Economic justice was always central to Martin Luther King Jr.’s agenda. But society has moved backward on that issue since his death. By Michael K. Honey, Time — When Memphis sanitation workers went on strike in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. knew they had a lesson to teach America. “You are reminding the nation,” he told attendees at a March 1968 rally there, “that it is a crime for people to live…
By Darrel Thompson, CLASP — Reparations for descendants of enslaved Black people have been discussed on and off at least since the end of the Civil War. But the conversation…
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson — After the Nevada caucuses, Bernie Sanders is now the front-runner in the Democratic presidential race. In South Carolina, the next primary, former Vice President…
By Alan Singer, HNN — Author’s note: “Represent NYC” is a weekly program produced by Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN). The show’s guests usually discuss topics like affordable housing, education policy and…
With the cost of higher education skyrocketing, many young Americans from economically struggling communities across the South and elsewhere have turned to the military as a solution for student debt. By Benjamin Barber, Facing South — Earlier this month, after a United States drone strike in Iraq killed 10 Iranian military leaders including the country’s top security and intelligence commander, elevated tensions between the U.S. and Iran raised alarms about…
The Associated Press — American colleges and universities are increasingly discussing the idea of reparations linked to their historical ties to slavery. Until now, schools have created monuments, changed building names and issued…
By Bill Smith, Evanston Now — After three months in which the Evanston City Council’s three-member reparations subcommittee held not a single public meeting, on Dec. 19, 2019 the city issued a press release announcing a schedule for a reformulated subcommittee to develop a reparations plan for submission to the City Council next year. At various times this fall members of the subcommittee that was appointed on Sept. 9 — Aldermen Robin Rue…
By Bob Lord, CounterPunch — Wealth in America has concentrated — and dramatically so — over the past four decades. Since 1980, note wealth researchers Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the top…
Inequality comes in waves. The question is when this one will break. By Liaquat Ahamed, The New Yorker — In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, at the age of twenty-five, was…
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…
Garner scratched-out a living in the gray market. “Not today,” he said when cops came for him. Now he’s dead. By Bob Hennelly, Salon — On the fifth anniversary of Eric Garner’s homicide we were flooded with the video images of his takedown by NYPD officers. What’s been lost in this retrospective was Mr. Garner’s defiant stand minutes earlier when he was first confronted by the police for the economic “high…
Presentation by Jeffrey S. Lowe, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Texas Southern University for the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW). National Emergency…