Over the past year, we have seen the Trump administration repeatedly use the specter of sexual violence to scapegoat immigrants and trans people — specifically women and transfeminine people. Both historically and currently, these groups are disproportionately likely to face sexual violence, but in the right-wing narrative, they have been reframed as its perpetrators. While breathtaking in its…
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In 2013, when I had been locked up in solitary confinement for 25 years, I wrote an essay entitled “A Sentence Worse Than Death,” which I’m told has been read by upwards of a million people to date. It describes what life was like in “the box” (the special housing unit, or SHU for short) in New York’s state prisons, and posited that if given the choice, I would have opted for a sentence of death…
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In the relentless nightmare that is the post-Roe United States, it can be hard to find the bright spots for abortion rights. Maternal mortality rates in states with abortion bans are increasing. South Carolina, which already has a draconian six-week abortion ban in effect, is now debating whether to ban nearly all abortions in the state. The future of mifepristone access remains murky and tenuous…
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We cannot separate fossil fuels from the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war on Iran. The volatility surrounding the Strait of Hormuz has shaken the global economy, restricting the passage of oil from the largest producers in the Gulf region. The economic costs of this illegal, unjust, and unpopular war are mounting alongside the heartbreaking human costs — including troops lost and thousands killed…
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In the face of deep public opposition, the notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surges that culminated in the siege of Minneapolis have been deep-sixed, at least for now. Yet that doesn’t mean that the most anti-immigrant administration in modern U.S. history isn’t still looking for less dramatic (but at least as effective) methods to pursue its war against immigrants. In fact…
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When word of an upcoming maritime flotilla coming from countries thousands of kilometers away first began circulating, Palestinians were in the heart of this war, in one of its harshest moments, with famine silently tearing through Gaza — heavier even than the shelling itself. Despite my awareness of the Israeli occupation’s brutality and severity, and my knowledge that it does not really…
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