2020-8-18 Housing: Structural Racism’s Ground Zero
The Ultimate Frontier: Housing as Structural Racism Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute published a piece in the Times on Sunday focused on a Silicon Valley satellite of San Francisco,...
View Article2020-8-20: A New Kind of Candidate in Peoria
It Takes Courage Our hometown of Peoria, Illinois has a different sort of mayoral candidate this year. Her name is Chama St. Louis. She’s a long-time community organizer and activist; she’s young...
View Article2020-8-21 Deeds Have Consequences
When Deeds Belie Words America doesn’t care about its children. That’s pretty much the conclusion we’re compelled to draw from the “reopen America’s schools” campaign the Administration – including...
View Article2020-8-23 The Woes of the USPS
The (Continuing) Travails of the USPS Here’s what’s been happening in the past couple of weeks: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (mega-donor to the Republicans, former owner of a logistics company he...
View Article2020-8-25 It Never Stops
“This Is the Epidemic We’ve Got in this Country” —Ja’Mal Green Like so many others, we were by turns shocked, appalled and infuriated when we watched the cell phone footage of a Kenosha, Wisconsin...
View Article2020-8-26 It Takes a Village
2020-8-26 On the Roots of Educational Inequity: A Personal Story “We pretend that everybody enters the school on an equal footing …” –Jack Schneider, Education Historian Deedspeakout recently had a...
View Article2020-8-27 Redlining’s Consequences
Redlining’s Environmental Toll The city of Richmond, Virginia drew up its redlining map in the 1930s, with four “zones”: green, blue, yellow and red. Nearly a century later, the original green and...
View Article2020-8-28 On Justice, YMMV
Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the Murky Aftermath of Kenosha It’s very difficult to follow the ongoing story in Kenosha in the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake by KPD officer Rusten...
View Article2020-9-1 White Privilege
How Does the Expression “White Privilege” Make You Feel? “The system does not change until it’s forced to.” – John Oliver Over at an academic blog, Crooked Timber, which we occasionally read and...
View Article2020-9-3 Louisville, What Hast Thou Wrought?
“No Justice, No Derby” The Kentucky Derby will, to the surprise of many, be run this Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. The 150,000 or so rich fans and assorted hangers-on will be...
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2020-9-6 Disrespect in the Heartland
Disrespect and Despair Our hometown of Peoria, Illinois suffered a small crisis due to an indignity foisted upon a small community garden this past week. Here’s the big picture: Renaissance Park...
View Article2020-9-7 Precursor Displacement and Policing
Gentrification & Policing: Charleston S.C. edition Our mission is to consider how the various areas we cover frequently cross paths with one another in ways that heighten the negative consequences...
View Article2020-9-10 You Need $1 Trillion? You’re Getting $0
States and Cities Need $1 Trillion: They May Well Get $0 Yesterday there was a post on our go-to Illinois politics site (Capitol Fax) with some discussion about Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and US...
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2020-9-11 The Great Unraveler
Covid-19, the Great Unraveler Revealing the Underbelly of American Inequality Today we reflect on three different stories: one from NYC, a second from Kissimmee, Florida, and finally, we return to a...
View Article2020-9-13 It’s Good News Day
Good News Day at Deedspeakout Readers have observed that Deedspeakout is often bleak in subject matter and short on hopefulness. We concur – the news in the areas we discuss isn’t encouraging these...
View Article2020-9-14 You Want Stark? We’ll Give You Stark
Observing the Outer Limits of Education Inequity On September 9 and 11, the New York Times published stories devoted to education. They illustrate the outer limits of extreme inequity in U.S. society,...
View Article2020-9-15 Our Sorry Healthcare System, Pandemic edition
This is Just the Beginning “I got to go find work, I got to get my health coverage. Because I got a lot of people depends on me. I got a wife, I got grandkids. I got kids. I got a lot of people and I...
View Article2020-9-18 A Note to Readers
A Note to Readers I’ll be taking a break from regular posting over the next few weeks, but wanted to let you know I’ll be back – possibly right before the elections, possibly right after, depending on...
View Article2021-1-2 Are We Our Brothers’ Keepers?
The Ethics of Vaccine Administration: The Incarcerated “The subject [of vaccination priority] has become a contentious and political issue, particularly in the USA, with experts worrying that...
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