By Arielle Newton for PBS NewsHour

On paper, I’m a progressive candidate’s ideal. I’m a 23-year-old, black, queer, college-educated woman who is drowning in more than $160,000 of undergraduate student loan debt. I fervently believe in unlimited access to reproductive healthcare, despise corporate welfare, and consider climate change to be the most severe public health issue of our time.

by Leah C.K. Lewis

There has been a great deal of commentary about the #BlackLivesMatter disruption in Seattle during the first weekend in July. Two young activists connected to Seattle’s BLM chapter stormed the stage and demanded a 4.5-minute moment of silence to honor the anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing at an event where Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, an Independent self-proclaimed socialist senator from Vermont, planned to discuss social security and Medicare.

by Candace Simpson

It has been about a week since Election Day. Many of us left-leaning folk woke up Wednesday morning groggy, upset that our country had turned Red. Not too soon after this news did political pundits and armchair-philosophers pontificate the reasons why people “voted against their interest”. And while there were absolutely people who voted against their interest for Republican representation, there were also people who chose not to vote.

by Maya Harris

When black women show up at the polls, as we did in 2008 and 2012, we demonstrate a capacity to deliver decisive wins—just ask President Barack Obama.  And, as Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe can attest, that exhibition of political might is not reserved solely for presidential election years.

A new study released by the Census Bureau revealed that African-Americans voted at a higher rate in the 2012 Presidential Election than any other race. This is the first time that African-Americans outvoted Whites in an election since 1996, when the Census Bureau started collecting voting data.