Kevin Powell

The east end of Richmond, Virginia is a community rich in people, but depressingly poor otherwise. It's like every other inner city in America. It is strikingly similar to the impoverished section of Jersey City, where I was born and raised. Just as in the days of Jim Crow, the...

Slow suicide is the term I've used for years to describe those individuals who are incredibly unhappy in their own lives, in their own skin, and do things to destroy that life, to destroy that skin. Whatever the race or culture of that person is immaterial; it doesn't matter if...

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

I was awakened in the wee hours of this morning by texts and calls from friends and associates distraught that Occupy Wall Street protestors were being forcibly removed from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Even more troubling is that you chose to make...

My brothers:

I've wanted to write this open letter to all of you for a long time. That is because I am not only a huge admirer of what you do as sportsmen but also because I care, and I am deeply concerned about the state of Black male athletes...

There is yet another great and bloody gash on the soul of America right now, because we allowed a state-sponsored killing of a potentially innocent man to occur in our name, on our watch. Fellow Americans, we must end the uncivilized and inhuman act of the death penalty, of killing...

"To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice." -- Desmond Tutu

Unless something God-like and miraculous happens, Troy Davis, 42, is going to be executed tomorrow, Wednesday, September 21, 2011, at 7 p.m., by lethal injection at a state prison in Jackson, Georgia.

At this stage in my life, and for the rest of my life, I make it my business to obey the laws of my city and state, and of this country, always. That is because I am a community and political leader, and because I feel that we leaders need...

Might it be, as my mother said to me on this ugly, sinful day,
That the world is on its last go-round?
Hijacked wild birds strip the sky of its innocent morning breath
Steel towers crumple like playing cards on an uneven metal table
Unrehearsed screams...

"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people." -- PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

"Uh, I pledge allegiance, uh, to all the scramblers/Uh, this is the Star Spangled Banner" -- JAY-Z, "Made in America," featuring Kanye West and Frank Ocean

As we Americans finish...

Ashley Judd is a very courageous woman. I am not referring to her work as a global ambassador for YouthAids, or her efforts to end poverty and sexual violence in underdeveloped nations overseas, or even her journey here in America as an actress, mother, daughter of a country music star,...

Dear Chris,

I really did not want to write this open letter, and would have preferred to speak to you in person, in private. Indeed, ever since the domestic violence incident with Rihanna two years ago, there have been attempts, by some of the women currently or formerly in your...

Maybe it is simply me but it seems that the historic election of President Barack Obama has brought out the best and worst in America. Best in the sense that there is no way this man, of a white American mother and an Africa-born father, would have been elected leader...

I have been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. As a youth I formally played baseball, ran track and boxed until I decided I really valued my brain cells more than winning a bout; and informally we boys on the block played stickball, soccer, football (sometimes...

One year ago today we witnessed one of the greatest human tragedies in recent world history, the horrific earthquake and its ugly aftermath in Haiti. So many of us, myself included, have donated, organized, mobilized, and done whatever we can to provide relief and support to the people of this...

I say this because Arizona is not the problem. We the people are the problem.

That is, we Americans who think it is cool to engage in rhetoric, political or otherwise, that encourages division, ugliness, hatred, and violence, directly or indirectly.

Over the past several years, we've witnessed...

"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea." -- Medgar Evers (the NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963).

Medgar Evers must be tossing and turning in his grave at Arlington National Cemetery this very moment. For how terrible...

Can America really afford to abandon Barack Obama and his presidency now?

That is the very basic question that awaits us on Tuesday, November 2 as we Americans go to the polls from New Jersey and Florida, from Nevada and Hawaii, and points in between, to offer a direct citizens'...

Black leadership is dead. There, I said it. We have people in leadership positions, but far too many of them are operating as if it were the 1960s or even the 1980s instead of the 21st century.

As I've traveled from state to state over the years, I've heard...

I am an everyday American.

And I come from very humble beginnings: My mother migrated from rural South Carolina in the 1960s to Jersey City, where she met my father. She fell in love with him; he was not in love with her, but I was conceived anyhow. And...

I believe deeply in freedom of speech, and the free exchange of ideas in our society. When we take a quick scan of America's history, it is those fundamental principals that made it possible for everyone from "the founding fathers," to anti-slavery activists, to women, to the muckrakers, to labor...