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“Man in Forest Green,” 2016 Credit Derrick Adams/Tilton Gallery, New York

Who First Showed Us That Black Lives Matter?

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Chris Lebron — As a black philosopher, I am constantly navigating a path through the traditions and categories that define my profession. Most often, that navigation takes place between the canonical Western philosophy stretching back to Ancient Greece and the more recent intellectual output and contributions of previously excluded groups, including women, L.G.B.T people and African-American thinkers. This last tradition — the history of black thought — is a…

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Sugar Slavery

The Bitter Truth About Big Sugar’s Caribbean Colonialism

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Natalie Hopkinson — I awoke each morning dead tired, and often parched. I was going to the restroom constantly. My doctor did some blood work and delivered the dreaded news: My A1C levels were in the danger zone. Like 1 in 3 Americans, up to 90 percent of whom don’t know it, I was what she called “prediabetic.” My body was struggling to process sugar. I had to eat less…

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President Donald Trump shows an executive order entitled, 'Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch', after signing it beside members of his Cabinet in the Oval Office of the White House March 13, 2017 in Washington, D.C.

‘Kicking Off Black History Month,’ Trump Guts CFPB’s Ability to Curb Racial Discrimination by Banks

By News & Current Affairs

“These changes threaten effective enforcement of civil rights laws and increase the likelihood that people will continue to face discriminatory access and pricing as they navigate their economic lives.” By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams — In a move immediately condemned as yet another “shameful” effort by the Trump administration to roll back civil rights and reward big banks, the White House reportedly “stripped” a key Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) office of the power to take…

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Dave Warden, a bud tender at Private Organic Therapy (P.O.T.), a non-profit co-operative medical marijuana dispensary, displays various types of marijuana available to patients on October 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.

San Francisco Shows Nation Way Forward by Throwing Out Old Marijuana Convictions

By News & Current Affairs

“While drug policy on the federal level is going backwards, San Francisco is once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country’s disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular.” By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams — Just weeks after a California measure legalizing the use of recreational marijuana went into effect, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced on Wednesday that…

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The Lincoln Emancipation Statue, paid for by former enslaved people and erected in Washington, D.C., in 1876, has been criticized for representing the history of slavery from a paternalistic perspective.

What Kids Are Really Learning About Slavery

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

A new report finds that the topic is mistaught and often sentimentalized—and students are alarmingly misinformed as a result. By Melinda D. Anderson — A class of middle-schoolers in Charlotte, North Carolina, was asked to cite “four reasons why Africans made good slaves.” Nine third-grade teachers in suburban Atlanta assigned math word problems about slavery and beatings. A high school in the Los Angeles-area reenacted a slave ship—with students’ lying on the dark…

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Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega, Maurice Bishop, and Fidel Castro at a May 1 celebration in Havana in 1980.

Grenada’s March 13 Revolution: Forever Remembered, Never to be Forgotten!

By Commentaries/Opinions

The young revolutionaries of the 1979-83 era, at home and abroad, have all grown into advanced adulthood. It’s still quite uncertain why Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell has again set March 13, the anniversary date of the 1979 Revolution led by Maurice Bishop, as the date for a general election in the three-island state he rules over – Grenada, Carriacou, and Petite Martinique.

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