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Woman stands in the doorway of then new Historic Colored Entrance at the Lyric Theatre, in Birmingham, Ala

Why Jews should support reparations for slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Rabbi Sharon Brous — There is 2,000-year-old rabbinic dispute over what ought to be done if a palace is built on the foundation of a stolen beam. One rabbi, Shammai, argues that the whole structure must be torn down, the beam retrieved and returned to its rightful owner. No home can flourish on a foundation built illegally and immorally. Another rabbi, Hillel, offers a different take: What sense does it make to demolish it? Let the thief pay for the beam, considering its full value as the foundation of what is now a beautiful home. Neither argues that you can pretend, year after year, generation after generation, that the beam wasn’t stolen.

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March 10, 2018
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Stone Mountain

Is Stone Mountain Memorial a Gigantic Tribute to White Supremacy?

By Commentaries/Opinions

Some see the monument as “the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world.” By Debra McKinney, Southern Poverty Law Center — From its north side, Stone Mountain is a formidable sight. Staggeringly steep, nearly five times as high as Niagara Falls, it rises from Georgia’s wooded landscape like a rogue wave. This anomalous, igneous dome east of Atlanta is the centerpiece of a state park that draws 4 million visitors a year. Forty stories above ground, front and center on the gunmetal-gray face of the stone, is the largest bas-relief carving on the planet, a Civil War memorial to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. These leaders of the Southern rebellion against the United States sit astride their steeds, hats over their hearts, on a three-acre backdrop etched into the mountainside.

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March 9, 2018
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Slave sale, Charleston, South Carolina.

When Emancipation Finally Came, Slave Markets Took on a Redemptive Purpose

By Reparations

During the Civil War, the jails that held the enslaved imprisoned Confederate soldiers. After, they became rallying points for a newly empowered community By Jonathan W. White, Smithsonian — For decades before the Civil War, slave markets, pens and jails served as holding cells for enslaved African-Americans who were awaiting sale. These were sites of brutal treatment and unbearable sorrow, as callous and avaricious slave traders tore apart families, separating…

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February 28, 2018
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U.S. Census

Who Counts?

By Commentaries/Opinions

How the Trump administration’s scheme to rig the census threatens American democracy By Eric H. Holder Jr., New Republic — In his first year in office, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a daunting number of direct and open attacks on long-respected American rights and freedoms—threatening immigrants, the media, health care, transgender rights in the military, and much else. But there have been other, indirect and behind-the-scenes attacks, too, which may be no less damaging to…

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February 20, 2018
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caribbean-residents-see-climate-change-severe-threat-us-dont-heres

Caribbean residents see climate change as a severe threat but most in US don’t — here’s why

By News & Current Affairs

People in the U.S. and the Caribbean share vulnerability to climate change-related disasters, but only in the Caribbean is the public truly worried. Why? By Elizabeth J. Zechmeister and Claire Q. Evans, The Conversation — During the 2017 Atlantic basin hurricane season, six major storms – all of which were Category 3 or higher – produced devastating human, material and financial devastation across the southern United States and the Caribbean.

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February 14, 2018
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