In the wake of a New York grand jury deciding not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner, racially diverse protests instantly erupted across the nation. White faces could be seen in swelling crowds from NYC and D.C., to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Denver. Their mouths covered with masking tape with the words “I can’t breathe” scrawled over it. The righteousness of racial solidarity burning in their eyes as they joined in chanting, “Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” This is not to say that there were not White allies protesting over the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-…

In the wake of a New York grand jury deciding not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner, racially diverse protests instantly erupted across the nation.

White faces could be seen in swelling crowds from NYC and D.C., to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Denver. Their mouths covered with masking tape with the words “I can’t breathe” scrawled over it. The righteousness of racial solidarity burning in their eyes as they joined in chanting, “Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!”

This is not to say that there were not White allies protesting over the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. They were there shutting down the St. Louis Symphony with a haunting “Requiem for Mike Brown.” They were there disrupting a St. Louis Rams football game back in October.

There were even scattered throughout the crowd during the fiery protests that ensued after a grand jury declined to indict former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s death. Allowing Wilson, who had just killed a teenager, to leave the scene, go wash Brown’s blood off of his hands and place his own gun into evidence is almost farcical — something one would expect from Shonda Rhimes’ How To Get Away With Murder, not the streets of America.

That did not stop MSNBC’s resident Republican Joe Scarborough from comparing Mike Brown to 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman, while his guest Donny Deutsch joined the ranks of liberal wild card Bill Maher in referring to the slain teen as a “thug.” The underlying message being: His death isn’t right, but it’s okay.

What has become quickly apparent in the days following the non-indictment of Pantaleo, however, is that there are some White people shocked at the scope of white privilege and how deeply the system of racism functions as a safe haven for bigots with badges. Unlike Wilson shooting of Brown, it is the rare White person who believed that Pantaleo, a man who has faced at least two civil rights lawsuits for violating the rights of African Americans, who boldly took down Garner, who was unarmed, using a chokehold that was banned in 1993 by then Police Commissioner Ray Kelly while the father of six gasped over and over and over again, “I can’t breathe,” would not face any consequences. Even after the New York City medical examiner’s office ruled Garner’s death a homicide, a grand jury decided that Pantaleo should not even have to stand trial. If we didn’t live in a nation where lynching was once the law that would be stunning.

Even FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly proclaimed himself “extremely troubled” by the grand jury’s decision, saying in his Talking Points segment, “[Eric Garner] did not deserve what happened to him. He did not deserve that.”

That’s when you know it’s real.

There are some White people, as evidenced by the likes of Maher, Scarborough, Charles Krauthammer and my Twitter timeline, who need to believe that had Mike Brown been a near-perfect victim, he’d still be alive. That belief exempts them from examining a system that privileges Whiteness over Blackness. It exempts them from grappling with their own racial biases. And it allows them to convince themselves that the execution of an unarmed teenager, whose body was allowed to lay exposed on the pavement for hours, his blood serving as a heart-wrenching lane divider, was an uneasy justice — unfortunate, but necessary nonetheless.

Let’s be clear: It does not matter if Mike Brown smoked weed. His life mattered. It doesn’t matter if he listened to gangsta rap. His life mattered. It does not matter that he was suspected of stealing cigarillos. His life mattered. The same system that ruled his life didn’t matter is the same system that ruled Eric Garner’s did not. Unfortunately, there are those White people who consider themselves advocates for social justice who don’t recognize the grave injustice of Mike Brown’s death, yet cry over the killing of Eric Garner. And those White people don’t get. They don’t get that there is no separation. The extrajudicial killing of unarmed Black people is never acceptable and being a perfect victim should not be the price of the ticket.

There are those Black people who have drawn the same comparisons between Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The nuanced difference here is that in most of these cases, they are not attempting to justify or excuse Brown’s death because he is suspected of scuffling with Wilson and suspected of shoplifting; rather they are pointing out the likelihood of a Black person being killed by a police officer in an encounter if they are not respectable. And that is not separate and apart from White supremacy, it is evidence of it.

All. Black. Lives. Matter. Not just the ones who make White America comfortable. And until we reach the point where that is recognized in a court of law, the racially harmonious protests currently sweeping the nation are just detours along a road full of dead, Black bodies deemed not worth the effort.

