AT FIRST GLANCE, THE APUAN Alps of northwest Tuscany’s Carrara region are pure white. Alison Leitch first saw them from a train window when traveling through Italy in the early 1980s. From a distance, she writes, their dazzling tops looked like snow. Her seatmate told her otherwise: The blinding whiteness was actually marble dust, a powdery byproductContinue reading “The Tuscan Town Famous for Anarchists, Marble, and Lard”
Category Archives: Politics
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:Continue reading “Lesbian bars are disappearing. We spent a night at one that’s still standing.”
The Struggling Vineyards That Helped Inspire Karl Marx’s Communism
A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING TRIER, Germany—the spectre of Karl Marx. Today, tourists to the small Rhineland city visit the house where Marx was born and gaze at the armchair he died in. They take selfies in front of a larger-than-life Marx statue, gifted to the city in 2018 by the Chinese government. Read more at Atlas Obscura. Photo:Continue reading “The Struggling Vineyards That Helped Inspire Karl Marx’s Communism”
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—mostlyContinue reading “Why These Activists Are Protesting Hindu Nationalism in Trump’s America”
Why Are We Still Debating Whether Trump is Racist?
Defining things as racist is like that exercise swim instructors do, where they tell kids to swim to them but keep walking backwards so the goal is never actually reached. Except in this exercise, the American public is trying to agree on whether something is racist or not, and the swim instructor is the ever-receding standard forContinue reading “Why Are We Still Debating Whether Trump is Racist?”
Letting Go of American Exceptionalism, One Harvard-Educated Banker at a Time
It has, as the New York Times reports, been the year of the lynch mob. Amid the increasing hysteria of a blatantly Hindu-supremacist, anti-Muslim, and anti-poor government, mob lynchings have been on the rise in India. Since 2015, reports The Quint, 68 people have been lynched, most of them Muslims or Hindus from oppressed castes. Stoked by vote-hungry politiciansContinue reading “Letting Go of American Exceptionalism, One Harvard-Educated Banker at a Time”
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 shortsContinue reading “Who Gets to be Naked at Harvard University?”
PSA: Women in Power Don’t Necessarily Help Women
Originally published at Feministing Donald Trump and his cadre of evil cronies sure have a way of making the worst decisions, always. A recent treat: DeVos’s announcement that she will roll back Title IX enforcement. This anti-survivor plan, cooked up after conversations with MRAs, has been deemed a terrible idea by at least 100,000 student activists. The recent decision illuminates a factContinue reading “PSA: Women in Power Don’t Necessarily Help Women”
Why Do Misogynists Like Donald Trump Love to Talk About How Much They Respect Women?
There is a fundamental contradiction in our attitude toward sexual violence — and Donald Trump embodies it perfectly. After I watched the second debate, beat my breast in mourning, and wiped my tears off my laptop screen , I realized which part of Trump’s soul-killing word diarrhea I hated most. It was a line I haveContinue reading “Why Do Misogynists Like Donald Trump Love to Talk About How Much They Respect Women?”
Final Clubs, Take Two
I continue to weigh in on Harvard’s contentious debate over single-gender secret societies: The final clubs. After a recent administration-level decision to sanction members of unaffiliated single-gender clubs, I do a happy dance and offer up some analysis.
