Derrick Z. Jackson

Derrick Z. Jackson

Derrick Z. Jackson is a 2018 winner from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, a 10-time winner from the National Association of Black Journalists and a Pulitzer Prize finalist and co-author of Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock (2015). He can be reached at dzjphoto@gmail.com

Articles by this author

Signs at environmental justice protest Views
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Why Environmental Justice Needs to Be on the Docket in the Presidential Debates
Earlier this week, when Fox News announced the lineup of topics for the upcoming presidential debate, climate change and environmental justice were nowhere to be seen. Among the many lamentable things about that is that moderator Chris Wallace, who is scheduled for this Tuesday’s debate, has shown...
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Will the American electorate end up asking for an encore performance of this full-throated rejection of scientific evidence? (Photo: Grist / U.S. Forest Service) Views
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Election Day Is Nearing, But There's No End in Sight to Trump's Attacks on Science
President Trump appears to be on a tear to play down, put down, and take down science in the last weeks of his reelection campaign. After being caught on tape saying he purposely played down the true threat of COVID-19, he and his administration have put on encore performances with attacks on...
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A coalition of Americans gathered for the March for the Dead, Fight for the Living, a candlelit procession across the Brooklyn Bridge to the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan demanding the Trump administration and beyond to take responsible action to save lives and end suffering from COVID 19 on August 21, 2020. (Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images) Views
Thursday, September 10, 2020
The Evidence is Clear: The US Public Wants Science-Based Policies for COVID-19
You would think that after 190,000 COVID-19 deaths, the Trump administration might finally develop a national strategy to control spread of the coronavirus. No. Instead, it foists on us a new member of the coronavirus task force with no expertise in infectious disease or epidemiology. Scott Atlas,...
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Logan, Taaffe, BSA District Executive in Washington, D.C, recites the Scout Oath before EPA Administrator Wheeler and National Capital Area Council, BSA Scout Executive Craig Poland sign a Memorandum of Understanding at the Boy Scouts Memorial in Washington, D.C. on August 17, 2020 (Photo: US EPA/YouTube screengrab) Views
Friday, September 04, 2020
The Boy Scouts Can Do Better Than Teaming up With Trump’s EPA
In more sane times, it would be natural for the Boy Scouts of America to share its do-gooder image with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The two institutions recently announced a special award for scouts that commemorates the EPA’s 50th anniversary. The award is given after a scout earns...
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"If you believe words have power–or can disempower–the “minority” labeling of Black and brown people has surely played no small part in our concerns being ignored or perpetually diluted by white politicians, businesses, and voters," writes Jackson. (Image: Grist / Viktoriya Kuzmenkova / nndanko / Getty Images) Views
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
The Term ‘Minority’ Has Never Made Sense. Let's Cancel It.
Nearly three decades ago, I wrote the following sentence in a Boston Globe column: “Let us bury the term ‘minority.’” Silly me, thinking in 1991 that I could eliminate this amorphous, diminutive label for people of color with a few taps on a keyboard. I excised it from my own writing, as government...
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Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (left) and Governor Brian Kemp (right) (Photo: Screenshot) Views
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
When COVID-19 Science Comes Home to Roost
In my childhood, our nation’s war with itself was seared into me by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. For succeeding generations, 9/11, and the massacres at Columbine, Sandy Hook Elementary, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as...
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To effectively combat the pandemic, we need a just response guided by science and accurate data. (Photo: CC) Views
Friday, June 12, 2020
A Second Wave of COVID-19 Looms Large—and It’s Not Because of Protests
All over America, protesters have taken to the streets to protest the police murders of African Americans George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville and the white vigilante lynching of African American Ahmed Aubrey in Brunswick, Georgia. Part of the news coverage has dwelled on...
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Views
Sunday, May 10, 2020
The Push to Relax COVID-19 Protections Exposes Age-Old Racial Wounds
With unemployment approaching Great Depression levels, the nation is waving the white flag on controlling the coronavirus. It appears not to shock the senses at the White House or at many governors’ mansions around the country that the 76,000 deaths from COVID-19 in three months could fill the...
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The decline of EPA enforcement that has already occurred should serve as a harbinger of what is to come if this new rule dictates which water the government chooses to protect.(Photo: pxfuel) Views
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
The EPA’s Dirty Water: New Rule Discards Science, Ignores Importance of Wetlands and Tributaries
Water, water everywhere and hardly a drop is being protected by the Trump administration. In its latest act of abdication, the Environmental Protection Agency published its Navigable Waters Protection Rule in the Federal Register on April 21. The rule is scheduled to go into effect June 22,...
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The Wisconsin Experiment was a farce and a travesty. But those voters represent the fortitude and the long line we all need to join to preserve democracy. (Photo: Daniel Acker/Reuters) Views
Friday, April 10, 2020
The Election Travesty in Wisconsin Is A Wake-up Call for the Nation
As much as the denial of science is a hallmark of the Trump administration and the Republican Party, Wisconsin Republicans took things to a new level with their cynical decision to hold in-person voting in the midst of a deadly pandemic. As my scientist wife, Dr. Michelle Holmes, an epidemiologist...
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