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Supporting Only ‘Good’ Black Victims Won’t Dismantle White Supremacy

On Friday, Darlene Love will sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for David Letterman one last time. The nearly annual tradition started in 1986, and Love has spent the last 27 years performing the holiday classic on Letterman’s shows, “Late Night” and now “Late Show.” (A CBS press release notes that Love has performed 21 times since 1986.) This 28th year will be her final bow. To celebrate, CBS released a video mashup of Love performances through the years. “They couldn’t ask me not to sing ‘Christmas (Baby)’ on another show, but after 10 years, then 15 years, of doing this one song on this one show, I felt I had an obligation to…

On Friday, Darlene Love will sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for David Letterman one last time. The nearly annual tradition started in 1986, and Love has spent the last 27 years performing the holiday classic on Letterman’s shows, “Late Night” and now “Late Show.” (A CBS press release notes that Love has performed 21 times since 1986.) This 28th year will be her final bow. To celebrate, CBS released a video mashup of Love performances through the years.

“They couldn’t ask me not to sing ‘Christmas (Baby)’ on another show, but after 10 years, then 15 years, of doing this one song on this one show, I felt I had an obligation to be true to them,” Love said to Billboard in October. It’s unclear if another late-night show will pick up the tradition left behind by Letterman (who will go off the air on May 20, 2015), but Love might be open to the possibility. At a concert on Long Island over the weekend, she joked to the crowd that she’d be willing to sing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” for someone else after Letterman said his last goodnight.

In the past, Love has also said how she wants to start an annual Christmas show in New York with Paul Shaffer, Letterman’s famous band leader. It was Shaffer who got Love connected with Letterman in the first place, all the way back in the mid-80s, when the pair performed together in the musical “Leader of the Pack.”

“Paul Shaffer played Phil Spector in that play. So, David Letterman came down to see the show, and one night on his show, Dave said to Paul, ‘That Christmas song the girl does in the play you’re in is the greatest Christmas song I’ve ever heard. We need to get her on our show,'” Love recalled in an interview with HuffPost Entertainment in 2013. “It was just one coincidence after another! I started doing the first Christmas show in 1986 […] Every now and then they let me sneak in another song. ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),’ however, is the song. And that’s how all of that came about.”

Prior to her resurgence in the mid-’80s, Love had financial troubles that resulted in her becoming a maid. Love has said it was “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” that helped remind the now-Rock and Roll Hall of Famer of her talent.

“I was cleaning this one lady’s house in Beverly Hills and I heard ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ on the radio. I said, ‘That’s me singing that. This is ridiculous! People are playing my records. If they want to play my records that means people still want to hear me,'” Love said last year. “I quit that job and decided to go to work.”

Love’s final Letterman performance airs on Friday.

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Watch A Mashup Of Darlene Love Singing David Letterman’s Favorite Christmas Song

Many Americans seem to only remember one of the two namesakes of the 2009 federal hate-crime bill signed into law by President Obama: Matthew Shepard. Similarly, many Americans also seem to only remember the bill as the Matthew Shepard Act. However, this abbreviated mention conveniently leaves out the other person for whom the act is named: James Byrd Jr. Shepard was a white, gay college student who was brutally assaulted by two homophobes near Laramie, Wyoming, and died six days following the heartrending attack. His death now haunts our collective consciousness, reminding us that hate against LGBT people might surely mean death. James Byrd Jr., on the other hand, was a Black man from Texas. Byrd was ruthlessly murdered by three men, two…

Many Americans seem to only remember one of the two namesakes of the 2009 federal hate-crime bill signed into law by President Obama: Matthew Shepard. Similarly, many Americans also seem to only remember the bill as the Matthew Shepard Act. However, this abbreviated mention conveniently leaves out the other person for whom the act is named: James Byrd Jr.

Shepard was a white, gay college student who was brutally assaulted by two homophobes near Laramie, Wyoming, and died six days following the heartrending attack. His death now haunts our collective consciousness, reminding us that hate against LGBT people might surely mean death.

James Byrd Jr., on the other hand, was a Black man from Texas. Byrd was ruthlessly murdered by three men, two of whom identified as white supremacists. His ankles were chained to the back of a pickup truck, and he was dragged approximately three miles along an asphalt road in Jasper, Texas. In the process, his head and right arm were severed from his body. His torso was eventually left in front of a cemetery that mostly contained the bodies of other Black people. Whereas Shepard was murdered because of his perceived sexual identity, Byrd was killed because he was Black.

Why did we feel the need to write this open letter to mainstream LGBT organizations with a reference to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act? Why have we felt the need to point to the failure on the part of the American populace to rightly acknowledge the atrocities that ended the lives of both namesakes? Because it illuminates the dangers of focusing on one type of identity-based violence — the violence that impacts LGBT people — while willfully ignoring the police and vigilante violence that impacts Black queer- and trans-identified people, as well as all Black people: Mike Brown’s bloodied and lifeless body was left on a hot Missouri street for 4.5 hours; the world bore witness to video clips of Eric Garner uttering his final words, “I can’t breathe!”, as a police officer choked him to death; Marlene Pinnock was brutally pounded by a white, male police officer on a highway in the middle of the day; and Black trans women like Erycka Morgan and Islan Nettles, and many whose names we do not lift up, continue to be viciously attacked and killed.

