News
The City installed speed cameras along a deadly stretch of Roosevelt Boulevard this week. Is it Black and Brown Philadelphians, WURD’s afternoon host wonders, who will pay for them? The Philadelphia Parking Authority’s decision to test speed cameras on Roosevelt Boulevard is in many ways a sensible thing to do. After all, the notoriously deadly […]
Some might say Philadelphia feted its new City Council, re-elected mayor and other political luminaries in proper Broad Street-style at the Met on Monday. Some might say they could have done away with all the pomp and just carried out the ceremony at City Hall. But, one thing most seem to agree on is that […]
Not that she had much Black voter support while in it, but others did make gains once she left Since no one else is going to look at it, we’ll do it. Two of the latest major 2020 Democratic nomination polls offer us a glimpse in to sudden shifts in the primary landscape after the […]
A decade ago, before #BlackLivesMatter, before Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, before camera phones immortalized the deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of police, there was a Philadelphia narcotics squad that allegedly ran amok in black and brown communities. Officer Thomas Tolstoy was a key member of that narcotics squad, and their exploits […]
Philly Thrive activists, filling up seats in yellow shirts along the red velvet carpeting of Philadelphia City Council’s main chamber Thursday, felt a bit cheated. What had originally started out as a much more strongly worded resolution on the future of the shuttered Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery site—authored by outgoing Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds-Brown—ended up […]
Wake Up With WURD host Solomon Jones spearheaded efforts to hold police accountable for racist Facebook posts after disturbing findings released in the Plain View Project. Over 300 police officers were investigated and over a dozen officers were fired. Jones and other leaders in the city formed the Rally for Justice Coalition and they have been persistent […]
This past weekend in Philadelphia a 2-year-old was shot in the head and died. Just a day before, an 11-month-old baby was shot four times and lived. And while my prayer is that something good can come from this assault on our children, reality says prayer is not enough. Philadelphia’s black and brown community — […]
I was at home when my wife told me that Amber Guyger, a white former Dallas police officer, was found of guilty of murder for killing a black man named Botham Jean while Jean was at home in his apartment. “Good,” I said flatly. But that single word doesn’t capture the relief that comes with […]
Why would some Black audiences boycott the new Harriet Tubman movie?
Solomon Jones
November 13, 2019
In a Black community dealing with the shooting deaths of numerous children in recent months, another story is vying for top billing — the proposed boycott of the Civil War-era biopic, “Harriet.” It seems to be part of a disturbing pattern of Black folks telling each other not to support Black films. And not just […]