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Keshia Golden’s Plea Deal Kept Her Out of Prison—But Don’t Mistake It for Justice
Keshia Golden’s attorneys say that in October 2022, while she was eight-plus months pregnant, her then-boyfriend Calvin Sidney hit her, grabbed her hair and slammed her head against a kitchen counter. Golden grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed Sidney in the leg. Golden only intended to make him stop, she has always insisted. But she hit the femoral artery. Sidney died at a Chicago hospital.
Keshia Golden was charged with first-degree murder and held in jail, where, weeks from giving birth, she was transferred to the medical unit to recover from her injuries. Four years passed.
Then, on Aug. 24, 2026, just before Golden’s trial was to begin, the Cook County state’s attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke offered Golden a last-minute deal: If she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and underwent two years of community service, drug testing and probation, she would serve no prison time.
All evidence points to the fact that Golden acted in self-defense and should never have been charged in the first place.
Nonetheless, she accepted the plea.
Her acceptance of this lesser charge is not an admission of guilt. It’s also not justice.
Golden is a single mother who was forced to make an impossible choice to ensure she would be able to raise her 3-year-old daughter. “All she has is me,” Golden said in court.
Now, the only remaining path to justice for Golden is a pardon from Gov. JB Pritzker. Such a pardon would send a clear message: No woman should have to die to prove that she was a victim. No one should be punished for surviving abuse, defending themselves or protecting their child.
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Dispatches From Daisy Chain: Olivia Rodrigo’s Feminist Festival Brought Together Music, Reproductive Freedom and the Power of Women
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The Deportation of 5-Year-Old Liam Tadeo Signals a Darker Era for Immigration Policy
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‘If We Didn’t Do It, Who Would?’: Meet the N.C. College Students Leading the Fight for Campus Voting Access
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Was Mary Oliver a Feminist?
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‘That’s Just Aging’ Is Not a Diagnosis
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Heidi Overton and the Overton Window
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Girls Have Always Had ADHD. We Just Weren’t Looking.
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Justices Sotomayor and Jackson Sound the Alarm on SCOTUS’ Dangerous Deference to Trump on Mail-In Voting
In this episode, Dr. Goodwin breaks down what the latest Supreme Court ruling on voting rights actually says and what it doesn’t. (Of course, it means everyone’s hair is on fire.) Given that this Supreme Court has tried in every way possible to make it more difficult for people to vote, dismantling the Voting Rights Act—an act that had been supported over the years by both Republicans and also Democrats—what hot mess is next?
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was one that had been embraced over the years strongly by Republicans and Democrats. As Dr. Goodwin discusses, this Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has unraveled it, knowingly pulling the thread in order to disintegrate of one of the most essential pieces of legislation in American history, which protected all Americans. She reminds us that the very first suffragists in the United States were white men who had been dispossessed from the right to vote because they were not wealthy. Sit back and take a listen.
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- Women’s Equality Day: Many Gains, Still Work To Do
- Trump’s FDA Pick Raises Concerns Over Science, Abortion Access, and Food Safety
- Idaho Abortion Ban Blocked When Pregnancy Threatens Patient’s Health
- UN Experts: Five Years On, the World Must Not Normalize Taliban Rule
- North Carolina State Legislature Advances New Restrictions on Voting
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Beyond Abortion: How the ERA Could Transform Pregnancy, Work and Family Life
On Women’s Equality Day, the unfinished fight for constitutional equality extends far beyond abortion. State equal rights amendments—and, ultimately, a robust federal ERA—could reshape how the law treats pregnancy, motherhood, work and family life.
Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU, says state ERAs could be used to counter discrimination against pregnant women. Chu uses the example of a Tennessee case last year where a pregnant woman was denied prenatal care because she was unmarried.
“If they’re only asking about marriage in the specific context of pregnancy, then they’re treating pregnancy differently from other medical conditions,” she says. “And the other theory [of discrimination] is that they’re asking this question because they want women to be married before getting pregnant, enforcing the stereotype that only married women should receive prenatal care or should have pregnancies that are recognized.”
“I can imagine a robust ERA that says that it is a violation of our equality rights to die or to face the risk of dying from something that one of the wealthiest nations in the world should have rendered as an anomaly, as an exceptional circumstance that just doesn’t happen here anymore,” University of California, Berkeley, law professor Khiara M. Bridges says.
“The ERA can give us a real basis for making more intersectional arguments about equality, and pushing courts to consider the intersection of sex discrimination and race discrimination in ways that they have been unwilling to do until now.”
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‘Everybody Needs Somebody’: A Single Mother on Guaranteed Income, Community and Making It Work
Front & Center, a series from Ms. magazine and Springboard to Opportunities, puts the voices of Black women most affected by today’s policy debates at the center of the conversation. The series highlights the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which provides Black mothers living in federally subsidized housing with $1,000 per month for one year.
Candace, a 33-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., received one year of guaranteed income through the trust. She is working toward her life insurance license and dreams of starting a business helping people with cancer find high-quality wigs—all while building a more secure future for her children.
“Motherhood is hardest when you’re doing it by yourself, period,” Candace writes. “I want people to understand that the only way this works is if we help each other. There is no way around it. Everybody needs a community. Everybody needs somebody.
“Everything I do is based around my kids. Don’t invite me if my kids can’t come.
“The help that is supposed to be available for working mothers through government programs can be iffy. Unless you are completely unemployed, it can feel like you do not receive anything. But we are still struggling. We still live paycheck to paycheck, and people expect us to provide food out of that too. It is not realistic.”
