“There are a few things that people don’t know about my brother Samuel Harrell. He wasn’t just an inmate,” Cerissa Harrell tells a group of nearly 50 prepared to blockade the Dutchess County District Attorney’s office on Poughkeepsie’s very public Main Street. Cerissa stands with Diane Harrell, Samuel’s widow. Hands…
Ukraine held together for almost a year and a half. But political violence last week showed Kiev’s power is growing more fragile than many thought. Our own photographer’s face is proof.
Lynchburg, VA—Amos 5:24- But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.
The following correspondence between Brian Alsup and Kiese Laymon took place during the week of August 31, 2015. As John Callahan once wrote of the decades-long exchange between Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison in Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters, it is “the bounty of a rare and spontaneous friendship in which…
I began teaching in the Social Work Department at North Carolina State University in 2011. As a faculty member teaching the anti-oppression social justice course, I sought to use the lessons of Hurricane Katrina to talk about the history of systemic oppression in the United States.
Yesterday, the New York office of the largest online male escort service, Rentboy, was raided by the NYPD and Department of Homeland security. Its CEO, Jeffrey Hurant, and six other employees were arrested. They are accused of facilitating prostitution, among other charges. After the raid, a Rentboy escort and former…
Twenty years ago, Friday and Species were blowing up at the box office. Groove Theory’s “Tell Me” and Notorious B.I.G’s “One More Chance (Remix)” were in heavy rotation on my Sony Walkman. I had just graduated from high school in Philadelphia and was finally dealing with my sexuality. This was the summer sex workers…
I was 14, just starting high school at an all-boys public school in the Bronx, when I began to feel a strong physical attraction to other boys. I was quiet and observant, and I didn’t yet know if I should, or could, act on those emotions.
D’Angelo’s “Untitled” is on BET, your forehead pressed against the screen trying to look down, praying there’s a few more inches of TV. you don’t know what drives you to press your skin to the screen filled with his skin but you let yourself be driven, be hungry, be whatever this is when no one is around. you don’t…
It’s late July. There is a helicopter circling. A “ghetto bird” on this clear, dark blue night. I’m in my bed, staring at the ceiling fan, trying to sleep. It’s 1:30 a.m. It’s 2:00 a.m. I’m struggling. I’m tired. It’s hot. Someone’s dog is barking. I am now on Facebook, seeing post after post about rumors, or fact, of…
The first friend I made in Elizabeth, New Jersey was a white kid named Billy. As a New York transplant my Dominicano look wasn’t too popular with Jersey folk. I had an afro, wore dress pants, a collared shirt, and black leather shoes with little gold buckles. Most of the kids just wanted to know what my thing was.…
AMES, IOWA—Abortion. Abominable gays. And god’s abiding dislike of the current Democratic administration. Hey 90s kids: remember 1996? Remember the Culture Wars? They’re back.
In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, and with research indicating that the numbers of Americans who identify as religious are declining, the Religious Right seems to be losing its grip on American politics.
For the past few months, we have been bringing you true stories of Americans who receive welfare, food stamps, and other public benefits. Today we bring you our tenth and final installment of what it’s really like surviving on public generosity. These are worth reading.
Some people think men choose to sit down when they pee. But I always knew I was a sit-down pee-er—even when I peed standing up.
Living black in a world formed from the crucible of anti-black slavery imposes many moments of visceral absurdity, leaving you in a vast fissure between hysterical laughter, unstoppable streams of tears, and rage hot enough to burn a body. But what body should burn? The end of April imposed a moment on me that made…
At 5:30 a.m., I decided to leave the prayer hall early and go back to bed.
My mama is 79. Wednesday night is her bible study. Just like Ms. Ethel Lee Lance, mama has her circle of church going elders—black women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s for whom church is home. Maybe even safer than home. Their pain was safe in the hands of this particular Jesus. Unshed tears from the Middle Passage were…
I first applied in 1997 with an application filled out in chalk on the sidewalk of East 128th Street in East Cleveland. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote in my personal essay, but it involved a game with squares and a basketball.
State politicians across America are trying to restrict access to welfare and other anti-poverty benefits. To put this in perspective, we’re bringing you true stories from people who receive these benefits. A taste of society’s parsimonious generosity, below.
