civil rights
Still just a dream: 60 years later, racial wealth disparities remain wide
It was 60 years ago this week that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream Speech” to a quarter-million arrayed in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. The crowd must have been filled with hope. Lincoln’s war against slavery had been won almost a century earlier. But virtual slavery in […]
‘Hate will not prevail in America’: Biden marks 60 years since March on Washington
The U.S. still hasn’t met the goals of the Civil Rights Movement, President Joe Biden said Monday, the 60th anniversary of one of the movement’s most iconic events. Six decades to the day after the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, Biden urged Americans not […]
In Selma, President Joe Biden vows to continue work on voting rights
President Joe Biden Sunday praised the courage of civil rights activists and condemned efforts to restrict voting and attack the election process in a speech commemorating the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. In his 20-minute address delivered at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where a law enforcement posse attacked civil […]
Confronting history, Congress studies addition of lynching sites to national park system
The U.S. House is considering a bill that would put lynching sites in western Tennessee on track to become part of the National Park Service, part of a trend this year of Congress using the agency to advance discussions of the nation’s troubled and often violent racial history. A bill from U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee Democrat, […]
Congressional panel debates federal role in preventing youth incarceration
WASHINGTON — Members of a U.S. House Education and Labor Committee panel on Thursday questioned experts and leaders of youth rehabilitation programs about how the federal government could invest in programs to prevent kids from becoming incarcerated. “Although the juvenile justice system is intended to rehabilitate—not punish—young offenders, data shows that the more a young […]
GOP support for same-sex marriage protections builds in U.S. Senate
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate appears on track to send President Joe Biden a bill in the coming weeks that would guarantee same-sex and interracial couples can marry, even if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark cases that enshrined those rights. “I think we’re very close,” Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said Tuesday of efforts […]
U.S. House passes bill guaranteeing contraception access, with eight GOP votes
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House voted mostly along party lines Thursday to send the Senate legislation that would guarantee people the right to use contraception without government interference. The legislation from North Carolina Democratic Rep. Kathy Manning, approved 228-195, is part of the Democrats’ response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the constitutional right to an […]
U.S. sues Arizona over proof of citizenship voting law
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division announced Tuesday that it has sued Arizona over a law signed by the state’s Republican governor in March that requires people registering to vote prove their citizenship to participate in a presidential election or to vote by mail in any federal election. Republican proponents of the law, […]
Biden directs federal agencies to protect LGBTQI+ rights under attack in GOP-led states
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday aiming to curtail conversion therapy, expand health care access and promote safe learning for LGBTQI+ people. The order is meant to counter laws in Republican-led states that restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ kids and their families. A senior administration official referenced Texas and Florida as two states […]
Fact checking claims about gender-affirming care
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. A controversial bill in the Ohio House would prohibit LGBTQ+ youth […]
Freedom of speech is under attack in public schools, U.S. House panel told
Students and teachers told U.S. House members during a Thursday hearing that their right to talk about race and LGBTQ+ issues in public schools is being silenced due to an onslaught of new state laws as well as pressure on school boards from right-wing advocates. “To be crystal clear, this is about disrupting and destroying […]
Funding prisons is a higher priority than funding education in most states. Why?
In America, the land of the free, there are more prisons and more prisoners than any other country in the world. This is not a new phenomenon. For decades, the rate of imprisonment in the United States has been more than twice that of its nearest developmental counterpart. The long-standing question, both at home and abroad, is […]