Tag Archives: Angola

Federal Judge Allows ‘Untenable’ Plan to Send Juvenile Inmates to Angola Prison

“The move defies all common sense and best practices, and it will cause irrevocable damage to our youth and families,” said one children’s advocate.

By Julia Conley  Published 9-24-2022 by Common Dreams

The entrance of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola and nicknamed the “Alcatraz of the South” and “The Farm” Photo: msppmoore /Wikimedia Commons/CC

Critics of mass incarceration are condemning a ruling handed down late Friday by a federal judge in Louisiana, who admitted the state’s plan to send teenage inmates at a juvenile detention center to the notorious state penitentiary at Angola was “disturbing” even as she decided the plan could move forward.

Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ruled that the Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) can send two dozen children under the age of 18 from Bridge City Center for Youth, located outside New Orleans, to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, denying a motion brought by several law firms and the ACLU to halt the plan. Continue reading

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Tipping Point: UN Biodiversity Chief Warns Burning of Amazon Could Lead to ‘Cascading Collapse of Natural Systems’

“If we don’t work together, we are going to die together.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-30-2019

The fires engulfing the Amazon rain forest are a sign that the Earth is approaching an environmental and ecological “tipping point” that all of humanity must work together to avoid, the U.N.’s top biodiversity expert said Friday. (Photo: ©Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace)

Unless world governments, consumers, and businesses all work together to address the root causes of the current burning of the Amazon rain forest, the Arctic, and forests in the Congo and Angola, the planet will continue careening toward a point of no return, the U.N.’s top biodiversity expert said Friday.

Cristiana Paşca Palmer, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, called the fires that have torn through more than 1,300 square miles of the Amazon this year “extraordinarily concerning.” Continue reading

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Albert Woodfox Free: Last of Angola 3, Who Spent Decades in Solitary, Released

His ‘release is long overdue and undeniably just’

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 2-19-2016

Albert Woodfox. (Photo: Angola3.org)

Albert Woodfox. (Photo: Angola3.org)

Albert Woodfox, the last of the men known as the Angola 3, was released from a Louisiana prison on Friday.

He had spent over four decades in solitary confinement at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary known as “Angola.”

WBRZ Reporter Michael Vinsanau tweeted this photo of Woodfox as he walked out of prison: Continue reading

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