Southern aristocrats wanted armed militias mainly to control their slaves. So they wanted language in the new nation’s constitution protecting that right. By Nicolaus Mills, Daily Beast — Mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, have highlighted once again the importance of the Supreme Court’s 2008 landmark decision District of Columbia v. Heller declaring that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a gun. Writing for the Court’s…
By Julianne Malveaux — Have you ever been hungry? Not the missed-a-meal, wanna overeat hungry, but the stomach-churning, bout to steal a loaf of bread hungry. Not the luxury of choice, but the sheer desperation of not having eaten for so many hours that food is nothing more than a memory. A dictionary describes hunger as “an uneasy or painful sensation from lack of food.” Synonyms include starved and starving….
By Sikivu Hutchinson, The Humanist — On the bustling streets of Kensington in London last week, one of the Black women I asked to comment on the recent election of Boris Johnson (who has been branded as Donald Trump’s British mini-me) vehemently declined. “I wouldn’t be able to without cussing,” she said, her response encapsulating the rage and distress Johnson’s election has elicited for progressive people of color. The backlash…
By Derrick Johnson, NAACP President and CEO — As I ventured to the southern border near Laredo, Texas, I could not help but think about the tragic shootings in El Paso and Dayton, which are stark reminders of the dangers that plague our communities under the resurgence of white nationalism, domestic terrorism, intolerance and racial hatred germinating from the White House. People of color are feeling less safe today and…
The author, Burt Neuborne, is one of America’s top civil liberties lawyers, and questions whether federal government can contain Trump and GOP power grabs. By Steven Rosenfeld — A new book by one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers powerfully describes how America’s constitutional checks and balances are being pushed to the brink by a president who is consciously following Adolf Hitler’s extremist propaganda and policy template from the…
The same anxiety that drives white supremacists has motivated Republicans to disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. By Luke Darby, The Guardian — Before he opened fire on an El Paso, Texas shopping center, killing 22 people and injuring dozens more, the accused gunman, Patrick Crusius, allegedly posted a manifesto online explicitly stating his motivation: he was trying to stop a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. In April, another shooter…
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — In the immediate aftermath of the massacres in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Donald Trump actually began to contemplate doing a tiny sliver of the right thing. In doing so, he ran straight into the teeth of the Second Amendment, without doubt, the most lethally misunderstood corner of the U.S. Constitution. On the Sunday after the attacks, Trump reached out to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen.…
By Dr. Keith Magee — America is experiencing the most perilous of times in recent history as the result of its president, Donald Trump. Even though Monday morning he stepped forward to speak against the weekend’s hate crimes, it lacks residence because of the hate that has been reverberating since his stance against the Central Park Five, his ascendance in the GOP with the birther inquisition of Barack Obama, and…
By Julianne Malveaux — The US House of Representatives passed the Securing America’s Fair Elections (SAFE) Act in June by a nearly totally partisan vote of 225-184 in late June. Only one Republican voted for legislation that would mandate paper ballots, increase election security, and create safeguards to prevent foreign interference in our elections. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) opposes the legislation and won’t even allow it to be…
In theory, a president can offer comfort at times like these. But this one would prefer to hurl insults. By Richard Wolffe, The Guardian — In normal American mass murders – because such horrors have become so astonishingly normal – the president usually plays the role of some great but helpless comfort blanket. He may be unable to break the NRA’s cold, dead grip on the Republican party, but he…
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