News & Commentary

Since May 7, Al-Aqsa, one of the holiest sites for Muslims, and the neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah in Jerusalem have been the site of violent attacks against Palestinians, many of whom had come to the mosque to worship during Ramadan. During this violence, people took to Facebook and Instagram to post about what was happening to Palestinians using hashtags that referenced the mosque (#AlAqsa). But Instagram, owned by Facebook, blocked many of the posts through its content-filtering system because it inaccurately identified the hashtag as referencing a terrorist organization. While this may have been an error — though a demeanning and culturally ignorant one —its impact on users’ expression and the flow of information cannot be ignored. Palestinians and their supporters were silenced by one of the most powerful communications platforms in human history at a critical moment. T

I was shot multiple times by police and then unlawfully thrown in jail to cover up the excessive force violation. I am a 34-year-old Black man. I was charged with aggravated assault, but I never hurt anyone. I was hurt plenty, though. Police do fucked up shit and get away with it, and people need to hold them accountable to make society better as a whole. There’s no accountability when it comes to police or jail staff. In order for any society to function, there has to be accountability on both sides. What if somebody didn’t do nothing wrong and you’re covering it up? That means corruption just kills the system, everything that was meant to be good. I understand that officers risk their lives, they wake up every day and take on a challenge to make sure everyone is safe. That is an honorable act. But when you have people who lie or misuse their power, and another person helps them support that wrong action, that brings shame upon every good police officer. It brings shame on every department. In order for something to be built, something has to be destroyed, and this jail’s administration has to be destroyed. We’re too far along as a society to continue to be submerged in the wrongs and the corruptions, instead of to stand for what’s right.

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A nationwide attempt to censor discussions of race in the classroom is underway. In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers across the country have proposed bills banning teaching “divisive concepts” in K-12 public schools and in public colleges and universities. The new bills target efforts to provide education about gender and race discrimination, including critical race theory, an academic concept and practice that recognizes systemic racism is deeply ingrained in American society and examines how our systems promote inequality. Now, state lawmakers are attempting to use these bills to bar educators from teaching critical race theory and related concepts like white privilege and racial equity in schools. These bills don’t just set back progress in addressing systemic issues, they also rob young people of an inclusive education and blatantly suppress speech about race. Some bills also target government contractors and agencies — inspired by an executive order

On March 5, when Deb Mihal learned that the governor of South Carolina had just ordered non-essential state employees like herself to return to the office in person and full time with just a few weeks’ notice, she knew it was going to be a problem. Ms. Mihal had been doing her job as director of disability services for a public college remotely since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, in addition to supervising her son’s remote schooling at the same time. Now, she had less than a month to find child care. I

You’ve probably seen it by now, on B-roll if not in real life: Police and sheriff’s deputies spraying protesters with a water cannon mounted on a mine resistant vehicle. Combat vehicles rolling down American streets. Police — some with combat helmets and night vision goggles — touting military-grade rifles. These are America’s militarized police forces, brought to your community in no small part by billions of dollars in federal spending. No federal program is more emblematic of America’s police militarization problem than 1033, named for a section of law that allows the U.S. military to directly distribute weapons of war to police and sheriff’s departments. R

The federal government arms local police forces in the United States with weapons of war. A program called “1033,” for the section of the act that created it, allows the Department of Defense to give state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies military hardware. Since its inception in 1996, nearly 10,000 jurisdictions have received more than $7 billion of equipment. This includes combat vehicles, rifles, military helmets, and misleadingly named “non-” or less-lethal weapons, some of which have featured in police raids and police violence against

This month marks a year since George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, which outraged the world and sparked unprecedented domestic and global protests calling for racial justice and transformative change. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict should have been an inevitable accountability measure, yet even though the horrible display of brutality was caught on camera in broad daylight, the outcome was far from guaranteed. The uncertainty leading up to the verdict illustrates the normalization of impunity for police in the criminal legal system. C

One in four Americans are unbanked or underbanked. This is in part because because banks across the country are closing branches, or penalizing those who don’t have large savings. This means that 64 million Americans — disproportionately Black and Brown people — can’t easily access basic financial services and are forced to pay thousands a year in fees for alternatives. B