Ben Jealous Archives - Heart & Soul

The White Privilege Predicament

March 14, 2026 admin 0

By Ben Jealous Last week I wrote about something my father, who is white, has said for years: when many white Americans hear the phrase “white privilege,” they respond by listing all the ways their lives have been hard. But if […]

Rev. Jackson Lifted All of Us Higher

February 19, 2026 admin 0

By Ben Jealous One of the great strengths of our movement is that our leaders do more than inspire young people — they keep the door open for them. The leaders who carried forward the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther […]

February Is About Loving Too

February 11, 2026 admin 0

By Ben Jealous We keep Black History Month on one shelf and Valentine’s Day on another. One is supposed to be about pain and struggle. The other about flowers and pastel sugary hearts. Public remembrance of the most important Supreme […]

Surprised by the Headlines About White Men and College?

December 10, 2025 admin 0

By Ben Jealous Time for a Reality Check (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The headlines this month about White men, college admissions, and the fallout from ending affirmative action startled a lot of people. Stories of declining enrollment and shrinking opportunity for young White men […]

What 400 Years of Family History Teaches About This American Moment

November 3, 2025 admin 0

By Ben Jealous We just fell back. The season of darkness is coming on. But this year, more than any I can remember, that darkness feels existential, not just seasonal. As a professor, I’ve watched it settle over my students […]

Poisoning Our Future: The Trump Administration’s Dangerous Coal Exemptions

April 29, 2025 admin 0

By Ben Jealous Another day, another deadly move that defies logic, morality, and economic common sense. Last week, the Trump administration granted nearly 70 coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The move allows them to […]

In Fire’s Wake, a Community Comes Together to Prevent Future Disasters

February 5, 2025 admin 0

By Ben Jealous “As we address the aftermath of the wildfires, let us resolve not just to build back better but also smarter, with a commitment to the environment and future generations. As a pastor, I am guided by the […]

Trump’s Team is Coming for Climate Science.

January 20, 2025 admin 0

The Timing Couldn’t Be Worse By Ben Jealous It is official: 2024 was the hottest year on record. Temperatures not only surpassed 2023 as the previous hottest year, they leapt – for the first time – past the goal set in […]

The Liberty in Laundry Act Sounds Like a Joke. Sadly It’s Not.

December 24, 2024 admin 0

By Ben Jealous The incoming Trump administration is supposedly interested in “efficiency.” It has a whole quasigovernmental department – the Elon Musk- and Vivek Ramaswamy-chaired Department of Government Efficiency – purportedly ready to take aim at government waste. So why […]

The Figures Who Helped Shape Vice President Harris

September 19, 2024 admin 0

By Ben Jealous When Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president in 2021, she swore her oath of office on two Bibles. One belonged to our nation’s first Black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, the civil rights giant […]

Kamala Harris’s Chicago Convention and Illinois’ Unique Place in Civil Rights History

August 29, 2024 admin 0

By Ben Jealous The modern civil rights movement hit a new peak last week in Illinois. It marked the movement coming full circle, in a way, back to the state of its birth more than a century ago. Illinois is […]

Reclaiming “Tree Hugger”

April 22, 2024 admin 0

By Ben Jealous Most people think of “tree hugger” as a casual insult for a certain kind of environmentalist. The term actually has a proud history. It is time to take it back. In 1730, 363 members of Bishnois branch […]

The Clean Energy Transition Must Be a Just Transition

October 6, 2023 admin 0

By Ben Jealous When General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford – the “Big Three” American automakers – were close to extinction 15 years ago, their workers and the American people stepped in to save them. The United Auto Workers (UAW) gave […]

Saving the Planet Matters Enough to Measure Honestly

August 28, 2023 admin 0

By Ben Jealous (TriceEdneyWire.com) – There’s a phrase you hear from business schools to board rooms that comes from John Doerr, a legendary investor who backed Google, Amazon, and Intuit: Measure what matters. Those words certainly jumped to mind this […]

Big Chance to Cut Climate Pollution from Big Trucks

June 23, 2023 admin 0

By Ben Jealous The interstates built in the 1950s and 1960s killed the vitality of the communities where people of color and the poor lived, from Overtown in Miami to the Hill District in Pittsburgh to the South and West […]

Ensuring Our Right to Invest in the Next Generation’s Future

April 14, 2023 admin 0

By Ben Jealous If a public opinion poll done last month is right, more than half of you won’t know what I mean by the initials “ESG,” and fewer than one in 10 will understand what they mean for financial […]