By Kenneth J. Cooper
“Place matters for health.” That opening declaration in one of two new reports distills established wisdom that residential segregation is a big contributor to minority health disparities – because segregated neighborhoods tend to have less access to health care and fresh produce, fewer recreational facilities and more environmental hazards.

This week, Ryan Haygood, Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Political Participation Group, offered testimony at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights that addressed a wave of laws that erect barriers to the ballot box.

This week, Natasha Korgaonkar, Assistant Counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) testified at a redistricting hearing before New York’s Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR).

This week, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) filed a motion seeking to intervene in a lawsuit on behalf of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP and African-American voters to prevent the State of Florida from implementing discriminatory voting laws.

By George E. Curry
President Obama discarded his carefully-crafted image of Compromiser-in-Chief Thursday night by proposing a surprisingly bold American Jobs Act that calls for nearly $500 billion in federal spending and tax cuts to jolt the sagging U.S. economy.

By Kasha Dragon
The track and field world championships are over. The athletes, medals in hand or not, have packed up and left the heretofore little-known South Korean city of Daegu and scattered to their homes all over the globe.
Most of the world has moved on.
But in Grenada, one of the world’s smallest island nations and in one of its smallest communities, the fishing village of Gouyave, on its west coast, there’re still celebrating the less-than-45 seconds it took to put them on the map of the track and field universe.

By Lee A. Daniels
The condition of America’s political economy – that is, the political war in Washington between the Congressional Republicans and President Obama over how to fix the economy – may well get worse.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
“Misdiagnosed and undiagnosed [autistic] black children end up in jail,” Proctor said. “If I haven’t got him any sort of vocational skills, language skills, behavioral skills, instead of my son being Ari, his name is going to be inmate 402197. And I just couldn’t be on this earth and let him or another child of color be that.”

By Kenneth J. Cooper
A decade after the No Child Left Behind Act became law, the achievement gap still yawns as schools across the country reopen for a new year.