Wearing a dark blue suit and a broad smile, he walked out of his naturalization ceremony holding a small U.S. flag and his citizenship certificate. The timing was no coincidence; he aimed to become eligible to vote before the Nov. 5 presidential election. 

“I am very excited that I will be able to vote,” says Garcia, 57. “We can express our voice and, more than anything, we can make ourselves count.”

In swing states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, and large states such as California, the influence of Latino voters like Garcia could be key to choosing the next president in the race between former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Newly naturalized citizens and an influx of young Latinos reaching the voting age of 18 boosted to 36.2 million in 2024, up from 32.3 million in 2020.

A by Phoenix-based advocacy group (LUCHA) and Data for Social Good shows that a majority of 1,028 registered Arizona voters surveyed between April and May are highly motivated to cast a ballot. While immigration remains important for many Latinos, the poll found they are also deeply concerned about the economy, health care access, and affordable housing. The findings track with examining the issues Latino voters are thinking about less than a month before the election.

The shifting demographics of Latino voters reflect the nuanced distinctions within an evolving population often characterized as a monolithic voting bloc. “We’re a diverse community with a wide range of political views, experience, and priorities,” says Alejandra Gomez, executive director of LUCHA.

Canvassers have been knocking on doors all over the state since March to encourage voters—Latinos in particular—to cast a ballot and hopes are high that they will turn out en masse, says Stephanie Maldonado, managing director at LUCHA. “I definitely do see our community showing up and showing up big this November 5th,” she adds.

Garcia says he’s looking forward to making his vote count. For years after coming to the U.S. from Mexico, he worked in construction. In the 1990s, he started his own landscaping business, which he still operates. These days he worries about inflation because his earnings don’t go as far as they used to when buying necessities. “Prices have gone way up, for food and gasoline and other items,” he says.

Garcia is hopeful the next president will take on issues related to the economy, but he also would like the future commander-in-chief to push for immigration reforms. What’s needed, he says, is an orderly, speedier process that gives eligible people already in the country or waiting to apply for U.S. asylum south of the border an opportunity to live here legally. “People come here to improve their lives and to achieve the American dream, as I did,” he says. 

Dustin Corella, who was born in Tucson, is among a generation of young Latinos coming of age in 2024. Soon after turning 18 in June, he registered to vote and is eager to cast a ballot. “It feels like a big responsibility,” he says.

The issues motivating Corella to vote include his desire to elect politicians who ensure appropriate funding for public education as well as after-school programs and other resources aimed at youth in the community. And he says there’s a need for elected officials who can better address the impact of climate change, adding, “Those are the things that I care about, and I’m looking for leaders who can tackle them and create opportunities for the next generation.”

Corella is one of 1.3 million eligible Latino voters in Arizona. The state, along with California, Texas, Florida, and New York, is home to about two-thirds, or 65%, of all Latino eligible voters in the country, according to the .

For Latinos and immigrant communities across the country, the stakes are high this election, says Nicole Melaku, executive director of the . The coalition of immigrant and refugee rights organizations is working to encourage the nation’s naturalized citizens to vote, especially in the face of anti-immigrant attacks. For example, a slew of focuses negatively on immigrants.

“With the likes of Project 2025 looming about in the background, of family separation and of attacks to our democracy, I think it was important for us to make sure that our communities, and naturalized voters especially, are aware of the power that their vote and their voice has to shape the outcome of the election,” Melaku says.

Project 2025 is a policy agenda of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that aims to radically restructure the federal government in a conservative administration. Experts caution that and promotes with far-reaching implications.

from the project, but he has made immigration a key part of the race. In one campaign stop after another, Trump’s against immigrants punctuates his speeches. Should he win, he promises to quickly launch living in the country without legal status—and even some with legal status.

Instead of countering him with pro-immigrant rhetoric, Harris has responded by taking a tougher stance on the issue, including a proposal to implemented by the Biden administration. She has also endorsed . for a record number of migrants—many of them asylum seekers—entering the U.S. from Mexico, even as amid policy changes on both sides of the border.��

In the border state of Arizona, the immigration debate is ever present. On Nov. 5, voters will reject or approve Proposition 314, which would give the state authority to enforce federal immigration policies. The initiative, Maldonado says, “specifically targets immigrant communities and continues to push racial profiling, which we know is a top concern among the Latino community. And I think that this election for us is pushing back against policies that continue to criminalize our families and communities.”

Immigration hits close to home for Maldonado, who comes from a mixed-status family. She and her two siblings are U.S.-born citizens and her father is a legal resident. However, her mother is undocumented, says Maldonado, and returned to Mexico some time ago. Her mother’s departure was the catalyst for Maldonado to become more involved in electoral and civic matters. “We need a permanent solution on immigration, not just for my family, but millions of families across the country and many diverse families that are living in these complexities of being separated,” she explains.��

The Latino vote in the upcoming election could mean a shift in the usual narrative about the nation’s second-largest group of voters, Maldonado says. “If we didn’t have this much power, there wouldn’t be so many attempts at trying to strip away our rights.” She adds, “We just need to come together and make it happen even greater this year.”&�Բ�����;

Let me make it clear at the outset that this is a family affair; the whales about whom and on whose behalf I write are part of said family, as are you. I’ve been building relationship with the community of whales who migrate from Bahia, Brazil, to Antarctica for the past seven years, and sharing that process through my project, . It is from the depths of our shared oceanic origins that I bring you this offering.

