Opinion

Working families are, as usual, getting the short end of the stick from the new Trump-GOP tax law. Huge tax cuts that mostly go to the wealthy and corporations are exploding the national debt, and threaten deep cuts to essential public services like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education.

We cannot let the controversy and turmoil distract us from what Trump is actually accomplishing. His administration is fundamentally altering United States policy at home and abroad.

Homeownership is the number one way that working families build wealth, and protect themselves in stormy seas. But black families have consistently been discriminated against, generation after generation, and the results are there.

After 50 years, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lives on through the legacy of Unity Bank and Trust, the current work of OneUnited Bank and all black banks.

Together hundreds of residents to ask for their ideas for addressing segregation as part of Boston’s new “Assessment of Fair Housing.” This community engagement was prompted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s implementation in 2015 of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule that sought to finally make good on a key provision of the Fair Housing Act requiring HUD to actually address not just explicit discrimination but also continuing place based disparities in access to opportunity — a mandate that for nearly 50 years Republican and Democratic administrations declined to enforce.

It’s hiring season in the Boston Public Schools. Principals across the city are interviewing talented teachers to join their school teams. One top criteria they must look for is diverse candidates that reflect the racial demographics of their students.

On April 4,1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life was cut short in Memphis, where he was fighting for dignity and justice for black sanitation workers.

Approximately 3,000 individuals return to Boston from jail or prison each year, and a majority of them will return home to the neighborhoods we represent. They are our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and deserve the chance to rebuild their lives with their families here in Boston. But, the door to opportunity cannot be locked.

There’s a long and shameful history in this country of discriminating against minority borrowers when they try to buy homes. From 1934-1968, it was the official policy of a government agency, the Federal Housing Administration, to refuse to insure loans for qualified borrowers in minority communities — to help white people buy homes and to deny that help to black people. The federal government had set the standard and private lenders enthusiastically followed Washington's lead.

Fear at school was something the Little Rock Nine knew all too well. Facing vitriol, racism, and merciless violence, the Little Rock Nine were escorted, for their own safety, by federal troops to their high school classes. For those brave students selected to make the promises of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision a reality, fear and terror were a normal part of the school-day routine.

In the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting, after more precious lives were stolen, I struggled a little to find appropriate words. As a nation, we have experienced so many of these mass murders, in churches and theatres, at concerts and nightclubs, that the “thoughts and prayers” we all offer start to lose their meaning. They seem hollow — like something one says because lack of action is the real problem and everybody knows it.

In 1986, Mrs. King warned that Sessions had used the power of his office as an Alabama prosecutor to chill the free exercise of the vote by African Americans. As attorney general, Sessions has continued that crusade, targeting not only African Americans, but Latinos, the elderly, veterans and other marginalized groups. Sessions eagerly embraced President Trump’s voter suppression commission, has defended state-level efforts to purge voting rolls, and has engaged in state-level inquiries into voter databases.