Civil Rights

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Reel-to-reel: A long-lost Malcolm X speech recovered

History Dept.
I was born just two years before Spike Lee's 1992 biopic about Malcolm X and starting in kindergarten, I have faced the question in an almost endless loop: are you named after him?
By MALCOLM BURNLEY | February 16, 2012

Review: The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2012: Documentary

Powerful images
The films in this program contain some of the most powerful images to be seen on the screen this year.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 10, 2012

End Black History Month

Diverse-city
It's that time again! Let's roll out the black history materials and talk about African-Americans as if most people really care about them, during the shortest month of the year.
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | February 01, 2012

Jonathan Lee is back home, creatively and with his activism

A Maine stalwart returns
When Jonathan Lee rose from the crowd at the Equality Maine Awards banquet last March to pledge $5000 to the pro-gay marriage effort, it's likely that many people in the room turned their heads in curiosity.
By TONY GIAMPETRUZZI | November 02, 2011

Review: Question One

Documentary goes behind the scenes in Maine's 2009 gay-marriage fight
When Joe Fox and James Nubile began work on their documentary, Question One , which covers 2009's gay-marriage battle from inside both camps, they had no idea that Marc Mutty would be such a compelling interviewee.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | October 26, 2011

Trans explosion

Personal narratives drive social change, and vice versa
When a social movement gets its own high-profile celebrity poster child, you know it must be hot.
By LISA BUNKER | October 26, 2011

Speaking with Howard Solomon about his years of LGBT research

Finding — and preserving — unheard voices
When Howard Solomon's name was submitted as a nominee for the Catalyst for Change Award, the highest honor given by the Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at the University of Southern Maine, the center's board agreed very easily to bestow it upon the well-known LGBT historian.
By JEFF INGLIS | October 19, 2011

Review: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

A collage of privileged documentary moments
In the era when the Black Panther Party was its most powerful and off-the-pig-threatening and separatist, there was little interest in even conversing with whitey, unless whitey was from somewhere other than the ultra-racist USA.
By GERALD PEARY | September 27, 2011

A hug beats a nod

Diverse-city
Maine may be the whitest state in the country, but it certainly isn't the straightest.
By SHAY STEWART-BOULEY | September 14, 2011

Immortalizing Irene: dressed up to clean up, tales of survival, and blowhards

Paging Babe the Blue Ox
Phillipe had to endure Irene at Casa Diablo South in Newport. No problems at all, save for a titanic poplar limb, whose size had already led P&J to dub it "Johnny Wadd," falling all the way across the circular driveway and nearly taking down the power lines.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | August 31, 2011

Review: The Help

Steel Magnolias version of the civil rights movement
As it turns out, according to Tate Taylor's adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's bestseller, the Jim Crow era was not due to centuries of institutionalized racism, but to Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her hang-up about "colored" servants going to the bathroom.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 09, 2011

Showtime for New Boston

With the Urban League conference coming next week, Boston's movers and shakers are scrambling to project a progressive racial image
After years of trying to convince groups with large minority membership that the Hub is now a welcoming, friendly destination for African-Americans, this is the first big organization to test the theory.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | July 27, 2011

Bus stopped?

The proposed RIPTA cuts are totally unacceptable
Last week, the Rhode Island chapter of the National Federation of the Blind (NFBRI), sent an email blast to folks around the state, which contained the first two paragraphs of a press release issued by the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority on June 30:
By RUDY CHEEKS | July 06, 2011

Angry art: ''Rhode Island Blows''

Design Dept.
A few months back, openly gay Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox backed away from a same-sex marriage bill, which he believed would not pass, and threw his support behind civil unions.
By GREG COOK | June 15, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

Review: Dramatic Rep's ambitious Gross Indecency

Wilde's trials
In the center of Gross Indecency 's simple, book-laden set sits a single green carnation in a crystal vase.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | June 10, 2011

Leveling the playing field

Letters to the Portland Phoenix Editor, May 20, 2011
A few observations on Dena Riegel's " Striking Back: Turning Feminist Theory Into a Visceral Rape Deterrent " (April 29).
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | May 18, 2011

Will the Catholic Church kill gay marriage?

Inside the high-stakes battle over same-sex nuptials in Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s gay marriage moment has finally arrived. And the Catholic Church just might kill it.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | February 23, 2011

Anti-diversity is bad for business

Letters to the Portland Editor, January 28, 2011
As he has done with environmental leaders, Governor Paul LePage needs a forum to hear from Maine immigrant and civil-rights leaders. This is made all the more urgent when one considers his "kiss my butt" sound-bite refusal to meet with the NAACP because they are a "special interest."
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | January 26, 2011

LePage's secret bankers

How much the governor really owes, and to which special-interest groups
Paul LePage was making national headlines last week for all the wrong reasons: telling the NAACP to "kiss my butt" on the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, dismissing the civil-rights organization as a "special interest" he won't be "held hostage" by after its local director expressed concern at his declining to participate in MLK Day events his predecessors had (see more here ).
By COLIN WOODARD | January 19, 2011

Airport upgrades

Hoopleville
Air travel choices have evolved.
By DAVID KISH | December 01, 2010

Why did the liberals help construct our concentration camps for the poor?

Prison complex
Why did middle-class liberals, historically the leaders of compassionate social reform, allow, with nary a peep, the construction of our colossal Prison Complex? Two books, one new and one a few years old, explain why liberals not only went along with this right-wing, racist project — they encouraged it.
By LANCE TAPLEY | September 08, 2010

Fighting back

Two cases in federal court here in Massachusetts could help turn the national tide against DOMA
Thanks to a federal law that codifies discrimination against same-sex couples, more than 15,000 legally married couples (and an untold number of children) are being denied basic benefits, such as the right to file their taxes jointly, or Social Security payments and health-insurance subsidies.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | June 04, 2010

Considering Kagan

She’s weak on free speech, but doesn’t deserve her ‘Seinfeld moment’
Elena Kagan, onetime dean of Harvard Law School and current US solicitor general, is a less than perfect candidate to sit on the Supreme Court.
By EDITORIAL | May 12, 2010

Marriage activists get closure, look forward

Moving on
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree expressed what many in the room were feeling at Equality Maine’s annual dinner celebration on Saturday night: the function room at the Holiday Inn by the Bay on Spring Street elicits “a little bit of PTSD” for Maine’s gay-rights supporters.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | March 31, 2010

Corporate love

Think how much simpler life would be
Here’s a modest proposal for resolving the problems associated with marriage: Abolish it.
By AL DIAMON | April 02, 2010

Policy matters

A look at the legal landscape
Identifying and living as a transgender person has intense emotional implications that we touch on in this week's story. But here, as with most social issues, the personal is also political.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | February 24, 2010

Should non-citizens vote?

Government Reform
We Americans know we don't like taxation without representation in our democracy, but should we allow participation without naturalization?
By JEFF INGLIS | February 17, 2010

Building block

Letters to the Boston editor, January 15, 2010
Your editorial, “Menino’s Promise,” about Mayor Menino’s inauguration, stated: “He must shelve his reservations about becoming more involved in private development.”
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | January 13, 2010

By | January 01, 0001