• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the full show

GUEST: Rosa Clemente, community organizer, freelance journalist, 2008 Green Party Vice Presidential candidate, and currently a doctoral candidate in the W.E.B. DuBois Department of AfroAmerican Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is currently on a nationwide tour called If I Were President. Clemente is currently in Los Angeles to stand trial along with six other activists with Black Lives Matter on misdemeanor charges related to the shutting down of the 101 freeway in November 2014.

Since summer 2014, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization has become known for its powerful and creative efforts to draw attention to how police brutality targets African Americans. But individual activists are paying a heavy personal price with multiple criminal charges for their activism in cities around the country. That seems more true in LA than any other city.

In early March, the first of six trials this year culminated in convictions for 2 BLM activists, Evan Bunch and Luz Flores. The two await a sentencing hearing in April. Now, a second trial has begun with 7 members of BLM-LA facing misdemeanor charges for their involvement in the barricading of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles in November 2014. One of those 7 is Rosa Clemente.

For more information visit Rosa’s website www.rosaclemente.net or follow her @rosaclemente.