The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, one of our nation's most revered civil rights heroes, died this week at 89 in Birmingham, Ala. Shuttlesworth was a leading activist in the fight against segregation and racism in the South during the Jim Crow era. Together with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Shuttlesworth also helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Starting the clock on the work of cutting poverty in the United States by half over the next ten years, the Half in Ten campaign today released a new report outlining measurements and strategies to help achieve that goal.

Franklin E. Kameny, one of the nation’s most prominent gay rights leaders, died in his sleep yesterday, on National Coming Out Day. He was 86.

Voicing concerns about the absence of accountability standards, a broad coalition of civil rights organizations, business groups, and education officials and advocates is withholding support for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2011 that is being considered by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP).

In a straight party-line vote of 23-15, Republican members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs this week passed H.R. 2829, the U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act of 2011. Among other things, the legislation seeks to withhold funding for several important U.N. programs and activities and restrict U.S. participation in the Human Rights Council.

Senate Republicans, joined by two Democrats, last night blocked President Obama's proposed American Jobs Act from advancing to a full vote.

“The senators who voted to keep the Senate from debating the American Jobs Act should be ashamed of themselves," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights, following the filibuster of the jobs bill.  "No issue is more pressing than the jobs crisis. Yet instead of the bold action that Americans are demanding, the Senate today delivered only more procedural gamesmanship."