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The 1619 Project
On Sunday, the New York Times unveiled "The 1619 Project," a journalistic series in the Sunday magazine that seeks to tell the "unvarnished truth" about slavery and its impact on America's history. In 1619, just 12 years after the founding of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, the Jamestown colonists bought the first slaves, 20 to 30 enslaved Africans, from English pirates.
America must not descend into a new feudalism where money rules, and people suffer
The pomp and circumstance of the crowning of King Charles III filled TV sets over the past days.
The Sensible, the Mad and the Missing
The 2024 presidential race is taking shape. It looks like a choice between the sensible, the mad and the missing. Joe Biden seems intent on running on his record, a sensible route for the incumbent. His major challenger, the inescapable Donald Trump, is replaying his madcap candidacy – his program a mixture of resentment, racism, bluster and victimization. What’s missing are the big challenges that America can’t avoid and can’t seem to face.
Trump's Stump Speech Is A Con Job
President Donald Trump is back on the stump, promising to campaign "six or seven days a week" until the general election to try to keep Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress.
The Myths and Lies About Poverty
"The poor will always be with us," say the cynics. No doubt, some will always be wealthier than others. We wouldn't want to live in a society that forced all to be equal. But poverty isn't inevitable. The 30 million people in America who lived in poverty even before the pandemic when unemployment was at record lows needn't exist in that state.
Scientific Community Must Reach Out to Ensure African Americans Gain Confidence to Get Vaccinated
On Friday, I received my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. I was honored to be accompanied by Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, the brilliant African-American viral immunologist who is a rock star in the field of immunology science.
Harvey, Noah and The Floods
It is too soon to know the extent of the damage done by Hurricane Harvey. Estimates are that over a million people have been displaced. As I write this, 49 are feared dead -- a number that will continue to climb. The governor of Texas estimated that his state will need "far in excess" of $125 billion in federal funding to help rebuild. Harvey broke the U.S. record for rainfall from a single storm. Houston, the fourth largest city in America, was hit with 50 inches of rain.
'America is not a racist country'
“America is not a racist country.” This is quickly becoming a Republican mantra. Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, used it in his rebuttal to President Biden’s address to the Congress. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican weather vane, echoed him, as did Republicans across the country. Scott went on to accuse Democrats of dividing the country by using race as a “political weapon.”
Democracy not a partisan issue
While the United States champions democracy across the world, our own democracy is under siege. Nothing is more fundamental to democracy than the right to vote – yet there is no explicit guarantee of the right to vote in the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. ranks near the bottom of industrial democracies in voter turnout. This isn’t accidental – many states purposefully create barriers that make it difficult to register to vote or to cast a ballot. The sensible answer to this is to create — and enforce — the right to vote for every citizen.
Time for Biden to invoke the 14th amendment
So it has come to this. House Republicans are about to force the U.S. government to default on paying its debts – obligations that the Congress voted to make. They bluster that they will blow up the economy, tank the dollar, and destroy America’s good faith and credit unless they get their way – even as they are bitterly divided about what “their way” means. The stakes are unfathomable – and so it is worth being clear about what is happening.
Pell Grants Needed for Low-income Students
Nuts. There may be fancier words to describe Donald Trump's latest lunacy -- but just plain "nuts" is most accurate. The president decided, overnight, that he wanted the United States to go "back to the Moon, then Mars." To help pay for it, he called on Congress to cut an additional $1.9 billion out of the funds designated to pay for Pell Grants -- the grants that help students from low-income families pay for college. For those children, for the country, for our future, this is just simply nuts.
There's More Than Enough Evidence of Trump's Bias
Last week, amid the continuing clamor of Trump's chaos presidency, the question of whether Trump had used the n-word became a media sensation.
Remembering Brown v. Board of Education
Last Sunday marked the 66th anniversary of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education. The Brown decision addressed consolidated issues from four different cases involving racial segregation. The issues emanated from Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, and Virginia. The unanimous opinion of the court was written by Earl Warren, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's newly appointed chief justice. The Court declared that forced segregation of public-school children violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.
New Wave Of Anti-Asian Racial Violence
"Asian Americans confront wave of racial violence - turning pain into power"
The Movement for Justice Will Not Be Deterred
The result will open the floodgates even further to the wave of partisan laws that Republicans are pushing in states across the country to suppress the votes of African Americans and other people of color. The right-wing justices continue their assault on the meaning and power of the Voting Rights Act, a triumph of the civil rights movement that Justice Elena Kagan, writing in dissent, noted represents the "best in America."
No Doubt Global Warming Is a Reality
Record fires in Oregon and California. Floods in Houston and New York. Deadly winter storms in Texas. Droughts across much of the west. Flash floods in England and Germany. Blinding dust storms in China. 100-year cyclones devastate Fiji and Indonesia. Deadly droughts across sub-Saharan Africa. Wildfires in Greece and Italy. The year is not over yet, but in the United States and across the world, the toll in lives and destruction is growing in storms of biblical proportion.
The Growing Racial Wage Gap
President Donald Trump keeps boasting about the low black unemployment rate, although African-Americans still suffer nearly twice the unemployment rate as whites do.
Kavanaugh Showed Us Exactly Who He Is
Brett Kavanaugh is now a justice of the Supreme Court. He is there only because he is what he showed himself to be in the Senate hearings: a vicious, partisan operative utterly committed to a right-wing judicial activism that will inevitably lead to a constitutional crisis.
Peace is a Process, Not a Single Act
July 27 marked the 66th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War armistice, which brought an end to hostilities that killed nearly 5 million people, including almost 40,000 U.S. service members. The war ended in a temporary cease-fire, which is why the United States still maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea. Nuclear missiles ring the region and threaten the people living there. North and South remain divided, separating thousands of families.
The Right to Vote Is Fundamental to Any Democracy
The right to vote is fundamental to any democracy. Protecting that right -- and making it easier to exercise it -- ought to be a priority across partisan lines. Instead, in states across the country -- particularly in the five years since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act -- it has become a pitched battle.
