Thinking over the moments that motivated me this year & how powerfully & clearly this country revealed itself. It was confirmation of all I have known, but I also learned so much more. The clarity with which I see the challenges we face has strengthened my resolve beyond measure.
It started with one of the best days ever. My journey with the #USPS this year has been kind of “how it started...how it’s going.” First, the unveiling of the #GwenIfillForever stamp in January. So grateful for this honor from the @USPS.
By November we were in a pitched battle w/the #USPS to ensure that absentee ballots were delivered on time after new postal leadership imposed measures that resulted in delivery delays in major cities. msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/sh…
I cannot think of a more fitting replacement. #BarbaraJohns is an American hero. At 16, she defied school leaders and led a walkout at her segregated HS in Virginia. Her action led to the Virginia Brown v Bd case. Learn abt this extraordinary activist pbslearningmedia.org/resource/bf10.…
Whew! Tears. #BarbaraJohns did what great activists often do - pushed the civil rights attys at @NAACP_LDF to file the Va. Brown case before they felt ready. Her HS in Va. is now a museum, regarded as the birthplace of the modern civil rts mvmt motonmuseum.org
Simple Justice by Richard Kluger is the quintessential account of the development & execution of the Brown v Bd litigation. But among my favorite passages is the awakening of teenager #BarbaraJohns as an activist: “the man who drove the bus I took...was also my history teacher.”
Why isn't there a serious, public demand for access to remdesivir for ordinary ppl? It is unconscionable that ordinary, ill Americans don't have access to this therapeutic. Trump taunts us w/his "recovery," when his privilege has insulated him frm the reality of COVID.
The focus on the vaccine is important. But saving lives is also important. A great way to build Black support for taking the vaccine, is to equitably provide access to remdesivir & other therapeutics to Black & Brown patients disproportionately suffering & dying from this virus.
So let’s do both. Push for vaccine equity and access and demand the same for therapeutics.
Recently I spoke w/@AnandWrites about the need for institutions to take responsibility for their own role in America’s democratic decline. Like this. The @KCStar taking responsibility for its failures in reporting (or not) fairly & adequately on the Black community.
This is not the first of this kind of broad self-accountability exercise by a newspaper. In 2004, the Lexington Herald-Leader apologized for its failure to report on the local Civil Rights Mvmt - publishing articles & developing film that had languished. washingtonpost.com/archive/lifest…
Pieces like this are so harmful. What so many, including this reporter sadly, cite as Republican cj efforts are just...not. Example: citing grants of clemency as accomplishments of criminal justice reform. An act of mercy toward an indiv is the exact opposite of systemic reform.
Mr. Trump did not keep the two issues separate. His Superbowl ad lifting up his personal release of a grandmother serving an overlong harsh sentence from prison sits firmly alongside his denunciation of grassroots demands for police accountability.
It is part of the project to hijack the concept of systemic criminal justice reform and to rebrand it.
THREAD: Civil rights advocates have been ringing the alarm on this since the pandemic struck. Here’s the @southerncenter appealing to the DOJ in Sept about the desperate conditions in Georgia jails: schr.org/schr-calls-on-…
Lots of attention on the rise of COVID in South Dakota where the irresponsible Governor has stoked COVID-denial and eschewed mask mandates. Not enough attention to what this means for prisoners in South Dakota. eji.org/news/nearly-ha…