You are here

Day: March 25, 2018

City Councillor and Leading Rights Activist Shot Dead in Downtown Rio de Janeiro

Bridge Agents

Brazil (GV) – Less than two hours before she was murdered on the evening of March 14, Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco was speaking at a roundtable of black women activists about “young black women moving the structures”. As Franco was leaving the site, a car pulled up to the side of her own vehicle and fired nine shots into it. Franco and her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, were killed on the spot. The councillor’s press officer, who was in the backseat, was hit by glass fragments and injured but…

Read More

Eroding Protection Under the Law

Bridge Agents

Washington DC (ProPublica) – At the age of 50, the federal law that seeks to protect older American workers from age bias has been enfeebled by court decisions that have widened loopholes for employers and narrowed the ways employees can seek redress. When Congress enacted the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) in 1967, the law was treated as something of an addendum to the Civil Rights Act, which had been passed three years earlier and banned bias on the basis of race, gender, religion and, later on, sexual orientation, among…

Read More