We can no longer sit idly by as you, mainstream LGBT organizations, center your movements and advocacy work on some within our varied communities but not others. We are no longer OK with the mainstream LGBT organizations among you who signal your complicity in anti-Black violence through your loud silence and deliberate ignoring of the types of systemic, institutionalized forms of anti-Black racism that negatively impact Black queer and trans people (and all Black people), disallow Black well-being, and deaden us.

And while there have been some awareness and recognition of the fact that anti-Black racism materializes in ways that stifle Black freedom and lives, it is insufficient for LGBT organizations to merely acknowledge these horrific events. The morally courageous thing to do is take action. And organizations like the Audre Lorde Project, the Anti-Violence Project, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and INCITE! cannot do the necessary intersectional work alone.

We are calling for a bigger commitment and a more radically inclusive vision from LGBT organizations. We are calling for an agenda and a commitment to combating racism as forcefully and unshakably as your commitment to standing against homophobia. We are calling for a new, multivariate LGBT agenda that acknowledges and advances recognition of the humanity and suffering of Black people. We are calling for an agenda that not only expresses awareness but demonstrates, through tangible actions, a value for Black life. And should you not, we can only conclude that Black lives do not matter to you.

Movements are not built on the backs of the most vulnerable in the service of the needs and whims of the most privileged. Movements are built and succeed when they begin at the most marginal of spaces — always evaluating who’s positioned in the center of power and always ensuring that asymmetrical power relations are corrected so that we might exist in a more equitable society.

Some of us within the LGBT spectrum are Black. Our lives matter too.

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An Open Letter to Mainstream LGBT Organizations That Have Remained Silent on Black Lives Mattering

I am a fairly prominent African American screenwriter (Ali, Remember The Titans). I write this in defense of Amy Pascal, someone I met 22 years ago as a young writer. What she did for me, away from the cameras, when I was nobody and just breaking in, I want to share with the public as she comes under this withering barrage of racial invective. My producer and I had a meeting with her when she was an executive vp at the studio to pitch a project. It was one of my first high-level meetings. I had only been in the business a few months. I was nervous. I was pitching a true story (something that would become my specialty years later). The meeting…

I am a fairly prominent African American screenwriter (Ali, Remember The Titans). I write this in defense of Amy Pascal, someone I met 22 years ago as a young writer. What she did for me, away from the cameras, when I was nobody and just breaking in, I want to share with the public as she comes under this withering barrage of racial invective.

My producer and I had a meeting with her when she was an executive vp at the studio to pitch a project. It was one of my first high-level meetings. I had only been in the business a few months. I was nervous. I was pitching a true story (something that would become my specialty years later). The meeting did not go well. In fact, she and producer had words, as they say. I said to myself, “my career is over before it’s even begun.” It had little to do with me, it more had to do with them, but I was collateral damage.

I left her office that day thinking, “I’m done. It’s over for me.” I got in my car and just drove around LA aimlessly. After lunch, I was headed back home when I got a call on my cell. It was Amy Pascal. I was shocked to say the least. I remember what she said like it was yesterday, “You’re a good writer and you’ll have a great career. This wasn’t your fault, but just remember a movie is not about events, it’s about people.” That was the best single piece of advice I’ve ever gotten. Ever. I use it every day to write.

This good woman saw a young black writer, reached out to encourage me when no one was looking, when there were no cameras to record this kind act. And at that time the number of black writers in Hollywood could be counted on one hand. Anyone who would call her a racist is going to have to fight me.

This does not mean there isn’t racism in Hollywood; there is. I’ve written about it myself blogging on HuffPo, “The Whitewashing of James Brown,” but to compare this good woman to that monster Donald Sterling is evil and stupid on the part of Al Sharpton. More than anyone, he should be sensitive about reputations since his careless remarks have destroyed the lives of others.

There should be a holistic discussion about race and diversity in Hollywood. I would welcome it, but leave aside character assassination and focus on the problem and how to solve it. Leave the hyperbole out of it. It does nothing to advance the cause of inclusion.

And just in case someone thinks I’ve been paid to write this, I haven’t been in business with the studio since Ali. I write this from the heart because I saw hers that fateful day when she saved me, lifted me up when I meant nothing to anyone in this town.

