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Home Issue: 681

Issue: 681

January 12, 2017

Cover Story

Disrespect is a License to Trump

By Perry Redd Columnist

He continues to perpetrate the lie that he won a mandate. He lost the popular election by 2.7 million votes - that is no mandate. Will we immerse ourselves in day-to-day survival mode or react as Johnny-come-lately activists that give Trump and his band of billionaires license to kill the future of our children’s and grandchildren?

I would say it’s frustrating, or even maddening, but I’m pretty much angry every day. I hear the thoughts and opinions of many who are deemed…

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Vets Attack

Cartoon

Vets Attack

By Eric Garcia Cartoonist/Artist

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Commentary

April 3, 1968 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – I’ve Been to the Mountaintop

By The Black Commentator Guest Commentator

Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 —…

Continue reading 22 min

Color of Law

The U.S. Has Much Experience in Killing Democracy

By David A. Love, JD Executive Editor

It should come as no surprise that in a nation that thrived on slavery (that institution was encoded in the Constitution) and never embraced democratic rights not earned in blood, the American experiment has proven a constant struggle to withstand oppressive tendencies.

Many Americans are justifiably outraged that, as the evidence suggests, Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election and assisted the president-elect to victory. Indeed, the prospect of…

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Commentary

White Women Can’t Speak for Me, So I Will Support the Women’s March

By Dr. Julianne Malveaux, PhD Editorial Board

The march is to remind all watching that “women’s rights are human rights”. Black women’s rights will be considered in this gathering because some black women dared place themselves in an uncomfortable space (working with privileged white women is never easy) in order to make a difference.

Ain’t I A Woman”, railed Sojourner Truth, “I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a…

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Commentary

Other Challenges in the Trump-DeVos Public Education Takeover

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

the most effective tactics have been those where the black middle class has been encouraged and assisted in profiting off poor children of color who are the primary recruitment targets of public school privatization. The voucher-charter bull’s eye, to date, has been placed on urban majority-minority school districts where most of these schools are located.

The plans for the privatization of public education have been laid. The only question now is whether public education stakeholders have the courage and the will…

Continue reading 6 min

Sharp n’ Blunt

Apartheid, American Style

By Desi Cortez Columnist

if we can’t transform the Democratic Party then we ought abandon or burn the plantation down and start our own party, The People’s Party. All Power to the People!!!

I ask my people, Afro-Americans, and my Native and Mexican brothers and sisters who’ve too been in this 400 year-long struggle against genocidal colonialism . .…

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Commentary

How Exceptional is the U.S.?

By John Funiciello Columnist

Most developed countries have provided universal health care of some kind to their people. The U.S. has not. Most have tried to provide clean air and water. The U.S. only has done that in fits and starts, usually when there is an emergency. Developed nations provide education for their young people.

If there is anything that will finally put to rest the myth of American “exceptionalism,” it is the two-party system’s monopoly, which in 2016, resulted in…

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Commentary

Kim Burrell Reminds Us How the Black Church Uses, Abuses Gay Christians

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

Our silence, shame, and stigma around issues of identity, sexual practices, and the lack of pastoral care to people deemed “outsiders” are factor contributing not only to high-risk sexual behaviors and the transmission of HIV/AIDS, but also to the silent killer of suicide and homelessness in my community.

Gospel music undeniably has a queerness at its roots that has not only shaped the genre but it has continued to give gospel music its enduring…

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