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The Climate Change Debate: Black People Are Being Left Out and That Can Be Deadly
When Bloomberg Media convened an invitation-only forum of notables on “The Future of Climate Change” during the first weekday of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last summer, there was only one black person at the table. When that person, economist Julianne Malveaux, finally asked what that event’s cross section of environmentalist elite were doing…
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Gentrification and Food Deserts Got You Down? There’s an App for That
There are a number of social-justice movements, but urban-planning movements are starting to catch up. With that comes the next generation of “new urbanists” and creative designers of public spaces who are falling in love with big social terms like “equity” while scrambling to create technology that can visualize it. And if neighborhoods are the…
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A Group of Black State Legislators You Probably Don’t Know Just Met to Get Ready for the Age of Trump
Unbeknownst to the vast majority of folks, there are more than 10,000 black elected officials nationwide on the local, state and federal levels. Even less known is the fact that 700 of them are state legislators: state representatives, delegates and state senators, many congregating in state capitals in nearly all the 50 states, in addition to…
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4 Ways the Jill Stein Recount Screws Black Voters
Americans are, based on their loosely knit, religiouslike obsession with professional sports, a replay nation. When bad calls occur, millions of fans jump from couches and look to replays for divine intervention. For proof, look no further than the oversized hope that Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s ambitious (and pipe-dreamy) move to recount ballots in…
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Trump’s Federal-Workforce Plans Will Blow Up the Black Middle Class … and a Lot More
If you’re black and work for the federal government, you were among a small, but very anxious, crowd of election night viewers who watched the results stream in with all the intensity of a football fan who had just bet his house on a bad playoff game. As any chance at an Electoral College victory…
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3 Reasons Keith Ellison Should Not Lead the Democratic Party
Real talk from one Ellison to another: This isn’t really the right time for U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) to chair the Democratic National Committee. That’s not to say Ellison doesn’t know what he’s doing. And it’s not saying he isn’t the on-the-ball tenacious champion of progressive causes we know him to be. But if…
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A Black Political Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Trump Galaxy
Nowhere does the question “What’s the next step?” carry more significance than in black America. Safe to say that most black voters feel like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow, repeatedly slain by aliens on a violent beachhead one day and repeatedly waking up the next in a dopey haze of “Did that just happen?”…
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Black Women Were the Only Ones Who Tried to Save the World Tuesday Night
With dust settling on the biggest political upset in U.S. history, the hazy day after is an atom-bomb-drop mess of circular firing squads, blame games and armchair-quarterbacking analysis of what just happened. And while the top-line analysis pretty much points to white America’s collective anti-black streak as the primary culprit, we are now getting a…
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4 Ways the FBI Director’s Election Ambush Was White Male Privilege at Its Best
Black folks know all about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It’s a history dipped in the ongoing harassment, surveillance and unmitigated unconstitutional destruction of black life and leadership. And so, the eleventh-hour, October-surprising relaunch of one of the fakest political scandals in recent memory wasn’t unusual behavior for the agency. Former Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent…
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4 Reasons Not #VotingWhileBlack Is Dangerous
Parental discretion is advised, but imagine this a few months from now: the pained looks of fake composure and shock as the first black president, along with his illustrious first lady, stomach an inaugural ceremony for a guy who erected his white nationalist political empire on the false claim that said black president was born…
