Saturday, December 21

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Mothers in prison aren’t likely to see their families this Thanksgiving – or any other day
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Journalism

Mothers in prison aren’t likely to see their families this Thanksgiving – or any other day

On a mid-October morning, I drove from Philadelphia to State Correctional Institution Muncy, Pennsylvania’s oldest and largest women’s prison. Nearly two-thirds of imprisoned mothers have never received a visit from their children. Shutterstock/Sakhorn The prison, located in the north central part of the state, is set at the base of a mountain and encircled by farmlands, feed mills and the upper branch of the Susquehanna River. The 170-mile drive took nearly four hours. I was visiting Cynthia Alvarado. In 2010, a Philadelphia jury found Alvarado guilty of driving the getaway car in a robbery homicide. The judge gave her the same sentence as the man who pulled the trigger: life without the possibility of parole. I was there to discuss her case as part of project on Pennsylvania’s accompli...
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IN OTHER NEWS

How to Really Divest From R. Kelly And Other Disgraced Celebrity Favorites

Withdrawing support, both intentional and inadvertent, from harmful entertainers begins with knowing how they make their money. Singer-songwriter R. Kelly has maintained a wildly successful music career for the past three decades, despite a long and disturbing history of sexual misconduct allegations against him. But in 2017, a social media campaign to bring down the so-called “King of R&B” was launched amid reports of Kelly holding several women—and girls—as sexual prisoners. And on the heels of Lifetime’s six-part docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia reportedly opened a criminal investigation into sex crimes allegedly committed by Kelly in and around Atlanta, where the 52-year-old once resided. Also, the Cook County state atto...
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The Best Screenshots of Celebs Texting Each Other
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CELEBRITIES

The Best Screenshots of Celebs Texting Each Other

Unfortunately, many times when you see screenshots of celebs texting each other or interacting online, they tend to be beneath a headline trumpeting a massive scandal of some sort. But have you ever wondered how celebs interact with each other online the rest of the time? After all, we live in a digital age where texting, Twitter, and Instagram have become near inescapable parts of our reality and the chances are slim that famous people only utilize them to cheat on each other and insult each other. That’s why we’ve put together the following collection of less-than-scandalous interactions between celebrities online and via text message. Here you’ll see some of your favorite actors, singers, and personalities joking around, arranging playdates, and even giving each other a little helpful ...
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Journalism

A Radical Vision for Food: Everyone Growing It for Each Other

I grow a half-dozen fruit trees along my 40-foot stretch of sidewalk. The generous fig tree just finished, two young apple trees and a pomegranate are full of bounty, and the kumquat and persimmon are ripening. As much as I love the simple act of orcharding, I’m also sharing a radical vision for food and economy in my suburban Los Angeles community of Altadena. What if all my neighbors grew food in their yards, too? What if we shared the bounty with each other? What if you could eat a delicious, varied, and healthy meal from the abundance provided by your neighborhood trees? Forty percent of the food produced in the part of the planet we call the U.S. is wasted. Much of this waste ends up in landfills, where it produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The food–climate nexus is a wind...
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5 Things That Black and White People Don’t Understand About Each Other
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Journalism

5 Things That Black and White People Don’t Understand About Each Other

In the next couple of months, we might very well have our first black president here in the U. S. So I feel that black and white people in this country should start working on embracing, or at least respecting, each other's culture. There are a lot of things about white people that many black Americans don't understand and vice versa. Many times we have a negative reaction to things we don't understand. But when we see our fellow Americans of other ethnicities engage in activities that we can't quite relate to, we should respect that and appreciate their differences. Because no matter how much we try to rationalize, there are things that black and white people will never "get" about each other. With that being said, I have compiled a short list of 5 Things that black and white people don't...
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‘It’s Because I’m Black, Isn’t It?’: Obama Misunderstands the Country, Not the Other Way Around
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IN OTHER NEWS

‘It’s Because I’m Black, Isn’t It?’: Obama Misunderstands the Country, Not the Other Way Around

Race makes people crazy, but often not in the way you’d expect. A nation watched wide-eyed as Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC complained that the Star Wars franchise was racist because the major villain is “black.” Darth Vader is black in the sense that Johnny Cash or Ben Roethlisberger or certain figures from Arthurian legend are “black” — white guys in black outfits — so people kept waiting for Harris-Perry, “America’s foremost public intellectual,” to crack and let us know that she was joking. But she wasn’t joking.One cannot imagine what she’d make of that Adolf Hitler/Darth Vader episode of “Epic Rap Battles of History,” in which the Nazi dismisses the Sith and his off-brand Stormtroopers: “You leading an army of white men? Disgraceful.” And, of course, in the latest installment, The Fo...
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