Free Republic

People in New Orleans, Louisiana, have been voicing their discontent about the intrusion of the Interstate 10, or I-10, Freeway in their lives ever since it was completed in 1990. After years of debating and studying, they are ready to repair the damage it has caused with what they are calling a Cultural Innovation District. The community will not remove the Interstate since the city cannot afford it, and in the end, the cost of removing it wouldn’t measure up to its value, according to studies conducted. As a result, the city and designers decided to meet halfway and resurrect...

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Two days before the oldest and best-known U.S. civil rights group holds its yearly convention in Milwaukee, black leaders in the city say their community is being torn apart from the inside. Civil rights leaders like 57-year-old Prentice McKinney, who fought to free Milwaukee's blacks from the ghetto, say gangs, drugs and violence have left those who still live in the nation's urban cores in fear of the next generation. "Back then, the enemy was clear, it was white racists, and racist police officers," said McKinney, who was a black teen-age "commando" in the 1960s and now...

The Battle for the Black Vote in 2004Political Commentary By Kevin L. Martin The general election of 2004 remains some 15 months away as I write this, and already presidential candidates on both sides are lining up to corral the black vote. Black voters can take great pride in the fact that both parties are finally fighting for our votes, but it is the Democrat party that has the most to lose and the Republican party that could be a major beneficiary. Black liberal Democrat activists Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond and Ron Waters have been howling up a storm over...

<p>Calling herself a modern abolitionist, former Black Panther firebrand Angela Davis brought her campaign to dismantle American prisons to McDonogh No. 35 Senior High in Treme on Friday.</p> <p>Students and educators were riveted, but they didn't always agree with the African-American activist, 59, who's now a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.</p>