17 May 2013
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help [...]
22 May 2013
By Elizabeth Dorssom I first started referring to myself as a feminist when I was 17. Even though I didn’t identify as a feminist until I was older I was definitely a feminist from a very young age. When I was in elementary school I enjoyed playing with Hot Wheels cars instead [...]
20 May 2013
By Molly Baker On April 23, University of Arizona student Dean Saxton, better known as Brother Dean, stood on a bench brandishing a sign that bluntly stated in bold, black letters “You Deserve Rape.” Saxton proceeded to verbally harass many women that walked by on their way to class, calling them [...]
15 May 2013
By Mohadesa Najumi When I think about what modesty means in today’s political, cultural and religious environment, I am inclined to believe that the concept itself does not involve choice, or any dimension of freedom or independent thought. Rather, modesty constitutes a dictatorial concept forced upon women whether they agree [...]
7 May 2013
*Trigger warning* Sometimes I feel like the NRA is actively just trying to lose all the credibility it has left in this world. Just when you thought the NRA’s annual convention in Houston this weekend couldn’t draw any more negative attention, it goes out and casually promotes a company selling a product [...]
29 Mar 2013
By Monica Torres When I sign my name, it’s Monica, not Mónica. When I order pupusas at my favorite restaurant, the waiter will give my accent an approving nod, as if to say, you’re one of us. But it will only take a harder question for me to reveal the [...]
18 Mar 2013
By Alexa Lambertis At an early age, I was exposed to a woman who essentially changed my life. A sweet lady with a southern background, she was introduced to me as a family friend. I met her in her own home, where we would spend a majority of our time [...]
By j.n. salters Last week, Kermit Gosnell—the African-American “late-term abortionist” who delivered live babies and then stuck scissors in the backs of their necks and “snipped” their spinal cords in his West Philadelphia “house of horrors”—was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences in the deaths of three babies, the overdose death of a patient,...
Read more »
By Ariane Beckman A few months ago, The Catalyst, an independent student newspaper published at my school, Colorado College, published an article entitled “Why I Love Capitalism, and Why You Should, Too!” To be clear, I don’t exactly hate capitalism. Go on, you capitalism lovers! Buy your new iPhone! Spend your money! I participate...
Read more »
By Paul Seltzer On August 23, 2012, the George Washington University’s independent student newspaper, The GW Hatchet, reported that rising senior Tori Guy was transferring. Her father had lost his job, and Guy, relying on financial aid for 60% of her tuition, could not pay. According to the Hatchet article, Guy requested emergency funds...
Read more »
By Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Heather Laine Talley Perhaps in this twenty-four hour news cycle culture, the horrid sexist and racist sexualization of nine-year old Quvenzhané Wallis both at the Academy Awards and in Twittersphere is now old news. And maybe for her sake, it should be. White feminists’ silence in the face of...
Read more »
Last month, Michelle Obama visited a Springfield, Illinois, Wal-Mart to celebrate and highlight its efforts to help Americans eat healthier. Mrs. Obama announced, “For years, the conventional wisdom said healthy products just didn’t sell. Thanks to Wal-Mart and other companies, we’re proving the conventional wisdom wrong.” If only this neoliberal logic delivered as promised....
Read more »
The B52 bus picks up passengers on the corner of Gates and Lewis Avenue in the mostly working poor to middle class, black Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. This particular bus stop, which is a few blocks south of the famed Marcy Projects of Jay-Z’s past, is visited by hordes of black residents of various...
Read more »
By Special TFW Correspondent, Mazuba Haanyama Week one is rapidly drawing to an end and I feel like I have been hit by a train; a collision of cargo reminiscent of struggles fought by my ancestors in my dreams light years ago. This is the end of week one at the Commission on the Status...
Read more »
By Alice Driver Some people we know only through their words. And so it was with author Charles Bowden and his images of bloated bodies, scurrying rats, of air so hot that a single match would light it on fire, images of savagery inverted into beauty that came with the uncomfortable awareness of the...
Read more »
By: Asha Best I began writing this piece in late November 2012, but even in the process of returning to it and revising, reports of rapes and assaults on subways and buses have multiplied. But because public space/ transit has been so terribly pathologized–deemed overused by the chronically poor, the infantile, the black, and...
Read more »
Within our neoliberal cultural imaginary, disabled people are rendered as bodies lacking agency. As a result, the measures of progress used to gauge the inclusion and liberation of disabled people within an able-normative supremacist culture tend to be organized around, what I name, “the zero mentality.” Let me explain. Globally, disabled people, most of...
Read more »
22 May 2013
By Aditi Rao Dear Mr. Yadav, I too am an Indian Woman “Referring to the recent ‘Slut Walk’ held in the Capital, Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav said we had naked women walking down the streets with tattoos on their cheeks, whereas Indian women did not even look up while [...]
17 May 2013
Assata do not dry like dissipated plums under castro’s bronzing sun you mural fortress you live memorial spirited artifice rouged sea salt that marinates america’s wound Assata you like stripped bone road unaware of which exit is free birth brown coagulated rhythm redefined reborn rumba queen Assata dusk breath [...]
16 May 2013
“Affirmation” by Assata Shakur* ___ I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people. I believe in sunshine. In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs. And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts. And sprouts grow into trees. I believe in the magic [...]
7 May 2013
7 May 2013
30 Apr 2013
25 Apr 2013
20 Apr 2013
The Guardian