Politics

While speaking at the NAACP national convention earlier this month, President Barack Obama endorsed “banning the box” on job applications so that formerly incarcerated people, like me, have a fair chance at employment. That was a great gesture, but the federal government still hasn’t caught up with the 18 states, 100 cities and counties, and…

As we delve deeper into every minute of the infamous Sandra Bland traffic stop seen around the world, experts (as expected) are clawing into every legal nook and cranny to ask one of the most pressing questions of 2015: Exactly how many rights do you have should you see the popo’s red and blue lights…

President Barack Obama’s visit to his father’s homeland concluded Sunday with an address to nearly 5,000 young Kenyans in an indoor arena just outside Nairobi. There, he told the adoring crowd, “I am proud to be the first American president to come to Kenya, and of course, I’m the first Kenyan American to be president…

Tonight I begin my fourth visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office, the most of any U.S. president. I’ll also become the first sitting American president to visit Kenya, Ethiopia and the headquarters of the African Union. My visit to Kenya, where my father was born, obviously holds deep personal meaning for me, and my…

With 2016 on the horizon, presidential candidates are all on the new policy-wonk flavor of the year: “inequality.” And they’re using it in a heated bid to win as many white votes as they can get. Interestingly enough, the cognoscenti once talked up the canyon-sized gaps between rich and poor as default markers for a…

Being a politician is a tough job because unless you’re in a dictatorship, of royalty or Dr. Doom, you actually have to deal with dissent, disagreement and protests from the people you rule. Is it fun? Of course not, but just about every elected official in America, right or left, has to deal with it.…

It’s a shocking turn of events, or at least a shocking turn of phrase. On Thursday a Republican leader in Congress actually said something on criminal-justice reform that two years ago would have been unthinkable.  He bashed our own dysfunctional system. “We’ve got a lot of people in prison, frankly, that don’t really in my…

The Washington Government Relations Group, the nation’s oldest association of African-American government-relations professionals, held its 6th Annual Tin Cup Awards Dinner highlighting excellence in leadership at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., July 15. Here are some of the honorees and special guests.

Philadelphia, Wed., July 15: In an address to the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, former President Bill Clinton offered a mea culpa for signing a criminal-justice reform bill into law during his two-term presidency. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it,” Clinton said at the 106th NAACP National…

President Barack Obama’s call for major criminal-justice reforms at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia Tuesday offered concrete policy follow-through to issues of racial justice the president raised during his historic eulogy in Charleston, S.C., last month. In the City of Brotherly Love, Obama outlined a series of reforms aimed at reducing the numbers of Americans in…