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Democrat Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California, spoke Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019, at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair. Des Moines Register

Kamala Harris on reparations for slavery: ‘It can’t just be, ‘Hey … write some checks’

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Barbara Rodriguez, Des Moines Register — U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris says she supports studying reparations, but she’s not sure what any resultant program would look like. The senator from California and Democratic presidential hopeful said Sunday during a Des Moines Register editorial board meeting that the idea, which would grant compensation to individuals impacted by slavery and racial discrimination, is complex and deserves to be examined carefully. “This stuff…

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NRA Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre

The NRA Is a Symptom of the Racism That Drives Violence in the United States

By Commentaries/Opinions

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.…

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The Cathedral of our Lady of Victories in Yaounde, Cameroon.

In Cameroon, religious freedom can’t be separated from politics

By Commentaries/Opinions

By R. Drew Smith, RNS — American religion and politics have been stubbornly connected — except where we pretend they aren’t. Despite constitutional separations between church and state, religion has been more closely tied to politics and politics more closely tied to religion than most care to admit. And yet, advocates for international religious freedom often treat religious freedom and political freedom as totally separate and distinct domains. This separation…

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Donald and Melania Trump arrive in El Paso.

Trump could renounce white nationalism – but he can’t pretend he cares

By Commentaries/Opinions

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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Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg: ‘Systemic racism is a white problem’

By News & Current Affairs

By Paul LeBlanc, CNN — Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Thursday said “systemic racism” in the US is a “white problem” in the wake of two mass shootings in the US last weekend — one of which involved a white supremacist suspect. Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Miami, Buttigieg said, “We are by no means even halfway done dealing with systemic racism in this country.…

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Civil rights advocates carry placards during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in Washington

Truth and Reconciliation: Addressing Systematic Racism in the United States

By Commentaries/Opinions, Editors' Choice

By Danyelle Solomon — 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of Africans sold into bondage arriving on Virginia’s shores. It has been 156 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 55 years since the end of Jim Crow, and 51 years since the civil rights movement. All of these moments in U.S. history represent crossroads—moments where the country made a choice or where people demanded that the words on the pages of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights became more than words; that policies and practices were equitably distributed among all people, not just a select few…

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