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Locked Up and Locked Out: How to Ensure New York's Black Communities Get Their Share of the Marijuana ‘Green Rush’
While Corvain Cooper sits in a prison cell in California facing a life sentence for marijuana-related charges, he is dealing with the reality that he may never be reunited with his family again or get a second chance at life outside of prison. Nearly 3,000 miles away in Atlanta, Robert Stovall was sentenced to 12…
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Reproductive Justice for Black Women, Latinas, More Critical Than Ever
For the past three years, the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights, or COLOR, along with dozens of partners, has hosted a Halloween-themed social media conversation on Twitter about the frightening facts and the disparate outcomes in health, wealth, safety and well-being that reproductive-justice warriors like Sister Song have been fighting to address…
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What Pitbull Gets Wrong When He Says ‘Immigrants Built the United States of America’
It’s one thing to underscore the vast contributions immigrants have made to the United States of America. It’s another to completely erase the egregious history of slavery while benefiting from it. Rapper Pitbull demonstrated such a faux pas last week at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It was there that Telemundo held its 2017…
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Bail Reform Is About Criminal and Economic Justice
There are many injustices in our nation’s criminal-justice system. But one of the greatest injustices occurs before the accused are even convicted of a crime. It’s the application of our money-bail system, and it works like this: Let’s say a mother is accused of shoplifting at a department store and is arrested. A judge sets…
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How a Lack of Access to Healthy Food May Destroy Your Mind as Well as Your Body
It is widely known that a lack of access to fresh, healthy foods can contribute to poor diets and higher levels of diet-related diseases. In the case of brain health, we know that everyone who has a brain is at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, with the greatest risk factors being aging and genetics. But…
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From Fear to Fortitude: One Woman’s Fight for Black Boys a Year Later
This time last year, I was curled up in a ball on my bed, in tears and feeling frustrated, angry and afraid. I was suffering from a condition I coined called “MOBB disorder,” the seemingly irrational fear of a mom of a black boy that he will be unfairly stopped, harassed, brutalized or killed by…
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Flint, Mich., Water Crisis: How Much Is Gov. Snyder Responsible?
We knew the Flint, Mich., water crisis had poisoned people—now the investigation has reached the point of manslaughter charges. Along with several others, Nick Lyon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, was charged June 14 with misconduct in office and involuntary manslaughter for his role in the crisis—specifically, for failing to…
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It’s Time to Revive the Heart of the Voting Rights Act
Fifty-three years ago today, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi, where they had gathered to register black voters as part of Freedom Summer. Their murders, and the brutal treatment of voting rights marchers in Selma, Ala., less than a year later, galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965—one…
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Police Training Should Start With a History Lesson on Slavery Laws
A recent study on police interactions shows what black Americans already know: Police interact in a less respectful manner toward them than they do white Americans. Based on police-camera audio from the Oakland, Calif., Police Department, this evidence is being used to support a change in police training regarding how to teach police to show…