Climate change and hurricanes
Hurricane Dorian has drowned the Bahamas and devastated the coasts of North and South Carolina. There are trillions of dollars worth of damages to communities that will take years to rebuild.
New Coliseum project ‘almost certainly a mistake’
The Navy Hill development project proposes to spend $350 million in public money to build a massive 17,500-seat regional arena in Richmond’s small and valuable Downtown. The arena, paid for only by the City of Richmond, will short-circuit all other …
Congressional reps rebuke delay of payday loan rule
Anyone who struggles with the rising costs of living knows all too well how hard it is to try stretching dollars when there’s more month than money in the household.
School supplies donations versus making education a budget priority
The event promised to be one of those last-gasp-of-summer events that would raise a little money for a good cause. The young woman who called to tell me about it promised that I’d meet interesting people, enjoy excellent wines and …
Asthma and back to school
As summer winds down and talk in households around the country turns to back-to-school preparations, many parents and students are getting ready for another school year with the challenges of asthma.
Recovering from Ferguson
“The city’s personal-responsibility refrain ... reflects many of the same racial stereotypes found in the emails between police and court supervisors. This evidence of bias and stereotyping, together with evidence that Ferguson has long recognized but failed to correct the …
Jay-Z buys in — sells out
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love” - …
Get serious about white extremists and domestic terrorism
Just over a decade ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI produced a report titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”
Getting to root cause of racism
It’s amazing how often the news media give big play to an academic report that tells us something black mothers already knew.
Calling for a groundswell
How, in a span of only 24 hours, could two cities in different states and regions suffer mass shootings — one in El Paso, Texas, a city only a few miles from the nation’s southern border, and the other in …
A tribute to Toni Morrison
“Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified …
Why I visited the border
As I ventured to the southern border near Laredo, Texas, I could not help but think about the tragic shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which are stark reminders of the dangers that plague our communities under the …
Richmond’s next commonwealth’s attorney
On Thursday, Aug. 8, and Saturday, Aug. 10, Richmond Democrats will vote to decide who will be the Democrats’ nominee for Richmond commonwealth’s attorney.
Righting old wrongs
“The U.S. ‘war on drugs’ — a decades-long policy of racial and class suppression hidden behind cannabis criminality — has resulted in the arrest, interdiction and incarceration of a high percentage of Americans of color. The legal cannabis industry represents …
‘Red Summer’: Lessons for today
On July 27, 1919, and for 13 days after, Chicago was engulfed in violence. White mobs wantonly attacked black people and black people fought back.