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The Amy I Know

“People would spit at me every day when I went into school,” Lalita Tademy recalls. Hers was the first black family to make their home in Castro Valley, California, just south of Oakland, in the 1940s and 50s. “They made it very known that they wanted us out.” But Tademy persevered. She read voraciously and excelled academically. She won scholarships, she climbed the corporate ladder, and in the midst of the first great tech boom, Tademy occupied a position that remains rare for female minorities: she was an executive at a Silicon Valley powerhouse, Sun Microsystems. And then she quit. Her colleagues and family were stunned. Her career …

“People would spit at me every day when I went into school,” Lalita Tademy recalls. Hers was the first black family to make their home in Castro Valley, California, just south of Oakland, in the 1940s and 50s. “They made it very known that they wanted us out.”

But Tademy persevered. She read voraciously and excelled academically. She won scholarships, she climbed the corporate ladder, and in the midst of the first great tech boom, Tademy occupied a position that remains rare for female minorities: she was an executive at a Silicon Valley powerhouse, Sun Microsystems.

And then she quit. Her colleagues and family were stunned.

Her career had become unfulfilling, and Tademy decided to take her life in a different direction. She spent her newfound free time pursuing a passion for genealogy, which led to the idea of creating fiction about the fascinating ancestors she’d researched.

Multiple bestselling historical sagas later, Lalita Tademy has established a new career and a new approach to life. (Her latest novel, “Citizens Creek,” focuses on a real-life slave with a gift for learning languages who was sold to a Creek Indian chief as a 10-year-old and who became the first black Creek chief after the Civil War.)

At her home in the Bay Area, The Huffington Post asked Tademy to share some life lessons — about shifting careers, aging, regrets, relationships that flower later in life, and death.

What do you say to people who are on the fence about leaving an unsatisfying career to pursue their passion?

There comes a point where you have to decide whether you’re willing to live the one life that you have in an unfulfilled way.

I’m very supportive of people taking risks, and while that risk may not take you where you think that it might, I think it will take you someplace where you can pivot and eventually find your footing.

If you are going to take the risk, do it the smartest way that you can. Plan it, save, give yourself a cushion. Don’t just say, “I don’t have to take this anymore,” and walk out. That’s not a formula for success, because whatever happens, it’s probably going to take longer than you expect.

Do you know anyone who took that risk but didn’t see it pan out well?

I do. Actually, maybe I don’t. I do know people who have stepped off and said, “I’m going to pursue something else,” and then the “something else” didn’t materialize in a way where they could be supported and they had to try to fight their way back.

But I’m not sure that was a failure. I think they stopped themselves from being on a track that they no longer desired, and they ended up someplace that maybe wasn’t lofty, but it did get them re-situated.

You went from working in a stimulating environment surrounded by smart people to working mostly alone. How have you adjusted your social life?

What I’ve done is I’ve replaced a lot of my business friends with creatives, other writers and people who understand that solo pursuit of a project.

I joked with my husband, there was a moment when I was so incredibly happy because I knew more writers than I knew business people. I was thrilled, because it’s a different energy, you’re feeding off people in a different way. Now a lot of my friendships are around hiking or walking — it’s one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-three, smaller groups. It’s going to lunch, it’s going to dinners.

But it took a while to get there. It was quite a shock to step off of the corporate merry-go-round, and I was eager to do so but very surprised at how different life is outside of that cocoon.

What is a great regret of your life?

I don’t spend a ton of my time on regrets. There’s very little that you can do about it. And if you can do something about it, it’s no longer a regret.

I got married for the first time when I was 55. With the type of career that I had, at the time that I had it — for an African-American woman in the corporate world, I didn’t feel that I could juggle much of a social life and be able to accomplish what I accomplished in corporate America. Theoretically that could be a regret, that I didn’t spend more time trying to find a balance, that I wasn’t more aggressively seeking a partner.

But I can’t regret that because when I did get married, it was the most fabulous match ever, and it was what I’d been waiting for. It was tremendously, over the top, emotionally satisfying. We both came to it late, and therefore actually understand how incredible what we have is, and can really enjoy it together.

So I think regrets just get ground up and put in a different pocket, and take you where you’re supposed to go.

What about your relationship with your husband worked that hadn’t happened with previous relationships?

I think that leaving the corporate world and then finding out that I could write opened me up in new ways. I wasn’t nearly as rigid as I had been. I was more flexible and open and appreciative of someone else and someone’s needs, and the possibilities and the potential that two people can have together.

I don’t believe that if I had met my husband earlier in life that we would’ve gotten together, because I don’t think I would have been open to it. Because I waited so long, I knew that this was something that could work and that I was willing to work hard to preserve. I’m not sure I would’ve worked that hard earlier on when I was thinking of my needs.

You don’t have children. Are you content with how that part of your life has unfolded?

I am. It wasn’t as if that was something that I was desperate to do at some point and it just couldn’t happen. I made a series of choices, and that was never the top choice. And when the time for that faded away, that was okay with me.

