Black History Month challenges all of us to learn, reflect and understand many things about the Black American experience, among them the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. This outrage, perpetrated by the US Public Health Service, was not conducted for a year or even a decade – it went on for forty years. Originally intended to be…
While tens of thousands of Yemeni men, women and children are dying from starvation and disease, the world is shamelessly watching with deafening silence The bombing continues unabated. The explosions are heard in the distance. A family with seven children is cowering in fear in a corner of their shack, Daring not to step out…
Israel’s continued treatment of Palestinian political prisoners is unconscionable. Mohammad El Halabi, an aid worker from Gaza, has been in prison for four years while he awaits his trial; this is nothing short of cruel absurdity. He has been forced before the court over 150 times, many of those appearances secret, without word of when…
It does not seem possible that here in the United States, a country that has long prided itself on its humanity, a man could be serving a life sentence for stealing hedge clippers. Yet, shocking as it is, Fair Wayne Bryant’s story is the story of thousands of Americans whose lives have been decimated by…
Even a cursory review of our prison system reveals the outrageous inhumanity to which hundreds of thousands of prisoners, especially young adults, are subjected to, many of whom are imprisoned for non-violent crimes, sometimes for life. Some of the cases I came across are simply heart wrenching, bringing tears to my eyes. The over-policing of…
The US Supreme Court decided on June 15 that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination. Discrimination ‘because of sex’ is unlawful. But what is it that makes discrimination morally wrong? It is useful to examine this from a Kantian standpoint because Immanuel Kant lays the foundation for…
The continuing demonstrations throughout the country suggest not only the obvious—that Black lives matter—but that racism is consuming America from within, that injustice affects the perpetrators just as much as the victims, that enough is enough. The rage, desperation, and determination which continue to bring tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in protest…
The murder of George Floyd by a police officer in broad daylight came amid a high point in the continuing rampage of the coronavirus throughout the country, killing over 100,000 and infecting nearly 2 million while more than 45 million have lost their jobs. The death of Floyd is no longer seen merely as an…
Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Started in 1970 in the wake of a number of environmental disasters, particularly the Santa Barbara, CA oil spill and burning of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, both in 1969, it has grown into a worldwide movement. Environmental clean-up and recycling efforts have been boosted, legislation (domestic…
