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James Perry: The Man Who Wants To Run New Orleans
This weekend, voters in the New Orleans Democratic Party primary will begin the process of electing the city’s first new mayor since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. The race has been heated since the beginning—now 12 candidates are vying to replace the discredited C. Ray Nagin as head of the city government. It’s a crowded…
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Don’t Ask, But Don’t Tell Black Folks?
The Defense Department has announced a plan to end discrimination against gay American service members. On the heels of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union pledge to repeal former President Bill Clinton’s policy of requiring gays to stay in the closet while on active duty, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the…
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Michelle Obama’s Healthy Food Campaign
The White House Kitchen Garden is frozen under, but, this Black History Month, first lady Michelle Obama is once more using food to address the epidemic of childhood obesity that has gripped the country and, she said in a recent speech to the United States’ Conference on Mayors, “never fails to take my breath away.”…
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Hillary Clinton Stands Up For Internet Diplomacy
Addressing an international crowd at the Newseum in Washington, the United States’ shrine to a free press and an open society, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a landmark speech on internet freedoms and digital democracy. She announced a $15 billion committment to helping developing and developed nations around the world empower citizens—especially young people…
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Rebuilding a Better Port-au-Prince
Three days after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that sent Haiti from a developing nation to a flattened one, President Barack Obama addressed a statement directly to the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken, you will not be forgotten.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who cut short a trip to Southeast Asia and traveled…
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Would Martin Luther King Get Out the Vote in Massachusetts?
With a Haitian disaster, two wars and a financial crisis on his plate, president Barack Obama nonetheless took time to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the history of the civil rights movement. The president and his family, accompanied by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Joshua DuBois, executive director of the Office…
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Does America Speak Terrorist?
Somali terrorists tried to blow up Barack Obama’s inauguration. Internet yahoos threatened to “lay him out in a box.” He requested Secret Service protection for himself earlier than any presidential candidate in history. And on Christmas, the botched plane bombing by a Nigerian allegedly claiming al-Qaida affiliation exposed America’s security vulnerabilities like never before. Nevertheless,…
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Haiti Is Wearing Your Shirt
When news broke last night that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake has killed thousands and leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, I immediately thought of the things we take for granted in America—building codes, for example. I also thought of a photo essay I once edited about Haiti’s long tradition of recycling and retailoring clothes from wealthy nations into…
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Black Americans Securing the Homeland
At a meeting in the White House to review Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253, the Situation Room was packed with major security brass: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder—as…
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Should Harold Ford Run for Senate in New York?
Continuing the conversation on the race for 2010, here is a surprising development that wouldn’t change the Senate math for Democrats, but could start quite a fight: Encouraged by a group of influential New York Democrats, Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee, is weighing a bid to unseat Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
