In moments of instability, political power rarely stands on its own. It reaches for something older, deeper, and harder to challenge: divine authority. When legitimacy begins to erode, governments do not simply tighten policy, but moralize it. They wrap enforcement in scripture. They frame control as righteousness.
Read MoreI’ve been walking to the same Foodtown for 16 years, but yesterday was the first time I counted: 7 blocks, 21 minutes.
The walk, as always, was punctuated with tree-lined streets, beautiful front gardens, the brownstones in Brooklyn you hope to live in one day, and restaurants of all kinds that could satisfy the pickiest of eaters. Signs pledging “Black Lives Matter,” “I Voted For Her,” and “Freeze the Rent” hung outside unconsciously expensive apartment windows. The neighborhood that had been my neighborhood made me feel more like a tourist and less like a native these days.
Read MoreThis question has been sitting in the back of the mind of every Black woman paying attention for a long time now, and in recent weeks it has gotten louder and more urgent and more impossible to ignore. Why do men hate women so much—and why, in 2026, are they still killing us for it?
Last Sunday, Shamar Elkins shot his wife Shaneiqua Pugh in Shreveport, Louisiana, and then turned the gun on seven of his own children—ages three to eleven—and another child in the home, leaving eight children dead and two women wounded. Days before that, former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax shot his estranged wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, in their home and then turned the gun on himself, leaving their two children to find them. And somewhere between those two tragedies, influencer Ashlee Jenae was found dead in a hotel room in Zanzibar—her birthday trip with her partner ending not in a proposal but in her death, her family notified not by him but by the hotel. Four months into 2026, story after story after story: Black women killed by husbands, partners, the fathers of their children—acts of violence so senseless they begin to blur together, and yet each one is devastatingly, irreversibly distinct.
Read MoreI have been traveling to Cuba for over 10 years. In November of 2015, I arrived for the first time for a conference at the University of Havana. With free time in the convening schedule, I walked down the streets of the backroads of Old Havana. I passed four-story colonial-styled homes, which lined the streets packed tightly and were colored in light teals, pinks, and off-white. An older Black man and his grandson stood at his door and shouted in English, stern but inviting: “We are Black here!” My Spanish was rudimentary, so I replied back, “I know,” and smiled. He stated back, “Inglaterra,” implying that I may be a Black British visitor. I said, “No, jamaicana,” not claiming the political weight of the American passport in my bag. He returned my statement with a smile and nodded with connection and approval. His grandson, about five years old, attentively watched the diasporic rhythm of our interaction.
Read MoreMy editor asked me to write about the war in Iran and what students think about it. Here’s the honest answer: most of them don’t. And that terrifies me far more than the war itself.
On February 28th, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, killing the Supreme Leader and pulling the region into an expanding, open-ended war. Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed. Civilians—including 165 children inside a girls’ elementary school in Minab— are dead. A genocide in Gaza has been unfolding for over a year. The Congo continues to bleed. And I walk into school every morning and watch teenagers scroll past all of it without flinching.
Read MoreWhether a survivor chooses to share their story, including the name of the offender, or not is their choice alone. I was raped by a stranger in a home invasion. So, while I share my story, I have nobody to name. When someone like Dolores Huerta–activist, movement leader, and inspiration to so many–breaks her silence it reminds me yet again of just how powerful survivors are. It goes beyond surviving this type of violence. It’s how we share our stories to be beacons in the ocean for others to know they are not alone, to normalize sharing and remove feelings of shame, and provide others with the opportunity to come forward.
Read MoreAI has been used in romance, in education and in politics for better or for worse. Its impact on the environment and policy have made a number of headlines, but it has also integrated itself in everyday tasks and human interaction from sourcing recipes to crafting the perfectly written email. AI has increased the power of the powerful and given those with less power the illusion of power.
Read MoreI did not arrive at this conclusion through theory. I arrived at it in a fourth-grade classroom, watching how easily history bends in front of children trained to trust the adult speaking. That moment did not feel dramatic at the time. It felt ordinary, which is precisely what made it dangerous.
My daughter’s class was reading Across the Alley, a children’s book about a Black boy and a Jewish boy growing up in 1940s Brooklyn and learning to cross the prejudices their families carry. It is the kind of curriculum I want for my children because it teaches friendship across differences and insists racism is constructed, not natural. The lesson was working. The room was quiet in the way classrooms get when children are listening seriously.
Read More
