Cognize

No one likes to talk about the fact that “doing time” leaves the majority of returning citizens worse off than before they were incarcerated. Prior to my imprisonment, I had a very successful consulting business and I lived a solidly middle-class life. I worked hard, I [...]

*This piece has been published with permission of the referenced ex-partner. Other relationships may have been slightly altered to protect specific identities.* The first time I was sexually assaulted I must have been 9 or 10 years old. I was violated by two family [...]

Fourteen years ago, I was raped. It was late fall 2001. I was in the first semester of my 9th grade year in high school. I was14 years old. My parents had just gotten divorced, and I’d recently transferred to a new school district for a [...]

What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and [...]

Bryan Stevenson has spent most of his career challenging bias against minorities and the poor in the criminal justice system. He is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala., an advocacy group that opposes mass incarceration and racial injustice. [...]

Everyday, somewhere in America people wait in long lines only to be patted down, or body scanned. We open our suitcases, empty our pockets, and place our computers, belts, and purses on a conveyor band. Instinctively American citizens and visitors respond on demand. We travel [...]

You are staying until it’s done You said I could have it once You said you liked it You said you wanted it You are my wife and it’s your duty You owe me You are asking for it [...]

Darren was kneeling, but he was not praying. Baptized Catholic and brought up in the church, Darren had turned to his faith to get him through the early years of a decade-long confinement, including months spent on isolation units. Now he [...]

Keith Knight is many things to many people–rapper, social activist, father and educator among them. He’s also one of the funniest and most highly regarded cartoonists in America, and the creator of three popular comic strips: the Knight Life, (th)ink, and the K Chronicles. For [...]