other than ourselves initiate the change and we find ourselves awaiting a leader. However, what is required now for us to spread Nonviolence across the globe is the individual faith and refusal to accept man’s current condition as permanent. My father embodied and expressed this faith and refusal in his Nobel acceptance speech.

He stated, “I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

We must rediscover our faith in the future and join with one another to ensure that Nonviolence is the prevalent choice for government, law enforcement, the non-profit sector, business, education, media, entertainment, arts, and for the global citizenry. It starts with you. It starts with me. Then, together, we can build the Beloved Community within our great World House.

Let’s not be discouraged by the violence and tragedies in Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland and elsewhere. Let’s not be disheartened by the tides of fear and violence. And let’s not get distracted from the challenge — and the vision — Martin Luther King, Jr, presented to our nation and world a half century ago today: “There is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up.”

It is time for humanity to reset our spiritual compass from self-centeredness to other-centeredness. Let’s accept the challenge to make the Beloved Community a reality, for we still have a choice between nonviolent co-existence or violent co-annihilation. Now is the time to choose Nonviolence 365.

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Revisiting My Father’s Nobel Acceptance Speech, 50 Years Later

NYPD investigators have formally interviewed Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who was caught on film placing Eric Garner in a chokehold that medical examiners said contributed to Garner’s subsequent death. A grand jury voted not to indict Pantaleo in Garner’s death on Dec. 3. The next day, the NYPD launched an internal investigation into the incident, according to ABC News. Pantaleo himself was interviewed by NYPD Internal Affairs bureau investigators Monday. Investigators, who reportedly questioned the 29-year-old for more than two hours, told DNA Info that Pantaleo “pretty much told the same story” as he did before the grand jury. Garner, 43, died July 17 while being arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes on the sidewalk. Video footage of the arrest shows Pantaleo …

NYPD investigators have formally interviewed Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who was caught on film placing Eric Garner in a chokehold that medical examiners said contributed to Garner’s subsequent death.

A grand jury voted not to indict Pantaleo in Garner’s death on Dec. 3. The next day, the NYPD launched an internal investigation into the incident, according to ABC News.

Pantaleo himself was interviewed by NYPD Internal Affairs bureau investigators Monday. Investigators, who reportedly questioned the 29-year-old for more than two hours, told DNA Info that Pantaleo “pretty much told the same story” as he did before the grand jury.

Garner, 43, died July 17 while being arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes on the sidewalk. Video footage of the arrest shows Pantaleo placing the unarmed Garner in a chokehold — a move prohibited by the NYPD — as Garner shouts “I can’t breathe!” before seeming to lose consciousness.

Medical examiners ruled the death a homicide, stating that Garner died as a result of neck compressions, “the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” They noted that asthma, heart disease and obesity also contributed to Garner’s death.

The grand jury’s decision not to bring charges against Pantaleo, which came on the heels of another grand jury’s decision not to indict a Ferguson, Missouri officer in the killing of an unarmed black teen, incited mass protests nationwide.

In addition to the NYPD investigation, the Department of Justice is conducting a civil rights investigation into Garner’s death. Garner’s family has also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against New York City.

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NYPD Investigators Question Chokehold Officer For More Than 2 Hours

–Grammy award and Golden Globe award-winning singer-actress Queen Latifah reveals her desire to become a mother. (Closer Weekly) More Notable/Quotables:

–Grammy award and Golden Globe award-winning singer-actress Queen Latifah reveals her desire to become a mother. (Closer Weekly)

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Queen Latifah Opens Up About Her Dream To Become A Mom

Two children, ages 14 and 17, have been arrested and jailed without probable cause in southwest Ohio in the last year, prompting a federal lawsuit to be filed on their and other juveniles’ behalf in the state. The lawsuit alleges that police in Hamilton County have routinely and unconstitutionally arrested children without due process. Kim Tandy, who filed the lawsuit, stopped by HuffPost Live on Wednesday to address the suit, saying the trend is troubling. “It is disconcerting,” Tandy told host Alyona Minkovski. “I really feel like there is some real unfettered discretion that police have because we don’t have a system of checks and balances in place. We don’t know necessarily why that occurs. But…

Two children, ages 14 and 17, have been arrested and jailed without probable cause in southwest Ohio in the last year, prompting a federal lawsuit to be filed on their and other juveniles’ behalf in the state. The lawsuit alleges that police in Hamilton County have routinely and unconstitutionally arrested children without due process.

Kim Tandy, who filed the lawsuit, stopped by HuffPost Live on Wednesday to address the suit, saying the trend is troubling.

