Forced strip searches in Minnesota prisons continue despite zero tolerance claims. Advocates and survivors say the degrading practice must end and call for body scanners and accountability.
Opinion
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Posted inOpinion
The right to vote is on trial. Again.
Ever since I was five years old, walking to the polls with my mother, I wanted to vote. I remember watching her proudly cast her ballot, knowing it was both a right and a responsibility hard-won by generations before us. So I proudly applied for my voter card as soon as I turned 18, and […]
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What Black women want and what Virginia needs
All skinfolk ain’t kinfolk. This admonishment came from novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most prolific Black literary figures of the 20th century. Tracy Chiles McGhee, a Zora Neale Hurston biographer, shares context, noting this reference is loosely drawn from Hurston’s 1942 autobiography, “Dust Tracks on a Road.” Zora unapologetically leaned into […]
Posted inOpinion
End using MN public funds for genocide
Why is Minnesota still doing business with a country whose soldiers shot a five-year-old girl 335 times? Her name was Hind Rajab. For nearly two years, Minnesota Labor for Palestine has joined workers around the world in demanding an end to what is being called history’s first live-streamed genocide. Yet the Minnesota State Board of […]
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I posted an ICE tip line in anger. I’ll regret it forever.
Dear Chicago, You were my second home for nearly 15 years. I still love you deeply. And today, watching ICE raids tear through your neighborhoods, I feel nothing but heartbreak and shame. I’m writing to apologize for something I did in 2016, right after Trump’s first election win. In anger over what I saw in […]
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We still have power until we give it away
Thirty years after the Million Man March, the fight for democracy and self-determination continues. The No King’s Movement revives that spirit of collective power — a reminder that unity remains our greatest defense against tyranny.
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When Trump’s troops come, it won’t be to help Black people
I’ve lived long enough to know that when power feels cornered, it looks for a mirror to break. The Insurrection Act is that mirror, a 19th-century law revived whenever those in charge want to project fear instead of face truth. Written in 1807, the Act allows the president to deploy the military on U.S. soil, […]
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Lifeline for Black student parents at risk
Last month, Senator Tammy Duckworth and Representative Katherine Clark reintroduced the Child Care Access Means Parents in Schools (CCAMPIS) Reauthorization Act to keep the program running through 2031 and increase its funding to $500 million annually. CCAMPIS is designed to help low-income student parents cover the cost of child care. It can fund on-campus or […]
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Shutdowns: what they do and who they sacrifice
Tell the truth about who suffers when the government disappears, and about who profits from the disappearance.
Posted inOpinion
Since O.J.’s trial, the rule of law has taken a beating
If we lose it, we’re lost Thirty years ago, when the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial was announced on Oct. 3, half the nation exhaled in relief and the other half gasped in disbelief. I was there, a member of the defense team many dubbed the “Dream Team.” I remember vividly the polarized emotions […]
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The unseen cost of our beauty obsession
Our culture’s obsession with Eurocentric beauty standards fuels a “beauty sickness” that devalues natural Black hair, skin, and bodies. This op-ed names the harm and makes the case for authenticity, self-love, and rejecting manufactured ideals.
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We must accept our horrendous American past
As the Trump administration pressures the National Park Service to remove references to slavery and other injustices, this commentary argues that erasing the record won’t heal the nation. The iconic image of Gordon (“Whipped Peter”)—his back scarred by bondage—stands as indelible proof of a history that must be told fully and truthfully.
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Don’t let your climate power slip away
A call to action “You have power unless you give it away” are words my grandmother instilled in me as a young boy growing up in the mountains of Appalachia. Her words have been echoing in my head as the seasons turn. Today is the first day of fall, and already the air feels unsettled, […]
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Support our prisons’ invisible caregivers
Inside Maryland prisons, incarcerated people routinely act as nurses, chaplains, and social workers for one another—unpaid, unprotected, and unseen. Rev. Jamesina E. Greene urges lawmakers to pass a Prison Care Standards Act to mandate adequate health staffing, create peer-caregiver training and certification, and require transparency about in-prison care.
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State drug affordability boards need community input to succeed
Minnesota’s PDAB can cap drug reimbursement rates, but critics argue UPLs risk disrupting access to HIV medications and undermining ADAP/340B-funded services. Patients urge meaningful engagement so affordability doesn’t come at the cost of availability.
Posted inOpinion
The B-word: Use with caution
The B-word is both wound and shield. This essay maps its history, Black women’s experience, pop-culture reclamation, and the boundaries that keep respect intact.
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Many feel conflicted mourning Charlie Kirk’s death
Charlie Kirk’s killing is a tragedy—and for many, it brings conflicted mourning. A marriage and family therapist outlines how to hold compassion for a life lost while rejecting harmful rhetoric, and offers three practical steps to process grief, avoid false binaries, and lower the temperature in our public life.
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Black misleaders collaborate with ‘tough on crime’ politicians
This Baltimore over policing commentary says Trump’s rhetoric and bipartisan calls for federal “surges” revive a legacy of criminalizing Black activism and communities, and urges a turn toward self-determination.
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What Kirk assassination reveals about America
This Charlie Kirk commentary rejects political violence and examines how dehumanizing rhetoric breeds it. Praising extremists as martyrs, the author argues, only deepens the harm.
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Charlie Kirk: The hate he put out came back on him
This Charlie Kirk commentary political violence argues that America’s rote condemnations overlook the core issue: rhetoric that dehumanizes communities and invites violence, even as some seek to make Kirk a martyr.