Whale Whispering is an ancestral commission, an ode to water, a work of interspecies translation and co-creation between me, humpback whales, and other cetaceans and people. It is a diasporic healing quest, an exploration and transmutation of the legacy of transatlantic enslavement through music. Based in Praia do Forte, Bahia, Brazil, it is a soundtrack for personal, communal, and global transformation, a love song for whales, for Bahia, for Earth, for the ancestors, and for life. 

I’m listening to and singing with the whales to tap into the echoes of the Middle Passage contained within their songs, to bring forth sounds that honor Nature’s prescription for this time of reckoning and share water’s wisdom as it is relayed to me. Through underwater and studio recordings, filmed documentation, blog posts, and community gatherings focused on collective singing and water blessing rituals, Whale Whispering serves as a way of dreaming forward via the lens of the so-called past.

As I address the womb sickness that has affected my own womb and those of so many Black womb-carriers due to generations of sexual trauma, I’m learning to wail with the whales as a form of curative release, just as the Africans who crossed the Atlantic in slaving vessels surely did. This siren call, summoning awareness of the unity of all being(s), and resonating with the movement in support of planetary healing, is a vibrational antidote to the violence that threatens to engulf the planet right now. These messages, shared through waves of water and sound, affirm that, for those who are listening, Love’s song is stronger. 

has emerged as the central theme of this collaboration. With this echoing phrase the whales affirm that there is no reality in which we are not all connected to every other being, every other particle in existence—through our breathing, our intake and transpiration of water, our dreaming. Among their many offerings to the human members of their extended family is the gentle nudge to ask ourselves if we are dreaming big enough.

This is a question adrienne maree brown and I were exploring during one of our near the end of the Pandemic Pause, just as the wheels of the global economy (i.e., racial capitalism) were starting to churn back into gear. Via that conversation, I first relayed the whales’ message from the 2022 season. Clearly, the reduction in sonic, vibrational, and chemical interference in the oceans as a result of diminished shipping traffic had proven beneficial to them, and their perception of the retrograde slide toward pre–COVID-19 levels had moved them to make their most forceful, emphatic declaration thus far: “We Will Run This World.”

It is not lost on me that whales everywhere have proceeded to occupy increasing amounts of space in international news, asserting and claiming visibility and acknowledgement, demanding to be seen and heard. While I’ve repeated their declaration a few times publicly since that interview, I’ve mostly been listening and observing, wanting to be sure that any further details I bring forth about that statement are rooted in the clearest and sincerest point of connectivity between me and the whales. In my experience, this clarity requires time. Given their size, lifespan, and range of movement, it’s no surprise that the whales have their eyes on the long game with regard to guiding their human kin, as they watch what, to many, looks scarily like our imminent self-destruction.

Speaking of eyes, anyone who has had the rare and singular experience of gazing into the eye of a whale can attest to having met with a being of far vaster intelligence, sensitivity, and wisdom than most human minds can begin to fathom. Since living that wonder myself, I’m convinced that whales are capable of feats that would qualify as miraculous in any context. In considering the meaning behind the declaration that they will run this world, I’m compelled to lead with miracles. They could be as fantastical as the whales adjusting and accelerating their evolution in the blink of one of those knowing eyes, making them suddenly capable of living on land, communicating through language with humans as a whole, and deconstructing and restructuring the systems that have brought us to this point of global upheaval through direct intervention. My sense though, is that, per their nature, the whales intend something more nuanced and easily absorbed. 

Looking to the (technically dolphins, but whales by association) in the Strait of Gibraltar as an example, I see not as some type of revenge or retribution for human destructiveness, but as intentionally headline-grabbing activity drawing our attention to the rudders they have consistently disabled. They are pointing out faulty steering by humans, the ones who have been driving the planet to destruction, suggesting that a new way is needed. As far as I know, no one has died as a result of these encounters, but they have definitely put whales on many people’s minds.

By overturning boats, then , leaping onto and stealing the scene , among other shenanigans, the whales are impressing themselves upon collective human awareness. They are infiltrating our conscious and subconscious minds with suggestions to listen to their subaquatic songs and sounds. Through both our listening and the vibrational reverberations that result from playing their songs above water, the whales can infuse us with massive doses of compassion, pour into us and other species from the fount of grace to which they have access. 

Based on what the whales have shown me, their songs have the capacity to reverse so much of the damage caused by humans—they could dissolve microplastics and oil spills, deactivate the harmful properties of chemical and other pollutants threatening the world’s water supply, and perhaps most importantly, soothe the indignation of our mothering planet, preventing her from wiping us out completely. But because fear, doubt, and subjugation to the nightmare spell of our current moment are so pervasive, and because most humans are living unaware of their own psychic impact, there has been a block on the extent to which the whales can wield their miracles—and to which we can wield our own. From our fitful slumbering, the whales are calling us to lucidity, on behalf of all the species smaller and thus more easily ignorable than they are. They have visions of healing technologies that they can float into our imaginations, infusing them with solutions to such pressing issues as how to ensure safe, viable water for all, for example. Like so many plant spirits and human stewards, they are calling us to exalt the connective practices that Indigenous peoples worldwide have been preserving: to gather at and with water, joining our sung voices as sources of generative and regenerative force, engaging the Oneness that is the origin of all possibility.

