philando castile

On the windy bluffs of Weehawken, New Jersey, overlooking Manhattan, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr regard one another coldly. In awful synchrony, the pair raise their flintlock pistols, each one…

Last week we watched death on our smartphones. We witnessed the light drain out of Philando Castile’s eyes and we knew that the stillness of Alton Sterling’s body after the bullets were fired was that…

“We are innocent people, Lord.” So prayed Diamond Reynolds as police handcuffed her and put her and her four-year-old daughter into a police car. Officer Jeronimo Yanez had just fatally shot her…

There is a poignant story in the gospel of Mark where Jesus encounters a young man tormented by a demon. The boy’s father, who desperately wants Jesus’ disciples to help him, has reached the point of…

I know. You want me to say something profound, the hard thing. You want me to say something passionate, something to rally you, something to make you feel like there is hope, and that we’re going to change. But that’s not what this piece is about.

The easily-predicted meme of the moment coming from law enforcement officials and their many political allies is a threefold rebuke to the entire criminal justice reform movement—not just…

We do not love ourselves. We have become cavalier with each other’s lives and we, as a nation, have not yet decided that we have reached the point where we will now practice willful and strategic…

Words are insufficient. Words—like horror, atrocity and domestic terrorism—are inadequate. Words—like sin, evil and blasphemy—are wholly lacking. “Violence is woven into the fabric of our country…