Urban Thought Collective

About Me:

Najee Ali is Executive Director of Project Islamic H.O.P.E, a national civil rights organization that advocates for the human rights of oppressed people regardless of race, gender or religion. He was selected by Wave Newspapers and Our Weekly Newspaper as one of the 25 most influential black leaders in Los Angeles. More information is available at: www.islamichope.org.

Now that Sen. Barack Obama and John McCain are the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees, the nation’s attention along with every political pundit and blogger is now focused on who they will select as their respective running mates.
I have decided to come up with my own short list of nominees, beginning with McCain who simply […]

Dear Ludacris:
You are a three-time Grammy award winning artist. No one can dispute that you are one of the leading rappers in the industry. You have the first amendment right to record music of your own choosing. But I feel that the recent release of your song attacking Jesse Jackson […]

The shooting death of Black postal worker Kevin Wicks by Inglewood, California police officer Brian Ragan has created a fire storm of controversy in African-American community. It also continues a disturbing trend that Black America continues to face nationally: the devaluing of Black lives by law enforcement. It appears that we are all […]

I promised myself that I would give Jesse Jackson a break. I didn’t want anyone to misunderstand and think that I had an axe to grind or it was personal. It isn’t. I’m just a truth teller.
In the last two weeks, Jackson made national headlines disgracing himself. He didn’t need my help. […]

Rev. Jesse Jackson’s words last week that he wanted to cut Obama’s nuts off was a source of outrage for many blacks across the nation. He has apologized. Obama has accepted. Personally, that was good enough for me. I think it’s time to move on this week to more serious issues such […]

Rev. Jackson,
Your vulgar tirade caught on tape by Fox News, in which you said you wanted to rip Barack Obama’s nuts off and accused him of talking down to black folks with moral lectures at churches, is simply the last straw for me and a growing number of African-Americans.
There are many blacks across the nation […]

The Fourth of July is a day our nation cherishes. None of us should take our freedom for granted, or the fact that brave soldiers like Crispus Attucks, a black man who was the first martyr in the American Revolution, lost their lives for a greater cause. We should respect the men and […]

As I watched the national news last week, there was a major story out of Gloucester, Massachusetts concerning seventeen white girls at Gloucester High School who are all pregnant at the same time. This number is more than four times the number of pregnancies that the school (with an enrollment of 1,200) has […]

Jamiel Shaw, the seventeen year old African-American high school football star murdered on March 2nd, allegedly at the hands of 19 year-old Pedro Espinoza (an illegal immigrant and member of 18th street gang, one of the largest Latino street gangs in Los Angeles County), is a murder case that has garnered national headlines. […]

R. Kelly said he believes he can fly in one of his hit records, and he has done just that. After six long years, he was found not guilty of 14 counts of child pornography in a Chicago courtroom on Friday.
In my opinion, Kelly is the latest in a long line of celebrities to […]