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Category: Black Politics

The Bizarre Trump-Fueled Backlash to Healthy School Lunches

Party of One Studio Back in 2010, then–first lady Michelle Obama launched a nefarious scheme to turn school cafeterias into liberal indoctrination zones. Or at least that’s how Obama’s right-wing opponents portrayed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a law she spearheaded that gave the National School Lunch Program its first nutritional update in more than…

You’ve Got to See These Inspiring Photos to Understand the Scale of Today’s Global Climate Strikes

Protestors fill the streets of Frankfurt, Germany for the World Climate Strike.Andreas Arnold/Zuma In a remarkable display of global collective action, hundreds of thousands of people around the world skipped school and work on Friday to protest the lack of meaningful governmental action against climate change. The Global Climate Strike, a youth-led movement that has partnered with…

The Best and Worst of Abortion TV Since the 1970s

ABC Previously, on TV: the abortion-quandary plot­line, featuring an uncertain pregnant woman agonizing over her decision. For years, this was how abortion was portrayed—a right-wing fantasy, essentially, present even in shows with broadly liberal politics. But as the medium flowered in the new century, so did abortion TV. Now abortions could be just another part…

Democrats Say They Want to End Mass Incarceration. There’s No Way They’ll Do What’s Needed to Get There.

LightFieldStudios/Getty In his criminal justice proposal, 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Cory Booker (D-N.J.) has said he would grant clemency to 17,000 federal inmates serving time for nonviolent drug-related offenses. He proposed this idea in June, as part of his plan to end mass incarceration in the United States.  Shrinking the enormous US prison population has become a standard…

Has TV Ever Gotten Abortion Right?

Melinda Beck In 1981, eight years after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion and just a year before her breakout role as pregnant Stacy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jennifer Jason Leigh played another apparently knocked-up high schooler, this time in a CBS after-school special called I Think I’m Having a Baby. Leigh is Laurie,…