If you grew up experiencing violence or repression — whether in the home, from the state, or due to poverty — you may have experienced the culture shock of being around people who had more privileged experiences. Similarly, if you’ve had a traumatic experience of some kind as an adult — sexual assault, armed conflict,…
Category: movements
These Powerful Pins Honored Suffragists Who Were ‘Jailed for Freedom’
THE FIRST-EVER WHITE HOUSE PICKET was led by women, lasted for more than a year, and was met with violence from both counter-protesters and law enforcement. In November 1917, after 10 months of picketing, the government’s crackdown on protestors reached a new intensity. Dozens of protesters were arrested and incarcerated at the infamous Occoquan Workhouse, where…
How to Become an Ally in Our Intimate Lives
Often, we find a vision of a better world when we’re most in crisis. I was a young, queer woman in an abusive relationship with a partner who was marginalized in different ways than me. I needed help, but none of the institutions supposedly built for survivors—police, anti-harassment committees, even mainstream anti-violence orgs—spoke to my experience,…
Eat Like a 1970s Radical With ‘The People’s Philadelphia Cookbook’
“A VERY GAY MEAT LOAF” requires several key ingredients. First, wrote Michael Goldberger, a gay activist and neuroscience researcher, combine ground beef, pork, and veal with spices. Then, add partially-cooked spinach and—if you have the money—mushrooms, taking care not to overmix. Hard-boiled eggs and sour cream top it off. Goldberger adapted the recipe from gay New York…
The Refugee Women Turning Tastes of Home Into a Food-Delivery Business
WHEN FOOD BECAME SCARCE UNDER Taliban rule, Hoor got creative. Since the Mujahideen conflict, trade between neighbors had been periodically forbidden, rations were portioned out to the privileged, and even growing garden plots could be risky. But years of war had taught her how to find food for her family in a pinch. Hoor snuck groceries under…
Lesbian bars are disappearing. We spent a night at one that’s still standing.
Walking into Henrietta Hudson feels like taking off a heavy backpack. It’s a humid June night in New York’s Greenwich Village, and inside the reggaeton-pulsing bar, a sparse crowd drinks beer and laughs. My shoulders instantly relax, and not just because I’ve escaped a spring downpour. Read more at The Washington Posts’s The Lily. Photo:…
Why These Activists Are Protesting Hindu Nationalism in Trump’s America
On Friday, September 7th, six activists from Chicago South Asians for Justice stood up in the middle of the plenary panel of the World Hindu Congress in Chicago to voice their resistance to the Hindu nationalist political movement currently ascendant in India. Chanting “RSS turn around, we don’t want you in our town!,” the activists—mostly…
Tech Workers Revolutionary Roundup
Happy Prime Day, everybody! That’s right: on July 16, the world witnessed a half-priced online commerce holiday, as Amazon slashed rates so online shoppers could know, in concrete terms, how little the company values/pays its workers. While some of the world was shopping, many were resisting, as Amazon warehouse workers went on strike against low…
Who Gets to be Naked at Harvard University?
Every semester at Harvard University, students take their clothes off. The event is called Primal Scream, and it happens on midnight before the first day of final exams. As the hour approaches, there is a palpable buzz in the central quad, the Harvard Yard. Students gather in various states of undress: towels and trenchcoats, gym shorts…
Justice for Asifa: Sexual Violence, Religious Conflict, and the Politics of Outrage
On January 17, Muhammad Yusuf Pujwala and Naseema Bibi saw the body of their eight year old daughter, Asifa Bano. The child, a member of the nomadic Bakerwal community, a Muslim herding community residing in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, had been missing for several days. While her parents hoped for her safe return, they…