Earlier in life, I regretted and sort of mourned that I didn’t have a partner, but I didn’t mourn that I didn’t have a child. I think that being a parent is beyond phenomenal and should be cherished, but it wasn’t for me.

You’re in your mid-60s. Do you have any advice for people who are 10 years younger about how to get the most out of the next decade?

A lot of the prior decades — the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s — they each had their own tone. They each had their own philosophy, their own focus.

The 50s were my best decade ever. I loved my 50s beyond all reason. I was on enough of a financial perch where I knew I’d be okay — not necessarily fabulously well, but okay. And I was on an emotional perch that was great. I knew how to no longer buy into toxic people in my life, just let that go. And I had things that I wanted to accomplish that I could work on as projects that were very fulfilling. Everything seemed very right.

So what I would recommend is: concentrate — in a non-selfish way — on making yourself happy. People around you will respond to that.

Do you think about death?

I actually think about other people’s death more than my own. I come from a family of very long-living females, and so my biggest disappointment will be that I will outlive the people that I cherish and that I love. I do think about that quite a lot instead of my own death.

I feel so supported at this moment in time in so many different directions, and I just dread the thought of those people falling away from my life. And that’s what I think about.

Your mother passed away not too many years ago. Did you take away any lessons regarding grieving that others might find helpful?

My mother’s death was long in coming. She had multiple sclerosis; she was bedridden, housebound for decades. So for her passing, it was a relief for her not to be in pain, and I had a great deal of time to prepare.

My father passed before she did. I never felt as if we didn’t say things that we should have said to one another. I think that can haunt you for your whole life if you don’t engage, and interact, and say the things that you want to say to somebody so that they know what they mean to you.

If you do tell them, then it’s just a natural passing and it’s part of life. Otherwise, it is a regret that you hold on to.

Anything on your ‘bucket list’ that you’d like to accomplish?

Very truthfully, I’ve accomplished more than I thought that I ever would. I’ve had two careers, and both have gone very well.

I have three books that I am very proud of — not because they’re bestsellers or not bestsellers, but because they really, I think, bring forth history in a way that it isn’t always depicted.

So I don’t have a big bucket list of “I need to visit these places,” or “do these things,” or “leave this behind.” It is what it is, and I’m feeling pretty dog-gone good right now.

Transcription services by Tigerfish; now offering transcripts in two-hours guaranteed. Interview has been edited and condensed.

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Inspiration From A Prominent Tech Exec Who Dumped Her Career To Pursue A Passion

Dear Readers, We’re seeking 15 women age 50 and older who plan to make a radical change in their lives in 2015. Whether your New Year’s resolution is to strike out on your own, reinvigorate your marriage, get healthy — through diet, exercise or something else — start a business, adopt a child, overcome a fear or learn a new skill in 2015, we want to hear from you. The aim is to create an inspiring initiative that reminds us it’s never too late to change your life, pursue your passion, or prioritize personal happiness and wellbeing over traditional definitions of success. When we launched Huff/Post50 in…

Dear Readers,
We’re seeking 15 women age 50 and older who plan to make a radical change in their lives in 2015. Whether your New Year’s resolution is to strike out on your own, reinvigorate your marriage, get healthy — through diet, exercise or something else — start a business, adopt a child, overcome a fear or learn a new skill in 2015, we want to hear from you. The aim is to create an inspiring initiative that reminds us it’s never too late to change your life, pursue your passion, or prioritize personal happiness and wellbeing over traditional definitions of success.

When we launched Huff/Post50 in 2011, we made clear our generation was not ready to go gently into the night. Since then, we’ve provided a unique platform for bloggers to explore the issues and ideas that matter most to those over 50. While we’ve heard countless stories about people who’ve reinvented themselves for the better after turning 50, we’ve also heard stories about women who feel invisible after they pass the big 5-0. One recent study pointed specifically to 51 as the age when many women start to feel they no longer matter. The result, says the study of 2,000 women, is depression.

While we admit we live in a culture that often equates beauty and energy with youth — leading to a lack of self-esteem among at least some older women — we’d like to turn that way of thinking on its head. We believe women can be smart and sassy, beautiful and confident — and that they can make extraordinary contributions to the world around them — whether they’re 50 or 75 or 100. And that’s why we’re seeking 15 women 50 and older who plan to make a change in their lives in 2015.

So if you are indeed a woman with a plan — a big plan — for 2015, please email the following to 15over50@huffingtonpost.com — and put 15 Over 50 in the subject line:

Your name
Your hometown
Your contact information including email address and daytime phone number
A specific explanation of how you plan to change your life in 2015 (even just 100 words will do)
A current photo of yourself (if you want to send a video, even better!)

We will choose 15 women 50 and older to feature on The Huffington Post. Throughout 2015, we’ll follow your progress, tell your story, and be your biggest cheerleaders.

