The murder of a cousin takes Conducive editor Heather Tirado Gilligan back to her home in the Bronx, and back to the childhood and experiences that continue to shape her.

Humankind, both collectively and individually, has a strange little quirk. We ignore the past when it holds valuable lessons that go against what we want to hear or believe. Our insistence in doing this has negatively affected our future many times, both as individuals and as a society. We give our tacit approval for the [...]

With much of the public and political attention over the last year going to divisive issues like health care reform and economic stimulus programs, other key landmark legislation that became law in 2009 was largely ignored. One of these, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, was the first piece of legislation President Barack [...]

My 11 year old son and I worked in a soup kitchen the day after Christmas. I had lived in the inner city before, so I had seen many homeless during my time there, but my son had never seen any in his life except on TV. He was amazed by the variety of people [...]

‘Tis the season for all kinds of predictions for the new year that sound good now, but that people will have forgotten about by this time next year. So if I put out a list of predictions for next year now, I’ll be just fine. It’s kind of like the weather man and his 50 [...]

Same sex marriage is one of the most controversial social issues in the U.S., and has become a central struggle for the gay rights movement. In 2008 California voters passed Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage shortly after the state’s Supreme Court legalized it. Although a clear setback against homophobia, does marriage equality herald the success [...]

The incident with Henry Louis Gates Jr. has made it clear that while many Americans take pride in electing a “black” president, President Obama is not supposed to discuss race. Obama quickly got the message as well, transforming a much needed dialogue about racial profiling in the wake of Gates’s arrest into an appropriately mocked [...]

In spring, same-sex marriage supporters celebrated recent wins in Iowa, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire after the Proposition 8 let-down in California. As the movement for civil rights progresses, Heather Tirado Gilligan details a new problem. As it stands now, the 2010 census will discount same-sex marriages. Ignoring same-sex marriages does not allow an accurate [...]