Archive
We Need a People's Bailout NOW
One of every five working Americans – more than 32 million people – have lost their job to COVID-19. A tsunami of evictions will come unless lawmakers take meaningful action now. Unemployment is rising - again. Hunger is rising, too. And cases of COVID are rising...
Policing Is Not A Public Good
Photo credit: Sgt. Joe Davis, Utah National Guard / cc For decades, we’ve been told that policing is a public good: available to all, for the benefit of all. But in practice, that’s never been true. One of the basic measures of a “public good” is that it’s accessible...
An Open Letter to LeBron James: Don't Dribble, Organize for Voting Rights
“Don’t Mourn, Organize.” - Union organizer Joe Hill, before his unjust execution in Utah in 1915 “Shut up and dribble.” - Laura Ingraham to LeBron James for commenting on racial justice Dear LeBron, Basketball fans endlessly argue about who’s the greatest player...
Georgia's Primary Election Meltdown
Photo credit: National Archives, USDA / cc The signs kept coming that Georgia’s June 9 primary would not go well. On the last day of early voting, the Friday before the election, Jon Ossoff, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, waited for more than three hours to vote...
Freedom Is Ours To Take: Join Us On Juneteenth
Photo credit: Ted Eytan / Flickr / cc “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man (or woman), you take it.” - Malcolm X So much has changed in our nation’s Capital since my last Letter from D.C. That time of hope...
Education Secretary DeVos Is Using COVID To Get What She Wants
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr / cc As American deaths from COVID-19 crested 100,000, the New York Times reported U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos declared her intention to “force” public school districts to spend a large portion of federal funds they’re...
Alarm Bells: COVID-19 In Alabama's Meatpacking Plants
Photo credit: Hometown Organizing Project / cc Workers throughout Alabama are reaching out to me to sound an alarm on what they are seeing inside meatpacking plants.This piece started out as an informative piece on how and why the COVID-19 virus is spreading rapidly...
We Need A New Food System, Not Meat Industry Bailouts
Photo credit: Government Accountability Office / cc The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on disturbing injustices in our food system—reaffirming the need for systemic change. Slaughterhouses (euphemistically called “meatpacking plants” by the meat...
Neoliberal Capitalism Depends on White Supremacy
Whitehall Street, Atlanta Georgia, 1864. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons / cc Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Jamie Dimon may personally associate with individual African Americans, Latinos and other minorities. They might even employ them. They...
Protesters for Black Lives Are America’s True Patriots
Photo credit: Rosa Pineda / Wikimedia Commons / cc When demonstrations erupted across the country after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers, Donald Trump portrayed the protesters as America’s enemies. Trump called them “thugs,” “lowlifes” and...