Benefits of being black include patience, critical thinking, perseverance
Think back to the historic March on Washington in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These historic events banned poll taxes, literacy tests, poll bully tactics, efforts to limit voting hours, and other intentional and strategic...
With qualified immunity, who’s policing the police?
Qualified Immunity is the judge-invented legal doctrine that makes it impossible for many people who have been abused by the police to obtain justice in court. The result is not just injustice for the victim, but also danger for society as whole, as police misconduct...
Misguided anti-meth bill has regressive, anti-art, anti-business impacts
Add yet another Republican-driven, over-reaching, and misinformed piece of legislation to the Iowa Legislature's list of bad ideas this year: a 40 percent tax on glass pipes, plus several more increased costs and licensures. Proposed under the guise of slowing the...
Burst of events provides intersectional end to Black History Month
St. Louis is filled with nationally significant Black History: it's where Dred Scott and his wife Harriet began their fight against slavery in 1847, where Josephine Baker kicked off her amazing blues career, and where tennis great Arthur Ashe grew up. It's also within...
Groups ramp up, seek help, to fight Iowa’s anti-LGBTQ bills
DES MOINES -- If you'd like to join the fight against a rash of anti-LGBTQ bills proposed by Republican state legislators this year, two of Iowa's leading civil rights groups are providing three chances to get involved within the next week. "Moral Mondays Iowa: The...
Key City Pride in Dubuque moves forward with diverse tone starting Feb. 6
DUBUQUE — Key City Pride is moving forth with at least five months of events through June, starting with a Black History Month drag showcase Feb. 6. Featuring drag performers from Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois, the Feb. 6 showcase will be offered both in-person, and...
EDITORIAL: The Biden-Harris era as an antidote to nihilism, full-spectrum
Today’s the start of the Biden-Harris era. But more importantly, let’s make it the “End of Nihilism” era. Nihilism, the belief that everything is hopeless, is the ugliest ‘ism of all. It encompasses all the other ‘isms, encouraging a belief that nothing matters and...
From Willis & Rainey to MLK Youth Summits: A week filled with timely events
Sandwiched between the historic attempted insurrection two weeks ago and the coming Presidential Inauguration, today may be one of the most significant Martin Luther King Jr. Days in decades. So it's only fitting that events honoring the day extend all week and into...
“Basic ethical principle that is equally good for everyone” is focus of two-parter
Please partake of the information in this two-part attempt to close out The Real MainStream's commentary and analysis on the topics covered below! It's been a tough conversation, but one focused (as the "Careless Whispers" blog states) on "a basic ethical principle...
Social justice pioneer Kesho Scott resumes outreach to small Iowa communities
CEDAR RAPIDS -- It’s been eight months since George Floyd’s death triggered nationwide historic protests against racial injustice and police brutality. But the work of memorializing him, and so many other people victimized by inappropriate policing, isn’t over, says...
“POC and Q+T-centered:” new Methodist denomination takes intersectional to new levels
“No one is shunned,” announced Rev. Alex Da Silva Souto, a queer native Brazilian Methodist pastor in Connecticut, about halfway through the first-ever Zoom service for LMX. They and Althea Spencer-Miller, a Drew University professor who studied in the West Indies and...
Author and comic artist Huda Fahmy confronts Islamophobia with humor, wit
Life in America can be challenging when you wear a hijab. Huda Fahmy shares her experiences as an obviously Muslim woman in America with humor and wit in her book "Yes, I'm Hot in This." This comic collection of her experiences reveals the Islamophobia and ignorance...
George Floyd memorials today as police ethics face growing local, national questions
IOWA AND ILLINOIS -- As the nation and several groups throughout Iowa and Illinois honor the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's videotaped murder at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers, police ethics are under the spotlight anew both locally and...
Warhol numbs, Dylan Kelly makes us care: two Scholastic Art Award winners then, now
This is a case of a lesson learned, and then unlearned. Some years ago, as a high school art teacher, I learned to withhold praise for personal styles in student work. Teens, not fully formed in mind or body, will stay with the praised style, hesitant to explore other...
White Male Fear: Problem & Solutions
To the Editor: Our country and our community has a White Male Fear Problem. Not all, but too many, white males think this country belongs to them: it doesn’t. They think men are superior to women: they aren’t. They think the problems in our communities are due to...
Lies, melodrama, and the hunger to control guns and drugs: roots of police brutality
Days after Derek Chauvin's trial resulted in full convictions last week for George Floyd's murder, we're in the thick, realizing things haven't changed much in the past year. Since Tuesday alone, victims of known videotaped police shootings are a 40-year-old unarmed...
TRM Blog: Race, gender and religion? Or ego, pride and control? Real-life intersectionality in Grinnell
GRINNELL, IA -- The straight white male history teacher could not have been more repentant. “I drew incorrect conclusions …. I misinterpreted … I did not paint an accurate picture,” he said of an attack letter he wrote about efforts to make Grinnell-Newburg’s public...