While athletes speak out, Trump drops ball
Donald Trump is a political commentator’s dream in the usually news-challenged weeks of late summer when we’re looking for someone to complain about.
Make America ‘great’ again?
Our American exceptionalism allows us to shimmer too fully in our greatness. We are the biggest and the baddest. We are the best armed and the most influential. We win the most Olympic medals, and we have the most nuclear …
Injustice with no action, little notice
Now it is Milwaukee. On Aug. 13, a car with two African-American men was stopped for “suspicion.” The men fled, the policeman pursued, and driver Sylville Smith, reportedly armed, was shot and killed.
‘We love our animals to death — literally’
Today’s 10 highest grossing box office releases are about animals. They include “Finding Dory,” “The Jungle Book,” “Zootopia,” “The Secret Life of Pets” and “Kung Fu Panda.” Nearly half of our households include a dog and nearly 40 percent have …
How far we’ve come; how far yet to go
With a woman heading the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket, it may be challenging for us to remember that women have had the right to vote for less than a century — and black folks less than that.
Lethal disregard for black lives continues
Protestations regarding the value of black lives have become increasingly common in the public dialogue. The simple phrase “Black Lives Matter” has generated praise from that segment of society that has suffered countless race-based indignities and been condemned by those …
‘Whose movement is it anyway?’
Activism creates economic, political or social change. It comes in all forms, from litigating and lobbying to strikes and sit-ins.
We’ve got the power
It has been said that if a lie is told loudly and often enough, it will stand as the truth. Just as many people believe that no lie can stand the test of time and that truth will ultimately prevail. …
A plan for urban recovery
As the general election season begins in earnest, the National Urban League has a message for the next president: Invest in America. When Europe found itself in physical and economic ruin after World War II, the United States invested $13 …
Don’t swallow the lies
Last week, I spent my evening hours viewing television and looking at the circus that formally was labeled by the networks as the Republican National Convention.
Corporate leadership needed on racial justice
When North Carolina passed laws eliminating anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and passed its “bathroom bill” mandating that transgender people use the bathroom of their birth gender, they experienced almost immediate backlash.
The status quo
Like millions, I am shocked and appalled by the needless killing of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, five Dallas police officers, and three Baton Rouge police officers. Respect for humanity requires that we reject, in the strongest terms, the unwarranted and …
Gun violence demands action
As the Republican Party holds its national convention in Cleveland, Americans remain shaken by the shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., following the police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minn. I spoke …
Williams a rising activist
“The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job, alright, stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique …
Requiem for black people
Lorenzo Collins, Michael Carpenter, Roger Owensby Jr., Timothy Thomas, Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Kenneth Walker, Sean Bell,
