Politics
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GOP, Former President Clinton Change Tune on Criminal Justice
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…
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Tin Cup Leadership Awards Handed Out in Washington, DC
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.
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Bill Clinton Admits Federal Sentencing Laws ‘Made the Problem Worse’
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…
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President Calls for Racial Justice and Prison Reform
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…
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‘This Is Our Selma’: NC’s Fight for Voting Rights
Monday marks the start of a pivotal voting-rights trial in North Carolina. On the line? Access to the ballot box for tens of thousands of African-American voters. Calling the trial its “Selma,” referencing the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1964 in Alabama, the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP is taking Gov. Pat McCrory to court…
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Police Misconduct and More Killings Go Largely Ignored
While the nation is wrangling over the fate of a Confederate flag still flapping, high-and-mighty, outside South Carolina’s Statehouse, no one seems to have noticed that July is barely into its first full week, and already 26 people across the nation have been killed by police. That’s according to The Guardian’s authoritative “The Counted” project. While the…
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Take Down That Flag, Mayor of Columbia, SC, Demands
I was just a boy in school the first time I read the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, trying to imagine what it must have been like to live through those events and be part of a movement that fundamentally redefined who we are as a nation and a people. I…
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When It Comes to Race, Valerie Jarrett Asks Why It’s All on the President. But Why Not?
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama’s top adviser Valerie Jarrett did a 30-minute interview with Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute. Isaacson asked Jarrett about Obama’s reticence on race. “Some of us feel there was an opportunity throughout this presidency to really deal passionately, vocally and without putting a muffled hand in front of the face on…
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A Black Pastor Reveals How He Came to Support Same-Sex Marriage
My journey toward being an unapologetic supporter of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples began in the fall of 2011 when I requested a meeting with a lesbian couple who had joined our church. I noticed they had joined on separate Sundays so as to appear not to be together, and I wanted to…
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A Forceful Obama Decries Racism and White Supremacy in Eulogy
President Barack Obama tapped into the black church’s soaring rhetorical traditions Friday afternoon to deliver a bold and brilliant eulogy honoring the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the 41-year-old preacher and state senator who was gunned down, along with eight others, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. Grace proved to be the theme running…