Jessicah Pierre

Jessicah Pierre is the inequality media specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Articles by this author

Views
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Celebrating the End of Slavery—With One Big Asterisk
During the week of June 19, cities around the country mark Juneteenth — the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, this holiday marks the day when Union...
Read more
"The Poor People’s campaign calls not only for a radical redistribution of political and economic power, but for a deep moral analysis of the national consciousness around poverty and racism." (Photo: PoorPeoplesCampaign.org) Views
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
The Moral Revolution America Needs
Thousands of civil rights advocates, low-wage workers, and religious leaders kicked off massive protests on May 14, launching a 40-day campaign across the nation in an effort to revive Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign. The Poor People’s Campaign brings together poor and marginalized...
Read more
"King foreshadowed that if we maintain our exploitive economic and political systems, then we’d get not only racial apartheid, but economic apartheid as well." (Photo: Public Domain) Views
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
King’s Dream Included Economic Equality, Too
April 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. American history rightly honors King as one of...
Read more
"Why should the burden of cleaning up Trump’s mess fall on a single black woman?” (Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
America, Oprah is Not Your Savior
Oprah Winfrey’s remarkable Golden Globes speech rocked not only the event’s A-list attendees, but almost all of America. Winfrey cited the under-told story of Recy Taylor, a young black woman who was raped by six armed white men during the Jim Crow era. Despite threats to her life, Taylor reported...
Read more
Haiti after the earthquake (Photo: French embassy in Haiti / Flickr) Views
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Trump’s Cruel Holiday Gift for Refugee Families
Two months after experiencing the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010, my dad finally made it back home to Boston. What had started as a holiday vacation turned into weeks of sleeping outside the family home in Haiti, fearful that it would collapse on anyone sleeping...
Read more