Almost $5 Billion Was There for War in the Caribbean — But Not There for Brownsville, Brooklyn

Over the past year, America has found money for military adventures in Venezuela, the Caribbean, and the Eastern Pacific. We’re talking about boat strikes, naval deployments, oil blockades, and regime-change — for national security. Brown University’s Costs of War Project and the Institute for Policy Studies estimate that America’s operations in the region cost at […]

Scene & Heard: Bilal — Live With Robert Glasper, Questlove, and Burniss Travis

Social media friend “Bart” — I’ll leave it at that since I don’t know how much he wants y’all to know about his kind and generous self — hit me with a Bilal vocal performance video that features Questlove playing drums, Robert Glasper on piano, and Burniss Travis keeping the pocket fresh with bass duties. […]

BROWNSVILLE BROOKLYN RAPE IGNITES RACE MEMES

Hearing about an 18-year old woman being raped at gunpoint by five males in Brownsville, Brooklyn disgusts me. Everyone should feel the same way. My disgust is operating on two levels. First — the act itself. It’s no wonder why women in America don’t feel any more safe than their peers who live in war-torn […]

SCHOOL SEGREGATION — NYC STYLE

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not fooled — not even for a minute. And if some of you didn’t shut down your MLK studies immediately after reading his “I Have a Dream” speech, you wouldn’t be so surprised that members of the White/Liberal/Hipster/Wall Street/Creative/Techie class in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, New York have […]

WHAT BAY RIDGE, BROOKLYN CAN TELL YOU ABOUT THE NEXT FINANCIAL CRASH

The Bay Ridge couple I recently saw in the Whitehall Street subway station☆ may provide a clue about the fate of the US economy. But I should first describe Bay Ridge, so that you can see what I mean. A predominantly Irish and Italian neighborhood for much of the 20th century, and popularized by the […]