Category: OPINION

Labor Day always has a special meaning for my family and me. As a child, my father’s union card was our passport to a better life. Our experience reflects that of America’s working families everywhere – and, especially, the families of Americans of Color. For nearly a century now, the civil rights movement and the […]

WASHINGTON-In an often expressed dream for a better America, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called upon Americans to honor “all God’s children” and their rights to equality and justice. His powerful voice and leadership would be welcomed in the turbulent world around us. Forty-three-years after the March on Washington, Dr. King’s dream of equality for […]

Labor Day is approaching and families will be returning from vacation, kids will be going back to school and those who have jobs will be resuming their regular work week schedule. This summer has been fraught with extremes. The heat wave with record-breaking temperatures that stretched from the Midwest to parts of the eastern and […]

This is a well-deserved salute to two global icons of hip-hop culture, two successful Black men who transcend race and social division and have attained the pinnacle of worldwide impact with their artistic genius and empowerment consciousness. Jay-Z and Kanye West, with the release of their latest album, Watch the Throne, are revealing the sustainable […]

In the hoopla surrounding Sunday’s dedication of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. statue on the National Mall in Washington, Harry E. Johnson Sr., the visionary and fundraising engine behind the project, will finally get his due. Placing Dr. King on the Mall was a project of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, but it was Johnson, […]

If one were to look up “tenacity” in a dictionary, one might well simply search for logo of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, or a photograph of the MLK Memorial Foundation’s Executive Director Harry Johnson Sr. In 1984, the men of Alpha Phi Alpha proposed a national memorial to Dr. King, and they continued to push […]

From new backpacks to sharp pencils, parents across the country are doing their best to cross the items off their children’s back-to-school checklists. They want to be sure that when the first day of school comes, their children will have everything they need to be ready to start and ready to learn. But as a […]

Water cannon? Calling in the army? Shutting down or disrupting mobile phone messaging services and social networks in times of civil disorder? Oh the irony of ironies. Six months after my country’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down after 18 days of a popular uprising, British Prime Minister David Cameron, members of parliament and the security services were […]

The federal elections next year will determine more than the course of future federal spending. The quality of the very air that we breathe is at stake. Throughout my life, I have suffered from asthma. It can make you feel as if you are suffocating. It started when I was 5 and it is still […]

If you thought this fight to raise the debt ceiling was tough, you haven’t seen anything yet. Let’s just say the battle lines have been drawn for the 2012 presidential election. If you really support President Barack Obama, then now is the time for you to – as James Brown would say – get up […]

(NNPA) — It is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama and Democrats need pressure from within the party to force them to stand their ground against the Tea Party insurrection in Congress. As was evident in the recent debt ceiling fiasco, conservative House Republicans have gravitated even farther to the right because of pressure from […]