In this bonus episode of the Suave podcast, Maria and Suave reflect on everything that has happened in the year after their podcast was released, including the fact that they won a Pulitzer. 

Tamar Sarai writes about how prison policies have increasingly limited extended family visits and how that also limits the relationships and access to intimacy for incarcerated people, in this article for Prism Reports. 

“In its premiere, Inside Story travels to Louisiana, where we find a community group protesting the state’s decision to move some youth to Angola, a notorious prison for adults,” write Lawrence Bartley and Donald Washington, Jr. to preface their documentary essay for The Marshall Project.  

Olivia Lapeyrolerie writes about the incredible life’s work of Marvel Cooke, a Black reporter and union organizer, who inspired Black women activists such as Angela Davis and spent her life fighting systemic inequities and the exploitation of Black people, in this article for Teen Vogue. 

“The challenge of solving the Black wealth gap is informed by another time in our past when Black people were the wealth of this nation,” writes Daina Ramey Berry in this piece for The Boston Globe. 

The Free Black Women’s Library features a collection of four thousand books written by Black women and Black non-binary authors and celebrates these authors through workshops, readings, story circles, performances, cultural conversations and a monthly reading club. 

Kathryn Joyce writes about New College in Florida, a once liberal arts college that is being transformed into a right-leaning institution by DeSantis, who wants to replicate this motion across the country, in this article for Vanity Fair. 

“What I found in How to Be A (Young) Antiracist was a kind of meditation on the ways that the personal is, as they say, political,” writes Janell Ross in this interview with author Ibram X. Kendi, for Time Magazine. 

“The maintenance of racism has required the public’s ignorance of racism. The public’s ignorance of racism requires a perpetual undermining of public education,” argues Ibram X. Kendi in this excerpt from his book "How to Raise an Antiracist," published by USA Today.  

Gothamist shared ways to help victims of the deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which left over 7,000 people dead so far. Find out how you can help here. 

Jonathan Ben-Menachem writes about new research that shows how heavily policed communities are more likely to withdraw from civic life, in this piece for Bolts magazine. 

“In interviews, Nichols’s relatives have attempted to ensure that he is remembered as a man beyond the gruesome video of his beating. One piece of information from these interviews stood out to me: Tyre Nichols also loved sunsets,” writes Clint Smith in this piece for The Atlantic. 

“With the police killing of Nichols, the wash-rinse-repeat cycle has begun anew. There have been protests, though nowhere near as large or diverse as those in 2020. Black people, as usual, are doing the heavy lifting. There are talks again about reviving the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that previously stalled in the Senate. But it’ll never get through House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s extremist puppet masters,” writes Renée Graham in this piece for The Boston Globe. 

John Nichols writes about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s record on foreign policy and states that despite her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she will not be silenced, in this article for The Nation. 

Marcus Anthony Hunter writes about how the African American story is also the American story, and yet it is an uphill battle to teach African American history in light of Gov. DeSantis’ decision, in this article for the LA Times. 

In this episode of Code Switch, find out how Bad Bunny has become a megaphone for Puerto Rican politics and issues, which have been a major influence in his music career.

Alana Casanova-Burgess discusses Bad Bunny’s activism and love for his island in comparison to the song Preciosa, one of Puerto Rico’s unofficial anthems, in the first episode of season 2 of La Brega. 

George Varga unpacks the Grammy’s history of “playing it safe,” often rewarding white artists over artists of color, and details some of the new initiatives that will hopefully make the organization more diverse, in this article for The San Diego Tribune. 

“Mass shootings — where four or more people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed — have averaged more than one per day in 2023. Every week has had at least six mass shootings,” writes Júlia Ledur in this article for Washington Post.

“While the United States may have a ways to go before it reaches the crisis level that Peru reached, the seeds are all there,” writes Julio in his latest opinion piece for MSNBC.

Wajahat Ali writes about how Meta’s decision exemplifies the GOP’s influence on American institutions, in this article for Medium.

Amir Khafagy writes about what the victims of the Twin Parks fire are still owed one year later, in this article for Documented. 

“For more than 50 years, the Twin Parks North West high-rise defined the Fordham Heights skyline. But now, on the first anniversary of New York City’s deadliest fire since 1990, the building is also the neighborhood’s tallest tombstone, standing 19 stories high,” write Camille Botello, Aliya Schneider, and Robbie Sequeira in this article for Bronx Times. 

Ngozi Cole talks to some of the residents of the Twin Parks building and exposes a pattern of negligence, in this article for Shelterforce. 

Eric Cortellessa writes about why Congressional Republicans are comparing their select committee to investigate the Biden administration to the Church Committee of the mid-1970s in this piece for Time Magazine. 

“The scale of the conspiracy makes this case unusual — this was not a lone wolf, but someone seeking elected office who engaged multiple people over several weeks in planning targeted attacks on Democrats,” writes Nicole Narea about the attacks on New Mexico Democrats in this piece for Vox. 

“‘The Embrace’ is majestic, standing 22 feet high, but also more intimate than I imagined it would be,” writes Renée Graham about the new memorial to the Kings in a column for The Boston Globe.