Tag: nation

Right-Wing Groups Like Proud Boys Seek To Build A White Nation – Regardless Of Seditious Conspiracy Charges’ Outcome
IN OTHER NEWS

Right-Wing Groups Like Proud Boys Seek To Build A White Nation – Regardless Of Seditious Conspiracy Charges’ Outcome

As the House Select Committee held its first public hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, far-right groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were a prominent topic of discussion. At the same time, both of those groups’ leaders are facing criminal charges of seditious conspiracy. They are alleged to have worked together “to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States.” Those charges can be difficult to prove in court. But regardless of the outcome of any prosecution that alleges these groups worked to overthrow the government, our research has shown that the more committed members of these and other extreme right-wing groups believe that the U.S. government, as currently constituted, is illegitimate and should be overthrown and replaced with one t...
Father Of South Africa’s ‘Rainbow Nation’: Archbishop Desmond Tutu
POLITICS

Father Of South Africa’s ‘Rainbow Nation’: Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has died at the age of 90. Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as “The Arch”. When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma’s removal of the respected Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, Archbishop Tutu left his Hermanus retirement home to join the protests. He was 86 years old at the time, and his health was frail. But protest was in his blood. In his view, no government was legitimate unless it represented all its people well. There was still that sharpness in his words when he said that We will pray for the downfall of a government that misrepresents...
Across The Nation Closures Of Black K-12 Schools Threaten Neighborhood Stability
EDUCATION

Across The Nation Closures Of Black K-12 Schools Threaten Neighborhood Stability

Jerome Morris, University of Missouri-St. Louis Residents of the St. Louis neighborhood known as The Ville have been fighting for years to stop the closing of Charles H. Sumner High School, the oldest historically Black high school west of the Mississippi River. Sumner High School has been under repeated threats of closure from the school board and the superintendent, who cite declining enrollment. The most recent such threat arose in December 2020. Established in 1875, Sumner High is named after a former U.S. senator who vehemently opposed slavery. The school’s alumni represent a who’s who of Black people, including rock stars Tina Turner and Chuck Berry, comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory and tennis legend Arthur Ashe. Throughout Black people’s history in the U.S., predo...
Here’s A Strategy For Managing Our Nation’s Fire Seasons, Like 2020
ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

Here’s A Strategy For Managing Our Nation’s Fire Seasons, Like 2020

As of late fall, wildfires are still smoldering under snowfall in Colorado. I am hoping that the cold and snowy weather over the last few days will finally put to bed the 2020 fire season in my state. Through much of October, great pillars of smoke rose in the sky and ash rained down from at least four major fall wildfires, affecting millions in the urban corridors east of the Rocky Mountains. October wildfires are rare in Colorado, especially large ones that burn more than 1,000 acres. Only about a dozen that size have burned since 1984, out of 335 in the state over that period. This fall’s major blazes are a signal of climate change in the here and now. And they’re not the only such evidence in a record hot and dry 2020 fire season, where states across the West are still putting out ho...
The WHO often has been under fire, but no nation has ever moved to sever ties with it
COVID-19, VIDEO REELS

The WHO often has been under fire, but no nation has ever moved to sever ties with it

In the midst of a surge of new cases of COVID-19, the United States this week gave formal notice of its intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization. The move, to take effect next year, will at once deprive the WHO of one of its major sources of funding and marginalize the United States within the field of global health. The Trump administration had been threatening this unprecedented pullout for several weeks, criticizing WHO for its handling of the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in China. The WHO is a United Nations agency that coordinates a wide range of international health efforts. The United States typically contributes more than US$400 million per year to the organization, roughly 15% of its annual budget. The U.S. already had suspended funding in May. In an...
How Reparations to Descendants of Slavery Can Heal a Nation
Journalism

How Reparations to Descendants of Slavery Can Heal a Nation

To truly understand the debt this country owes to Black people is to be liberated from the bondage of miseducation that we’ve remained shackled to in the so-called land of the free. On a spring day, I stood at the corner of Madison and Pennsylvania avenues in the nation’s capital, transfixed on the building in front of me. Passersby zigzagged around me. In my trance, I imagined a “magnificent brownstone front, its towering height,” with “spacious windows.” A “splendid” sight indeed. Through those windows I imagined “its marble counters and black walnut finishings,” and “a row of its gentlemanly and elegantly dressed” Black men and women “clerks, with their pens behind their ears and buttonhole bouquets in their coat-fronts.” It was “beautiful,” just as Frederick Dou...
How We Shut Down the Nation’s Largest Child Detention Center
SOCIAL JUSTICE

How We Shut Down the Nation’s Largest Child Detention Center

Now the Trump Administration wants to reopen it. On the morning of Aug. 3, the last of more than 3,000 children were taken out of the Homestead detention center in Florida. The controversial detention center had served as an indefinite holding place for migrant youth, many of whom fled violence and poverty in Central America and were seeking asylum in the United States. Homestead was an “emergency influx facility”—a designation used to skirt the Flores settlement agreement, which requires oversight and certain standards of care for children in detention. It was run by Caliburn—a for-profit prison operator that includes former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on its board of directors, and cost taxpayers $1 million dollars a day to operate. Children were not allo...