Opinion

Let’s be clear: If the culture had a backbone, it would be dipped in cocoa butter and braided tight with laid edges. Black women are the blueprint, the foundation, the spark — and somehow, we still get side-eyed when we say it out loud.

Each year approximately seven million college students benefit from Pell Grants, a 50-year-old needs-based program that can be used to cover costs for tuition, fees, living expenses and room and board.

For the last half dozen years, advocates in Massachusetts have been pushing for the creation of more worker-owned businesses, often called co-ops, as a way to share profits with the people who create products and deliver services.

Gina Dukes knew she wanted to be a teacher the moment she heard a formerly homeless schoolmate talk about the impact teachers had in his life. A once-shy student who grew into a confident, charismatic poet, Dukes wanted to advocate for Black kids.

When I was growing up, my mom would never miss the Roxbury Homecoming celebration. Even as she got older, we would stake out a spot the night before and return the next day and set up our cooler, food and chairs for the community picnic that’s been taking place in Franklin Park for decades.

As they walk through our doors every day, I see Boston’s urban youth for what they truly are: the city’s greatest assets.

In every generation, there are people who want to bury the truth. We are living through one of those times right now.

When Elon Musk called President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” a “disgusting abomination,” he was right for the wrong reasons.

Scapegoating is about power. It’s about exploiting people’s anxieties and frustrations to gain that power. And it’s about making an example of a group to chill dissent and create a climate of fear.

Without school-based support, Black students face greater emotional distress, academic declines, and rising suicide risks.

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement have removed from the quiet streets of exurban Milford an 18-year-old who is an honors student at the town’s high school, brought from Brazil by his parents more than a decade ago.

President Lyndon B. Johnson famously declared an unconditional “War on Poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union address, initiating one of the most ambitious policy initiatives in American history aimed at systemic economic inequality.