Opinions

This Ain’t Your Grandma’s Black Wall Street

     In 2020 alone, we lost 41% of Black businesses between the months of February-April. Many of our brick-and-mortar mainstays didn’t survive the economic shutdown, particularly those who weren’t sufficiently tech-enabled. Many of those mom-and-pop shops or small-to-medium size enterprises (SME) have been subsumed under the new everyday economy. The everyday economy is now almost entirely online, and the central reason we have to tech-enable every Black business at little to no cost. […]

Opinions

Baltimore City Councilwoman Phylicia Porter

In a city with such a legacy of residential segregation, the block on which you’re born can easily determine your trajectory in life. That’s why Porter is convinced a public-health approach to the myriad issues that plague Baltimore is just as critical as legislative fixes are when it comes to addressing deeply systemic challenges. “I’ve always been super involved in my community; I think my parents instilled in me this idea of staying busy and only getting into ‘good trouble,’ to evoke a little John Lewis here. I’ve been doing all this behind-the-scenes work for years,” Porter explains. […]

Opinions

Unhealthy and Deadly Skepticism

        COVID-19 has ravaged the world for two years infecting 201 million people and causing approximately 4.27 million deaths. Miraculously, a vaccine was developed to lessen its spread as well as spiraling deaths. Unfortunately, there were no warnings that tens of millions of people would refuse vaccinations because of their dire unhealthy and deadly skepticism. […]