It’s unlikely that every human will hear or answer this call. Only a critical mass of deeply engaged, genuinely receptive and open-hearted individuals is required to make way for the whales to steer us into a new dream. This whale-sized waking dream is one in which life on this planet is more balanced, healthy, just, and sustainable. It is one where the expansive generosity and compassion of these ancient beings have permeated the modus operandi of the planet’s powerful problem children—humans. 

While people will continue to hold—and debate—a diversity of beliefs about spirituality, divinity, and the supernatural, everyone can agree that whales exist. And each one who opens themselves to imbibe the medicine the whales pour forth can taste the truth, can become imbued with the knowing that there is indeed a Higher Love, one that scales beyond what this current, shared reality suggests is real. Each one who receives that medicine and deepens into that knowing becomes a conduit for that Love—one among the countless channels through which it flows, hydrating them with real magicalisms that have only awaited the acceptance of their own sublime potential in order to come true.

Are you One?

“I’m really surprised so many people had reports today,” says the National Weather Service meteorologist based in Boulder, Colorado. “This is their most important observation—maybe of their whole time volunteering—and so they want to get it right.”

At 7 a.m. on Oct. 10, in the chaotic hours after the swept ashore, one citizen scientist in Daytona Beach Shores reported 15.8 inches of rain. Another near Lake Helen clocked 15.37 inches for a similar 24-hour period, and added in the notes section: “Lots of tree limbs down. Some roads are flooded due to lakes overflowing their banks.”

Observations like these are added to an internet database at 7 a.m. each day by volunteers with the nationwide Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS. The observations from 26,500 stations across the country contribute to National Weather Service flood warnings that may save lives by accounting for the variability of how much rain fell and where. Radar and satellites are not sophisticated enough to provide such down-to-the-backyard estimates.

In one such alert, for the St. Johns River in Florida’s Seminole County, forecasters more than an hour’s drive away, in the city of Melbourne, added CoCoRaHS rainfall totals to other on-the-ground observations, radar data, and river models. They estimated that runoff from Milton could cause the river to rise to 10.2 feet by the night of Oct. 14.

“The river is forecast to reach Minor Flood Stage later tonight, and will continue to climb through Moderate Flood, reaching Major Flood Stage later this weekend,” reads the alert Gimmestad pulls up on his screen. It cautioned many roads were “impassable, limiting access to homes.”

CoCoRaHS reports also help forecasters provide tornado, hail, fire, and other weather-related warnings in real time by allowing participants to log storm notes in the network’s computer system any time of day.

These observations—which provide input in up to half of such warnings—get routed to the nearest National Weather Service station, where they ring alarm bells. Meteorologists use them to caution people to take shelter or evacuate. Scientists also use CoCoRaHS data after storms have passed to refine computer models to better reflect precipitation variability.

Such life-saving weather data are vital as the United States suffered 28 climate and weather disasters each—the most such events ever recorded in a year. Storm warnings will become all the more important as a warmer atmosphere traps more moisture—leading to more recurrent and intense rainfall.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for a breakup of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, saying that these federal agencies push climate propaganda. But shutting down these essential services could stymie the ability of forecasters to issue comprehensive weather warnings and protect people at risk during climate disasters. 

As the presidential election looms and global warming intensifies, CoCoRaHS precipitation records, which account for two-thirds of the observational data collected by federal agencies on how much it rained or snowed, are becoming even more indispensable. 

“It’s a huge value,” he adds. “Radar is really good at capturing the pattern, and CoCoRaHS observations give us the amounts, and so we put those together and it gives us a really nice map of how much it rained, hailed, or snowed.”&�Բ�����;

The Critical Role of Data Collection

Altogether, CoCoRaHS’s stations span all 50 states, Canada, the Bahamas, and several U.S. territories. The network comprises about 75 million measurements and growing. 

The effort emerged in the wake of a deadly 1998 flash flood in Fort Collins, Colorado, that caught many people by surprise. The network is now one among hundreds of citizen science projects nationwide whose data are helping researchers, identify, and catalog.

“CoCoRaHS changed the way we do weather forecasting,” says Ellen McCallie, program director in the Directorate for STEM Education at the U.S. National Science Foundation. The consistency and reliability of the data are helping improve National Weather Service precipitation predictions, she adds.

After CoCoRaHS volunteers watch a training video, they are assigned a station number. They install a National Weather Service–approved cylindrical plastic rain gauge, from which they measure precipitation and record the data online.

Network coordinators, who often work for state climate offices, urge volunteers to collect readings each morning, even if there’s no precipitation. These data are immediately visible on weather service maps. Each station is represented by a dot whose color reflects the amount of precipitation—red for more, blue for less. 

In addition to the vast public benefit CoCoRaHS provides, the citizen scientists who are the backbone of the network say they benefit personally from the work, too.

