Only a couple of weeks ago, as the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have a Dream” speech, I was reminded of the Rev. King’s last birthday, in January 1968.
By Michael Ortiz
We’ve heard the argument over and over. “Of course we’re in a post-racial society; racism is over; slavery is long gone; the president is black, etc.” And then we’ve heard the counterargument over and over. “Post-racial?! How can that be the case when health disparities remain significant along racial lines? When unemployment and incarceration continue to disproportionately affect people of color, etc.?”
Sometimes when data is released on social conditions the numbers do not surprise. Such is the case with the revelation from Census data that poverty in New York City is on the upswing and that income inequality in the nation’s largest city has widened.
The warmongers in Washington have stepped back from the brink of waging war against the Syrian people, but no one should imagine they have been converted to peace or have lost faith in the devastating effectiveness of overwhelming firepower in meeting challenges and making self-serving changes in the world.
Five years after the beginning of the financial collapse and the Great Recession, where are we? This week, President Obama offered Americans a progress report. He hailed the steps taken to turn the economy around and rescue the auto and financial industries. He used the occasion, sensibly, to challenge Republicans in the Congress not to do more damage to the slow recovery by manufacturing another unnecessary budget crisis.
It seems the mantra “shoot first, ask questions later (if alive)” applies to how law enforcement reacts to Black males. The latest in a long-line of police shootings occurred on Saturday in Charlotte, North Carolina where, according to published reports, police opened fire on 24 year-old Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed Black man and killed him.
Claudio E. Cabrera
Last week, I saw a video shared on my Facebook timeline that featured children in the Dominican Republic undergoing the same colorism study children in the 1940s underwent in America, where two black psychologists used dolls to study children’s attitudes on race. That same study has been replicated in recent years by numerous news networks to show how the issue of colorism is still a powerful one in our country.
Culture, we said in the Sixties, is the first and fundamental ground of resistance; cultural revolution precedes and makes possible and sustains the political struggle; and revolution and resistance are acts of culture themselves.
By Helen Redmond
Many Americans who do not use illegal “drugs” assume exemption from drug war policies. But regardless of how much marijuana you do or don’t smoke, the U.S. war on drugs affects nearly everyone.
When the Egyptian army first began its offensive against the Muslim Brotherhood, many speculated that such an assault would likely be extended to the same revolutionaries who demanded — in massive demonstrations — that President Morsi be evicted from office.
There have been several signs that this has already begun, though most notably the government repression against striking workers at Suez Steel and the Scimitar Petroleum company, where the striking workers were accused of being influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.
By Paul Le Blanc and Michael D Yates
“A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” published in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, demanded that the federal government put in place policies and programs that would eliminate poverty within ten years. Its authors demonstrated with clear and realistic assumptions about government taxes and revenues that this could be accomplished easily. The “Freedom Budget” was a direct descendant of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers of the march and the architects of the “Freedom Budget” – people like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. – understood that ending poverty, achieving full employment, guaranteeing incomes, winning higher wages and providing good schools, national health care and decent housing would not happen without tremendous struggle, one that challenged not only the federal government but the basic structure of a capitalist economy. Their sensibility was democratic and socialist; it envisioned a society both egalitarian and controlled by the people themselves.
By Rania Khalek
When Philadelphia public schoolchildren returned to their classrooms on September 9, 2013, there were fewer schools, fewer educators and fewer opportunities because of mass school closings and what amounts to financial starvation. It all started late in 2012, when the Philadelphia School District (PSD) revealed it would be shutting dozens of schools to fill in a $304 million budget gap.
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