Five years after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, Black Lives Matter activist Martin Henson reflects on Floyd’s legacy and the change that hasn’t come.

If the church really wants to entice an increasingly nonreligious society to come back into its fold, it is their responsibility to move past its own ego and provide a place for people to process their church hurt.

My church hurt was simple. One of my pastors cheated on his wife. The church fractured. I felt betrayed by the contradictions I witnessed, not yet old enough to understand that the church is made up of people who make mistakes.

Regardless of party, most people hate politics, they distrust the system, and they feel left behind, unheard, and sidelined. I understood how they felt. So how could I reconcile this with being an elected official? I decided on an “ambitious” idea — aiming to talk to people.

These town halls have very little format, lots of me answering questions, sharing frustrations, and inviting people to help me solve the problems. It’s risky, no doubt, for an elected official to deviate from the script, but to meet this moment it’s also necessary. Opening yourself to a dialogue, answering any question asked can be a challenge, but importantly it also humanizes our decision-makers.

The losing candidate — Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin — couldn’t steal the election, but he did immeasurable damage to the public’s faith in our democracy. He challenged 65,000 ballots from voters who complied with all the rules, and four justices on our state Supreme Court agreed to throw out some of them. 

Griffin never presented any evidence that voters did anything wrong in casting their ballots, but it suddenly looked like their votes might not count.

We depend on Duke for electricity. They need to deliver that. But Duke also shouldn’t put shareholder profits over careful stewardship of the natural resources that we all depend on.

This isn’t politics as usual. This is dangerous. Over the past few months, I’ve watched headlines roll in with a knot in my stomach. Cuts to vital veterans’ services. Mass layoffs of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ staff. Unelected power brokers unraveling programs that took decades to build, with no accountability to the American people. President Donald Trump, backed by the likes of Elon Musk, has allowed his political allies to gut federal agencies, including those that directly serve veterans and their families.