Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons and we have just seen the start of a new war in the Middle East over one more nation supposedly trying to acquire them. While we consider the dangers of such weapons and their capacity to cause massive destruction, we often overlook the risks associated with what still passes for “peaceful” nuclear power. With that in mind, let me revisit a moment when…
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As war on Iran rages again, and tired rhetoric of “Iranian sleeper cells” resurfaces, Iranian American communities are bracing for another round of backlash at home in the U.S. through immigration enforcement. Last year, ICE agents arrested Mandonna Kashanian while she was picking figs in front of her New Orleans home. She was 64 years old with no criminal record, had arrived in the United…
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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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Fascism depends on our compliance. Authoritarians know they cannot sustain rule by individually repressing each person in the country. They use threats and violence to inflict fear — a primary weapon to force compliance. If fear is their strategy for compliance, then we need a strategy for sustaining dissent. Amid Trump’s unjustified and illegal war on Iran, many of us need space to…
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Warning: This article contains spoilers. Near the end of Sinners, there is a moment that Hollywood rarely permits. The character Smoke guns down a gang of Ku Klux Klan members who have come to murder his people — and then, with hands still trembling, he cradles his newborn child in his arms. Watching it, something strange and powerful stirred within me — as if the film were bending time…
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On July 10, 2025, as federal agents stormed cannabis farms in Ventura County, California, community members rushed to protest what they saw as yet another sweeping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. Among them was Jonathan Caravello, a 37-year-old philosophy lecturer at California State University Channel Islands. Today, he faces a federal felony charge that could send him to prison…
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