In the United States, we've put our elections on Tuesday. That's dumb. In modern life, it makes absolutely no sense.
— Shaun King
When you turn 18 in the United States, you should be automatically registered to vote. Ideally, this sensible reform would be a federal law affecting all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and American territories, but our federal government stopped being sensible a very long time ago.
When Trump was elected, it gave white men - particularly white men in power - full, unfettered permission to say or do whatever they want without consequence.
To defeat Donald Trump, the Democrats must run a stellar cast of all-stars in their primary.
Before I was a journalist, I was a preacher in Georgia and Kentucky.
Blame it on our short memories, the daily grind of the 24-hour-news cycle, or the endless barrage of information that comes at us on social media, but count me in the number of people who did not truly understand how utterly gross both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton have been to women, including their own wives, across the years.
While I fundamentally reject the notion that anyone who owned other human beings was either good, moral, or decent, Francis Scott Key left absolutely no doubt that he was a stone-cold bigot. He came from generations of plantation-owning bigots. They got wealthy off of it.
People with momentum can get so much done. Momentum is easy to lose and almost impossible to fake.
Much of the foundation of our criminal justice system is derived from slave patrols and was created when African Americans could still be bought, sold, and traded.
Over and over again, I looked family members who had lost loved ones to police violence, I looked them right in the eye and told them, 'Don't worry. We will get justice for your family.'
There is a movement we call Afro-Futurism, where we imagine a black way of life free of white supremacy and bigotry. 'Black Panther,' I think, is the first blockbuster film centered in the ethos of Afro-Futurism, where the writers and directors and makeup and wardrobe team all imagined a beautiful, thriving black Africa without colonialism.
When the primary people who have influence and power in our communities are not even really allowed to educate you on who to vote for and against, we're in trouble.
Here's what I know for sure: every single vote counts. That's not just a saying.
I've come to understand that awareness and momentum, while necessary and valuable, are just two of the dozens of essential ingredients required to actually make change happen.
Every day I walk down the street or hop on the subway, I am reminded that I am a citizen of a very big, incredibly diverse world.
I've had some unbelievable successes, and I've also learned painful lessons through failures so low I can hardly stand to think of them.
Anne Marie Schubert is one of the most horrible district attorneys in the state of California. She represents Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. It's no wonder she continuously refuses to hold the police accountable for violence against people of color.
Our nation is not a fully representative democracy if we do not have a one-person, one-vote method of directly electing our president. It disproportionately tilts favor to smaller states with smaller populations.
Donald Trump is a bigot.
No man represents toxic white masculinity more than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump should not be underestimated. He'll say or do anything to suck the wind out of the news cycle. His reach and influence on social media are immense and are only rivaled by a tiny handful of people in the world. He's dirty. He doesn't fight fair.
Bill Clinton is just as gross as Donald Trump - so much so that the Clinton campaign can't really back Trump into a corner on his integrity or mistreatment of women because Bill's personal history is so damn awful.
Justice, particularly for the oppressed and marginalized in our society, never comes without great effort and sacrifice.
I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In a dream world, the bread is super soft, like the Wonder Bread of my childhood, and the sandwich will have crunchy peanut butter, strawberry jam, and a cup of cold milk to go with it.
I love social media, and it is an important part of how we make change happen. But we can't retweet ourselves out of our most serious problems.
When I travel and speak across the country, I often tell college students that we are making a significant mistake when we say to each other that this criminal justice of ours is broken. To say it's broken would be to suggest that it was well designed and had good intentions from the start.
I became personal friends with Erica Garner and with so many other families affected by police violence.
'Black Panther' had a whole cast of beautiful black brilliance. Black scientists. Black presidents. The style. The technology. The color.
'Go vote' is a not a political strategy. It's hardly a slogan. Hell, it's not even a good tweet.
As you may know, I'm the co-founder of a political organization called Real Justice. Our goal is to help elect progressive, reform-minded prosecutors and district attorneys that are committed to ending mass incarceration.
It's always important, when we experience injustice in this nation, that people in power understand that we will not take that injustice quietly.
I love New York. It's my favorite city in the world. I live and work here by choice.
Having come so close to death, I now value just how precious life truly is and want to ride what God gave me until the wheels fall off.
It was my long-held belief that police brutality would increase under the Trump administration.
When 3 million more people vote for a presidential candidate, but that candidate still loses, the system sucks. Period. It's broken. I think it's broken if the candidate loses by one vote and still wins. Losing by 3 million votes, but still winning the election, is preposterous.
Trump's America means many things, but this much is clear - it means toxic white masculinity is not just permitted, it's fully empowered - and getting worse.
When 63 million people voted to elect Donald Trump as the president of the United States, it opened up the floodgates for toxic white masculinity in America.
America was not built on kindness or the Christianity of Christ. It was not built on freedom or liberty. This nation was built on white supremacy.
I was in high school when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky. We didn't have social media back then - hell, we didn't have a computer with the Internet in our home - so the details of it all escaped me.
'The Star-Spangled Banner' should've never been made into our national anthem. That President Woodrow Wilson, widely thought to be one of the most bigoted presidents ever elected, chose it as our national anthem, is painfully telling as well.
My theory on momentum is that the best way to produce it is through small, hard-fought victories that lead to bigger battles and bigger wins. Winning builds momentum.
Politicians and lawmakers are willing to watch us take us a knee, watch us march, watch us picket and protest - and wait us out. They are willing and prepared to outlast us - and, in most cases, to do absolutely nothing about the problems we highlight and amplify.
Very few police officers are ever held accountable for even the most egregious shootings and acts of violence.
I grossly underestimated the gravitational pull of America's justice system toward white supremacy.
We live in a country where movies, music, and sports are more important than God to a lot of people. It's why Colin Kaepernick's protest rocked the nation and got the whole world talking. Taking a knee is a simple act of defiance. Had Colin done it anywhere other than the football field, it might not have even made the news.
Because of tax laws governing charities, including almost every single civil rights organization you've ever heard of, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the ACLU, and others, those organizations are not allowed to endorse political candidates or use their resources in political campaigns of any kind.
The United States has so many laws, into the millions, that experts have lost track of just how many laws we have.
Politicians can and should be held accountable for their choices.
I refuse to allow the excuses in my mind to grow into giants that keep me from living up to my full potential.
We must put an end to the corruption and systemic racism in our justice system, and that starts by electing progressive district attorneys who will fight for real justice across the country.
