As Iowans we are privileged in so many ways – with our land, our people and our history, but we should be willing to show some humility in recognizing how these privileges came to be. How different would life be today if freedmen and women had been allowed to take their rightful place as land owning, independent farm families – like so many of our ancestors here in Iowa?

In January 2018, I spoke with the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Nicks about The Force, his feature documentary about Oakland’s deeply troubled police department and its history of violence. This is a new interview with Pete, discussing those issues in the post-George Floyd world.

As the Democratic Joe Biden-Kamala Harris team began to campaign together to win the 2020 election, the contours of the upcoming political contest became clearer.

In a world that had been dominated by a small class of rich men for so long that most people simply accepted that they should be forever tied to their status at birth, a group of upstart legislators on the edge of a wilderness continent declared that no man was born better than any other. America was founded on the radical idea that all men are created equal.

Four top officials of the media organizations the US government funds to provide factual, unbiased news to world populations without access to a free and independent press have been fired. They will be replaced with by Trump loyalists.

In April 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church, Dr. King delivered a sermon that offered a profound diagnosis of the illnesses afflicting the nation. King summoned the nation to “undergo a radical revolution of values” that would transform the United States “from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” Only through such a revolution, he declared, would we be able to overcome “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”