Category: Opinion

The racial differential in the poverty rate is staggering. Last time I checked, about 12 percent of people in the United States, one in eight people are poor. Depending on race and ethnicity, however, poverty is differently experienced. Fewer than one in 10 Whites are poor; more than one in four African Americans and Latinos are poor.

I like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Her progressive ideas are just what we need while Hilary Clinton is straddling the fence, and still cozying up with bankers. Warren says she isn’t running for president, but there are quite a few political action committees urging her to run.

President Barack Obama knocked it out of the park during the State of the Union address. He was strong, progressive, firm, and relaxed. He was almost cocky as he offered a few jokes, smugly announced that he would have no more elections, and just generally exuded confidence. Instead of the kumbaya thing, he laid out his priorities to a Republican Congress that will likely block much of what he proposed, especially when it comes to raising taxes on the wealthy to support his free community college program.

One could not help but be impressed by the millions that turned out in Paris to stand against the Islamist terrorists who killed workers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and four others at a kosher grocery store. Two law enforcement officers were also killed, bringing the total to 17.

As he labored for social, civil and economic justice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was extremely concerned both about the educational inequities that were a function of segregation, and about the purpose and quality of education. As early as 1947, as a Morehouse College student, he wrote an article, “The Purpose of Education,” for the Maroon Tiger, the college newspaper. His article is as relevant today as it was then.

“I can’t breathe,” gasped Eric Garner, again and again and again. “I can’t breathe,” he said, as several police officers were on top of him, choking him, pushing his head onto the concrete sidewalk. The man was not resisting arrest; he simply had the temerity to ask a police officer not to touch him. And because he was allegedly selling loose cigarettes, the life was choked out of him.

Washington, D.C., just lost an icon. In the early morning hours of Nov. 23, D.C.’s “Mayor for Life” succumbed to some of the health challenges that have plagued him for several years. Even in ill health he was, as he had been all his life, an icon to the people, especially those in the poorest part of the city. He distributed turkeys to the poor every year. More importantly, he pushed legislation that would not punish felons when they applied for jobs.