News & Commentary

Farmworkers play a vital role in North Carolina’s multibillion dollar agriculture industry, providing essential labor in a state that produces much of the nation’s sweet potatoes, tobacco, Christmas trees, and many other crops. More than 90 percent of these workers are Latino. Many are migrants working seasonally under temporary v

School just got back in session, but one school district in Northern California already needs a lesson in how to create a welcoming and safe environment for Black students with disabilities.A 5-year-old Black student with autism and speech and language impairments suffered for months, including suffering injuries that needed to be treated by a hospital, all because of the inadequate oversight of Hayward Unified School District’s staff. In a time when Black students are regularly pushed out of classrooms for discipline and other subjective criteria, being Black with disabilities creates a unique and even more troubling set of problems that many school districts fail to adequately address.As outlined in our letter to the school district, in April 2018, E.E. moved with his mother from Inglewood and started at Helen Turner Children’s Center in the Hayward Unified School District. Within a month of E.E. arriving, it became clear that E.E.’s teacher was not creating a safe environment for E.E., which would ultimately lead to physical injury and missed class time for E.E. — the only Black student in a classroom with other students with disabilities. Shortly after E.E. started school at the Children’s Center, E.E. came home with scratch marks on his shoulder and, unlike his nor

We were in a Washington, D.C., appeals court on Wednesday facing off yet again with the Trump administration over its patently unconstitutional policy of obstructing young immigrant women from accessing abortion. Last September, a 17-year-old woman known as Jane Doe arrived in the United States and discove

Sheer stubbornness is required of us when our government violates the law and refuses to recognize it. Seeking justice for the U.S. torture program of the post-9/11 period has required a lot of stubbornness. In North Carolina

Last week, Philadelphia and its district attorney, Larry Krasner, agreed to overhaul the city’s civil asset forfeiture practices after a long history of abuse and subsequent reform efforts thwarted by prosecutors across the state. But no one should be fooled into believing that forfeiture has been “dismantled” in Philadelphia. For years, the City of Brotherly Love has been in the national spotlight for its aggressive use of civil as

In January 2018, Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and demanded identification from passengers. Videos of the encounter went viral — showing these agents, with “POLICE” emblazoned on their vests, escorting a woman of Caribbean descent in her 60s off the bus. In the background, someone filming says, “This is new?” Unfortunately, it wasn’t.Customs and Border Protection, which contains the Border Patrol, has a history of b

Geoffrey Pesce tried everything to overcome his addiction to opioids: detox at least four times, Suboxone, Naltrexone. In 2016, after overdosing three times in less than 48 hours, he was scared for his life and committed to reco

It’s been nearly one year since the #MeToo movement came into public consciousness and months since the Senate and House of Representatives each passed legislation to reform the way Congress handles claims of harassment in its own workplace. But further action on the bills has stalled, and even after sitting members had to resign over their own misconduct, our elected officials have still not moved to effectively protect the safety of their employees.  On Thursday, seven former congressional staffers sent a

On Tuesday, President Trump will make his second appearance at the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly, where he will reportedly use the international spotlight to deliver a speech that centers on favoring U.S. “sovereignty” over our commitments to the global community. The world has now witnessed the human costs of Trump’s self-defeating “America First” policies: the inhumanity of family separation, the ruine