“It is disconcerting,” Tandy told host Alyona Minkovski. “I really feel like there is some real unfettered discretion that police have because we don’t have a system of checks and balances in place. We don’t know necessarily why that occurs. But we do know, and we have plead this in the context of a preliminary injunction, we do know that the harm is much greater for children of color.”

The two children remain unnamed because they are minors, going only by L.D. and S.W. in the case.

S.W. was arrested in September for robbery despite only vague evidence attributed to him. He was jailed for a month before being acquitted. L.D., meanwhile, spent 15 days in jail and six months on house arrest after police arrested him for a robbery charge without probable cause.

Read more on the case here.

Watch the rest of the clip above, and catch the full HuffPost Live conversation here.

Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live’s new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!

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Why A Black High Schooler Was Jailed Without Probable Cause

This past August, Missouri voters adopted an amendment to the state constitution affirming a “right to farm.” The amendment would ensure that “the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed.” Opponents of the amendment claimed that it was designed to protect large agribusinesses from lawsuits by environmental and animal rights groups, among others. If the notion of a right to farm surprises you, it is because the process by which rights are established is an inexact one. Most of us think of rights as either being God-given or at …

This past August, Missouri voters adopted an amendment to the state constitution affirming a “right to farm.” The amendment would ensure that “the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed.” Opponents of the amendment claimed that it was designed to protect large agribusinesses from lawsuits by environmental and animal rights groups, among others.

If the notion of a right to farm surprises you, it is because the process by which rights are established is an inexact one.

Most of us think of rights as either being God-given or at least flowing seamlessly from commonly agreed aspects of human nature like our freedom or capacity to reason (“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”). But the truth is that rights are subject to political machinations just like almost everything else.

This past year has witnessed plenty of examples of traditional human rights at risk, including the crackdowns on political dissent in Egypt, the beheadings of Westerners by the Islamic State and conflicts over excessive use of force by police in the United States. No one would argue that the rights to free expression, life and due process are not well established in the lexicon of human rights.

But perhaps what has been even more interesting this past year has been the evolution of newly recognized or emerging rights. The most obvious example is that of same-sex marriage. Though the Supreme Court has not explicitly affirmed its constitutionality yet, the court is likely to rule on that question in 2015, given the conflicting circuit court rulings on the practice. And the Supreme Court’s decisions to let same-sex marriage proceed in a variety of states signal at the very least that the right to marry for same-sex couples is galloping toward the mainstream.

Similarly, 2014 saw a ruling by the European Court of Justice that Google must implement a “right to be forgotten” on its local European website domains by deleting links to certain materials about individuals that they would rather not have circulating on the Web.

Under the European Union’s data protection legislation, the right to be forgotten has been in place in the EU for years, but this decision gives it teeth it never had before. On November 26, the EU went even further, issuing new nonbinding guidelines that would extend the right to be forgotten to all non-European Web domains.

Social media is forcing lawmakers and courts to rethink a vast array of questions about free speech and privacy, prompted by everything from the Edward Snowden revelations to an impending Supreme Court decision on whether personal threats on Facebook are protected by the First Amendment or can be prosecuted.

Add to these examples the continuing debate about animal rights and the recognition in parts of Latin America of the rights of nature — that is, that trees, oceans, mountains and forests have legally enforceable rights to exist and flourish — and it is easy to see that rights are in considerable flux.

But this is how it has always been. Rights are not static. They evolve, shift and grow. Consider genocide, for example. If anything seems as if it ought to have always been a violation of human rights, it is the mass extinction of a particular group. Yet it was not until 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Convention against Genocide that such a mass atrocity was defined by international law as a crime.

This is not to say that figuring out what constitutes a legitimate “new” right is easy or smooth. It is, after all, a political process, and politics is rarely easy or smooth.

Emerging rights may well be at odds with traditional rights, as with the so-called right to farm that may prompt a battle over the human right to safe, affordable water, or the tension between the public’s right to information on the Internet that appears to clash with an individual’s right to privacy.

And internationally recognized rights are not established by the action of any one nation alone, much less the state of Missouri. They come into being as a result of a growing consensus of world opinion as marked by international treaties and conventions, the opinions of national and international legal bodies, and the gathering policies of international human rights organizations.

By these measures few of the “emerging” rights have yet garnered sufficient consensus to be considered established universal rights.

But what the political nature of human rights does point to is this: each one of us has a role to play in shaping the human rights of the future.

In this sense Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous remark that human rights begin “in small places, close to home … the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works” is exactly right.

Human rights are formed and re-formed by an emerging embrace of what constitutes the good society. An important point to remember between now and Human Rights Day 2015.

