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U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Barbara Lee probed the “State of Black America” during the Congressional Black Caucus’s first-ever visit to Massachusetts. Both representatives spoke with the Banner last Friday about Pressley’s decarceration initiative — the People’s Justice Guarantee — and advocated for the Ending PUSHOUT Act, legislation focused on keeping black girls in school and reducing unjust expulsions.

Mayor Martin Walsh announced transformative new plans for housing on Tuesday night, pledging $500 million over the course of five years to ensure liveability and curb inequity.

For the last three years, business owner Brandale Randolph of 1854 Cycling Company was running his operation out of his garage, selling around 300 bikes total. Now he’s planning to scale up his business, moving it into a factory in Hopkinton and expecting to break even by the second quarter of the year.

In his State of the City speech last week, Mayor Martin Walsh pledged $100 million in additional funding to Boston Public Schools, funds that he said would be above regular yearly cost increases and would be channeled directly to classrooms.

The Congressional Black Caucus made a historic visit to Boston last weekend to address the country’s systemic inequality and economic injustice.

Fatema Ahmad has been appointed executive director at Muslim Justice League, where she leads MJL’s  efforts to dismantle the criminalization and policing of marginalized communities under national security pretexts.

Maybelline Perez, 21, remembers how complicated it was to move her belongings from her home in East Boston to her dorm on Northeastern University’s campus without a family car.Her brother Ben, 16, a boarding student in Andover, uses a combination of MBTA buses, subways and commuter rail to go between school and home, making what should be a 30-minute drive into a two-hour-long commute.Perez and her family moved to Boston in 2012 from El Salvador. Since then, they have been living in the United States undocumented. Having a driver’s license would allow the Perez family to take faster trips to Andover and to roam the state freely.

When the Puritans arrived in Roxbury 390 years ago, a common burial ground was essential, as death was a constant companion to the English settlers. Over the next two centuries, the Eliot Burying Ground piled up with those who died early deaths in the cold winters of the New World, those fortunate enough to die of old age, and the dead from King Philip’s War of 1675, the French and Indian War of 1754, the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

For two years, a group of Mattapan neighbors has been struggling with city officials and developers over a pair of projects that promise to place 21 units in their back yards. The neighbors have been gearing up for a planned Jan. 28 meeting with the city’s Inspectional Services Department, which allowed the developers to build their projects “as of right,” meaning without the input of neighbors or a vote from the Zoning Board of Appeal.

Monday marked a historic precedent as four new Boston City Council members were sworn in at Faneuil Hall, forming the most diverse Council in the city’s history. 

Boston College High School is proud to announce that The James E. Cotter ‘55 Courage Award, presented to a member of the BC High community in recognition of courage in the face of adversity, tenacious spirit, and force of will, was awarded to the Honorable Serge Georges Jr., ‘88.

Several dozen activists last week marched from the Boston Common to the headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to protest the Jewish civil rights group’s funding of exchange programs in which local police departments receive training from the Israeli Defense Force on crowd control, counterterrorism and other military tactics.