We go to Bloomington, Indiana, to speak with the African American human rights commissioner for Monroe County, Vauhxx Booker, who says he survived an attempted lynching when a group of white men pinned him against a tree over the Fourth of July weekend. “You have to be aware of George Floyd and how many other Black folks in our history have heard their executions spoken before them in real-time,” Booker recalls. “I felt myself want to cry out 'I can't breathe’ with these men on top of me, and I just couldn’t say the words.” Police were called, but no arrests were made. “These men remain loose in my community,” says Booker. The FBI is investigating the encounter as a potential hate crime, and Bloomington’s mayor has condemned the incident in a statement. But Booker is now calling on the U.S. District of Southern Indiana to convene a grand jury to take up the case. “At this point, I’m not sure that we can find justice in our local system,” he notes, “so we’ve asked for the federal government to step in.”
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What Are We Cheering For?
Every holiday, every weekend, every so-called American ritual came with a side of football. The game would be on, and we were supposed to care. I didn’t. Not really. Not until I almost did. For a brief stretch, when my dad worked with the Clippers during the Lob City era, I started to believe. Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan — it felt like swagger, like culture, like something to belong to. Then the trades came, the team got gutted, and the curtain dropped. It wasn’t family. It wasn’t culture. It was business. That moment stuck. The more I watched, the more the wires showed: how ritual gets packaged, sold, and weaponized. How meaning becomes merchandise. How attention becomes empire.
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When AI Replaced Our Comics
When AI replaced hand-drawn comics in our newsroom, I saw more than ugly art — I saw the erosion of what makes journalism worth doing.
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Farewell to Sister Assumpta Oturu, Champion of African Voices
Celebrating the life and legacy of Sister Assumpta Oturu, who amplified African stories and built bridges across continents through decades of fearless broadcasting.
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Cary Harrison Explains The Truth Behind The Mar-a-Lago Raid
What would George Washington say? Secretly flying 35 filing cabinet drawers-worth of Pentagon secrets to your private hotel for favor-swaps was the straw to make all Presidents now raidable. Will this affect a future Trump 2024 run? What about Hunter and Hillary?