“It’s something to do every day at 7 a.m.,” says Noah Newman, the program’s education and outreach coordinator. “One volunteer working their way through Alcoholics Anonymous got their five-year [sobriety] chip thanks to CoCoRaHS, because they said no to going to the bars so they could get up to read their rain gauge.”&�Բ�����;        

Retired Montana State University scientist and faculty member Bill Locke recounted in an email how recording daily precipitation in the CoCoRaHS database has helped him cope with his depression in the 11 years since he signed on to be a part of the network. 

“From now until March I need to pull on Bean boots, a headlamp, and appropriate attire to trek to my gauge,” he wrote, adding that the plastic cylinder is about 82 feet away from his Montana home. In the winter, these duties often involve measuring and collecting snow from a board on the ground and swapping cylinders if the existing one is full. “It’s tough to go back to bed after all that!”

A People’s Climate Record

The CoCoRaHS network isn’t the only example of how citizen scientists contribute to the nation’s climate record. Federal agencies also rely on about 8,700 people who volunteer with the 134-year-old , or COOP.

These citizens collect temperature and precipitation data daily from National Weather Service equipment, and then report it electronically to the service. This on-the-ground grassroots system is smaller and not as geographically diverse as CoCoRaHS, says meteorologist Gimmestad.

“Instead of having official weather reporting stations that are 30 or 40 miles apart—so we might have one per county—with CoCoRaHS, we might have 10 or 50 stations in the county,” he says. “This way, we don’t have to use one point to represent a huge area, and so we know how rainfall was distributed around that county.”

Data from CoCoRaHS and COOP—together with observations from at the nation’s airports—account for about 80% of the precipitation numbers that federal scientists use to compile what’s known as the—a catalog of temperature and precipitation averages from 1991 to 2020. The 30-year retrospective is vital for the health of the nation’s economy because it’s a go-to resource for businesses. 

“The construction industry wants to know how many rainy days there will be at a location in which they are putting in a bid—and to learn how to design air conditioning and heating for buildings,” says Michael Palecki, the lead scientist on the project at the National Centers for Environmental Information. “People want to know what the weather is going to be like where they are looking to move, and, of course, agriculture is one of our biggest users.”

Tracking Hurricane Helene

Some 11 CoCoRaHS volunteers work in Palecki’s office in Asheville, North Carolina. The physical scientist, who had to remove a few trees from his property following Hurricane Helene, recounts how the region spent two weeks without power and remains without drinkable tap water.

When the air conditioning went down in the National Centers for Environmental Information’s computer room—a vast repository of weather data—temperatures soared to 120 degrees, requiring officials to shut down the system and delaying the publication of weather-related information nationwide.

The life-saving value of volunteer precipitation data was also evident in North Carolina as hardy CoCoRaHS participants tugged on rain gear to collect rainfall totals from their plastic gauges in the face of Helene’s “.”

One wrote in observation notes from Flat Springs on Sept. 28: “Absolutely catastrophic impacts from flooding, landslides, and high winds. Major roads impassable. Neighboring fire department … completely carried away by Elk River.”

The North Carolina State Climate Office relied in part on CoCoRaHS observations to determine where, and how much, rain fell. Four network volunteers in the western part of the state recorded totals from : 24.12 inches in Spruce Pine, 22.36 inches in Foscoe, and about 22 inches each at stations south of Black Mountain and Hendersonville.

Using a federal weather that categorizes the likelihood of extreme storm events, state weather officials rainfall produced by Helene likely qualifies it as a one-in-1,000-year storm.

“Yet another event of this magnitude within the state offers even more evidence that our climate is changing, and in extreme ways,” wrote Corey Davis, an assistant state climatologist, in an online summary of Helene’s formation and impacts.

Davis continued: “The rapid intensification of Helene over the Gulf, the amount of moisture available in its surrounding environment, and its manifestation as locally heavy—and in some cases, historically unheard of—rainfall amounts are all known side effects of a warmer atmosphere.”

The National Weather Service is currently updating this atlas, and in doing so, is relying “very extensively” on extreme precipitation data recorded by CoCoRaHS volunteers to determine where heavy rainfall was distributed over time, Palecki says.  

Understanding Science in Daily Life

One volunteer whose data will likely be reflected in this record is Matt Kelsch, a hydrometeorologist in Colorado who is also the Boulder County coordinator for CoCoRaHS. Kelsch has collected precipitation data for the network—or asked a house sitter to do it—without missing a day since June 2001.

His plastic rain gauge sits in his expansive backyard near his garden, which, on Oct. 10, is bone dry.

But it’s not always this way. Kelsch, who has an encyclopedic memory for notable water-related weather events, says the wettest year he recorded was 2013, when about 34 inches fell. And one of the “most impressive spells of snow” occurred in 2006, with 26 inches around Dec. 21, then 14 inches a week later, and 11 more inches seven days after that. 

For Kelsch, the value of CoCoRaHS lies in its ability to teach people of all ages to tune into the variability of precipitation in their own neighborhoods. Volunteering helps participants “improve their skills at estimating how much rain is falling,” he says.

