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Cuban doctors in Peru

Cuba Has 9 Doctors Per 1000 Citizens, Highest in Its History

By News & Current Affairs

Cuba’s health system is in an all-time high as the country has nine doctors per 1000 citizens and more than 485,000 health professionals working in the National Health System. Cuba has more than 100,000 doctors, the highest number in the history of the country with a proportion of nine doctors per 1,000 citizens. Jose Angel Portal Miranda, head of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap), said that after the revolution,…

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Lynette Gibson McElhaney

Reparations Resolution Adopted by Oakland City Council

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Ken Epstien, Post News Group — The City Council this week unanimously passed Councilmember Lynette Gibson McElhaney’s reso­lution in support of HR-40, the bill in Congress to study reparations to “de­scendants of enslaved Afri­can Americans.” Council President Re­becca Kaplan co-authored the resolution. Rebecca Kaplan “This is an important time in our nation’s his­tory where we need to seek to make right that which is wrong,” said McElhaney, speaking at…

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A man representing the Freedman's Bureau stands between armed groups of Euro-Americans and Afro-Americans in this illustration from 1868.Alfred R. Waud, Harper's Weekly

The US Gave Slavers Their Land Back. What About Black Folks’ Reparations?

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, can help fulfill the promise of “40 acres and a mule.” By Taru Taylor, Truthout — The U.S. government was on the wrong side of history when they reneged their promise of “40 acres and a mule” to formerly enslaved Black Americans in 1865. Exactly 154 years later, let’s pass H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, and…

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Mary Turner and the Lynching Rampage of 1918

No More Mary Turners

By Dr. Julianne Malveaux

By Julianne Malveaux — Mary Turner was lynched on May 19. 1918 because she dared raise her voice. Her husband, Hayes Turner, was among 13 people lynched in two weeks in and around Valdosta, Georgia. The lynchings took place because one brutal white man, who was known to abuse workers so severely that he was only able to attract workers by getting them through the convict labor system, beat the…

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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) sponsored HR 40, legislation to form a commission to study slavery reparations for African Americans.

Germany paid Holocaust reparations. Will the U.S. do the same for slavery?

By Commentaries/Opinions, HR 40 Congressional Hearing, Reparations

By Susan Neiman, Los Angeles Times — Born as a white girl in the segregated South, I’ve spent most of my adulthood as a Jewish woman in Berlin. This double perspective has fueled my resolve to explore America’s fraught relationship with its history. It is easy to point to the differences between the Holocaust and the enslavement and abuse of millions of Africans. When examining possible responses to these crimes,…

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Detail of an American flag held by a newly naturalized citizen during a U.S. citizens naturalization ceremony in Atlanta on Aug. 10, 2016.

Citizenship once meant whiteness. Here’s how that changed.

By Commentaries/Opinions

Free people of color challenged racial citizenship from the start. By Ariela Gross and Alejandro de la Fuente, Washington Post — The country has spent days debating whether President Trump’s tweets telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries are racist. Although all four are U.S. citizens and three were born here, Trump’s tweets channeled a long American tradition of equating citizenship with whiteness. But at this…

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President Trump’s recent comments about four congresswomen are widely seen as racist.

Trump’s America Is a ‘White Man’s Country’

By Commentaries/Opinions

His racist idea of citizenship is an old one, brought back from the margins of American politics. By Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times — If Donald Trump has a theory of anything, it is a theory of American citizenship. It’s simple. If you are white, then regardless of origin, you have a legitimate claim to American citizenship and everything that comes with it. If you are not, then you…

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Donald Trump defends racist tweets about congresswoman

Republicans Want a White Republic. They’ll Destroy America to Get It

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Carol Anderson, Time — When in a recent tweetstorm Donald Trump suggested that four Congresswomen of color leave the U.S. and “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” social media exploded. Outrage. Even some news outlets finally let go of the euphemisms and called the tweets “racist.” The Republicans, on the other hand, were quiet. As well they would be. The ideological demographics of…

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