BY JAMES CLINGMAN Sandra Bland is dead. While many are concentrating on “how” she died, we must also face the reality of “why” she died. All of the circumstances surrounding her death notwithstanding, Sandra is still dead. I cannot help but think that along the three-day period from her arrest to her final moments in that lonely and frightening jail cell, there were opportunities to rescue her from such a h ...

BY DR. JULIANNE MALVEAUX It ought to be unnecessary for an activist movement to hinge on the principle of the equivalency of life. In the worlds of Democratic presidential candidates (don’t get me started on the Republicans), there is a compelling need to point out that Black Lives Matter and White lives matter. The problem with stating the obvious is that White lives have always mattered, and institutional ...

BY HARRY ALFORD During the last seven years we’ve seen our nation go from an economically challenged state of affairs to one of confusion, division, hate and hopelessness. It isn’t what President Obama promised but he did say he was going to fundamentally change America. He has done that and we are in a worse position since the 1970s. Our rivals (Iran, China, Russia, etc.) no longer fear us. They, in fact, ...

BY DR. JULIANNE MALVEAUX Jerry Alan Bailey was sentenced to more than 30 years in federal prison for conspiring to violate federal narcotics laws. Shauna Barry-Scott was sentenced to 20 years for having cocaine in her possession and intending to distribute it. Jerome Wayne Johnson grew marijuana plants and was charged with intending to distribute marijuana. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. D ...

BY GEORGE CURRY There is no question that the criminal justice system is broken. President Obama made that clear recently in his address to the annual convention of the NAACP in Philadelphia. “The United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners,” he said. “Think about that. Our incarceration rate is four times higher than China’s. We keep more people beh ...

BY REV. JESSE JACKSON, SR. “That’s what strikes me. There but for the grace of God.” That was President Obama’s reaction when he became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a federal prison, the medium-security El Reno Federal Correctional Institution near Oklahoma City. “These are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys ...

BY JAMES CLINGMAN Now that the confederate flag has been taken down, complete with honor guard and pomp and circumstance, what are Black folks going to do now? Another question is, “What does the math of the aftermath look like?” Everything boils down to economics/business at some point, so let’s take a look at the past few weeks to see what has really taken place. After all the bluster, the tears, the rall ...

BY REV. JESSE JACKSON On Friday, the Confederate battle flag came down on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. This symbolic, long overdue gesture has significant meaning. The flag celebrated the sedition, slavery and secession of the Civil War. When Robert E. Lee surrendered, that flag was furled. It was raised over the statehouse in 1961 to celebrate segregation, suppression and states’ rights. Previous ...

BY GEORGE CURRY The disclosure that Dylann Roof, the admitted killer of nine unarmed African Americans attending Bible study at Emanuel A.M.E. Church June 17 in Charleston, S.C., was photographed dozens of times holstering the rebel flag ignited a long overdue discussion on what that flag represents and prompted the removal of the flag from the state Capitol grounds in Columbia, S.C. after more than 50 year ...

It is time to bring down the Confederate flag of hate, but we shouldn’t stop there. We should remove the monuments and tributes to the Civil War traitors from public buildings and streets. ...