At 15, with my skinny legs swinging off the exam table, I sat and listened as my gynecologist stood before me with serious eyes and told me that I had a high risk of developing cancer someday. It was a shocking message to get as a teenager; nonetheless, I made immediate decisions to protect myself. I stayed on birth control pills for years despite wild swings of emotion…
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Congressman Jamie Raskin said the US Department of Justice’s decision Monday to abandon its legal cases against law firms that refused to capitulate to President Donald Trump should serve as “a reminder that those who fight back against authoritarianism are winning.” The DOJ asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss its cases against law firms including Perkins…
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Years ago, I stood at the Black Fist statue, and felt the heaviness of George Floyd’s death. I also felt hope from the protests in his name. The corner of 38th St. and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis was liberated by the people into an art-filled, open space. The joy was electric. Maybe, I thought, maybe this is a glimpse of a Black future. Now, nearly six years after Floyd’s murder…
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Fifteen years ago this month, a mass movement in Tunisia overthrew the 24-year reign of U.S.-backed despot Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. What seemed impossible merely weeks prior became real. Today, living in the United States, things feel daunting, hopeless, terrifying: It is hard to imagine how to reverse the intensification of the police state, the erosion of whatever pretenses of democracy…
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Americans are once again searching for historical analogies to explain what is unfolding around us. As authoritarianism accelerates — as government-sanctioned violence becomes more overt in immigration enforcement, in policing, in the open deployment of federal force against civilians, and in the steady erosion of civil rights — people are scrambling for reference points.
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Despite months of warnings from party members up and down the caucus that President Donald Trump has been “lawless,” “destructive, and ”authoritarian“ in his wielding of power both domestically and abroad, 149 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives on Thursday night joined with 192 Republicans to pass a sweeping military spending bill — a vote that progressive critics say exposes…
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