In The End of Imagination, Arundhati Roy describes with exquisite pacing what nationalism, fundamentalism, and militarism have yielded across India and Pakistan over the last thirty years. As she recounts the mayhem (including murder, staged terrorism, and activist intimidation in the countryside and on college campuses), Roy also writes of alternatives: An altogether different coalition of castes, one that […]
The tyranny of the algorithm
“You do not have permission to view this folder or page.” One of these days when I get through the list of things I should already have written, I’ll have a slow think about technological access denial messages and all of the system boundaries that they represent. In many offices, access to information and the […]
For the beauty of the Earth
I haven’t lived anywhere I’m more conscious of “the fragility of each breath” than New York City. The density of traffic fumes and tobacco clouds, and occasionally the pungent odor of marijuana, too—all of these pollutants make it easy to notice my breath and the quality of air I’ve taken for granted until now. When […]
The slow death of assimilation
Dr. Crystal Lee stopped by New York City today to share Navajo history, culture, and family stories. Lee, a public health postdoc at UCLA, is also the founder of a nonprofit organization that offers mentoring to young Native students, and she regularly advocates for Native youth and young women at the United Nations. She prefers […]
Our lenses aren’t new
The overwhelming oppression is the collective fact that we do not fit, and because we do not fit we are a threat. Not all of us have the same oppressions, but we empathize and identify with each other’s oppressions. We do not have the same ideology, nor do we derive similar solutions… These different affinities […]
A vision for the left-handed world
There’s a running gag on social media. Something terrible in the world happens or society slaps minoritized people with yet another unnecessary restriction, and folks respond with something like “Where’s the spaceship; get me out of here!” It happened again today, when Popular Science published a story about congregating humpback whales near South Africa. “So […]
