How SCOTUS Turned America’s 250th Birthday Into a Burial
This is what the Court has often done when our freedom got out ahead of the country’s appetite for it. It reaches back. It calls our undoing a vindication of principle.
This is what the Court has often done when our freedom got out ahead of the country’s appetite for it. It reaches back. It calls our undoing a vindication of principle.
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.
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.
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.”
With the Oscars behind us, it’s clear: awards season isn’t just about who wins, it’s about who gets protected, whose dignity is safeguarded, and whose presence is taken seriously. For BAFTA, this year’s ceremony offered a stark contrast, one that, if someone were deliberately scripting how not to build a sense of belonging, couldn’t have been better executed
There are seasons when a nation mistakes speed for clarity. When information multiplies but wisdom thins. And when outrage travels faster than understanding. This feels like one of those seasons. We are awash in data. We can measure almost anything. We can predict markets, track storms, map genomes, and automate memory.
A population stuck in survival mode cannot organize, cannot protest, and cannot imagine an alternative. When hunger becomes normalized, it becomes far more insidious.
A population stuck in survival mode cannot organize, cannot protest, and cannot imagine an alternative. When hunger becomes normalized, it becomes far more insidious.
Union Church officially unveiled its Everyone 250 Marker, launching Black History and Black Futures Month with a powerful affirmation of Boston’s legacy of resistance, faith, and community leadership. The ceremony honored the church’s founding in 1796, when African-American congregants courageously left a segregated church to form their own spiritual home.
A population stuck in survival mode cannot organize, cannot protest, and cannot imagine an alternative. When hunger becomes normalized, it becomes far more insidious.