On what would have been Coretta Scott King’s 99th birthday, several Boston organizations came together to honor the activist’s legacy and connection to the city that many are unaware of.
It matters more than ever at a time when nightclubs, lounges, and music venues—the gathering spaces that have long served as the connective tissue of Black social and civic life—are disappearing at an alarming rate. And it might not be a coincidence that democracy is dying along with the spaces where we learned to practice it.
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg popularized the term “third place” in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, arguing that informal gathering spaces are essential to civic life and healthy communities. A third space is what exists beyond home and work: the places where people gather, build trust, exchange ideas, and create culture in real time. It is where community stops being abstract and becomes something lived.
Tina Zhu Xi Caruso is a functionally blind photojournalist, but she sees more than most people when it comes to overcoming disabilities.
She has cerebral/cortical visual impairment, a brain-based blindness. It is the world’s leading cause of childhood blindness and low vision, according to the Perkins School for the Blind.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but buying the Evil Empire album by Rage Against The Machine when I was a junior in high school fundamentally altered my brain chemistry.
Coretta Scott King, who would’ve turned 99 years old this month, devoted her life to anti-war and anti-capitalist ideals. Those philosophies would make her an enemy of this current regime. And yet, we remember her as a hero who, along with her husband and countless others, brought this country closer to its truest ideals.
Last Saturday, America made history.
An estimated 8 million people took to the streets for No Kings rallies throughout the country as a protest against authoritarianism, war, and the erosion of our democratic systems.
For Twin Cities residents, the upheaval is just the latest trauma to hit Minneapolis and St. Paul, which also witnessed and protested the murders of Philando Castile and George Floyd in the last 10 years.
That’s why one, a father of two, refuses to be silent—both in calling out injustice and creating the community he wants for himself and his family—not matter what it costs.
You’re allowed to have things be new to you—like any student in class. You’re allowed to see this as new, and to learn and to grow. However, once you realize something is new to you, you have to acknowledge that it’s not new to everyone.
Marcus Board Jr., Ph.D. grew up knowing there was something deeply wrong with the country he lived in, but also that speaking out only got him into more trouble. So, he “embraced the trouble.”
