News stories vie for our attention, our agreement, our understanding, and our view of what is real, and possibly most importantly, what is just. Journalists, reporters, and editors at the major US news outlets narrated the war for us, they imposed meaning, included evaluation, interpretations, and judgment. They also hid much of the truth of the violence. Interpretations and judgments arrive…
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Soon after Medicare, Medicaid, and the Hart-Celler Act, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, became law, the federal government began to label certain geographic areas as Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), which designated an inadequate number of physicians in relation to the population. HPSAs were generally populated with people who were low-income, elderly…
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I used to be an English teacher. My classroom walls seemed to breathe with the wind, and the light depended on the mercy of the sun; a very eco-friendly setup, if you think about it. Who needs electricity when the sun graciously decides to show up for class? For eight years, I taught in Beit Hanoun Prep School for young girls; a place where optimism stubbornly thrived in conditions that would…
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An outgrowth of the counter-revolutionary Oslo Accords, the Palestinian internet digitally encapsulates the contradictions of anti-colonial resistance in the neoliberal era. As such, the internet today is both an instrument for collective interconnection to Palestinian revolutionary history and struggle as well as a site of suppression and surveillance. As Miriyam Aouragh writes in Palestine…
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One June day I wound my way up a lush hillside in Simi Valley, California, where the fortieth president of the United States sat grinning at me from atop a horse. Ronald Reagan looked dapper and relaxed, his toned body a leathered green-brown. Somehow, his teeth gleamed white. How can a statue’s teeth look white? I wondered as I pulled my rental car into the packed parking lot. But if anyone’s…
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Indulge me. Imagine you take a medication that is vital to your health: as vital as oxygen or water. You can’t go a single day without it because you are completely dependent on it to think, to work, to take care of your family, to just be you. And if you miss a dose? A withdrawal hellscape awaits: extreme muscle and bone pain, intense cravings, vomiting, insomnia, severe anxiety, cramps…
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