“They can see when the storm is analyzed how much rain fell—their report was one of the dots that was used,” he adds. “CoCoRaHS, even though it’s simple, connects people with the science.”

“I understand why young people are really angry and really hurting,” Fonda said. “What I want to say to them is: ‘Do not sit this election out, no matter how angry you are. Do not vote for a third party, no matter how angry you are. Because that will elect somebody who will deny you any voice in the future of the United States. … If you really care about Gaza, vote to have a voice, so you can do something about it. And then, be ready to turn out into the streets, in the millions, and fight for it.’”

Fonda’s remarks came in a wide-ranging interview organized by the global media collaborative����and conducted by The Guardian, CBS News, and Rolling Stone magazine.

Making major social change requires massive, nonviolent street protests as well as shrewd electoral organizing, Fonda argued. Drawing on more than 50 years of��, from her anti–Vietnam War and anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s to later agitating for economic democracy, women’s rights, and, today, for climate action, Fonda said that: “History shows us that … you need millions of people in the streets, but you [also] need people in the halls of power with ears and a heart to hear the protests, to hear the demands.”

During the Great Depression, she said, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed with helping the masses of unemployed. But FDR said the public had to “make him do it” or he could not overcome resistance from the status quo. “There is a chance for us to make them do it if it’s����and Tim Walz [in the White House],” she said. “There is no chance if Trump and Vance win this election.”

Scientists have repeatedly warned that greenhouse gas emissions��, Fonda noted, so a President Harris would have to be pushed “to stop drilling and fracking and mining. No new development of fossil fuels.” Trump, on the other hand, has promised to “‘drill, baby, drill.’ For once, let’s believe him. The choice is very clear: Do we vote for the future, or do we vote for burning up the planet?”

Fonda launched the����three years ago to elect “climate champions” at all levels of government: national, state, and local. “The PAC focuses down ballot—on mayors, state legislators, county councils,” she said. “It’s incredible how much effect people in these positions can have on climate issues.”

Forty-two of the 60 candidates the PAC endorsed in 2022 won their races. In 2024, the PAC is providing money, voter outreach, and publicity to more than 100 candidates in key battleground states and in California, Fonda’s home state. California is “the fifth-biggest economy in the world, and an oil-producing state,” she explained, “so what happens here has an impact far broader than California.”

Fonda is also, for the first time in her life, “very involved” in this year’s presidential campaign, “because of the climate emergency.” She plans to visit each battleground state, she said: “And when I’m there, we give our schedule to the Harris campaign. Then they fold in Harris campaign [get-out-the-vote events], volunteer recruitment, things like that … and then I do them for our PAC candidates” as well.

Her PAC has a strict rule: It endorses only candidates who do not accept money from the fossil fuel industry. The industry’s “stranglehold over our government” explains a crucial disconnect, Fonda said.Polls show that��, yet their elected officials often don’t deliver it. In California, she said, “We’ve had so many moderate Democrats that blocked the climate solutions we need because they take money from the fossil fuel industry. … It’s very hard to stand up to the people that are supporting your candidacy.”

Fonda also faulted the mainstream news media for not doing a better job of informing the public about the����and the abundance of solutions. Watching the Harris–Trump debate, she thought that “Kamala did very well.” But she “was very disturbed that the No. 1 crisis facing humanity right now took an hour and a half to come up and was not really addressed,” she added. “People don’t understand what we are facing! The news media has to be more vigilant about tying extreme weather events to climate change. It’s starting to happen, but not enough.”

Given her years of anti-nuclear activism—including producing and starring in a hit Hollywood movie, The China Syndrome, released days before the����in 1979—it’s perhaps no surprise that Fonda rejects the increasingly fashionable idea that nuclear power is a climate solution.

“Every time I speak [in public], someone asks me if these����are a solution,” she said. “So I’ve spent time researching it, and there’s one unavoidable problem: No nuclear reactor of any kind—the traditional or��, none of them—has been built in less than 10 to 20 years. We don’t have that kind of time. We have to deal with the climate crisis by the 2030s. So just on the timeline, nuclear is not a solution.” By contrast, she said: “��takes about four years to develop, and pretty soon it’s going to be 30% of the electricity in the world.”

The reason that solar—and wind and geothermal—energy are not prioritized over fossil fuels and nuclear, she argued, is that “big companies don’t make as much money on it.” Noting that air pollution from��, she added: “We’re being poisoned to death because of petrochemicals and the fossil fuel industry. And we [taxpayers] pay for it!��[in government subsidies] to the fossil fuel industry, and we’re dying. … We need that industry out of our lives, off of our planet—but they run the world.”

The two-time Academy Award winner’s decades as one of the world’s biggest movie stars has given her an appreciation of the power of celebrity, and she applauds����for exercising that power with her endorsement of the Harris–Walz ticket.

“I think she’s awesome, amazing, and very smart,” Fonda said of Swift. “I’m very grateful and excited that she did it, and … I think it’s going to have a big impact.”

“My metaphor for myself, and other celebrities, is a repeater,” Fonda added. “When you look at a big, tall mountain, and you see these antennas on the top, those are repeaters. They pick up the signals from the valley that are weak and distribute them so that they have a larger audience. … When I’m doing the work I’m doing, I’m picking up the signals from the people who live in Wilmington and the Central Valley and Kern County and are really suffering, and the animals that can’t speak, and trying to lift them up and send [their stories] out to a broader audience. We’re repeaters. It’s a very valid thing to do.”

Climate activism is also “so much fun,” she said, and it does wonders for her mental health.

“I don’t get depressed anymore,” she said. “You know, Greta Thunberg said something really great: ‘Everybody goes looking for hope. Hope is where there’s action, so look for action and hope will come.’” Hope, Fonda added, is “very different than optimism. Optimism is ‘Everything’s gonna be fine,’ but you don’t do anything to make sure that that’s true. Hope is ‘I’m hopeful, and I’m gonna work like hell to make it true.’”

This article by is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.

Each year, those who live near the Atlantic Ocean, particularly those near the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, brace themselves for . As the water temperatures increase and mix with warm, humid air, tropical thunderstorms form and gather speed. Once a storm’s winds reach 74 miles per hour, the storm is officially classed as a hurricane—and people on land begin paying much closer attention. Between June and the end of November, the looming threat of high-speed winds, heavy rainfall, and coastal flooding hangs in the air; those who live closest to the water make emergency plans, keep an eye on their vulnerable neighbors, coordinate mutual aid efforts, and hold onto hope that, this year, they’ll be safe.

If a hurricane does make landfall, many in the area of impact will have the option to drive, fly, or run away from the danger and ensure their families are warm, dry, and far from danger. Some will choose to stay behind in spite of the risks, but thousands of others will be left with no choice at all. Prisons and jails are often when natural disasters hit. While people on the outside are given ample warning, the incarcerated are at the mercy of prison staff, government officials, and state politicians.

On Sept. 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene smashed into northwestern Florida and quickly made its way toward Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. When it made landfall, its winds whipped the air at 140 miles per hour, causing massive flooding and destruction across all four states. Authorities were well aware Helene was on its way, with each state declaring a state of emergency ahead of the storm. “There will be no place for you to go if things get bad,” on Florida’s Gulf Coast warned. “This is going to be a life-threatening surge. It is nothing to take lightly.”

Yet, even as the hurricane barrelled down, people incarcerated in prisons and jails in multiple states were not allowed to evacuate. Instead, or, as was the case in Florida, to “ built to withstand high winds.” In other cases, they were simply . 

Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton hit Florida again, knocking out power for millions, throwing up , and causing widespread flooding. The lead-up to the storm was grim, and photos of fleeing residents stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic only added to the alarm. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor went on television to tell Floridians, “If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”

For the second time, though, thousands of the state’s incarcerated people—including more than —were left with no option but to ride out the storm behind bars. The stated it had “successfully relocated” 5,950 people ahead of the storm—out of 28,000 who lay in the hurricane’s path. As Jordan Martinez, an organizer with watchdog Fight Toxic Prisons, told , the number of evacuees only made up a small percentage of the individuals in harm’s way and some of the evacuations barely qualified as such.

The majority of those evacuated came from work camps, halfway houses, and work release centers, and in many instances they were “evacuated” to theoretically stronger facilities nearby. For example, women at Lowell Work Camp, a section of the Lowell Correctional Institution in Marion County, Florida, were evacuated just a few dozen yards away … to another part of the same prison complex.

“The fact that they are unable to evacuate people in mandatory evacuation zones goes to show the complete lack of prioritization of the lives of incarcerated people during hurricanes,” Martinez said. “If we are prioritizing the safety of our communities, those communities must include the incarcerated people inside that are themselves organizing on the inside to fight for better conditions, and quite often being forced during hurricanes to prepare to protect their communities via forced slave labor with sandbags or in cleanup in the aftermath.”

As Martinez noted, the trouble does not end once the wind stops blowing, either. Hurricane damage can disrupt incarcerated peoples’ access to light, clean water, food, and medical supplies, leaving them cold, hungry, thirsty, or sick for days or weeks at a time. Power outages can cut them off from communicating with their loved ones and the rest of the world, which also hamstrings their ability to report unsanitary or dangerous conditions inside their facilities. It also leaves them unable to check in on their own communities, or to find out whether their own families are safe.

When Helene slammed into western North Carolina, prisoners in multiple facilities outside Asheville told about losing access to running water—and having to relieve themselves in plastic bags. As one woman’s husband told her, “We thought we were going to die there. We didn’t think anybody was going to come back for us.”

Elsewhere, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a nationwide collective of incarcerated individuals who provide support and legal resources to other prisoners, were able to share as Milton tore through the state: “Power’s out in here, and the COs are hiding in their offices while we’re left in the dark. We’re shouting for meds and updates, but no one’s listening. Just trying to hold on and hope this storm doesn’t swallow us whole…”

Another message illustrated the inhumane conditions inside as the storm raged, mirroring the hellish conditions stirred up by Helene: “Toilets backing up, feces running over. We’ve been told we’ll have to lay in it. No movement allowed.”

