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GOV_jabari-simama

Jabari Simama

Senior Contributor

Jabari Simama is an education and government consultant and a senior fellow with the Center for Digital Government. He served two terms on the Atlanta City Council, from 1987 to 1994; as deputy chief operating officer and chief of staff for DeKalb County, Ga., from 2009 to 2012; and as president of Georgia Piedmont Technical College from 2012 to 2018.

Simama received his bachelor's degree from the University of Bridgeport, his master's degree from Atlanta University and his Ph.D. from Emory University. He is the author of Civil Rights to Cyber Rights: Broadband & Digital Equality in the Age of Obama, published in 2009, and has been a columnist for Creative Loafing and Southwest Atlanta magazine and a feature writer for Atlanta magazine. He blogs at Jabari Simama Speaks.

The right has appropriated and weaponized the term. Progressives shouldn’t let them. Banning the teaching of our true history casts a chilling effect on the debates we must have. We need more Americans to be woke.
An alliance of state lawmakers deserves credit for a collective effort to fight disenfranchisement of minority and Democratic voters. But they will need a lot more support to win the fight to protect the sacred right to vote.
When a police officer exhibits courtesy and empathy, it brings into focus the nuanced, complex relationship between law enforcement and the African American community.
These teachings challenge the biased view that enslaved people brought nothing of value from Africa. Banning them is robbing all students of vital history and knowledge of how the nation got to be what it is today.
With more than 1,000 civilians being killed by cops every year, mayors and city councils can’t be equivocal about ending the warrior approach to policing.
The idea that the Justice Department and FBI are “deep state” forces aiming to undermine the MAGA movement conflicts with history. Too many state and local officials were complicit in the feds’ efforts to fight the civil rights movement.
As the president honored 14 ordinary Americans who defended democracy, Republicans in Congress engaged in a silly game to elect a speaker of the House. The contrast could not have been greater.
Its popularity is growing so fast that cities need to scramble to keep up with demand for facilities and to take advantage of its economic potential. They also will have to consider its racial and class implications.
Georgia’s efforts to discourage voters had an impact in the state’s Senate runoff. Fairness and justice still won out, but we should be making it easier — not harder — for people to register and vote.
A museum and memorial in a onetime Confederate capital preserve the memories of slavery, lynching and Jim Crow. Yet too much of that past is still around us.