I was in court yesterday trying to stop yet another slew of evictions. Most of the tenants are fine for now.

That’s because while I was in court, I received a text announcing that President Joe Biden extended the CDC Eviction Moratorium one more month. This is the last extension. July 31, 2021, the check becomes due.

I interrupted the judge to advise him of the extension. Even the judge was happy to hear the news. It was just six days away from the expiration of the moratorium and the system was about to wreak havoc on many people. …

“Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.” — Derrick Bell

Way back in 1995, Derrick Bell, one of the key players in the Critical Race Theory movement, wrote about the attacks on the movement from many different ideological spectrums.

This is back when CRT, as it is now known, was only known to law students, civil rights lawyers, legal scholars, and curious researchers and readers.

Bell’s article, Who’s Afraid Of Critical Race Theory? is one of the most important ever written on the topic because it is independent thought and most of all, it…

After the eulogy, prayers, the sweet soothing ritual of a choir moaning, I rose from the front pew of the Kennedy Street Adventist Church where I had sat for over an hour and took my place beside the casket which held my longtime friend, Pablo Enrique Sanchez, Jr.

Six of us in dark well starched black suits and pearl white funeral parlor issue gloves followed Pablo’s casket as it was wheeled down the middle aisle of the church slowly while the final remnants of the gospel standard “Last Mile Of The Way” hummed triumphantly from the church organ.

At the…

“I Can Make The March And Make Georgia Howl…” — General William T. Sherman

Last time I was in Georgia, I stumbled upon a Black Hair show at a fancy downtown hotel in Atlanta. Atlanta was booming back then, as it is now. I was on my way to Louisiana and decided to lay over for a few days with my family.

It was a joy to see the hair show; I even ran into a few barbers I knew from D.C. and one hairstylist as well.

I had Fried Chicken and Waffles when I was there as well. Visited…

The plague

If there had never been a coronavirus in the U.S. and a Covid-19 pandemic, there still would be an eviction pandemic.

This is because millions of people are evicted in the U.S. every year from their homes and apartments. That is our system.

In 2016, according to the Princeton University website, The Eviction Lab, 2.3 million people were evicted that year. Things did not get better.

This is mostly because it is not designed to get better. When renters are squeezed for their income, and when renters are evicted, the system works just as it is supposed to work.

Covid-19…

Masks

At an Asian market just down the street from my house, all of the workers now are wearing masks again. Some have on surgical masks as doctors wear and some wear the KN95 masks.

Most of the customers are wearing masks again as well. This is not the case at many of the other grocery stores where I live. In some grocery stores, bigger, and more crowded, no employees are masked up anymore. Most customers are not rocking masks either.

It has come to this. And once again, I am looking at Asian-American citizens and/or Asians in the states visiting…

What gives me that vibe and pep in my step this hot summer?

I am headed home. Like Dorothy clicking her red sparkling heels.

Back to Washington D.C. aka the DMV, aka, D.C., my native land. I feel like Aime Cesaire.

A new job carries me back home. I am blessed. Been moving all of July slowly. Back and forth from the fly-over states to the East Coast, where those so-called elites run the world. I doubt that.

Still will be teaching social justice law but something a little different and I am pretty pumped and challenged.

University of Maryland…

Traverse City

Today, I read several articles about racial and ethnic tension in the beautiful city of Traverse City, Michigan.

None of it surprised me.

According to various reports, vicious racial incidents by white high school students towards their fellow students of color have led to action by the Traverse City school officials to try to address the problem.

One incident had white students conducting a mock slave auction of their fellow Black students on Snapchat. This was one of many such incidents over the years in the schools according to various reports and sources.

The incidents resulted in the school board…