An Angolan friend once laughed when my family brought up Kwanzaa. She said it’s a term for currency where she’s from. While Kwanzaa is not an African holiday, dismissing it as another makeshift black creation ignores the positives of the celebration. Kwanzaa is a week long celebration from December 26 to January 1 that puts …
Check out the new article on the Excellence in Trades and Apprenticeship Preparation program at Portland Community College.
The Notorious B.I.G. once said, “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Kills You.” Look no further than Gary Webb. Although he had won a Pulitzer Prize, he didn’t achieve national acclaim until he stumbled upon a story connecting the Nicaraguan Contras to the Los Angeles crack trade. The series and the book titled “Dark Alliance: The CIA, …
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion Read More »
Check out my new piece on Richard Heinberg’s speech as a part of the East Portland Area Project. Focus East Portland: City Pushes Neighborhood-Sized Projects.
Racist costumes have become a hallmark of Halloween, especially on college campuses. Not long ago, I even remember running across an “Crips and Bloods Party” in my Facebook news feed. Students at Ohio University have chosen to start a campaign with posters saying, “This is not who I am and it is not okay.” However, …
Offensive Halloween Costume Ideas: Why Should White People Have All the Fun? Read More »
I like to think I started putting limitations on my dreams when I quit playing basketball before my senior year of high school. Truth be told, I built a ceiling for myself months earlier when I got Ds in both Physics and Pre-Calculus. I wasn’t necessarily a superstar in math and science but I was …
Check out my new article in the Skanner on the Teaching with Purpose Conference here.
Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed tomorrow at 7 pm. He was denied clemency today in what may go down as yet another case of police corruption. Davis was convicted for the killing of a police officer but he maintains his innocence. Despite several witnesses recanting their stories, Davis is still set to die. …
Snitch: Informants, Cooperators and the Corruption of Justice Read More »
How do you sell products to a generation that doesn’t buy anything? As the Internet generation transitions into the workforce, we’re faced with the consequences of a rebellion many of us didn’t realize we were fighting. We grew up being able to get music, movies, news and other media for free, whenever we wanted. Despite …
As we get older we have a tendency to look at some of the things we read as kids, in my case AllHipHop.com and SLAM magazine, the same way we look at professional wrestling. Their rampant typos and strictly Q&A style interviews may not have been the marks of professional journalism but there was a …