The Afropolitan Today — Commentary

Its been amazing watching the progress on the continent the last few years. After being there for over a year, I was so impressed by the advances. I got to travel to Zambia, made a 15 hour visit of Adis Abbaba, Ethiopia and took a days long drive through a bao-boab filled valley in Tanzania. Wow. I'm back home in my other home California, but man I miss Africa! I miss the colors, the sounds, the cadence of people's voices, the fruit! Things are looking up for the Continent--no matter what you've been told. 

There's an amazing photo essay by Camilo Jose Vergara on Slate. Its about decaying paired houses in Camden, New Jersey. If you know anything about Camden, you know its one of the poorest/decaying cities in America. What he did was take pictures of homes that are paired but one is abandoned/vacant and the other is occupied. The contrast is incredible. Take a look: (hit launch on the photo to see the slideshow)

[AP/Alex Brandon] Something has really been bothering me about the US Presidential Election. We all know the questions asked from the beginning about Sen. Obama have been centered around experiance and his race. Now that the experience question has almost vanished and been substituted with the patriot question, thanks to Sarah Palin, race is still on the table and the "great unknown".   As a black person watching the coverage since December when he was 20 points behind, I feel a bit slighted when the media makes comments like "race is an issue" or "the race problem". This directly links his blackness as being a...

Hello faithful readers! I just got back in the States after a 4 month stint in the Cradle of Mankind. I had a great time and was inspired by so much that it will take some time to get all the lovely Kenya posts going. I'll start by more photos of the Fashion for Peace event I attended waaay back in May, including the above photo of the venue inside the beautiful Nairobi National Park, and below of media section. Now that I have faster internet (it took excruciatingly long to upload even one photo in Kenya because of bandwidth...

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr's assassination.  I like to remember him as a fierce opponent on poverty and war, the Vietnam War in particular.  Here's the famous anti-war speech: