“Recognizing Taliban rule as gender apartheid is not only critical for Afghans, it is equally critical for the credibility of the entire UN system,” Vrinda Narain writes.
“Many Black women were out-front organizers for civil rights,” Vicki Crawford writes. “But it is no less important to remember those who assumed less visible, but indispensable, roles behind the scenes, sustaining the movement over time.”
Rhea Williams-Bishop, director of Mississippi and New Orleans programs at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation writes that “together, we can be the ones who create the environments and communities that build up our children, rather than tear them down.” She encourages Mississippians to come together to solve the Jackson water crisis—and then to repair the systems that led to it.
Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, writes that the capital city is at a “critical juncture,” calling on leaders to collaborate and take advantage of the funds available for necessary infrastructure work and decide upon a viable solution.
Mississippi’s justification for unconstitutional abortion restrictions has long revolved around the assertion that the laws, like the 15-week ban recently taken up by the Supreme Court, protect women and children. But the reality is now, and has long been, that Mississippi women and children’s health and economic security is not prioritized.
The modern history of reparations is only a few decades old, but it already demonstrates that reparations are always about more than the money. If the process includes compensation, but ignores complementarity and consultation, the effort may fail to truly answer for the past.
In March 2021, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History announced that it has repatriated 403 Native American remains and 83 lots of burial objects to the Chickasaw Nation, the largest return of human remains in the state’s history and the first for the department. The repatriation started a year ago in January 2020 and is ongoing as the department is about halfway through the process.
As the state starts to emerge from the 16-month darkness of the pandemic—which saw 16% of Mississippians unemployed at its peak—the eviction crisis has the potential to become even worse. The Aspen Institute estimates that 58% of Mississippi renters will be at risk of homelessness by the end of 2021.
Neither party has stood up for American descendants of slavery when it comes to racial disparities in environmental, social and economic policies. Co-founder Leo Carney writes that ADOS of MS are seeking reparative justice that is a pathway for statewide and federal reparations for American descendants of slavery in Mississippi and across America.
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