By Mark Naison (April 30, 2018) My Black friends have always told me “Mark, if you were Black, saying the things you do, acting the way you do, you would have been dead a long time ago.” If you think they were exaggerating, read the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the death threats and insults the African…
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By Arun Gupta (April 24, 2018) “Pittsburgh is the New Portland” has become a cliche. The meaning is it’s a medium-sized environmentally friendly city hospitable to young people who are creative, have an unorthodox lifestyle, or politics, and the city is low cost and close to nature, at least compared to cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco….
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By S. (April 23, 2018) Dear White America, We have a communication problem. You are getting better at listening. In the past you’ve blamed us for not communicating to you in a manner that would facilitate you listening. We were too angry, too quiet, too loud, politically inconvenient, self-centered, stuck in victim mindset. Finally, thanks to cell phone footage, you…
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By Mark Naison (April 20, 2018) I just had a conversation about the Trump Presidency with a Fordham professor who commands great respect in the Bronx. An immigrant from East Africa, she sees the greatest damage inflicted by the President not in the area of policy, but in how he encourages people who support him to speak disrespectfully to people…
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By Mark Naison (April 18, 2018) Donald Trump thinks he is the right person to “Make America Great” because he imagines he was responsible for New York’s revival after the Fiscal Crisis of the 70’s. But when you closely examine commerce in city neighborhoods outside of Manhattan, you realize that the very people Trump is attacking–IMMIGRANTS–are the ones who did…
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By Teka Lark (April 17, 2018) Boycott all Starbucks. Not just the one. The good white people need to learn too. Why I do the work that I do. I will not share the video of two Black men being removed by the Philadelphia police from Starbucks, because a white person was “afraid” (they aren’t afraid, they are racist) and…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (April 13 2018) There is a weird variety of Protestantism that suggests that the only social institution trained on securing justice is the Church. And everything else is mammon. So instead of a church exhorting you to go out and love one’s neighbor through organizing a workers union, etc., the church will try to bring the institutions…
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April 12, 2018 Elle Stanger recently spoke at the Opening Spaces for Radical Imagination Conference at Oregon State and mentioned federal legislation targeting sex trafficking that would, in effect, place sex workers into more dangerous working conditions. Upon the signing of this legislation by President Trump on April 12, 2018, Stanger prepared several short videos calling for its repeal and…
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Walidah Imarisha was one of the keynote speakers at the first Opening Space for the Radical Imagination Conference at Oregon State from April 6-8, 2018. Walidah Imarisha is co-editor of the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) book, co-published with AK Press, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements and author of IAS/AK Press book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (April 10, 2018) We’ve let employers dictate the terms of the labor debate. Forget the skills mismatch. There is a wage mismatch, and when wages aren’t pegged to cost of living increases, it’s a bit ridiculous. I first noticed it when I heard some older cat harangue a kid for not working their way through college like…
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Phoenix Calida (April 9, 2018) Have I ever told y’all about my Jack the Ripper stalker on twitter? Yeah. Some dude was using Jack the Ripper as a handle. He would tweet pics of ripper victims at me and ask if I was a street sex worker, and where I could be found. People online thought it was hilarious…
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