Your Choice: The Just Life – Or Just Life

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Vivian Rothstein: All the important justice movements of our times – civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights, environmental protection — were started and driven by volunteers whose lives were transformed by their participation.

Hope and Change: Landmark Human Rights Victories

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Julie Gutman: As the international community prepares to mark the 61st annual Human Rights Day on December 10, here is a short list of some of the best human rights developments of 2011 outside the Middle East.

King Memorial: Now More than a Scar on the Nation’s Conscience

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Anthony Samad: King meant different things to different people, but one thing is for sure…America, black and white, had not gotten over King’s death – not if you have any sort of a conscience.

Calls for Abercrombie & Fitch Boycott Over Racist Slur

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Andrea Defusco-Sullivan: A&F reportedly offered actor Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino “a substantial payment” not to wear its clothes as doing so “could cause significant damage” to the brand.

Perry Compares Civil Rights Movement to Tax Cuts for Billionaires

David Love: It is not surprising that Perry — whose Texas board of education erased black and Latino civil rights leaders and their accomplishments from the history books — would try to turn the narrative of the civil rights movement into a fight over tax breaks. But it is outrageous, nonetheless.

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Crown Heights Riots 20 Years Later

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David Love: Crown Heights was imminently important from a political perspective, as it altered the course of New York’s political history and ended the brief stint that was Black Power in the Big Apple.

Philly’s Mayor’s Message to the Youth? Yeah, Right.

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Jasmyne A. Cannick: It was another case of yet another Black leader passionately voicing the frustration of his generation with younger generations of Blacks by preaching to the choir.

“The Help” Reflects the Racial Divide, Then and Now

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Sharon Kyle: In a culture where “whiteness” is rarely mentioned and hardly ever critically examined it is not surprising that the women in my church saw the story as heartwarming and uplifting. I, on the other hand, saw this as just another story of the black experience as viewed through the white lens.

Republicans Like Leopards Never Change Their Spots

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Sy Slavin: Republicans like the proverbial leopards never change their spots. In 1935 they tried to kill Social Security – today using the same vile tactics; they are trying to do the same.

Fight to End the Most Base Form of Exploitation

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Brian McAfee: The men and the occasional women who participate in the abuse and victimization of children are unconscionable people whether serving as their rapists, pimps or enablers.

Won’t You Come Home, Jim Crow?

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Tom Degan: The Republican party is at this very moment mounting a campaign that, if successful, will disenfranchise the voting rights of African Americans – and everyone else who tends to vote left-of-center – all across America. Isn’t that sweet?

“Very Young Girls” — I Had Answers!

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Nikki Junker: I was able to tell them that one of San Diego’s law enforcement agents had begun that very day training all of the judges in California on sex trafficking.

Common Gets Bad Rap on Assata Shakur

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Jonathan David Farley: The synthetic rage over Common’s event with Michelle Obama rests on the unending demonisation of the Black Panther party

Will the Social Animal Achieve Adulthood?

Charles Hayes: How disturbing a notion that many of our daily behaviors are reliably predictable. How disappointed would you be to discover that some scientist could study the details of your life and then accurately predict the things you will do or say in the near future?

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Still Fighting the Civil War in South Carolina

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Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, History News Service: At a gala celebration Monday in Charleston to mark the sesquicentennial of South Carolina’s secession from the Union in 1860, the chief cause of secession—slavery—will be ignored. Historians Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts see this as yet another episode in a 150-year struggle over public memory in South Carolina and America.

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