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Boston's justice system is in serious need of reform. Many of its policies and practices are antiquated, expensive, and don't really even make Boston safer.
When 63 million people voted to elect Donald Trump as the president of the United States, it opened up the floodgates for toxic white masculinity in America.
Trump's America means many things, but this much is clear - it means toxic white masculinity is not just permitted, it's fully empowered - and getting worse.
When Trump was elected, it gave white men - particularly white men in power - full, unfettered permission to say or do whatever they want without consequence.
Much of the foundation of our criminal justice system is derived from slave patrols and was created when African Americans could still be bought, sold, and traded.
I've always loved technology - not gadgets so much... but I've enjoyed using technology to connect people to people and connect people to opportunities to do good.
When the primary people who have influence and power in our communities are not even really allowed to educate you on who to vote for and against, we're in trouble.
I'm most comfortable at the intersection of technology and helping people; that's really what gets me going and gets me excited and what I get most passionate about.
My theory on momentum is that the best way to produce it is through small, hard-fought victories that lead to bigger battles and bigger wins. Winning builds momentum.
I tend to write two stories every day, five days a week. It's a real grind. But it also allows me to really try to have my finger on the pulse of injustice in America.
I have been told for most of my life that the white man on my birth certificate is not my biological father and that my actual biological father is a light-skinned black man.
I've come to understand that awareness and momentum, while necessary and valuable, are just two of the dozens of essential ingredients required to actually make change happen.
I reject this idea that who Bernie Sanders was in the 1960s is irrelevant. Who you are and what you do, what you fought for, and who and what you fought against, is always relevant.
People I love and trust advise me to just drop off the face of the Earth for an extended period of time, and maybe that will calm or cool things down. But my work is very public work.
Some of the most destructive forms of racism - like being denied a home loan or being passed on for a job where you are the most qualified candidate - are hard to measure in real time.
Over and over again, I looked family members who had lost loved ones to police violence, I looked them right in the eye and told them, 'Don't worry. We will get justice for your family.'
We must put an end to the corruption and systemic racism in our justice system, and that starts by electing progressive district attorneys who will fight for real justice across the country.
We are living in tumultuous times, and our focus should be fighting against the oppression and injustices that are against us - not battling those who are on the same side of seeking justice and peace.
Before I ever endorse a candidate, I meet them, interview them, interview their colleagues and evaluate their competitors, study their positions and ideas, look at their campaign... then make a decision.
My work has never been about me, and I've never made a big deal about my race. I've actually tried hard to avoid ever making a big deal out of it and have, instead, simply tried to do good work that matters.
I was never a white guy pretending to be black. Not once, ever, did it occur to me that I was being phony or fraudulent or fake. Quite the opposite - I always believed I was living the truest form of my self.
Our nation is not a fully representative democracy if we do not have a one-person, one-vote method of directly electing our president. It disproportionately tilts favor to smaller states with smaller populations.
Bill Clinton is just as gross as Donald Trump - so much so that the Clinton campaign can't really back Trump into a corner on his integrity or mistreatment of women because Bill's personal history is so damn awful.
As you may know, I'm the co-founder of a political organization called Real Justice. Our goal is to help elect progressive, reform-minded prosecutors and district attorneys that are committed to ending mass incarceration.
When I write a story, I try to write them from the perspective of victims. I try to write them from the perspective of families who've been done wrong, who have lost their loved ones or people who have experienced injustice.
I've made tons of mistakes over the past years, but if there's anything I've done well, if I see an opportunity, or if I see God moving or going in a direction or opening a door for me, I try to take it; I try not to hesitate.
I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. In a dream world, the bread is super soft, like the Wonder Bread of my childhood, and the sandwich will have crunchy peanut butter, strawberry jam, and a cup of cold milk to go with it.
There are many great outlets that we love and respect, but 'The North Star' really is going to be a hard news outlet with reporters and journalists, White House correspondents. I think we'll be hard news with some cultural commentary.
'The Star-Spangled Banner' should've never been made into our national anthem. That President Woodrow Wilson, widely thought to be one of the most bigoted presidents ever elected, chose it as our national anthem, is painfully telling as well.
There is kind of this spirit in journalism to tell both sides of the story and to just let the listeners choose what they want to choose, and I understand that, and there's a place for it, but on some issues, we really do need to take a stand.
