United States of America
I write features and opinion pieces for outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.
As a native of West Virginia, I love covering politics and culture in Appalachia.
As a former New Orleans teacher, I also write about race, justice, and education.
As Highway 119 cleaves through the mountains of eastern Kentucky, exposed bands of black gold stretch on for miles - come get us if you can, they tease. And for years, miners did: they had good employment that earned them upwards of $70,000 a year and built a legacy of blue-collar pride in the region.
The first time I saw my students ball their fists and lunge at each other, I hurled my body across the room, smashing the buzzer on the wall for security - something I would do many times during my first year of teaching 10th grade in post-Katrina New Orleans.
The Fourth of July used to be a happy occasion. It smelled like chlorine and tasted like rocket pops. For a time, it looked like Barack and Michelle, dancing together for the first time as president and first lady as Beyoncé sang "At Last" by Etta James.
Here is a new strategy for the resistance: Bleed on 'em. On Thursday morning, President Trump took to Twitter to attack MSNBC commentator Mika Brzezinski with an arsenal of insults so medieval they might have been funny had they not come out of the president's mouth. First Trump called Brzezinski "low I.Q.
Someone snapped a photo of the Castlemont team kneeling, and it quickly spread on Instagram and Twitter. At the next game against The King's Academy in Sunnyvale, Castlemont's players took their protest one step further: they laid down on the ground as if they were dead and raised their arms in the "don't shoot" position.
In 1973, the Black Panther Party opened an elementary school in an old church on International Boulevard. At its peak, The Oakland Community School (OCS) served around 160 students, and relied on a combination of grants and private donations to give it total autonomy: the Panthers hired whom they pleased, taught how they wanted, and won awards doing it.
Forty-five years ago, on June 17, 1972, five men wearing suits and surgical gloves were arrested on the sixth floor of the Watergate Hotel in Washington. Their crime? Stealing files from the Democratic National Committee to help the reelection campaign of their boss, Richard Nixon.
The only thing planet Earth hates more than CO2 is the CO2 that comes from hot puffs of hypocrisy. And in the weeks since President Trump announced he is withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, temperatures have been rising. I know we're angry about the direction our country is heading.
Forget Post-it notes and protests. The most permanent canvas for your political outrage is your skin. Berkeley tattoo artist Karen Roze inks a special customer with symbol once despised by thousands.