A Peek Inside Travis Hunter’s New Jacksonville Mansion
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Earth Day Dos and Don'ts
It’s Earth Day and I’m keeping things real simple. I plan to spend the day near Prospect Park. In fact, I plan to go the Botanical Gardens and stand in wonder at the cherry blossoms [I may be too late for that, but it’s the green thought that counts. Right?]. Better yet, I advise all…
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Taking Green Global: Tougher than You Think
This Earth Day, supporters of political action on energy policy are trying to keep pace with the threat of devastating climate change. Back from recess, a handful of congressional committees are holding hearings as I type, about the scale of American response to the threat, and just what we’ll have to show for ourselves at…
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Greener Than Thou
I recycle. I stay away from aerosol cans, the kinds that reduce the earth’s rapidly depleting ozone layer. I try to choose sustainable foods off the menu if I eat out and I don’t let the faucet run while I’m brushing my teeth. When I’ve finished with the day’s newspapers, they go into the recycler.…
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Earth Day in Da 'Hood
LITTLE KNOWN FACT: When you live in the ‘hood, “environmentalism” means urinating outside. It’s not about separating your plastics and paper or whatever. Often, it’s about figuring out how to “recycle” the copper plumbing from the abandominum across the street for some grocery money. Poor people live in the now. People like me. I live,…
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Green Collar Hero: Baye Adofo-Wilson
Baye Adofo-Wilson grew up in Paterson, N.J., about 20 minutes away from the rough and tumble of Newark, a city in constant need of rehabilitation and revitalization. In 1999, he took an interest in Newark’s Lincoln Park Coast neighborhood, an area that had been home to black artists and jazz music, and started the Lincoln…
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Green Collar Hero: Brenda Palms-Barber
April is usually a busy time for Brenda Palms-Barber. Bee season has started and that means tending to the beehives owned by her 2-year-old organization, Sweet Beginnings, LLC. What’s unique about Palms-Barber’s bees is that they are urban-raised, creating their honeycombs in the heart of Chicago. Once their honey is ripe, Palms-Barber and her employees…
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Green Collar Hero: Zakiya Harris
What do you get when you combine phat beats and positive rhymes with organic food and alternative energy? Zakiya Harris’ music festival and environmental workshop, Grind for the Green (G4G). Harris has used hip-hop music to encourage young people in the San Francisco Bay area to adopt a more eco-friendly lifestyle. African-American and Hispanic youth,…
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Green Collar Heroes
The green movement is about more than celebrities driving hybrid cars and building green homes. It’s about everyday people around the country doing grassroots work to reshape their streets, blocks, neighborhoods and cities. Through strategies ranging from hip-hop to children’s television to beekeeping—yes, beekeeping!—these 10 community leaders are making the green movement accessible, fun and…
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The Root Goes Green
In honor of Earth Day, The Root is going deep on the ties between black people and the earth. We dig in to everything from Michelle Obama’s potential impact on farming to how to plant gardens on housing project rooftops to creating green jobs in black neighborhoods. Guest writers Majora Carter, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and Sen. John Kerry…
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Van Jones: The Face of Green Jobs
Years before it was announced that Van Jones, the premier green-jobs advocate in the country, was headed to the White House, it was clear that Van Jones was headed to the White House. Thomas Friedman devoted an entire 2007 column to Jones, writing of his lofty goals, “I would not underestimate him.” Jones muscled his…