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Meet the Black Woman Who Is the Brains Behind the Green New Deal
Rhiana Gunn-Wright is constantly figuring out how best to engage black people on environmental justice and crafting policy that empowers them against under-investment and structural racism. As she sees it, environmental justice is central to black liberation. But, as Gunn-Wright explained to me, issues like climate change aren’t explained to people in ways that relate…
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Kamala Harris Wasn't Allowed to Fail Up Like a White Boy
A lot led to Kamala Harris’ campaign collapsing before the first ballot was cast in the Iowa caucuses. But what arguably doomed her chances was her struggle to disprove she was not the lock ’em up prosecutor many critics accused her of being. Much will be written and researched about Harris’ campaign—especially how black women…
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Kamala Harris' Mental Healthcare Plan Calls for Ending Solitary Confinement, Expanding Services for People of Color
U.S. Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris has released a comprehensive mental healthcare plan that calls for ending the “mental illness to jail pipeline” by reclassifying disorders, ending solitary confinement and a range of other proposals the campaign released this morning. It is a well-known fact that America’s jails are the biggest providers of…
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Post-Debate Analysis: Joe Biden Wants You to Know That the Blacks Really, Really Like Him
ATLANTA—I’ve seen the word gentrification used for housing and neighborhood displacement, but never did I ever imagine that a person could attempt to gentrify an actually race of people. But last night, Joe Biden proved me, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and the rest of black America wrong. When Booker got his chance to speak on…
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Live Blog: From Atlanta, the Democratic Debate
What’s up from the ATL! The Root is here in the Dirty South live-blogging from Tyler Perry Studios, home of black excellence and Madea! That this debate is taking place on land that a black man bought should not be lost on anyone, by the way. Again, we are at the site of a Democratic…
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Democratic Debate: Democrats Can Win Stacey Abrams' Georgia If They Really Want It
ATLANTA—Georgia’s Democratic Party Chair Nikema Williams says the eventual Democratic nominee for president of the United States can win Georgia, if they put in the work. Stacey Abrams proved as much. She delivered some brief remarks Tuesday morning at a roundtable addressing access to voting for people with disabilities. Not being able to physically access…
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Elizabeth Warren Tells The Root How Capitalism Can Exist Without Racism
Summerton, S.C.—Sen. Elizabeth Warren is something of a MacGyver on the campaign trail. She has that rare ability to seamlessly break down the most complex policy challenges and not leave you feeling like an idiot. It has been this intellectual range—not to mention those hourslong selfie lines—that has elevated her to the top of the…
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Scarface Says It’s Time for the Hood to Represent Houston’s 3rd Ward on City Council
HOUSTON—I had no idea what to expect when I agreed to interview hip-hop legend Scarface back in September. A child of the 1980s, I was a keen listener of the Geto Boys and their hood tales of trappin’ in Houston, getting women (to put it mildly) and pullin’ out the chrome on niggas who stepped…
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How Black Flint Residents Are Fighting the Water Crisis Despite Government Inaction
“They want Flint to die.” —Liberty Bell text Walking around Flint, Mich., the epicenter of one of America’s most prominent self-inflicted environmental tragedies, residents feel that its water crisis was purposefully allowed to happen. State officials, from the former GOP governor on down, are letting the mostly black city suffer through lead-laced water as a…
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Meet One of America’s Cybersecurity Warriors
Since 2016, the words “disinformation” and “cybersecurity” have been thrown around a lot, and many of us still don’t know how to protect ourselves against malicious attacks against our elections systems and our social media accounts. We all know that the Kremlin launched a massive disinformation campaign against U.S. voters and those in European nations,…
