Posts by Ben Dawson

  • Character and Service

    President Carter once called justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, and love “the guiding lights of a life,” and those principles were the threads woven through the long lists of his own accomplishments.

    | National

  • Immigration

    Vote NO on HR 29, Laken Riley Act

    Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) and Children’s Defense Fund-Texas (CDF-Texas) urges you to vote NO on HR 29, the Laken Riley Act. This is not a border security bill. HR 29 is a discriminatory, anti-immigrant bill that violates the U.S. Constitution by rolling back basic due process protections that protect those who are wrongfully arrested from losing their immigration status.

    | Texas

  • Looking to the New Year

    The end of the holiday season and the start of the new year are always a time to prepare for new beginnings.

  • Nikki Giovanni

    When poet, essayist, scholar, and activist Nikki Giovanni passed away on December 9, the world lost a singular voice.

    | National

  • Education

    Giving the Gift of Books

    As parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, and adults everywhere are busy choosing holiday gifts for the children they love, books should always be at the top of the list.

    | National

  • A Litany of Thanksgiving

    On this Thanksgiving, I share once again the beautiful prayer of great Black theologian Howard Thurman, A Litany of Thanksgiving. For many years I always made Thanksgiving dinner for our whole family and for friends away from their homes.

    | National

  • Saying Grace

    During the Thanksgiving season I often share the description of an editorial cartoon my father kept pinned up in the vestibule of our church that made a deep childhood impression on me I have never forgotten.

    | National

  • Honoring General Tubman

    On Veterans Day, November 11, the state of Maryland posthumously named Harriet Tubman a one-star brigadier general in Maryland’s National Guard.

  • Keep Rising

    This is a moment when many people are feeling as if the dream they have of what America can and should be has been deferred yet again, while the forces that seem willing to ignore, excuse, or embrace misogyny, racism, bigotry, bullying, and cruelty may appear to be ascendant.

    | National