Journalism – Page 39

After Incarceration: The Truth About a Loved One’s Return from Prison

6Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

After Incarceration: The Truth About a Loved One’s Return from Prison

Author Ebony Roberts gives voice to the unspoken struggle many women face when a loved one comes home. We often talk about the impacts of mass incarceration, particularly on society, but rarely as it relates to how the epidemic is affecting individual families and personal relationships. We don’t talk about how it’s mostly women in families who carry the weight of their loved ones being locked away. It is usually women who have to maintain the home alone, find a way to visit the incarcerated loved one, explain to their children why that particular loved one is gone, and at the same time go without—in the case of being a wife—physical intimacy. And I don’t just mean sex. But what happens when that loved one returns home? Is the relationship that was cultivated in prison hea...

How Cultural Differences Shape Your Gratitude

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

How Cultural Differences Shape Your Gratitude

Americans say thanks a lot, but other cultures may have a deeper understanding of gratitude. If you’re trying to become happier, you’ve probably heard the advice to practice gratitude. “Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change people’s lives,” writes pioneering researcher Robert Emmons in his book Thanks! His studies suggest that gratitude can improve our health and relationships—making it one of the most well-studied and effective ways to increase our well-being in life. But prescribing gratitude to everyone is a problem: Most of what we know about it comes from studying Americans—and, specifically, the mainly white American college students from the campuses where researchers work. That creates a cultural bias in the science, and that’s w...

6Aug

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Journalism

The eternal fruit of Toni Morrison’s Iroko tree

Toni Morrison was and forever will be an inspiration for those who seek to set their imagination free. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison passed away on August 5 at the age of 88 [AP Photo/Kathy Willens] A few hours before I found out that Toni Morrison had passed, I had pulled some of her books off the shelf in search of inspiration for the shape a new project should take. That to me is what Morrison is - a touchstone, a compass and a way of thinking about what kind of place I want to occupy in the world as a human being and as a writer. Like any other writer, I not only bask in her mastery of the English language but also her searing vision of the world and its many defects. It is impossible for me to comprehend stretching my mind into a new projec...

White Supremacy Has Always Been Terrorism

5Aug

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Journalism

White Supremacy Has Always Been Terrorism

And Donald Trump is fanning the flames by encouraging the violent ideology. White terroristic activity has been around since the nation’s birth. But the failure to acknowledge the escalation as a result of President Trump’s continual hateful rhetoric is itself aiding and abetting its proliferation. In moments like this, the script is sadly predictable. Some will blame everything from mental illness to video games for the carnage. Others will self-righteously claim that this is not the time to “play politics.” But speaking truth about this president is far from a political game. It is peddling in a sobering reality. There are no “both sides” here. There is only right and wrong. Never forget, this is a president who described himself multiple times as a “nationalist.” This is ...

2Aug

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Journalism, POLITICS

The Declaration of Independence Told Us What to Do About Tyrants Like Trump

Are we courageous enough to take action? Over the past week, I’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring the trash that comes from U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters. Even the comment telling four mostly U.S.-born congresswomen of color to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” I wish more people would do the same. I mean c’mon. There’s nothing new here: Lots of White folks have been spouting such ignorance to Black and Brown folks since Reconstruction. And guess what? We’re still here! We know Trump is an agent whose role and sole purpose is to further this nation’s particular brand of imperialist white supremacy capitalist patriarchy, while lining his and his family’s pockets. Although a dwindling minority of the popul...

Will Banning Single-Family Housing Make for More Affordable Homes?

1Aug

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Journalism

Will Banning Single-Family Housing Make for More Affordable Homes?

Minneapolis effectively eliminated single-family zoning in order to undo decades of segregation and create more affordable housing options. Other states are watching closely. Nothing captures the housing affordability crisis as well as this fact: In no single city, state, or other municipality in the U.S. can someone earning minimum wage afford a two-bedroom apartment. This is compounded by the fact that housing prices continue to rise, and cities don’t have the ability (and in some cases, the physical space) to add more affordable housing to help keep costs down. So Minneapolis changed the rules, and others are taking notice. In December 2018, the city approved a plan that allows for duplexes and triplexes, effectively eliminating the future of building more single-family hou...

25Jul

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Journalism

How This Black Entrepreneur Went From Homelessness to Housing Others

With help from a business incubator, Tyrone Poole created a platform to help people on low incomes find housing. Collapse and regeneration are experiences Tyrone Poole knows intimately. There was that period back in 2006 when he was homeless—that moment when, on crutches and in excruciating pain, Poole found himself staggering into the bus station in Portland, Oregon, where he collapsed on a bench and threw up. That was how a policeman found him that night and later took him to the YMCA homeless shelter, where he got a cot on the gym floor. Everything he owned was in a bag under the bed. What had led to Poole’s downslide was medical debt. He’d completed his associate degree at Portland Community College and was training to be a firefighter when he suffered a debilitating i...

How Southern Communities Tackle Summertime Food Scarcity

18Jul

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Journalism

How Southern Communities Tackle Summertime Food Scarcity

Without free and reduced school lunch programs during the summer, many children go hungry. Local organizations and churches are stepping up to help to narrow the food gap. Jasmine Caston’s weekdays begin before the sun rises. A single mother of two daughters, Caston works full time and goes to school. Every day is a juggling act. To be sure it goes well, she and her children need to be out of the house no later than 6:20 a.m. Nine months of the year, this isn’t a big problem. The girls are in school. But summertime? That’s a different story. A mythology surrounding school’s summer vacation days is that they’re fun and restorative for children and their families. But this mythology has rarely applied to low-income families of color, especially across the American South, whe...

How to Travel at Home: Finding New Routes Through Our Daily Lives

4Apr

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Journalism

How to Travel at Home: Finding New Routes Through Our Daily Lives

Many of us don’t look up from our smartphones long enough to notice what’s around us. Grandpa Schiffman joshed that he was taking us grandkids on an ocean voyage to Europe. The round trip on the Staten Island Ferry to the city’s farthest-flung borough and back to lower Manhattan took a little over an hour and cost a nickel, a bargain even in the late 1950s. While Europe would have to wait, New York Harbor was unusual enough for kids brought up in the asphalt jungle. There was a limitless bowl of sky above us, swift tides, salt-tanged breezes, even wildlife: cormorants diving headlong into the waves and seagulls snagging the chunks of baked pretzel we tossed them. There were boats too of all sizes—tugs and barges, a fireboat fountaining rainbowed streams of water, and an ocea...

Reasons to celebrate: Where have all these ‘national days’ suddenly come from?

4Apr

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Journalism

Reasons to celebrate: Where have all these ‘national days’ suddenly come from?

While many designations are quirky, others are beneficial — such as June 23 being National Hydration Day — or historic — Day of the Seafarer, June 25. June 20 was Ugliest Dog Day; the 22nd, National Kissing Day. June is considered the national month for candy, soul food, country cooking and dairy. Every day of every month, in fact, is a reason to focus on and “celebrate” something. While many designations are quirky, others are beneficial — such as June 23 being National Hydration Day — or historic — Day of the Seafarer, June 25. Just who decides these daily themes is a historic hodgepodge. From 1870 to 1983, U.S. Congress voted on 11 official “national” days, or federal days, some of which are recognized wholly by non-federal businesses while others less so: New Year’s Day, Martin Luthe...