The deadline for submissions is 11:59 p.m., eastern time, on Monday, January 5, 2015. Please note that your submissions are subject to HuffPost’s user terms, and please, no music if you submit a video, unless it’s an original work you composed and are playing. Thanks!

Help us to celebrate all those who are reinventing themselves, no matter what their age.

Rita

Rita Wilson is an actor, singer, producer and Huff/Post50’s editor at large.

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Rita Wilson: We Are Seeking 15 Women Over 50 Who Want To Make A Radical Change In 2015

While 2014 will forever be known as the year of the world’s biggest Ebola outbreak — and the first cases of Ebola contracted in the United States — the virus is just one of several impactful changes in our medical and personal health landscape. From cancer research breakthroughs to innovative food policies to strides in the search for an HIV vaccine, we’re quite a bit further in our understanding of medicine than we were last year. Thanks to research in 2014… Your Fitness Tracker Data Could Lead To The Next Big Medical Discovery Your FitBit, Jawbone and other personal tracking devices and apps are logging every step you take, every bite you eat and …

While 2014 will forever be known as the year of the world’s biggest Ebola outbreak — and the first cases of Ebola contracted in the United States — the virus is just one of several impactful changes in our medical and personal health landscape. From cancer research breakthroughs to innovative food policies to strides in the search for an HIV vaccine, we’re quite a bit further in our understanding of medicine than we were last year.

Thanks to research in 2014…

Your Fitness Tracker Data Could Lead To The Next Big Medical Discovery

Your FitBit, Jawbone and other personal tracking devices and apps are logging every step you take, every bite you eat and every hour you sleep.

All of that data is a potential treasure trove for health researchers, which is why University of California, San Francisco and the American Heart Association are inviting people from all over the world to plug their apps and devices into the Health eHeart platform. The hope is that people who track their health data can provide scientists with powerful, real-world and real-time insights that they can then use to make observations and associations between things like exercise, diet and heart disease.

Dr. Elliott Antman, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and president of the American Heart Association, called the big data push unprecedented and said it could pave the way for how big clinical research projects are conducted in the future.

“This dwarfs even the largest studies that we could do in a conventional randomized trial,” Antman over the phone to HuffPost. “This platform allows us to gather information in a free-living population, as opposed to the artificial atmosphere of a medical clinic.”

The best observational, longitudinal studies involve cohorts of tens of thousands of participants, but the Health eHeart study has the potential to synthesize data from up to one million users.

A Single Donor Transformed Mental Health Research Funding Forever

The deaths of high-profile and beloved people like actor Robin Williams kept depression, suicide and mental health at the forefront of the news in 2014. There’s no doubt that losing Williams and others sparked important conversations like HuffPost’s Stronger Together series, where people share how mental illness has affected their lives.

And just as the death of one person has opened up a broader conversation about depression, a single donation may have done the same for research. Philanthropist and businessman Ted Stanley announced in July the donation of $650 million to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which will finance research to find and treat the genetic roots of mental illness, reported NPR. The gift was inspired by Stanley’s son, who has bipolar disorder.

The New York Times noted that the donation “comes at a time when basic research into mental illness is sputtering, and many drug makers have all but abandoned the search for new treatments.” For that reason, Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, called the donation a “game changer” and a “long-term play that will pay-off” in an email to HuffPost.

Cancer Patients Can Use Their Own Immune Systems To Fight Tumors

Cancer patients are unlocking the power of their own immune systems to shrink their tumors with immunotherapy drugs — a class of medicine that can either train your immune cells to recognize and attack cancer, or boost your immune system with man-made immune proteins. The Food and Drug Administration approved the first such immunotherapy drug, called Keytruda, for patients with advanced melanoma who are no longer responding to other drugs. Keytruda is just one of several immunotherapy drugs being developed to combat a wide variety of cancers.

“These drugs represent a groundbreaking advance in the treatment of cancer,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society to HuffPost. “This probably is the most important breakthrough [cancer] news of 2014.”

Sequencing Cancer Tumor Genes Reveals Better Ways To Treat Patients

But researchers are also excited about the promise that genomic sequencing holds for the treatment of cancer. Scientists in several different institutions are working on ways to analyze the genes of cancer tumors to see how they differ from a patient’s healthy tissue. Identifying what makes tumors tick could help doctors match patients with clinical trials or medicines that can best shrink tumors or stop them from growing, all the while doing as little damage as possible to the healthy tissue.

Genomic testing ushers in a new era of personalized cancer care, or the notion that what may be best for one patient may not work for another patient — even if they technically have the same kinds of cancer. To Dr. Norman Edelman, Senior Scientific Advisor for the American Lung Association, genomic analysis of cancer tumors is at the “very top of the list” for important medical breakthroughs of 2014.

