On Poisoned Ground
The city of East Chicago built an elementary school and public housing on a known polluted industrial site. The self-serving web of business interests and politicians who green-lighted these projects in this segregated community embody the term “environmental racism.”
Held to Account
“If you don’t reach a child by seventh grade, they won’t make it to tenth.” An upstart charter school is hoping to turn things around for students in Clayton County, Georgia, where dysfunction had caused the entire school system to lose its accreditation a few years ago.
Interview: Bernice King
An interview with Martin Luther King Jr.’s youngest child, Bernice King, on her family’s legacy:
In the popular history of your father, people remember “Dream” and his crusade for civil rights. But his other platforms—fighting poverty, antimilitarism—seem to get lost. Was that part of the reason behind your 50 Days of Nonviolence campaign?
You have to take this part in stages and steps. Baby steps. Whether we want it or not, we live in a violent culture. And I don’t mean only video games or people on the streets. I mean in our discourse. We scream and holler, make disparaging comments. It’s a violent culture. If you are going to shift it, you have to spoon-feed it like a little baby. So 50 Days was really about buzz, to get the notion of nonviolence out in the culture. This has been a tough 365 days in our nation.
