Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Civil Rights

Civil Rights Advocates Challenge Missouri DOT’s Discriminatory Spending

By Angie Schmitt | Sep 7, 2016 | No Comments

Missouri, like many other states, shifts transportation funds from cities to rural areas — it collects most gas tax revenue from urban areas and spends it on roads in the hinterlands. And as in many other states, this amounts to a massive transfer of resources from the places where most people of color live. But […]

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Naomi Doerner on How Street Safety Advocates Can Support Racial Justice

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 22, 2016 | No Comments

When a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, shot and killed Philando Castile earlier this month, the encounter began with a traffic stop. The stop fit a pattern: Castile had been pulled over many times before — 46 times in 13 years — but few of those citations were for dangerous driving. More prevalent were stops for minor issues like […]

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The Right to Peaceful Assembly vs. the “Right” to Convenient Motoring

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 11, 2016 | No Comments

Demonstrations against police brutality spilled onto streets and highways in American cities this weekend, with protesters stopping traffic in Baton Rouge, Memphis, St. Paul, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NPR reports 102 people were arrested in St. Paul and another 120 in Baton Rouge, including prominent Black Lives Matter organizer DeRay Mckesson, who was arrested while walking along […]

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House Panel Calls on U.S. DOT to Measure Access to Economic Opportunity

By Angie Schmitt | May 27, 2016 | No Comments

A bill working its way through Congress may prompt federal officials to get a better handle on how transportation projects help or hinder access to jobs, education, and health care. The legislation, which passed out of a House Committee this week, calls for U.S. DOT to measure “the degree to which the transportation system, including public transportation, provides multimodal […]

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Civil Rights Groups Challenge Maryland Gov. Hogan’s Red Line Cancellation

By Angie Schmitt | Dec 21, 2015 | No Comments

Back in June, newly elected Maryland Governor Larry Hogan unilaterally cancelled a transit expansion project that Baltimore had been planning for a decade, transferring the state’s promised investment to road projects in more rural parts of the state. Now a coalition of civil rights groups is challenging the decision on civil rights grounds, saying it amounts […]

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Police Profiling Is a Safe Streets Issue

By Keith Benjamin | Mar 16, 2015 | No Comments

Cross-posted from the Safe Routes to School National Partnership “Are they going to kill me?” That’s the question a young black boy asked me one afternoon when I accidentally bumped into him and his grandmother on West Florissant Avenue, in Ferguson, after Michael Brown’s death. He was pointing at two officers watching peaceful protestors. I […]

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