If we take President Obama at his word when he challenged the Congressional Black Caucus to press on for fairness, then the Occupy Wall Street protests taking place across the country are exactly what the president is asking for and needs, a mass movement against financial and political institutions that behave as self-imagined kings and […]Read More
When we look at President Barack Obama, it is easy to forget that he does not share the psycho-social heritage of the descendents of chattel slavery and that he was raised by white folks. And while there is nothing wrong with that, his mother was an extraordinary woman herself, it does mean that his psychological […]Read More
When I was a child watching movies, it was the Mau Mau who were the villains and the white colonialists who were portrayed as the good guys. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the Mau Mau were freedom fighters and it was the opposite that was true. Now we have President Barack […]Read More
The world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren is competitive in ways not seen before. President Barack Obama reiterated the national effort to ease the path to citizenship for “the best and the brightest” from around the world. And with the globalization of information transfer, they don’t even have to come stateside to […]Read More
It turns out that the cynics who said Osama bin Laden was not in a cave, but was probably somewhere living in luxury, were more right than not. He was in a million dollar compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, living with his wife and family in some of the largest and most distinctive buildings in the […]Read More
“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” is the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and the title makes you wonder what will the elephant say? Because it isn’t just what’s called gentrification that is troubling, after all, communities transition from one ethnic group to another for various reasons. […]Read More
This first year of the Barack Obama presidency has been spent setting the stage for the what’s to come. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are far from over, but they seem to have faded in the popular consciousness, but not for the men and women overseas fighting, their families here at home, those […]Read More
Bill Thompson grew up on Putnam Avenue between Stuyvesant and Malcolm X Blvd. The journey from those streets to being elected City Comptroller in 2001, managing a staff of more than 700 with a budget of $68 million and being overwhelmingly reelected in 2005, is a long one with middle-class struggles, and successes achieved by […]Read More