Rights and Democracy
I Won the Housing Lottery
I grew up in an affluent corner of Loudoun County, Virginia, where the median household income is nearly $120,000. In September, I’ll be a junior at Harvard University. Coming from the richest county in the United States, where I graduated from a competitive magnet...
Five Laws That Made America a Better Place
Our country has no shortage of big problems. While big challenges are nothing new for Americans, how we deal with them has changed. Fifty years ago, rising social unrest forced Congress to deal with big things — like voting rights, immigration, and access to health...
Throwing Public Education under the Bus
Public education used to be, you know, public — an essential societal investment for the betterment of all, paid for by all through school taxes. In addition to privatization schemes to turn education over to corporate profiteers, public schools themselves have...
Hard Knocks U
In the 1960s, I attended the University of North Texas. It was a public school blessed with good teachers and an educational culture focused on enabling us students to become socially useful citizens. And it was affordable — with close-to-free tuition and a part-time...
The Sentence They Don’t Tell You About
Eight years ago I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. I knew there'd be trouble, but I never could've predicted the years-long ordeal that followed. My revelations led to a four-year-long FBI investigation and five felony charges — against me, not the...
Hillary or Bernie?
To Fight Racism, Protect the Right to Vote
The cold-blooded murder of nine people at a Charleston church made it impossible to deny the persistence of racism across the nation. So do the symbols of support for slavery and segregation that remain emblazoned on public property throughout the South, and scattered...
Creeping out of the Foxhole
At long last Republican presidential hopefuls crept out of their foxholes, where they’d been cowering and maintaining radio silence, to attack Donald Trump. With one or two exceptions, the field went AWOL as Trump trashed immigrants, calling them drug runners and...
Bullhorn Politics
The Money Primary
The results of the first election of the 2016 presidential race are already in. It's the money primary, controlled not by voters, but by super-wealthy donors. In this exclusive election, Jeb is way out front of the GOP pack with a record haul of $100 million, while...
