Opinion

A story in the New York Times reports that the district attorney in Brooklyn, New York has blacklisted seven police officers whose work is so flawed and so lacking credibility that their testimony is precluded from criminal cases. The story indicates that this is a common practice, but the names of the offending police officers are usually not publicized.

Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked choice for Kentucky Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, just won big in that state’s election. Cameron is the first African American to hold statewide office in Kentucky in decades. He is a staunch protégé of McConnell’s.

On October 4, a bicameral group of Capitol Hill lawmakers wrote a letter to federal regulators, making clear the need for CRA to be strengthened — not weakened — under the guise of modernization. The letter also requests hearings on the issue in both the House Financial Services Committee and in the Senate Banking Committee.

In January 2019, when a jury brought back a guilty verdict against former Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke in the murder of Laquan McDonald, there were loud cheers that justice had been done; namely a white cop finally tried and convicted of the murder of an unarmed black man.

Some prosecutors may demand longer sentences for them to send a message, as one put it, that “prison is the only answer for entitlement and criminality.” That message will always crash hard against white privilege.

State and local officials across the country also reckon with limited resources to house the nation’s half million homeless and its accompanying persistent poverty.

When I read about bulletproof or bullet-resistant backpacks for small children—no matter how practical and protective the acquisitions might be against mass shootings—I was compelled to ask: “Where are we going?!?”

The “normalizing” of this violence against blacks means a slaying is one day in and one day out in the news. Then It’s back to business as usual.

Transparency is a critical component of accountability, and public record laws empower community members by ensuring that they have access to information about our government’s actions. It should not be permissible for BPD, or any other government actor, to shirk that legal and community responsibility.

Across the country, there is an effort underway to strip women of the right to make their own health care decisions. We in Massachusetts have an opportunity to stand up for the rights of all women, particularly young women, by passing the ROE Act.

The photos of Garner being violently assaulted by a phalanx of NYPD officers and Crusius’s kid glove treatment by El Paso officers has been looped on social media with many eyebrows raised

In Roxbury’s Dudley Square, many publicly and privately owned parcels still sit vacant, offering little benefit to Roxbury’s residents. That’s why three years ago we launched PLAN: Dudley Square to determine if the publicly-owned vacant land in Dudley Square could be put to better use.