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The Rights, They Are A-Changin’

Three words pierced the white noise of Grand Central Station Tuesday night, jolting harried passengers and a fanny-packed tour group from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The words, the last spoken by Eric Garner, have become a rallying cry for activists around the country: “I can’t breathe.” This time, the speaker was Chazz Giovanni, a recent graduate of the acting program at SUNY Purchase. Hard to miss in a red puffer coat and Tiffany blue hat, Giovanni recited all of Garner’s last words — an unintentionally chilling monologue captured on video before the black Staten Island man’s death in July after a …

Three words pierced the white noise of Grand Central Station Tuesday night, jolting harried passengers and a fanny-packed tour group from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The words, the last spoken by Eric Garner, have become a rallying cry for activists around the country: “I can’t breathe.”

This time, the speaker was Chazz Giovanni, a recent graduate of the acting program at SUNY Purchase. Hard to miss in a red puffer coat and Tiffany blue hat, Giovanni recited all of Garner’s last words — an unintentionally chilling monologue captured on video before the black Staten Island man’s death in July after a white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put him into a chokehold.

As Giovanni bellowed the now-familiar lines — Every time you see me, you want to mess with me … Please just leave me alone … It stops today — dozens of dancers circled him, some beating on cookie tins as they chanted, “We can’t breathe.” Others broke into pairs to act out a simple, stylized move based on a chokehold. After each round of Garner’s monologue, the group fell to the ground, miming death.

Led by a group of artists who spread the invitation by word of mouth, the grassroots “die-in” slotted into what organizers are calling a Week of Outrage, a series of nonviolent protests across New York City building to a supersized demonstration this Saturday.

Garner’s plea has taken on its own life. In the days since a grand jury decided not to indict Pantaleo in his death, the words have been displayed on the chests of NBA players and echoed throughout social media. “There was this quote staring me in the face,” Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, recently told The Washington Post, explaining his decision to revise his list of 2014’s most notable quotes to put one of its newest — “I can’t breathe” — at the top.

For many, the phrase represents tensions that have been building for years in communities where run-ins with police are common. “When I think of someone breathing, it’s like someone is at ease,” said Shamirrah Hardin, a high school dance teacher who led the choreography of Tuesday night’s performance. “All is well. Everything’s ok. But we can’t keep on relaxing and breathing when people are getting choked out left and right, and gunned down.”

Protests in New York mirror those rippling out across the country from Ferguson, Missouri, where another grand jury recently decided not to indict Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown.

Jamel Mims, a multimedia artist and co-organizer of the Week of Outrage, said he believes civil disruption is the most effective way to honor Garner’s memory, by forcing Americans to consider the nuances of police procedure rather than going “back to business as usual — Black Friday shopping, holiday shopping.”

“Business as usual is black boys … getting murdered every 28 hours,” he said, referencing a popular statistic pulled from a 2013 study of online police reports by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. “We have to say no more business as usual.”

Statistics on fatalities at the hands of police officers are limited. The country’s police departments self-report records to the FBI, and many don’t file fatal shooting reports in a timely manner. The city of New York — where Garner’s death this year was notably followed by that of Akai Gurley, an unarmed Brooklyn man killed in a stairwell by a cop — hasn’t filed reports since 2007, according to a recent report by ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism unit.

The data that is available shows a dramatic racial imbalance when it comes to young men who are killed during police encounters. In the same assessment, ProPublica analyzed the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report. Per that report, young black men — ranging from 15 and 19 years old — were killed by police at a far higher rate between 2010 and 2012 than white men of the same age: 31.17 per million black males in that age range, versus 1.47 per million for whites.

It’s hardly a new notion that black men, whether guilty of a crime or not, face greater suspicion from law enforcement officials than their white peers. Mims said that he was assaulted by a policeman while in Boston one summer and then unlawfully arrested. He had just won a grant from the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program to study hip-hop in Beijing.

Though he eventually was able to clear his name with the Fulbright committee, he said his status was initially “threatened” when the committee found out about the arrest. It was a harsh wake-up call, he said, an “aha moment that it doesn’t really matter what you get” in life — scholarship or not, guilty or not — his future could change with the click of a handcuff.

Giovanni, who is half-black, said he had his own unbelievable moment when he was only 11 years old. He was on his way home from a movie with his friends when two cops responding to a call accused him of snatching a woman’s purse and throwing it into a nearby lot, he said. Though their search turned up nothing, he remembers police letting him go with these words: “At least you can tell your friends you were stopped.”

Giovanni said he wonders whether black men still even feel motivated to share stories of wrongful arrests or random questioning when the practice is so common. People are “so jaded” by the experiences, he said.

Contrast that with his impassioned shouting Tuesday to the rafters of Grand Central. “I still have my life,” he said. “I’d rather tell the stories of people who don’t.”

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Protesters Turn Eric Garner’s Haunting Last Words Into Performance Art