United States of America
My writing on race, politics, and culture has appeared at the Atlantic, the Huffington Post, the Boston Review, Jezebel, BuzzFeed, and several other outlets. My work organizing digital trainings for progressive political organizers and activists has been covered by the Washington Post. I spent the last year working with political writers at Medium.com.
Previously, I taught courses on writing and social justice full time at Howard University.
If students do not feel respected, they are right to take their own spaces. Many years ago as a black undergraduate at a mostly white university in the South, I successfully pestered a white professor into adding more black women onto our fiction syllabus.
I was writing about race and politics for my college newspaper when Don Imus called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed hoes." "What did those girls ever do to anyone except be Black and exist? " I wondered to myself.
In a lot of ways, it looks like your typical advertisement for a children's item. Only this little boy isn't advertising toys or candy. He's advertising bulletproof vests, and more specifically, bulletproof vests for kids. The ironic billboard is part of the #VoteOrVest campaign started by the Florida community organization the Dream Defenders.
If you're the type of person who reads blogs on the Internet, you're probably already familiar with Reddit. The online community driven by user-submitted content made headlines after hosting "Ask Me Anything" Q&A forums with folks as powerful and established as NPR's Ira Glass, Cory Booker and yes, even President Obama.
People often tell me that I don't look like your average Occupy protestor. I was initially drawn to the Occupy movement for several reasons. As an educator, anything that gets young people paying attention to the world around them is something that I feel the need to support.
In the opening sample of Kanye West's 2013 hit song "Blood on the Leaves", Nina Simone sings, "Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees. Blood on the leaves." In the original song by Billie Holiday, the "strange fruit" in question are lynched black bodies hanging from trees.
Gary Reyes/San Jose Mercury News/__username__ An image of Audrie Pott a news conference in April. Back in September, fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott took her own life after she was allegedly sexually assaulted while passed out at a party.
VOICES This article is part of our campaign on Voting Rights. Check out more reporting, research, and actions on Voting Rights → In 2008, young people-particularly those of color-endured more voting restrictions than any other youth voting demographic that came before, yet black youth turnout hit its highest rate in history.
Hey, Sam Youngman. It's me, someone living in D.C. who eats, sleeps, and breathes American politics for a living. I'm taking a break from having my own opinions validated on twitter (or whatever it is you think I do all day) to respond to your recent Politico piece about working in Washington.
You probably haven't heard much about Sage Smith. Dashaad "Sage" Smith went missing in Charlottesville, Virginia. The day Smith disappeared, she told her father that she was meeting Eric McFadden for a date but McFadden told police she never showed up. Shortly after being questioned by the police, McFadden left town.