While incarcerated people can be denied the most basic level of hygiene inside their dorms, they are also often the first to be drafted to clean up after a climate disaster. As reported, both and to clear roads and haul debris after Helene and Milton. During a press conference, cheerfully framed this forced labor as “utilizing” the state’s “resources.” “They do prison labor anyways,” he said. “The good thing about that is you can use that on private property, not just on public.” He also noted the cleanup “would cost us way more money if you had to do that through some of these private contractors.”

Unsurprisingly, Florida and are two of seven states in which incarcerated workers are for nearly all prison jobs.

As the climate crisis worsens, incarcerated people and those who love them will continue to worry that every new weather emergency may mean a death sentence unless real, concrete action is taken and laws are put into place to ensure state and local county officials are prepared in advance to evacuate everyone who may be under threat, regardless of their address or legal status.

Amid this ever-growing threat, incarcerated people, their loved ones, and organizers are on the front lines, advocating for themselves and their co-prisoners. “We urge the public to understand our plight as people in jails and prisons,” a member of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak told . “We suffer during natural disasters and lock our dark cells, not knowing if we will survive or not.”

Publications such as , , and are also closely following the impact of the climate crisis on prisoners and amplifying the stories of incarcerated individuals who have been subjected to dire conditions or left behind during catastrophes. Every letter, every social media post, and every phone call counts. The louder the public outcry about this cruel practice becomes, the less likely officials will give a repeat performance the next time a deadly storm starts brewing.

“This is not just a logistical failure, it’s a profound moral failing,” the member of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak emphasized. “While entire towns are evacuated and communities band together to seek safety, we remain locked within these walls, treated as less than human. It is heartbreaking to think that while the world preps for survival during a pending natural disaster such as Hurricane Milton, we are still treated as if we don’t matter, as if our lives can be tossed aside in the name of protocol. We must end this normalized routine. We beg the public to pay attention and have a heart of compassion.”

A sus 19 años, se dirigía a Canadá. Ella sería la primera de su familia en ir a la universidad en el extranjero. Todos sus familiares vinieron al aeropuerto para la despedida. Ella recuerda el adiós como un momento desgarrador. En ese momento, a Chavan y a su familia les resultó difícil comprender plenamente el sacrificio que implica migrar. “No teníamos idea de lo que significa dejar tu hogar,” dijo.

Una nota de los redactores: Eso historia ha translado a español por . Puede leerla en inglés aqui.
(Editor’s note: This story has been translated into Spanish by Kristina Fullerton Rico. You can read the story in English here.)

Pero inevitablemente, el duelo llegó a sus vidas. Casi doce años después de la partida de Chavan, mientras se encontraba sentada en su departamento en Winnipeg a principios del 2020, Chavan sintió un nudo en el estómago cuando su mamá le llamó por teléfono para compartir la noticia. La abuela de Chavan, quien vivía en Sidney, Australia, se había enfermado y, tras unas cuantas semanas, había fallecido. Su abuela había sido una de las personas más importantes en su vida, pero Chavan no tenía manera de ir a Australia para llorarla en persona. Además del costo de los boletos de avión, no contaba con la visa necesaria para ingresar al país, ni con el presupuesto necesario para solicitarla. Ante esta situación, Chavan se apagó emocionalmente. “Me sentí congelada por un largo tiempo,” explicó.

Los expertos en temas de migración y psicología usan los términos “duelo transnacional” o “luto transnacional” para describir esta experiencia, la cual se refiere a la pérdida de un ser querido estando en otro país. Aunque el duelo en sí es un proceso difícil, los inmigrantes que experimentan el duelo transnacional frecuentemente enfrentan sentimientos adicionales de culpa, negación y sufrimiento, ya que les es imposible asistir a los rituales de luto de sus seres queridos. 

La imposibilidad de ver a sus seres queridos en persona complica lograr una sensación de cierre, y el doliente puede sentirse incapaz de procesar la pérdida y seguir con su vida de una manera sana. En años recientes, esta experiencia se ha vuelto más común, ya que el COVID-19 acabó con millones de vidas, mientras simultáneamente aumentaron las restricciones fronterizas. La pandemia resaltó la importancia del apoyo comunitario y los cambios a las políticas migratorias para ayudar a aquellos que enfrentan sus duelos desde lejos.

El Dolor de la Pérdida a Larga Distancia

Desde hace mucho tiempo, experimentar el duelo a larga distancia ha sido la realidad de muchos inmigrantes. Cualquiera que deja a su familia atrás también corre el riesgo de estar separado de sus seres queridos durante tiempos de pérdida. Esto frecuentemente conlleva un torbellino de emociones complicadas.

“Hay un fuerte sentimiento de culpa. Hay un fuerte sentimiento de arrepentimiento de no haber podido estar con su ser querido al momento de su muerte,” explicó , una investigadora del duelo, de la Universidad de Alberta. Ella recuerda una conversación que tuvo cuando entrevistó a un inmigrante Iraní-Canadiense, quien había perdido a su hermano durante las cuarentenas de la pandemia del COVID. Porque no le fué posible viajar a Irán, o siquiera ver su cuerpo antes de que fuera enterrado, se negaba a aceptar la muerte de su hermano.

Chavan recuerda experiencias similares que sufrió al estar separada de su familia por fronteras después de la muerte de su abuela. “Sentía que no tenía derecho a llorar mi pérdida, porque no había estado ahí,” dijo.

