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Alabama Senator Hank Sanders

For Me, July 2nd Is Independence Day

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Hank Sanders — July 2nd is an important date to me. It is important to others for different reasons. Let me tell you why. I grew up in a segregated society. It was not just segregated but very oppressive. Most Americans think of segregation as just separation of the races. Separation does not even begin to tell the real story. So July 2nd is very important to me. I grew up going to…

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Saamakan Maroon community of Suriname today

Suriname slave records go digital as the country celebrates “Keti Koti”

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Ray Chickrie — Today, July 1, Suriname celebrates the 155th anniversary of the end of slavery, emancipation or Keti Kota. It is also known locally as Maspasi. Slavery came to an end in 1863 in Suriname, but prior to that enslaved Africans waged wars of liberation and freed themselves from bondage (Maroons) and signed treaties with the Dutch. The Netherlands signed peace treaties with the Nyduka (Akkan) in 1760,…

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Sen. Kamala Harris

African-American Senators Introduce Anti-Lynching Bill

By News & Current Affairs

By Vanessa Romo, NPR — Congress’s three African-American senators introduced a bipartisan bill Friday to make lynching a federal crime. Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., drafted the bipartisan legislation, which defines the crime as “the willful act of murder by a collection of people assembled with the intention of committing an act of violence upon any person.” It also classifies lynching as a hate…

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1n 1963 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass demonstration in Birmingham, Ala., to pressure the Kennedy administration to actively defend the civil rights of black citizens.

White America’s Age-Old, Misguided Obsession With Civility

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Thomas J. Sugrue, The New York Times — Recent disruptive protests — from diners at Mexican restaurants in the capital calling the White House adviser Stephen Miller a fascist to protesters in Pittsburgh blocking rush-hour traffic after a police shooting of an unarmed teen — have provoked bipartisan alarm. The CNN commentator David Gergen compared the anti-Trump resistance unfavorably to 1960s protests, saying, “The antiwar movement in Vietnam, the civil rights movement…

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Ben Jealous addresses supporters at a primary-election-night party on June 26, 2018.

Ben Jealous Is Ready to Make Maryland America’s Laboratory of Democracy

By Editors' Choice

The former NAACP head’s big win in a key gubernatorial primary sets him up as a Democrat who can run and win with a bold progressive vision. By John Nichols, The Nation — Ben Jealous entered the race for governor of Maryland with a remarkable résumé—Rhodes scholar, investigative journalist, past president of the Rosenberg Foundation, founding director of Amnesty International’s US Domestic Human Rights Program, youngest-ever national president of the NAACP, high-profile…

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A woman protests at a town-hall meeting being held by Thomas Homan, acting director of enforcement for ICE, in Sacramento, California, March 28, 2017.

Against Civility

By Commentaries/Opinions

You can’t fight injustice with decorum. By Sarah Leonard, The Nation — Michelle Obama’s 2016 declaration that “when they go low, we go high” quickly became the unofficial motto of the anti-Trump resistance. But instead of being used against Trump himself, this attitude is now being wielded against protesters confronting his administration’s obscene immigration-detention policies. Even in the face of family separations, a racist travel ban, and overt, violent white…

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