Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. Several Mississippi officials are looking at ways to increase police accountability in the wake of deadly encounters between police and unarmed men nationwide.
2. In the aftermath of a string of extrajudicial killings, including Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York, advocates in Jackson want to charter a commission to protect and facilitate more equitable social relations.
3. Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in yet another blockbuster case at the intersection of sex discrimination, workplace law and reproductive justice.
4. Dorsey Carson, an attorney specializing in construction businesses, faces financier Ashby Foote in a runoff for Jackson Ward 1 councilman.
5. Today, the campaign for $15 has spread to 150 cities and 33 countries. City councils in Seattle and San Francisco have raised the minimum wage to $15 in those cities.
6. Some Mississippians wants to follow the lead of Washington state and Colorado and legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes and to pardon individuals convicted of nonviolent marijuana-related offenses.
7. Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said that Mississippi needs to spend its money responsibly on "investments that matter" instead of focusing on more money to "do something for our kids" as other politicians urge.
8. Millsaps College recently received a $200,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to establish the International Perspectives Program.
9. What started organically in Ferguson with mad, disconnected young African American boys and girls, as a series of unorganized nightly actions, has matured over the past 100 days into a sophisticated movement.
10. The 1968 Kerner Report pulled few punches, warning in a now-infamous phrase that the United States was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."

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