My Summer in Japan and Ways You Can Help

One of the coolest things I’ve done in my life is study abroad. For three months in college, I studied Japanese in Japan. Talk about a culture shock! But the people were warm, thoughtfully curious, and especially kind. In the major cities, I could close my eyes and feel like I was back home hearing [...]

Help Haiti Now

Please see the below message from the Pan American Development Foundation, an organization I support to get much needed help to Haiti: With Tropical Storm Tomas only hours from striking Haiti and its 1.3 million vulnerable displaced persons, the Pan American Development Foundation is urgently seeking cash donations for relief and recovery supplies. Your help is needed [...]

Haiti on My Mind

Catastrophic doesn’t begin to describe the Haiti earthquake’s devastation on a country already ravaged by poverty.  Haiti is one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world.  I can’t bear to watch the news footage or see the pictures of destruction without doing something to help.  I encourage you to do so [...]

Since Apologizing for Slavery is All the Rage

We’ve touched on the recent spate of slavery apologies from the U.S. Congress, to Bill Clinton, to states and cities, and even corporations.  All of these public penances are by predominantly white institutions  apologizing for the slave trade and and benefits from free slave labor. The Black Informant has written extensively on the subject and recently [...]

Civil Rights Movement Marches on in Mexico

Time Magazine posted an article outlining the plight of Afro-Mexicans. Time writes: Mirroring Mexico’s history itself, most of Yanga’s Afro-Mexican population has been pushed to neighboring rural villages that are notable primarily for their deep poverty and the strikingly dark skin of their inhabitants. Mexico’s independence from Spain and new focus on building a national [...]

This Week in Washington: April 20, 2009

The President used his weekly address to announce two new appointments: Jeffrey Zients as Chief Performance Officer and Aneesh Chopra as Chief Technology Officer. Before heading south to the Summit of Americas, President Obama made quite a stir with his announcement on relaxing U.S. policy with Cuba. Don’t book a flight just yet, regular travel hasn’t been relaxed. While at the Summit of Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, President Obama did the grip and grin with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. This week the President will present the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy to the Naval Academy football team at the White House and travel to Iowa for Earth Day.

Zimbabwe cholera cases pass 60,000

CNN.com reports: More than 60,000 people have now been infected with cholera in Zimbabwe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Latest figures released Friday from the organization also show that 3,161 people have died from the disease since August 2008. In December, WHO spokesman Paul Garwood told CNN the organization an estimated 60,000 people would be infected with cholera in the “worst case scenario.”

Civil Rights Fought For Should Not Be In Vein

Reading the following article in the New York Times about young Afghan women and girls being sprayed with acid in order to prevent them from getting a basic education made me reflect on education here in the United States.  Yes, we know “a mind is a terrible thing to waste” and that “education is the [...]

Zimbabwe Needs a Port in Its Storm of Afflictions

David Coltart, a senator and member of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, writes in The Washington Post: There is a perfect humanitarian storm in my country. The threats of AIDS, poverty, hyperinflation and malnutrition, and now cholera, combined with a regime that has given up on its people, add up to an all-but-untenable state of [...]

A Way to Help the World’s Women

Marianne Mollmann, director of women’s rights for Human Rights Watch, writes in The Washington Post on the need to end impunity for rape: I have a project for Joseph Biden and Hillary Clinton to work on together: ending impunity for rape. Rape-conviction rates are appallingly low across the globe. I don’t mean only in countries [...]