By Jessica Mehta

My body gleams the same
shining cost
as a new car. Gilded in gold.
Punctuated in gems. You ask,
What would your mother think? 
(She thinks nothing, she
is dust), but

if she were to rise up, gather
her ashen self once more, then

I say,

she’d delight in my adornments, diamond
’round daith, topaz to tragus. Trace
these inky birds sprung from skin

“Slavery became a permanent system through constitutional law. The 13th Amendment is commonly thought to have abolished slavery, but it actually solidified the practice in the country. The full amendment says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude” except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been fully convicted, shall exist within the United States, of any place subject to their jurisdiction” (United States Constitution, Amed. XIII).

This means that slavery is completely legal under certain circumstances and is almost expected to be used to punish convicted individuals.”

By  Halford H. Fairchild, Ph.D.

On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. According to eyewitnesses the unarmed Brown was standing relatively close to Wilson; some even noted that Brown had his arms up, as if in surrender.  Nevertheless, Officer Wilson shot the unarmed Michael Brown 12 times. Sadly, it was only the final of those 12 shots that was lethal. Since that shot entered the top of Michael Brown’s head, it suggests that he was facing the ground when Wilson fired it. Brown’s dead body was then left in the street – in full view – for more than four hours.  

By  Sienna Bland-Abramson

Racial injustice and police brutality lie at the core of American history, in a country that beguilingly promises equal justice under law: a lofty oath that was arguably never true, despite its eternal inscription atop the West Pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, if we can ignore history, but otherwise take this truth to be self-evident, it’s not the guarantee that I find problematic; but the failure to make good on the explicit promise that continues to inflame me.  

I asked myself, what can I do to make a difference? How can I, as a 26-year-old white college student majoring in psychology, foster social justice in a truly meaningful way? While contemplating my alternatives, opportunity unexpectedly came knocking; in a pandemic, no less. I was approached about a job that would allow me to contribute to altering the life trajectory of a disenfranchised person of color who had been wrongfully convicted of murder. I responded with a resounding YES, when can I start?

We have made progress in this country. But we still have a long way to go in attaining equality not only for Black people, but for all people of all intersections and backgrounds.

How have we not achieved the same level of equality

amongst black and white people?

Well since the beginning of slavery and the founding of this country, systems were and still are put into place in an effort to oppress black people and prevent them from attaining the same level of equality as their white counterparts.

By John Grey

MAKING A STAND

that’s either your neck

with the life squeezed out of it

or you are on the side

of the knee

AN AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

been no lynching in your lifetime,

yet those executions follow you,

on streets like branches

stretching high and far

from a trunk that goes back years,

dangling nooses that weren’t there yesterday