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‘It’ll be fine, I’ll be with a white girl’: Words of wisdom and a warning
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. My best friend was around to my house on a recent Saturday for a long overdue reunion. Adult schedules and the demands of parenthood being what they are, it had taken UN-level negotiations to get our calendars to match. As we caught up, with a ballgame on […]
The AR-15 is ‘America’s Rifle.’ Ban it.
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. How many dead children does it take to finally move to restrict access to high-powered weapons of war? Lawmakers in Texas provided us with an answer last week, as a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers voted to advance a bill raising the minimum age to purchase assault […]
The GOP won on Thursday in Tennessee. They’ll lose the fight on gun safety.
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. In the annals of brazenly destructive attacks on democracy, Thursday’s vote by Tennessee’s Republican-controlled state House to expel two Democratic lawmakers who led a decorum-busting protest over the cold-blooded murders of children is right up there. The hard reality that both of the expelled lawmakers were young […]
She lost her grandson to gun violence: ‘It’s so hard to live with the silence’
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. There is no silence like the silence of a house where a child once was. Marge LaRue should know. Last fall, her grandson, Nicolas Elizalde, was shot and killed outside Roxborough High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It came just after the end of a junior varsity football scrimmage between players from Roxborough, Northeast […]
What’s behind the attack on Black history? Fear, of course.
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. It’s tough to decide what’s more odious: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ racist, authoritarian, and nakedly political power play rejecting an Advanced Placement course on African American studies, or the College Board’s cowardly decision to revise the course in the face of this thuggish criticism. The board’s decision […]
No, guns do kill people. And the solution is glaringly obvious.
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. My Nhan, 65, immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in the 1980s, and made her home in California’s San Gabriel Valley, in a community called Rosemead. Her niece, Fonda Quan, said she was ready “to start the year fresh,” and celebrate with her friends, according to the CBC. […]
Senate same-sex marriage vote still a step on long road toward full justice
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of last week’s U.S. Senate vote codifying protections for same-sex and interracial marriage as both a triumph of bipartisanship and fundamental decency. It’s also difficult to overstate, sadly, how much further we have to go to ensure full equality for LGBTQ […]
Pennsylvania voters sent the GOP a message on Tuesday. They need to listen.
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Though their reasons and motivations may have differed, when they came out to the polls on Tuesday, Pennsylvania voters were sending a clear message about the people they want representing them in Washington and in Harrisburg. They wanted someone who heard the voices of the state’s Black […]
Dog whistles, scare tactics and what Pa.’s U.S. Senate candidates aren’t saying about crime
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously observed that the truest test “of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” But the sage of the Jazz Age never had to run for office. And, […]
Still think everything is awful? Here are three reasons for hope
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Step away from Twitter. Stop doom-scrolling. Yes, I know, American democracy is under assault. Russian President Vladimir Putin is muttering dark warnings about nuclear weapons in the face of heroic and historic resistance by Ukraine. Dozens of people are dead and large swaths of Florida have been […]
Biden’s Philly speech was a challenge to all of us. We have to step up.
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Returning to the state where he launched his candidacy — and the one that handed him the White House in 2020 — President Joe Biden on Thursday called on Americans to join him in a fight to preserve democracy and to beat back the forces of extremism. […]
The Dems’ 2022 momentum just shifted. GOP overreach on abortion helped power it
This commentary originally appeared in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. Has the right’s electoral gamble on abortion failed? With the midterms a little less than three months away, there’s some reason for encouragement. Consider these three developments alone: The results of a recount in Kansas this week reaffirmed that voters overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would […]