Donnell Alexander

How did we land here, with millions all-in on not knowing settled U.S. history?

The public transit experience for the average Los Angeles resident amounts to peeking around buses while stuck in traffic and watching pedestrians disappear underground into the kinds of spaces they’d know better if they were living in New York, Chicago, or Portland.

How could the L.A. car crowd know that during peak COVID, the vibe on early a.m. Downtown trains was postapocalyptic, closer to a disaster movie o...

Adam Craig Hill left Rockaway, New Jersey, to become a famous writer in California. He wound up a polarizing and infamously fallible county supervisor in San Luis Obispo. Through it all, Hill’s big personality and addiction to shortcuts put him on an unpaved road to the Dead Poets Society.

At his Shell Beach home two Augusts ago, the Fresno State English Department product took his own life — months after winning election to a fourth term. SLO is a place that Oprah once called “the Happiest P...

Cannabis journalist, Donnell Alexander joins Madison in dynamic conversation around this cultural moment in psychedelics, spirituality, and the cannabis industry.

Alexander is a journalistic storyteller based in Los Angelos and a Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism where he’s reporting on fairness in cannabis. He has contributed to and been featured in TIME, NPR, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, Leafly, and KCRW.

“We outside!” Chance the Rapper exclaims into his microphone. The sky is near black at maybe seven minutes after 8 p.m. in Downtown Los Angeles. Third weeknight of October. Chance had been and would be again, soon, rhyming his way through a song. The Chicago MC had been in the midst of vocalizing about his heart and his God and the shifting tides of life.
Chano—as more ardent fans might call him—stood on top of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s roof while he did his thing.
It’s our inside-out ...

Malcolm Shabazz Hoover is rattling off his vegetable varieties to two potential customers from a local restaurant.

“It’s called Brassica juncea, a west African mustard green,” Hoover says to Marissa Lorette and Ian Watson, co-owners of BeesWing, a local restaurant looking to work with Black businesses. He picks some from the ground and offers it to them. “Taste it.”

“It’s sweet and spicy,” Watson says, looking pleased and happily confused, and Black Futures Farm bags another client.

Ghetto Celebrity named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's Best Books of 2003.

For me, Hollywood isn’t a state of mind. It’s the place where, 30 years ago, “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” rented me my first Los Angeles apartment. It’s where Brad Pitt's weed guy came to the crib off LaBrea with a briefcase full of selections; cannabis swag like I’d never seen.

With Opening Day nearing, old-school Major League Baseball fans are now focused on their probably doomed squads' chances of winning the World Series. Meanwhile, fans around the planet — and leading-edge Americans — are experiencing the World Baseball Classic as the game’s version of soccer’s World Cup.

In tonight’s World Baseball Classic final, the Uni...

A series on fairness in the cannabis industry.

Hearing the name New Edition is likely to conjure a lot of thoughts. Bobby Brown, those sweet dance moves, and the recent BET biopic to name but a few. Usually not too high on that list is the fact that they’re from Boston, but New Edition’s Boston roots run deep. So when they filmed a music video in Los Angeles with the Lakers during the height of the 1980s Celtics/Lakers rivalry, it was quite a shock to their hometown supporters. Find out how it happened, and how an assist...

A panel discussion concerning art from the African Diaspora. No Chance though.