Left to Die in the Streets

Left to Die in the Streets

As eighteen-year-old Paul O’Neal lay facedown with a pool of blood collecting at the back of his t-shirt, police officers gathered around. None of the officers attempted to administer first aid. None attempted to call for medical assistance. None evidenced even the...
Surveillance Isn’t Colorblind

Surveillance Isn’t Colorblind

During the 1960s, the FBI and NSA followed, wiretapped, and bugged Martin Luther King Jr. — all under the veil of proper legal process. Today, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security spy on Black Lives Matter activists under the guise of...
I Can’t Watch Another Police Killing

I Can’t Watch Another Police Killing

Philando Castile and Alton Sterling became the latest black Americans to turn into Twitter hashtags when videos of their deaths at the hands of police circulated on social media. But I couldn’t bring myself to watch them. I still remember the helpless...
Still Second-Class Citizens

Still Second-Class Citizens

When I heard about the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, I thought back to another name etched into American history: Dred Scott. In 1857, the Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether Scott, an African American man born into slavery,...
The Problem with ‘Blue Lives Matter’

The Problem with ‘Blue Lives Matter’

We’re not long into summer, but already we’re long on tragedy. Police shootings of black men in Minnesota, Louisiana, and beyond. A mass shooting of police officers in Dallas. Yet this surplus of tragedy seems to have created some confusion. So let’s...