Mohamed Ahmed is a 14-year old Texan from Irving who loves to invent and build things. This week, he built a homemade clock and brought it to school to show his teacher, thinking it would impress him. What happened next is has sent a shockwave of outrage across the country and across the globe and even prompted Hillary Clinton to […]

Photo by Anne C. Savage. “Great way to build a political movement. Those of you who defended the Netroots Nation takeover by #BlackLivesMatter need to explain this.” I’m on a number of private national listservs for progressive activists, bloggers, and organizers. This demand was thrown at those of us on one of them who defended the BLM protest at the […]

I’m on a listserv along with Working Families Party communications director Joe Dinkin. He posted his initial response to the #BlackLivesMatter protest at the presidential candidates townhall meeting at Netroots Nation last Saturday that I found to be one of the most impressive analyses of the event that I’ve read. He turned it into a piece for The Nation titled […]

The following is a guest post from Sommer Foster, the Political Director for Equality Michigan and a long time political activist. Like Anne and me, Sommer was at the #BlackLivesMatter protest during the presidential candidates’ townhall meeting last Saturday at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix. Anne and I have shared our perspectives as white progressive allies. Sommer brings the […]

NOTE: This post has been updated HERE and you can see more photos from the protest in Anne’s post HERE. The main event at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona this year was a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring one-on-one discussions between journalist and undocumented American Jose Antonio Vargas and presidential candidates Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders. I […]

Last Friday while many of us were celebrating the Supreme Court decision making marriage equality law across the USA, two black churches in the South were burned down. That came on the heels of two others in the days just before. Via FaithGardner at Daily Kos, here’s the list: College Hill Seventh Day Adventist church in Knoxville, Tennessee on June […]

I don’t like to throw around the phrase “must see!” much but this video, in my opinion, is something everyone should watch. It will only take three minutes of your time but this poetry slam performance by Darius Simpson & Scout Bostley says more about how women and minorities experience our society than any book or movie ever could. Pay […]

This post has been updated to reflect Brian Klawiter’s conviction on assault and battery charges and for parole violation. After the owner of Indiana pizzeria Memories publicly declared she wouldn’t make her pies for same-sex weddings, she raked in well over $800,000 from a GoFundMe.com fundraiser. Eager to get in on the action, or at least to share the limelight […]

After a Department of Justice investigation, Ferguson City Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty, was fired after 19 years on the job for using her city government email to send racist emails. One email showed a photo of Ronald Reagan feeding a bottle to a chimpanzee with the caption “Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in 1962.” Another said […]

There’s been so much in the news about over-the-top idiocy from Michigan Republicans lately that I thought I’d just put them all in one post. Over the past week or so, they’ve been trying to further degrade a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion and to corrupt our democracy by rigging the electoral system in favor of […]

“The Talk” painting by Michael D’Antuono, reproduced with permission by the artist. As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Day across the country, artist Michael D’Antuono released his latest painting called “The Talk”. Here’s what D’Antuono has to say about his piece: In honor of Martin Luther King Day, activist artist Michael D’Antuono is releasing “The Talk,” his painting highlighting […]