What Every Non-Muslim Should Know About Islam

Most people would probably be embarrassed to admit that they don't know much about faiths other than their own, which is OK because most people didn't major in Theology and most people aren't religious scholars. However, with the current political climate and with hate crimes on the rise, ignorance about faiths, beliefs, and cultures different …

Books, Trump, and the “inner city”

About three years ago, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenéz was looking to make room in the annual budget by closing down 22 public libraries; next thing you knew, town halls were packed with angry Miamians, the Miami New Times was writing about it, and WLRN (our local NPR station) was reporting on it. The public outrage was so strong that …

Illegal Immigration into the U.S.

People don't come here illegally because they want to break the law, they come here illegally because it's the only way they can in their desperate situation (meaning waiting X amount of years isn't an option). Illegal immigrants pay thousands of dollars to get here (that they would contribute to the U.S. if there was an avenue for …

Petty Politics

My dad is an old school Cuban; born right before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, he witnessed enough crimes committed by the Castro Regime to despise anything that resembles communism. My great grandfather immigrated to Cuba from Catalonia, Spain in the late 1800s, my grandfather built on the work of his father, and my father was …

On The Muslim Ban

“I am in love with every church And mosque And temple And any kind of shrine Because I know it is there That people say the different names Of the One God.” — Hafiz We are a nation founded on religious freedom. We are a nation of immigrants. The Muslim ban is not only morally wrong, it …

The Greatest Lie Ever Told

If you were to be diagnosed with cancer with 97% of doctors saying that you have cancer and 3% of doctors saying that you don't have cancer, would you seek treatment or would you risk dying from it? Or worse yet, would you tell them, "that's ridiculous because cancer does not exist?" Something I hear a lot about climate change …

Does Trickle-Down Economics Work For The Middle Class?

When I was a first year economics student in college, one of the first things we learned about was the difference between Trickle-up (Keynesian) and Trickle-down (aka supply side) Economics. The economy is, in general, susceptible to booms and busts (expansions and recessions), but is supply-side economics the economic system that promotes the best outcome? After the Reaganomics and Clintonomics eras …

Dr. King looking Jazzy in Miami, FL 1965

  Dr. King was so full of wisdom. His words: "It's alright to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. The fact is that millions of Negroes, as a result of …

Racism Through the Lens of 1944 France

2016 has brought, as Charlamagne Tha God has said (yes I am quoting him), "the issue of race into the minds of a generation that wasn't even thinking about it." The president-elect of the United States wasn't short of racial slurs during his campaign to the White House, and as someone who is considered "of color," …