From the Classroom to My Living Room: Coping with Gun Violence as the Daughter of Public School Teachers

There’s no commandment etched into stone that teachers must sacrifice themselves for their students, but the feeling that they should is as palpable as it is suffocating. In many ways, teachers are their students’ protectors and advocates, charged with their wellbeing and education until the school day ends. But there’s no bell that dismisses my mom from her role as my greatest champion.

Letting Go of the Fear of Racism

I’ve won academic awards, traveled abroad, graduated from college and lived in my own apartment. If I had let fear of racism hold me back, I would not have achieved these accomplishments. I refuse to dress and act a certain way to be perceived as “acceptable” or “safe” and I am not going to hold myself back from opportunities out of fear of impending racism.

Indigenous Peoples at the Heart of Climate and Biodiversity Action Offer Hope

For years, Indigenous groups have advocated outside of COP walls — holding press briefings at picnic tables, leading demonstrations, telling stories of their communities and demanding to be heard. Their activism led them from the periphery of global climate events to the very nucleus where negotiations take place.

Imagining Reproductive Health Care Access in a Post-Roe World

A disturbing subtext to the Texas abortion ban, its copycats, and the end of Roe, is that wealthy women will always be able to travel anywhere they need to obtain reproductive health care. Women with low incomes and incarcerated women will not.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson - A Dream Deferred But Not Denied

But we can never lose sight of the need to tackle every element of systemic racism in our country. Judge Jackson’s confirmation is a historic first and must not be the last.

Burness Film Festival: A Journey to Become Better Allies

For far too long, people of color have carried the emotional burden of living and working in spaces that diminish their existence. I’m proud this Film Festival gives us an opportunity to honor and better understand communities of color in all their complexity, challenges and humanity. Our discussions allow us to take an honest look at how some are cocooned in advantages they didn’t earn and others are cloaked in disadvantages they don’t deserve.