The Occupy Movement has taken a beating in the press. While it is credited with changing the nation's obsession from debts and deficits to income inequality, the protesters -- for months camped out in tents -- have found their image in desperate need of repair. For a fix, they might...

BOSTON -- In February 2011, when a New York grand jury declined to indict anyone involved in the shooting death of DJ Henry, Henry's family called for a federal investigation.

I telephoned Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez...

BOSTON -- Some law enforcement experts say that police forces around the country -- from Westchester County, NY, where DJ Henry was killed, to Los Angeles, which has had its own share of questionable police shootings over the years -- need to train officers to de-escalate conflicts and increase sensitivity...

BOSTON -- A New York grand jury in Westchester County earlier this year declined to indict Officer Aaron Hess in the shooting death of Danroy "DJ" Henry, a black college student from Easton Massachusetts. On October 17, 2010, Hess fired several bullets through the windshield of Henry's car after jumping...

The shooting death of Danroy "DJ" Henry, a black student at Pace University with no record of criminality or violence, continues to stir controversy on a number of levels that go well beyond this single incident. In a special four part web and WGBH public radio series, "DJ...

It does not take a lot of deductive reasoning to figure out why France's President Nicolas Sarkozy was so eager to lead a coalition of nations in the "liberation" of Libya. Realpolitik may have played a far greater role than matters of the heart in the case for intervention. The...

Malta sits between Africa and Europe. Because of its location, wave after wave of illegal immigrants traveling by boat have come ashore on a regular basis since 2002. Though migration waves have slowed down dramatically in recent months from a high of nearly 3000 in 2009, the tiny island nation...

With Libya's inevitable collapse, Europe will likely see a tsunami of black refugees sweeping across the Mediterranean. And Malta and Italy will be the first to feel the impact. To reach Europe, Sub-Saharan migrants often pass through Egypt, Tunisia or Libya, where life for black hued residents can be more...

The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center -the official name of the largest mosque and Muslim gathering place in New England--was twenty years in the making. Since its construction no one connected to the mosque has been arrested for terrorism, there have been no disruptions to the local community--as some--predicted,...

It was sixty-five years ago this month when a U.S. bomber dropped its top-secret payload on Hiroshima. This week, for the first time, the U.S. marked the anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack by taking part officially in the memorial to the 140,000 victims. It was an important...

244,000. That's the number of young Americans under the age of 16 believed to be at risk of child sexual exploitation that includes prostitution and child pornography, according to a University of Pennsylvania study*. It's clear that the nation has reached a new level of insensitivity when you see, as...

In recent years, law enforcement officials nationwide have reported increases in human trafficking. By some estimates there are around 20,000 victims brought into the United States each year. The victims come from countries around the world including China, the Ukraine, Estonia, Brazil, Vietnam, Korea, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, among...

Stepping out of Amsterdam's Central train station this past weekend there was a good chance your feet would have involuntarily met days-old garbage and your eyes may have burned from the smell of resistance.

The legendary "Venice of the North" for...

Two famous cinematic scenes came to mind when I heard that the people of Iceland had overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to bailout the bankers that sunk their country under mounds of debt: The most memorable is that of gladiators standing up individually to say "I am Spartacus", as the...

Another December 7th has passed "which will live in infamy", but which fewer and fewer Americans actually seem to notice. What lingers, however, especially for many older and conservative Americans, is a searing bitterness toward the Japanese, exemplified by the furious reaction to President Obama's bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito...

So what, some argue. Sammy Sosa wants to whiten his skin and some folks want a tan. The problem with using tanning as a counter-argument to whitening is that it is a false dichotomy. If one was to assume that skin whitening and bleaching...

No one should be surprised that baseball's Sammy Sosa has changed from black to white, albeit his claim to an accidental transformation caused by cream and lights. Skin whitening is a world-wide phenomenon that is becoming ever more popular as people in developing nations become more flush with cash. The...

If Skip Gates thinks he has problems with racial profiling here in Cambridge, MA, then talk to people of African descent living in Beijing. Walk in the shoes of Arabs and Africans in Paris, Roma (gypsies) in Rome or Palestinians in Tel Aviv. Racial profiling is rampant and increasing despite...

It's been a week since the official 20th anniversary commemoration of the historic Tiananmen Square demonstrations. But before the memory of those events of 1989 fade completely from our collective consciousness, let me address something that was missing from most news accounts and analyses; China's pro-democracy movement was stained by...

When the lights are out politicians often attach to bills various pet projects that would stand little chance of approval if scrutinized in the light of day. With cameras rolling, the accidental statesman, Illinois Senator Roland Burris, swore that everything was above board, only to later admit questionable fundraising attempts...