I know I can’t be the only one who thinks there’s something wrong with an agency that has found a way to enable people to bring small knives on a plane but not baby formula or breastmilk? Seriously??!! I’m more than a little outraged at the decision this week to allow knives in carry-on bags on domestic and international flights. Not because I believe carrying knives has much to do with airline terrorism – it probably doesn’t – what I’m outraged about is that TSA has done little to address the problem of the ‘fluids rule’ for airline travel, particularly with respect to medications and baby formula.

Continue reading →

This week marks the beginning of an historic event – thousands of AIDS workers, researchers and activists arrived in Washington, D.C. for the International AIDS conference. The event is historic in part because it is the first time the conference has been held in the U.S. since 1990 because the Obama administration lifted the ban on people with HIV traveling to the U.S. It is both significant and poignant that the conference is being hosted in the nation’s capital as it is the epicenter of the continuing AIDS epidemic in the U.S. which has becme a health emergency for Black America.

Continue reading →

Query this: Two young black men are walking down the street deeply engrossed in conversation about the recent NBA championship finals. They are arguing, gesticulating and sometimes using foul language but otherwise not doing anything illegal or improper. A law enforcement officer is driving down the opposite side of the street, he stops his car and yells out to the youth – Come over here! They stop and ask if he’s talking to them, the officer replies yes, he is and that he’s ordering them to come over to the car so he can question them. They cross the street as directed where they are then subjected to a search and frisk, finding nothing the officer then says he is issuing them a summons for jaywalking for crossing in the middle of the street. When the youth vigorously protest the summons with words like, “this is bullshit” and calling it the result of ‘entrapment’ they are arrested and charged with ‘disorderly conduct’. Continue reading →

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything. Quite frankly, the rapidly deteriorating state of our economy, democracy and society has rendered me virtually speechless. I fear anything I say will be interpreted as the paranoid ravings of a ‘hysterical’ woman driven by the irrational fear that others are trying to control her womb, inhabit her brain and impose some form or gendered ‘Jane Crow’ status on her economic and political life……

Continue reading →