I think what irritates both conservatives and liberals alike is when news outlets pretend that they don't have an agenda but then clearly do, be it in the editorial decisions they make and the guests they have and the material that they cover.
Anne Marie Schubert is one of the most horrible district attorneys in the state of California. She represents Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. It's no wonder she continuously refuses to hold the police accountable for violence against people of color.
I was in high school when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky. We didn't have social media back then - hell, we didn't have a computer with the Internet in our home - so the details of it all escaped me.
Donald Trump should not be underestimated. He'll say or do anything to suck the wind out of the news cycle. His reach and influence on social media are immense and are only rivaled by a tiny handful of people in the world. He's dirty. He doesn't fight fair.
Conservatives will fight hard to preserve the institutions of mass incarceration and police brutality. Because they don't see themselves as victims of these things, but as benefactors, they will fight hard to preserve the status quo against a reform candidate.
Politicians and lawmakers are willing to watch us take us a knee, watch us march, watch us picket and protest - and wait us out. They are willing and prepared to outlast us - and, in most cases, to do absolutely nothing about the problems we highlight and amplify.
For about a year, I worked for 'Daily Kos.' They were great. I mean, they allowed me to write whatever I was thinking about and feeling. 'The New York Daily News' saw it. They were making some pretty big changes. They hired a new editor in chief. I was his first hire.
While I fundamentally reject the notion that anyone who owned other human beings was either good, moral, or decent, Francis Scott Key left absolutely no doubt that he was a stone-cold bigot. He came from generations of plantation-owning bigots. They got wealthy off of it.
I used to think this notion of preaching to the choir was a problem, and we kind of use it in a bit of a pejorative sense... but I've actually grown to adopt that perspective that the choir needs good preaching - they need good information. They need good tools and insight.
When 3 million more people vote for a presidential candidate, but that candidate still loses, the system sucks. Period. It's broken. I think it's broken if the candidate loses by one vote and still wins. Losing by 3 million votes, but still winning the election, is preposterous.
When you turn 18 in the United States, you should be automatically registered to vote. Ideally, this sensible reform would be a federal law affecting all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and American territories, but our federal government stopped being sensible a very long time ago.
When I travel and speak across the country, I often tell college students that we are making a significant mistake when we say to each other that this criminal justice of ours is broken. To say it's broken would be to suggest that it was well designed and had good intentions from the start.
Racism itself is difficult to measure. We can measure hate crimes - which are absolutely an indicator. We can measure reports of discrimination. We can measure the number of times hateful words are being used across the Internet. Those things all help us measure racism, but it can sometimes be nebulous.
Because of tax laws governing charities, including almost every single civil rights organization you've ever heard of, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the ACLU, and others, those organizations are not allowed to endorse political candidates or use their resources in political campaigns of any kind.
Of course Trump thinks he is above the law. For his entire life, he has been able to say and do whatever he felt like saying or doing - not just without consequence, but he has been able to say or do whatever he felt like saying or doing - and rise up all the way to the position of President of the United States.
When you are a coordinated partner, you are, in effect, on the campaign staff. You can talk to the whole staff and have virtually no limits on what you can discuss and strategize around. When you are an independent friend of the campaign, you are not allowed to strategize with the campaign on their political decisions.
We live in a country where movies, music, and sports are more important than God to a lot of people. It's why Colin Kaepernick's protest rocked the nation and got the whole world talking. Taking a knee is a simple act of defiance. Had Colin done it anywhere other than the football field, it might not have even made the news.
Adults who loved and knew me, on many occasions sat me down and told me that I was black. As you could imagine, this had a profound impact on me and soon became my truth. Every friend I had was black; my girlfriends were black. I was seen as black, treated as black, and endured constant overt racism as a young black teenager.
Blame it on our short memories, the daily grind of the 24-hour-news cycle, or the endless barrage of information that comes at us on social media, but count me in the number of people who did not truly understand how utterly gross both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton have been to women, including their own wives, across the years.
There is a movement we call Afro-Futurism, where we imagine a black way of life free of white supremacy and bigotry. 'Black Panther,' I think, is the first blockbuster film centered in the ethos of Afro-Futurism, where the writers and directors and makeup and wardrobe team all imagined a beautiful, thriving black Africa without colonialism.