Rania Khalek Dispatches from the Underclass

Author / Rania Khalek

Gun violence is rarely discussed except for when a horrific mass shooting takes place. Still, even with the nation’s eyes focused on this particular issue, there is one kind of gun violence that is continually ignored: Police killings of unarmed citizens. In my experience, liberal gun control advocates are the most silent on this issue. […]

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“[W]e need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work —and by that I mean armed security,” declared NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre at this morning’s press conference, breaking his organizations week-long silence following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that left 20 children and 6 adults dead. After blaming gun control, […]

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Yesterday evening, a 49-year-old woman in Oakland, California was shot and killed by a stray bullet while walking to the store, marking the city’s 124th homicide of 2012. Thus far, a google news search of “Oakland woman shot” has produced just four articles about this particular shooting. As I wrote earlier this week, the media usually pays […]

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When I watch the media coverage of the six and seven year old’s mercilessly slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I tear up. Like most everyone else around the country, I begin to wonder about their last moments, the sheer horror they must have felt seeing their teachers and friends gunned down, the agonizing screams […]

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Diane Ravitch has a must-read blog post about the heroic actions of the six teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary School who died protecting their children. You’ve probably already heard the heart-wrenching stories about teachers using their bodies to shield their little ones from the gunman as almost every news outlet has covered this at length. […]

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The trauma being faced by the surviving children of the Newtown school massacre is a daily reality for their mostly poor black and brown counterparts in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore. That’s because gun violence is most prevalent in America’s impoverished inner-cities, where researchers say the PTSD rate could be as high as 40 […]

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By now, you’ve probably heard that there are nearly 300 million privately owned guns in the United States, almost one gun per person. As disturbing as that is, what’s even scarier is this: A minority of Americans own all of these weapons and just 20 percent are hoarding the majority of them. Following the massacre at […]

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As of this writing, at least 27 people are reported to have been killed, among them 18 children following the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. I don’t know about you, but I’m not just sad or horrified. I’m fucking outraged. I’m furious at policymakers for failing to enact gun control […]

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Christmas is one of my favorite times of year, which might seem a bit strange since I’m an atheist who’s adamantly opposed to the consumer culture that’s destroying the planet. Nevertheless, I really enjoy spending time with my family (we actually like each other) and Christmas is one of the few times throughout the year […]

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Warning: Stealing from Walmart can get you killed. Last week, an off-duty Houston police officer shot and killed Sherry Frey, a 27-year-old black mother of two, for suspected shoplifting at a North Houston Walmart. According to police, it all started when Deputy Louis Campbell, who worked an extra job as a Walmart security guard, was […]

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