Category: Cover Story

Haiti is a prison ruled by psychopaths, an angry wound in the body of the African Diaspora inflicted by pirates at war with civilization, itself. It is the festering evidence of the Bush men’s true intentions for the region and hemisphere, a nightmare and a warning from the North to the South: don’t even pretend…

“We need a national agenda to make sure that our community has more than music and style. We can’t continue to do bootleg activism. We’ve got to do institutional activism, creating media outlets that will push our propaganda.” – Jeff Johnson, America Votes youth coordinator and commentator for BET’s “Rap City” “We’re all activists. The…

“You all here today are a part of history. We are conscious, we are not unconscious.” – Angela Woodson, 36, Co-Chair, National Hip Hop Political Convention ”We’ve gotta stop idolizing hip hop music as something that’s gonna save the neighborhood. It’s a tool.” – M-1 Mutulu, 32, Dead Prez “The Civil Rights Movement was lost…

Mass incarceration is by far the greatest crisis facing Black America, ultimately eclipsing all others. It is an overarching reality that colors and distorts every aspect of African American political, economic and cultural life, smothering the human – and humane – aspirations of the community. Even the boundless creativity of youth cannot escape the chains…

Only 12 years elapsed between the glorious military victory over the Confederate Slave States in 1865 and the definitive defeat of Reconstruction in 1877. In many important respects, the Reconstruction period was even briefer than that. By 1870, when the last of the southern states ratified the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, Tennessee had already…

Bill Cosby has some nerve talking about “personal responsibility.” On May 17, with no warning, the 67-year-old multimillionaire comedian ambushed three venerable Black organizations – the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Howard University – fatally disrupting a gala celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown desegregation decision. Cosby drew from…

A direct line runs from the “segregation academies” of the post-Brown South and today’s corporate-invented school vouchers “movement.” Both talk the same language: a “freedom of choice” double-speak that would preserve and expand racial and economic privilege. In place of Brown, today’s voucher advocates would subsidize the “choices” that somehow become available in an American…

“We need the vision to see in this generation’s ordeals the opportunity to transfigure both ourselves and American society. Our present suffering and our nonviolent struggle to be free may well offer to Western civilization the kind of spiritual dynamic so desperately needed for our survival.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Strength to Love,”…

At 12:30 in the morning of May 10, approximately 20 U.S. Marines executed a military assault on the Port-au-Prince home of 69-year-old Annette Auguste, a.k.a. Souer Anne. Auguste’s residence is part of a compound that includes four other apartments that were also invaded by the U.S. military forces. The troops covered the heads of 11…

“They wanted to humiliate us. It was disgusting. They covered our heads with plastic bags and hit our backs with sharp objects, which added to our wounds. They then took off all our clothes, made us stand next to the wall and carried out immoral acts that I cannot even talk about. Women soldiers took…