Archive for January 2021

A local state representative has been named to a new leadership role in the Illinois House. 92nd District Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth has been selected as Speaker Pro Tempore. The new position makes her the highest ranked house member, outside the Chicago area. Read more at CIProud.com.

There’s this video clip, that, to me, has become a kind of shorthand for the way Donald Trump walloped American media, catching so many people blithely unaware. It’s from a 2015 episode of This Week With George Stephanopoulos. Read more at Slate.com.

New York Times national political reporter Astead W. Herndon on covering Trump’s first rallies, the biggest mistake in early reporting, and when to use the word racist. Read more at Slate.com.

As insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a certain shock and awe settled over many white Americans. On Twitter, politicians, cable news hosts, and regular everyday white folks seemed unable to understand how an attempted coup was playing out, not “in a third-world country,” but right here in the USA. Those who’d been…

Black women delivered the 2020 election for Democrats. We must sustain the colleges that served as their training ground. Read more at Elle.

Ronell Foster was riding his bicycle through the hushed streets of Vallejo, Calif., one evening when a police officer noticed that the bike had no lights and that he was weaving in and out of traffic. Read more at NPR.

In his first few minutes as America’s new president, Joe Biden made a promise so sweeping that it almost seemed to deny history. “We can deliver racial justice,” Biden pledged to his factious nation. It wasn’t a commitment presented in any detail as he moved on to asserting that America would again be the leading…

There are vast regions of Black life that are filled with joy, romance and beauty. Here are some favorite examples. Read more at CNN.com.

Tamika Palmer prays. To God. To her daughter Breonna. “Tell me if I need to give this up,” she asks. “Tell me if I need to walk away.” But every day she wakes up to the same answer. “It was something telling me, somehow she made me feel that, ‘Not today. You don’t give up, not…

The themes and rhetoric of President Biden’s Inaugural Address — in a departure from his predecessor’s odd decision to channel comic-book villain dialogue but a continuation of the choices used by normal presidents — were a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Biden praised the American spirit, called for unity, reminded his audience of our common…