“Now we know that a significant percentage of lung cancers — it may be as much as 10 percent — have genetic abnormalities that can be detected,” said Edelman. “More importantly, we have drugs to deal with it. ” Editor’s note: genetic abnormalities play a role in five to ten percent of all cancers.]

We’re Getting Closer To Defeating Polio For Good

There are three different types of Polio, a devastating, highly infectious viral disease that can cause death and permanent paralysis. Type 2 poliovirus appears to have been gone since 1999, and the world has now gone two years without encountering a case of Type 3 poliovirus, says Dr. Walter Orenstein, Associate Director of Emory Vaccine Center and the president-elect of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

“While that’s still too short a time to be certain, it gives great encouragement to the principle that two of the three polio types may be eradicated,” said Orenstein to HuffPost. Cases of Type 1 poliovirus are mostly concentrated in countries like Pakistan, which had 276 cases this year, and Afghanistan, which had 24 cases.

“We’re marching closer and closer to polio eradication,” said Orenstein. Societies can prevent polio with widespread vaccination campaigns, and the U.S. eradicated the disease in 1979.

Smoking Rates Are Lower Than Ever

The numbers are in. Rates of cigarette smoking are continuing to decline in the U.S. and dropped to under 20 percent in 2013 — the lowest rate since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started keep track of smoking rates in 1965. The CDC report, which chronicled the drop in smoking rates between 2005 and 2013, was released Nov. 2014. It also noted that while some people still smoke, they’re smoking less cigarettes.

Edelman said the drop signaled several important and positive cultural changes around smoking in the U.S.

“Keep trying to quit — the evidence suggests that if you keep trying enough times, you will be able to quit, and quitting is very important for your health,” said Edelman. “Also, if you continue to smoke, you’ll be among a smaller and smaller group of people who do it.”

A Vaccine For HIV Is Within Reach

Vaccines that were able to protect monkey from contracting SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus, a disease analogous to HIV in humans) are looking especially promising as a potential vaccine for HIV, according to Harvard Medical School professor Todd Allen, Ph.D.

Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health may soon begin a preliminary human trial based on research they completed injecting monkeys with long-lasting AIDS drugs, reported the New York Times. Check out HuffPost’s story on the biggest HIV/AIDS research breakthroughs of 2014 for more information.

A National Food Policy Could Include Nutrition And Environment And Human Rights Too

Food thought leaders like Mark Bittman (of The New York Times), Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma) are calling on President Barack Obama to create a national food policy to manage the U.S. agriculture industry, improve conditions for farm laborers and protect widespread access to healthy food.

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist of University of California, San Francisco (and the professor behind the viral “Is Sugar Toxic?” YouTube video) called this movement one of the biggest pieces of news from a nutritional public health perspective in an email to HuffPost.

In a Nov. 7 op-ed for the Washington Post, Bittman and Pollan called for Obama to create, via executive order, a national food policy that would streamline the eight different federal agencies that oversee various aspects of the American food system and guarantee the right “every American to eat food that is healthy, green, fair and affordable.”

It’s an outsized, but much needed, vision of the future. Consider this: When a government-appointed group of nutrition experts decided to gather information on how food choices impact the environment (a first), Congress came out against the council’s interest in the environment and directed the Obama administration to ignore their concerns when they issue new national dietary guidelines in 2015, reports NPR.

An Ebola Vaccine (Or Two) Is In Clinical Trials

Orenstein also expressed hope in two highly promising Ebola vaccines that are currently in phase 1 clinical trials. Both of them are two different viruses that have an Ebola gene inserted in them, to induce immunity in the deadly disease. However, one of them was temporarily suspended Dec. 11 over concerns that it caused mild joint pain in the hands and feet of study participants.

But that’s to be expected, said Orenstein.

“What looks like very promising animal data may not be borne out in the clinical trial,” he told HuffPost. Ebola has infected 17,942 people and killed at least 6,388, according to the most recent situation report from the World Health Organization. The epidemic, which mostly affects countries in West Africa, reportedly started with a single case in Dec. 2013.

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The Most Exciting Health Stories Of 2014

Of all the issues raised by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, perhaps the most intractable is the challenge of restoring opportunity to the high-poverty, high-crime, racially segregated neighborhoods where police and minority communities often collide most sharply.

Of all the issues raised by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, perhaps the most intractable is the challenge of restoring opportunity to the high-poverty, high-crime, racially segregated neighborhoods where police and minority communities often collide most sharply.

