Jamala Rogers

The backdrop for July 29th was certainly set with the premature firing of Shirley Sherrod from the US Department of Agriculture. An ambush initiated by blogger Andrew Breitbart who aired a doctored video tape of Sherrod was fueled by the rest of the rightwing media. These are the same people who have been ratcheting up…

Let’s be crystal clear. There has never been full equality in the earning power between African Americans and white Americans. Our free labor for over 300 years (including sharecropping, another form of slavery) put us on a virtual treadmill where the earnings gap has never closed. Racist policies and laws helped to ensure the widening…

As I flew into New Orleans last week, I felt like the ghosts of the Exxon Valdez environmental disaster were floating around the Gulf Coast. EV is one of the country’s largest oil spills yet most of us have vague memories of the 1989 man-made catastrophe—except the victimized citizens and 1300 miles coastline of Alaska.…

It seems ironic that our Nobel Peace Prize President would increase war efforts in Afghanistan. In a minute, the United States will have two full-fledged wars going on with a back-drop of a near-Great Depression economy. And if the US policy in Iraq to the public was unclear, the Afghanistan mission has topped it. Many…

A decade ago, Jobs with Justice was established in St. Louis. It joined a growing number of cities that make up an expansive grid under the national Jobs with Justice founded in 1987. JwJ chapters build a coalition of labor, religious, student and community organizations that are committed to working on issues that impact workers.…

Just as the Texas Forensic Science Commission was about to expose Governor Rick Perry as a willing accomplice to the state murder of Cameron Willingham, Perry ousted three of its members. This move effectively shut down the commission’s review of a report that challenged arson findings that led to Willingham’s 2004 execution. The Innocence Project…

The South African runner made international headlines when she won the 800 meters in a record-breaking 1 minute 55.45 seconds. Caster Semenya’s victory was eclipsed by claims that she was really a male and therefore had an advantage over her female competitors. Accusations of jealousy quickly came from family and friends; charges of racism came…

Recently, the Fairgrounds Park race riot of 1949 was acknowledged. The riot erupted when the City of St. Louis attempted to integrate the pool. For the occasion of the 60th anniversary, I interviewed civil rights activist Robert Gammon, one of the black kids who got the word that they could swim in the once segregated…