Social Justice
Read about the newest efforts to overthrow systemic inequalities and address injustices in terms of wealth, opportunities, and privileges to make the world a better place.
Diving program teaches kids to document sunken slave ships
In the quest to create a more complete picture of African-American genealogy, an underwater archaeology group called Diving With a Purpose (DWP) focuses on documenting old slave ships that have sunk to the bottom of the sea. Documenting these ships and other artifacts of the transatlantic slave Read More...
Prop 17 restores voting rights for 50,000 paroled citizens in California
50,000 more Californians were welcomed back into the democratic process this election as the state celebrates the passing of Prop 17. The proposition, which passed with support from 59 percent of voters, will allow paroled citizens convicted of felonies to vote. Previously, those convicted of Read More...
This company is creating ethical diamonds from captured CO2 and rainwater
Diamonds may be beautiful, but the industry behind it is not. To start with, there are the terrible environmental consequences that come with mining for diamonds. The Guardian reports that to get just one carat (0.2 grams) of a traditional diamond, miners could excavate up to 2.2 million pounds Read More...
Prisons often reject letters to inmates. This app stops that from happening
If you have a loved one in prison and want to contact them, generally you are allowed to call, email, or video chat with them. The only problem is prisons can charge a fortune for these services, leaving physical mail as the best and sometimes only option for people behind bars. But mail comes Read More...
6 dirty power plants in New York to transition to cleaner technologies
Power plants that rely on fossil fuels are already bad enough, but what makes these polluting plants even worse is that they are disproportionately located near communities of color. In a study from the University of Washington and Stanford University, researchers found that Black, low-income Read More...
How voting rights groups are helping inmates vote from jail
If casting a ballot can already be a tricky process for regular citizens, you can imagine how difficult it is for inmates to vote—especially during the pandemic. Most states don’t allow felons to vote while serving their sentence. With that said, people with misdemeanor sentences do have the Read More...
LGBTQ community adopts #proudboys to drown out hateful rhetoric
The Proud Boys, a far-right group designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, was trending on social media after being mentioned at the presidential debate, but Twitter users quickly took matters into their own hands to stop the spread of hateful rhetoric. Men in the LGBTQ Read More...
We need diverse juries. New California law will help make that happen
Making the US criminal justice system more fair and effective requires many changes, but one big one is selecting juries that reflect the demographics of their community. To help achieve this, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law last week that draws jurors from income tax Read More...
New project is saving dying restaurants by giving ownership to employees
Like many other sectors of the economy, the restaurant industry has been brought to its knees by the pandemic. As a result, some private equity firms and hedge funds saw the situation as an opportunity to get their hands on large areas of real estate by looking for struggling restaurants to Read More...
Number of young black authors doubles to nearly 20% in UK
People of color have long been underrepresented in the publishing industry, but a new study out of the University College London shows that is starting to change amongst young adult writers in the UK. The study found that only 7.1 percent of YA authors in the UK were people of color in 2017. That Read More...