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The Battle To Boost Opportunity

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael Brown’s father spoke in San Francisco on Monday evening, where he urged students to get an education and told of his own recently learned lessons on police violence. “It really didn’t hit hard until it hit my own backyard,” Michael Brown Sr. said about the killing of his unarmed son in August by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Weeks of protest in the Bay Area since a Missouri grand jury decided on Nov. 24 not to indict former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting the 18-year-old lured Brown Sr. to San Francisco to express gratitude for the support and to show solidarity with demonstrators and students. “I’m real tired of our …

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael Brown’s father spoke in San Francisco on Monday evening, where he urged students to get an education and told of his own recently learned lessons on police violence.

“It really didn’t hit hard until it hit my own backyard,” Michael Brown Sr. said about the killing of his unarmed son in August by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Weeks of protest in the Bay Area since a Missouri grand jury decided on Nov. 24 not to indict former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting the 18-year-old lured Brown Sr. to San Francisco to express gratitude for the support and to show solidarity with demonstrators and students.

“I’m real tired of our kids getting misused and abused,” Brown told several hundred people at Mission High School. “I’m here to stand, stand strong, with you all to make a change.”

On Sunday, Brown sent a similar message at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Brown’s trip to the West Coast shows his growing role as a public voice of opposition to police violence against minorities.

“Somebody’s got to stand up and take a stand,” Brown said in brief remarks, wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap and a T-shirt with photos of his son. “It’s my job and my duty to stand for all of us.”

In response to questions from the audience later, Brown called for outfitting all police with cameras.

Monday’s event was organized by Mission High School’s Black Student Union with assistance from the local NAACP chapter, according to a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District.

Students and other members of the public swarmed Brown on stage for photographs at the end of speeches.

“With the current events going on, we thought that there should be a movement,” said 15-year-old sophomore Damaris Bonner, the Black Student Union’s minister of communications. “We are the youth, but we’ve got to be the example for the generation coming up.”

Bonner said classmates got the idea for inviting Brown after seeing “Selma,” the new film about the civil rights movement.

Sophomore Damaris Bonner speaking to students at Mission High School on Monday.

The stage was decorated with banners saying “Black Lives Matter. All Lives Matter,” and “I Can’t Breathe,” the dying words of Eric Garner when a New York police officer fatally choked him.

We are in a state of emergency, said Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, whose nephew Oscar Grant was unarmed when a transit officer killed him on a train platform in 2009. “If you fail to stand up and speak to this issue what kind of life will your children have?”

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Michael Brown’s Father Expresses Solidarity With Bay Area Protesters

The president of the Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association on Monday refused to back down from criticizing a Cleveland Browns player as “pathetic” for wearing a shirt calling for justice for two unarmed black men who were killed by police officers in Ohio. Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association President Jeffrey Follmer on Sunday issued a statement criticizing Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins for wearing a shirt saying, “Justice For Tamir Rice and John Crawford,” before the team’s game. Tamir Rice, 12, was shot to death by Cleveland police last month while carrying a pellet gun. Crawford, 22, was killed by police officers in August while holding a toy rifle in a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio. “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,” Follmer …

The president of the Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association on Monday refused to back down from criticizing a Cleveland Browns player as “pathetic” for wearing a shirt calling for justice for two unarmed black men who were killed by police officers in Ohio.

Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association President Jeffrey Follmer on Sunday issued a statement criticizing Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins for wearing a shirt saying, “Justice For Tamir Rice and John Crawford,” before the team’s game. Tamir Rice, 12, was shot to death by Cleveland police last month while carrying a pellet gun. Crawford, 22, was killed by police officers in August while holding a toy rifle in a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio.

“It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,” Follmer said on Sunday. “They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.”

After Hawkins explained on Monday that he wore the shirt thinking of what could happen to his 2-year-old son, Follmer refused to back down.

“It’s not a call for justice, they were justified,” Follmer said during an interview on MSNBC Monday evening. “Cleveland police officers work with the Cleveland Browns hand-in-hand, and when he disrespects two of our police officers, he disrespects everybody else.”

Follmer said video shows police officers were justified opening fire on Rice within two seconds after pulling up on him in a park. He said that the 12-year-old, who police thought was 20, “wasn’t unarmed,” even though he had a gun that could fire non-lethal pellets.

A grand jury will consider whether to indict the officer who killed Rice. In September, a grand jury decided not to indict the officers who killed Crawford.

Follmer expressed little sympathy for parents who worried that their unarmed children might be killed.

“How about this? Listen to police officers commands, listen to what we tell you, and just stop,” Follmer said. “I think that eliminates a lot of problems. I have kids too, they know how to respect the law. They know what to do when a police officer comes up to them.

“I think the nation needs to realize that when we tell you to do something, do it, and if you’re wrong you’re wrong, and if you’re right, then the courts will figure it out.”

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Cleveland Police Union Refuses To Back Down From Criticism Of NFL Player For Tamir Rice Shirt