OUR COMMON GROUND Voice, Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith, author, "The Book of Jeremiah The Life and Ministry of Jeremiah A. Wright, 

She is the former Senior Pastor of Advent United Church of Christ, in Columbus, Ohio, is a 1986 graduate of Yale Divinity School, where she earned her M.Div.

She received her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Occidental College and her Doctor of Mininistry from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

She is the author of four books, Carla and Annie, From Calvary to Victory, Forgive WHO?, andCrazy Faith: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, which is currently in its second printing. Her work also appears weekly on The Washington Post, as a member of a panel of theologians, scholars and writers who comment on issues pertinent to religion.

She is the Gordon Cosby Seasoned Fellow at the Spirit House Project (ATL). 

OUR COMMON GROUND Voice, Dr. Price, is the former Dean of the School of Business and a professor of public administration at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York in Brooklyn, NY. He formerly served as an associate professor of political science in the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University (TSU) in Houston, Texas. Dr. Price spent five years at Rutgers University-Newark at the School of Public Affairs and Administration where he served as an assistant professor and director of the MPA and Executive MPA Programs as well as a number of other leadership positions including serving as the Associate Director of the National Center for Public Performance and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Management and Social Policy. A leading scholar in the field of prison privatization, he is the author of the book, Merchandizing Prisoners: Who Really Pays for Prison Privatization published by Praeger Publishers in March 2006 and the coedited 3-volume set entitled “Prison Privatization: A Controversial Industry” by Praeger Publishers, September 2012.

Thabiti Lewis has written for several newspapers, magazines, journals and magazines such as The Source Magazine, Crisis Magazine, AmeriQuests, News One, The St. Louis American, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oregon Humanities Magazine, and The Oregonian. He has also contributed several political and cultural commentaries to cable and radio programs.

In December of 2010 he published this pioneering book about sports, race, and American culture, Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (Third World Press). Prior to this he edited and co-edited special issues of journals (The Willamette Journal and AmeriQuests Journal). He is the editor of Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara (University Press of Mississippi), and is completing a book-length study about the art of the politics in the fiction of the writer Toni Cade Bambara. He is also at work on a study of the performance of heroism, race, and gender in four American sports museums.

Ms. Carmen Del Rosario served as the Director of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Domestic Violence Program for 10 years. Del Rosario was a pioneer in developing strategies to engage boys and men in positive ways to prevent violence and to promote healthy relationships. In the year 2000, under her leadership, de Domestic Violence Program received funding from the CDC to develop , implement and evaluate a five years demonstration project working with men as fathers. 

Over the past eight years Carmen has been working in East Africa, (Tanzania) Central Africa (Eastern Congo) and West Africa (Liberia), developing, coordinating and implementing programs to respond to survivors of Gender Based Violence (GBV), Women’s Empowerment Program as well as prevention initiatives with men from different background; these include, refugees’ men, religious leaders, traditional leaders, the police, and the UN peacekeepers. Carmen has developed intervention and prevention programs providing technical support to capacity development of the implementing partners in partnership with government, UNHCR, WFP, UNICEF and INGO.

OUR COMMON GROUND Voice, Dr. Joyce Ladner

Her career includes work at various universities and institutions: Southern Illinois University, assistant professor and curriculum specialist, 1968-69; affiliated with Wesleyan University, 1969-70; University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, research associate, 1970-71; Hunter College of the City University of New York, sociology faculty, 1976-81; Howard University, professor of sociology, 1981-98, vice president of academic affairs, 1990-94, interim president, 1994-95; Brookings Institution, senior fellow, government studies, 1977.

When she became interim president of Howard in 1994, she was the first woman to hold the position at the university. She retired to Florida in 2003

THE RACIST RICH

[col. writ. 5/14/14] © ’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal

When news broke of the comments of a wealthy NBA owner to his lover, it made me feel queasy.

That’s because some things should remain private, especially between lovers.

It’s not the business of the media, much less the government — nor us, for that matter.

I feel this way even when the issue of racism is raised, for even racism shouldn’t trump personal privacy.

Nothing Donald Stern has said has changed my view.

Moreover, this event looks like episodic racism, and reflects occasional eruptions, but also within the realm of the private. This ignores systematic racism, which, unlike episodic racism (which effects, at best, less than half a dozen people), has an impact on the lives and life-hopes of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

An example. Many people will agree that mass incarceration has affected the lives of millions; disproportionately African-Americans and Latinos.

This was no accident. It didn’t just happen.

It was the specific policy of public officials, like Das, judges, legislatures – and promoted by media.

This was a racist policy, made by politicians to play to the imagined fears of whites of dark ‘Others’.

It was also a cynical political decision to exploit the sufferings of millions of people to enrich the prison-industrial-complex, and boost employment in rural America, where most prisons are situated.

It is this vast, impersonal, systemic racism that deserves our attention – and our condemnation.

Not that of an old goat lusting after a 30-something and animated more by jealousy and envy, than real hatred.

But guess which one the media will exploit?

–(c)’14maj

Christie and Ras Baraka:We know that this was going to be a classic clash of the Titans. Christie is a bully and crook. I hope Baraka stays on him, and levies the final blow to this ego-maniac, "Tony Soprano want-to-be". 

 Demographics Are Against the GOP, So They’ve Become Dangerous

"THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS MORPHED INTO THE DOMESTIC ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES. THIS IS NOT AN OPINION, IT’S FACT BASED AND DOCUMENTED. SO PLEASE READ AND ABSORB IF YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO BE FREE"

Thom Hartman trying to unravel the rantings of a delusional white man who believes he knows what he is talking about. Why Thom, why?

OUR COMMON GROUND Voice, Jeffrey B. Perry is an independent, working-class scholar formally educated at Princeton, Harvard, Rutgers, and Columbia.

His work focuses on the role of white supremacy as a retardant to progressive social change and on the centrality of struggle against white supremacy to progressive social change.

For forty years Perry has been active in the working class movement as a rank-and-file worker and as a union shop steward, officer, editor, and retiree. He has also been involved in domestic and international social justice issues including affirmative action, union democracy, and anti-apartheid, anti-war, and anti-imperialist work.