VOICES

GUN VIOLENCE - This year through June 8, 2022, there have been 18,971 gun violence deaths in the U.S., 8,477 homicides, murders, and unintentional deaths due to gun violence, and 10,494 deaths by suicide, according to the Gun Violence Archives.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Another terrorist slips into the classroom, into the news.

GUN LAWS - On Thursday morning, Democratic lawmakers gathered at the western steps of the state Capitol to commemorate victims of gun violence and orate on the need for tougher gun laws — both in California and nationally. 

GUN VIOLENCE - Every time there is news of a mass shooting in this country, we go through the same cycle.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Many UN agencies were created that have and continue to provide critically important assistance in many fields, saving the lives and wellbeing of millions of people.

GUEST COMMENTARY - I could barely look at the pictures of mothers crying in agony at the loss of their children to the gunman at Uvalde, Texas.

GUN VIOLENCE - In the days since the Uvalde shooting, media outlets have shared heartbreaking images of the small victims as they were cherished in life.

EQUAL RIGHTS - Three years ago, the U.S. women’s soccer team filed a $24 million gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Today's six-member supermajority on the Supreme Court has surrendered all claim to being an impartial moral force for blind justice.

RUSSIA UKRAINE WAR - Peace advocates warned Tuesday that the Biden administration's newly unveiled decision to arm Ukraine with advanced missile systems further heightens the risk of a direct military conflict between the U.S. and Russia,

MY THOUGHTS - One has to be made of stone not to have been affected by the senseless mass shootings of the last three weeks.

LEGAL WOES - The irony was lost on no one last week when we learned that the parents of the mayor of Los Angeles have hired a professional lobbyist to make the case to the U.S. Senate that their son should be confirmed as ambassador to India (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2022). 

IN MEMORIAM - It was 15 years ago this month that Joseph Anzack Jr., private first class, United States Army, faced impending death on a dark and dusty road during America’s long war in Iraq.

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Memorial Day is a federal holiday for mourning the U.S. military personnel who have died while serving their country established in 1868 a few years after the Civil War ended.

A VIEW FROM HERE - In 1776, America Founded Itself on Two  Revolutionary Theories.

WHITE SUPREMACY - Civil rights activist and philosopher Cornel West called out former President Donald Trump for leading a “hate campaign” against Black and brown people.

ECONOMIC RELIEF - I borrowed money to pay for college. Like 45 million other Americans who did the same, I owe student loan debt.

GUEST COMMENTARY - It's been a week since a mentally ill racist murdered 10 people, most of them Black Americans, in a Buffalo supermarket.

UP TO THE STATES - Last year, David Pepper was so frustrated by the atrophied state of U.S. democracy that he tweeted a riff on a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “States are the laboratories of democracy.”

ROE V WADE - As the ridiculously right-wing United States Supreme Court stands poised to defy majority public opinion by reversing its 1973 Roe v. Wade (hereafter “Roe”) decision and thereby stripping away women’s half-century constitutional right to an abortion,

GUN VIOLENCE - In the 23 years since Columbine, at least 554 students, educators, and school staff have been victims of school shootings, according to a Washington Post report.