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Wealth Inequality

Fast food workers and union members carry signs as they stage a protest outside of a McDonald's restaurant in Oakland, Calif., on Feb. 12, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the historic Memphis Sanitation Strike that was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

What Happened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream of Economic Justice?

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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Military Recruitment

The student debt crisis is fueling the poverty draft

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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A chart accompanying Dec. 19 Evanston city press release on reparations.

City plans to restructure reparations panel

By Reparations

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…

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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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Activists with Black Lives Matter protest in the Harlem neighborhood of New York, Tuesday, July 16, 2019, in the wake of a decision by federal prosecutors who declined to bring civil rights charges against New York City police Officer Daniel Pantaleo, in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.

America’s deadly wealth pyramid: Eric Garner stood his ground and was crushed for it

By Commentaries/Opinions

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…

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