After acknowledging the initial horror many experienced when viewing video footage of Laquan McDonald being shot and killed by Chicago police, everyone started to notice the same thing – there was no sound. New records suggest that was more than a mere coincidence and reveals a pattern in CPD officers tampering with dashcams and hiding microphones.
Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s music has never really drawn me in. Initially, I admit it was because the public was so strongly against it I didn’t feel the need. Even when I decided to think for myself and checked out The Heist on my own, there wasn’t much to make me want to revisit it; but that’s […]
Nate Parker’s The Birth of A Nation, a film telling the story of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. The attention was so sudden that there was a bidding war the very next morning that ended when Fox Searchlight, the same studio that released 12 Years a Slave, bid […]
On January 25, 2016, the United States Supreme Court has decided that states have to place a ban on mandatory death-in-prison sentences for juveniles retroactively.
President Barack Obama has announced new rules that will change the way that federal prisons operate. For starters, putting juvenile offenders in solitary confinement has now been banned due to a belief that it is overused and can lead to severe psychological damage.
If you were to ask someone what the biggest problem facing Chicago wass there’s a strong likelihood they’d go for the easy answer of “gun violence.” While it’s definitely a serious issue that needs to be addressed, it should be noted that it’s actually the result of multiple factors, such as unemployment, poverty and access […]
What were you doing at 11 years old? Probably not setting up a book drive that fights racism in literature like Philadelphia native Marley Dias. Â
It looks like Flint, Michigan is getting help from nearby celebrities. Big Sean is an active participant in helping the Flint, Michigan water crisis, as he launched #HealFlintKids on Thursday, January 21, 2016 along with donating $10,000.
It’s been two embarrassing years for the Academy Awards on the diversity front. Not only was #OscarsSoWhite a needed slogan last year, but it’s even more justified this year as, once again, no actors or actresses of color were nominated for a single award. To bring some humor to the situation, as well as some additional […]
The original plan was for Desert Vista High School seniors to come together while wearing black t-shirts decorated in gold tape to spell out a perfectly innocent phrase, “BEST*YOU’VE*EVER*SEEN*CLASS*OF*2016.” But there was apparently an additional plan among six of those students to get together for a picture of their own.
I found myself welling up with tears as I chopped potatoes Sunday morning. It wasn’t the onions and garlic. It wasn’t dust in the air. It was the reminder that the breakfast I was making for my family was the same breakfast my father made for me before he passed away last year.
Many thought the lack of diversity in the 87th Academy Awards in 2015 and the #OscarsSoWhite social media campaign that followed would be a sufficient wake up call. The last thing that anyone expected was that the 88th Academy Awards would take a major step in the wrong direction when it was already so far behind.
