News & Commentary

Since 1967, when five days of violent clashes between police and community members left 26 dead and hundreds injured, residents of my great city of Newark have protested police abuse and impunity. A reminder of one of their most desired reforms sits on my desk: a sepia-toned photo of civil rights marchers with signs demanding the creation of a civilian review board to provide citizen oversight of the police.
Nearly 50 years of fortitude later, th

In a landmark victory for privacy, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously today that the mass phone-records program exposed two years ago by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is illegal because it goes far beyond what Congress ever intended to permit when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The ruling in

Nebraska recently made national headlines when someone filed a lawsuit here against all "homosexuals." While this lawsuit is clearly bunk and has already been dismissed, as a Nebraskan who is fighting for equal treatment of LGBT people in my home state, I would be remiss if I didn't use this as an opportunity to share the stories of those who are fighting alongside us.
There was a time I didn't know how my

A new study released this week and explored in depth in The New York Times shows what civil rights advocates have long known: in raising children, as in real estate, location is (nearly) everything.
By examining data about poor children

Ever since the New Deal era, U.S. labor laws guaranteeing minimum wages and overtime pay have excluded workers who care for elderly individuals and people with disabilities in their homes. These home health care workers — 90 percent of whom are women and most of whom are women of color — perform strenuous labor for long hours, helping those who need assistance with everything from dressing to meal preparation to eating to going to the bathroom to getting around. To this very day, these workers are denied the basic protections of minimum wages and overtime pay, even as demand for their services grows. They are among the poorest workers in our country, barely getting by on low wages, with 23 percent living below the poverty line.
At the same time, the home health care

Spring may have finally arrived in D.C., but Senator McConnell isn't being called a flip-flopper for his footwear.
Last month, in the face of a strong de

This piece originally appeared at Slate.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which

Below is a speech in commemoration of the 45th anniversary of the 1970 killings of four Kent State University students protesting the Vietnam War. The speech was delivered by the sister of Allison Krause, one of the victims.
Thank you for attending the 45

The past few weeks have been pivotal for conversations about LGBT people in the public discourse. Just days after Olympian Bruce Jenner announced to Diane Sawyer and 17 million viewers that he is a woman, leading gay rights advocate Mary Bonauto argued for marriage equality at the United States Supreme Court.
There is good reason to believe