0 Dylan Saba Would be an Awesome Senator

I met this kid my junior year.  I was sitting on a comfy leather couch in my room in 123 when my roommate, Geoff Gardner, walked in with his daily calzone from Hodgdon and two other guys following him inside.  They were both tall -- one of them really tall and he had a big afro.  Everyone probably knows that dude, Ruben; Ruben from B.E.A.T.S., Ruben with the 'fro, Ruben the guy who makes sweet music.  The other kid, the shorter-but-still-tall guy who came from Oakland just like Geoff, he had the most impressive knowledge of hip-hop this side of the Mason-Dixon.  Now, that same guy, Dylan Saba, is running for TCU...

0 Rage is Forever in my Memory: Trayvon Martin, One Year Later (2/26/13)

I wrote this speech for Tufts’ Pan African Alliance’s (PAA) “Remembering Trayvon Event” which took place outside on a cold solemn Tuesday night (2/26). It took me so long to find the words to write this speech, to say everything just right but honestly, it’s heavy. His death is heavy but in that weight there is always a need to think critically, remember critically, and love critically. Please Note: The term “Black bodies” is referring to people that are raced as black, with black skin. However in my reference to black bodies specifically in this speech, “black bodies”  cross an axis for various bodies of color.  Tuesday's Speech,...

0 What We're Reading Today (2-27-13)

Three-Fifths Compromise; Slavery; Journalism; Racism; Chicago Police Department; Mali; Counterterrorism; Obama; Republicans The Constitution's Immoral Compromise - New York Times Room for Debate There is no Indonesia Model for the Arab Spring - Foreign Policy Tom Pepinsky Racism, Torture, and Impunity in Chicago - The Nation Flint Taylor House of Cads: The Psycho-sexual Ordeal of Reporting in Washington - The New Republic Marian Cogan Annihilate: Obama's Very Secret Plot to End the Republican Party - The New Republic Michael Kinsley A Flawed America in Context - The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi N. Coates Iraq to Mali: the Changing Calculus of...

Once fully instituted, the arrangements of slavery became much more than a machine for generating wealth. They constituted a well-developed system for the social and sexual control of men and women. During slavery, and later under legal segregation, many African and African American women were sexually coerced and raped by white men, including sailors, slave-masters, overseers, and employers. Such sexual violence symbolized white male power to everyone in local communities. Under the North American system, the children resulting from coerced sexual relations were automatically classified as black, even though they had European ancestry. Indeed,...

1 What will Alvaro tell Alvaro Jr about Trayvon Martin?

I have had this on my mind for a long time and this piece needs some polishing but I wanted to publish it on the 5th instead of later.  Hopefully this is just one of a few pieces I'll produce about Trayvon Martin and his death and its implications.  His murder affected me a lot more over the ensuing months than I anticipated.  That said, happy birthday, Trayvon. I started thinking about this piece a little while ago, a few months or so.  Today is February 4th, 2013, and I'm fixated on flushing out this feeling. Today is February 4th, 2013, and today is my 22nd birthday.  Mondays are my worst days in terms of workload....