Recently, heavily armed and masked SWAT-like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rolled up at a Chicago-area elementary school as classes ended for the day. Their target? A mom picking up her child. The footage is heart-wrenching: A woman in a pink sweatshirt, struggling frantically, is pressed into the pavement by armed bodies as she screams, “There is no signed warrant…
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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy joined the ancestors last week. In these times of intensified fascism — marked by racist anti-trans violence and further abandonment by liberal politicians — it’s harder to know where to find anything other than despair without her here. A freedom fighter and glamour gurl until the end, Major is probably most famous for being a survivor of the 1969 anti-police uprising at…
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The human condition includes a vast array of unavoidable misfortunes. But what about the preventable ones? Shouldn’t the United States provide for the basic needs of its people? Such questions get distinctly short shrift in the dominant political narratives. When someone can’t make ends meet and suffers dire consequences, the mainstream default is to see a failing individual rather than a…
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For more than three years, I’ve lived with long COVID. The dizziness never leaves. I can’t drive more than half an hour without starting to get nauseous. Any strenuous activity — mental or physical — leaves me with post-exertional malaise that feels like a hangover the next day. I’ve learned to adapt and find gratitude for many things, but life remains an exhausting calculus of rationing…
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As New York City’s November mayoral election approaches, front-runner Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy continues to face familiar attacks and Islamophobic smears. While Mamdani has attempted to focus his campaign on making New York City more affordable, establishment figures have largely focused on his relationship to the Palestine solidarity movement as a means to attack him. This was evident during…
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The recent passing of Black Panther and Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur unleashed more than a sense of loss. It sparked a sense of pride in her defiance, a sense of gratitude for the movements and organizations that sustained her and a flowering of hope that the freedom she fought for could one day be real for the rest of us. The collective grief is still fresh following Assata’s…
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