Last night, a grand jury decided that the NYPD police officer who killed Eric Garner, an African-American man accused of selling untaxed cigarettes and whose last words were "I can't breathe," will face no charges in Garner's death. This comes not even two weeks after police officers approached 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and shot him two seconds later, and barely a week and a half after Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Michael Brown, walked away sans an indictment. People are screaming the obvious—#blacklivesmatter—into the void, because we have found that we don't live in a world where that concept is necessarily a given. READ MORE

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There’s still a lot of stigma; HIV’s related to sex and drugs, which are two things that make you “not a good person.” But really, really? Bullshit. Own your humanity and don’t judge people. I don’t care if I slept with 13,000 people and did heroin every day; I’m still a person. And, I might be a better person than you.

Yesterday was the 26th World AIDS Day, a number that both seems frighteningly long and curiously short, given that I, and so many others, have never known a world without AIDS. I often worry that the anxious awareness of the past has now grown stale and the cultural approach has turned cavalier, despite the overwhelming truths: nearly 50,000 people will be diagnosed with HIV this year, adding to the 1.2 million people who are already living with it. African-Americans are 12% of the US population, but account for 44% of people living with HIV, as of 2010. Black women are the second largest group of those diagnosed, after young gay males. This year's World AIDS Day theme was Getting to Zero, the same theme for the last three years. Let's hope we're getting closer. READ MORE

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I always forget to say "rabbit, rabbit" at the start of each month; my morning speech is limited to grunts and snorts and rude, unconsciously-dealt insults to anyone who dares to make noise around me, so mammals are never really the first thing on the brain. It doesn't stress me out, but it always makes me feel a little bad, and for the first five days or so, I rue my failed approach to preparing for the month ahead (I know, all of this because of a superstition) (BUT WHAT IF IT WORKS??). READ MORE

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Everything that could've been said has been said; everything that could've been done was avoided. Last night, Michael Brown was put on trial for his own murder. You will hear me repeat this a lot: what age is a black boy when he learns he's scary? Millions learned last night. READ MORE

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