Sin este espacio para llevar luto, el duelo puede volverse difícil de superar; especialmente para los inmigrantes indocumentados. , una socióloga en el Center for Racial Justice de la Universidad de Michigan, trabaja con estas comunidades, y contínuamente escucha sobre cómo el duelo afecta la vida cotidiana. “Las personas describen estas experiencias de duelo y luto a larga distancia como una de las partes más difíciles de estar indocumentado en Estados Unidos,” explicó.

Por ejemplo, mientras estudiaba entre el 2017 y el 2023, Fullerton Rico conoció a una mujer a quien llama Florencia (un pseudónimo usado para proteger su privacidad), quien dijo: “Era algo que no había de qué manera poderlo arreglar. No queda de otra más que aceptar que no puedes hacer nada.” Fullerton Rico también comparte una conversación que tuvo con un hombre a quien llama Felipe: “Felipe me dijo que el duelo te cambia profundamente.” La distancia aumenta el dolor del duelo porque es imposible decir adiós o asistir a un funeral, y esto impide obtener una sensación de cierre. “Hay un capítulo que no se cerró, que está como abierto,” explicó Felipe. 

 El peso del duelo transnacional frecuentemente es una carga soportada en soledad, lo cual agrava la situación. “No es algo que se suele reconocer abiertamente,” explicó Fullerton Rico.

Acortando la Distancia

Los rituales sociales, en cualquier cultura, son una parte importante del proceso del duelo. Los velorios y otras conmemoraciones pueden ayudar a la gente a pensar activamente en la persona difunta, dice , una neurocientífica que estudia el duelo en la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder. “Pensar en estas memorias le permite a tu cerebro como… remodelar y pensar en cómo encajan esas memorias ahora en tu vida,” dice ella. Pero para aquellos quienes están lejos al momento de la muerte y no pueden asistir al funeral en persona, este proceso puede ser mucho más difícil o quedar inconcluso.

, una psicóloga que trabaja con expatriados, ayuda a sus clientes a crear sus propios rituales para que cada uno pueda conmemorar su relación con su ser querido de una manera única. Ella los guía a través del proceso del duelo a larga distancia, usando acciones como escribir cartas, comer la comida favorita de un ser querido, o participar en una actividad que solían hacer juntos. El proceso toma tiempo. Frecuentemente son necesarias varias sesiones de adioses y rituales para que alguien haga las paces con una muerte repentina, dice Encina.

Similarmente, durante la pandemia, Chavan encontró su propia manera de enfrentar el duelo a través de la escritura. Ella había perdido su trabajo en ese tiempo y decidió asistir a una clase de escritura. Así inició un proyecto de “no-ficción creativa” que le permitía sumergirse en sus experiencias con el duelo transnacional. Chavan lentamente rompió el hielo que había encerrado a su corazón por ocho meses. Sollozaba mientras recordaba todos los detalles de su abuela: los debates enérgicos que juntas tenían, cómo dominaba los lugares a pesar de su pequeño tamaño, cómo reforzaba los lazos familiares con su amor.

“Fue horrible. Fue devastador. Se sintió como perderla de nuevo,” Chavan dijo.

Pero fueron estos actos de escribir y recordar los que le permitieron reconectarse a sus memorias… Y empezar a sanar.

Soluciones Sistémicas

Ultimately, making space for transnational grief requires the restructuring of how we think about immigration and loss. Currently, it takes years for an undocumented immigrant to become a legal, permanent resident in the U.S., and the few who are able to adjust their immigration status typically receive work authorization before the ability to travel back home, Fullerton Rico says. And so the opportunity of visiting loved ones becomes a waiting game, even as family members age or pass away.

Apoyar el duelo transnacional requiere que reconsideremos la forma en la que pensamos acerca de la inmigración y la pérdida. Actualmente, pocos inmigrantes indocumentados pueden ajustar su estado migratorio en los Estados Unidos. Los pocos que son elegibles típicamente reciben una autorización de trabajo antes de tener la opción de viajar de visita a su país de origen, y toma años para que obtengan la residencia permanente legal, explicó Fullerton Rico.  Es así que la oportunidad de visitar a sus seres queridos se vuelve una espera alargada, incluso mientras ellos envejecen o fallecen. Para muchos, es una espera sin fin.

“Si aprobamos leyes que le den prioridad a crear un camino rápido hacia la ciudadanía, podríamos evitar que las personas tengan que vivir estas experiencias,” dijo Fullerton Rico.

Muchos inmigrantes indocumentados también tienen trabajos inflexibles y de salarios bajos, lo cual los presiona a tomar decisiones dolorosas, como ver los funerales de sus seres queridos a través de su celular mientras ayudan a los clientes o preparan comidas en un restaurante. “En lugar de estar ahí en persona, ellos tuvieron que escaparse al baño, o esconderse en una cámara frigorífica para tener vistazos de uno de los rituales más significativos en la vida de una persona,” dice Fullerton Rico.

El permiso remunerado beneficia a las personas que están procesando un duelo. Esto les permite a los dolientes tomarse tiempo libre de sus trabajos sin tener que asumir las consecuencias potenciales de perder un cheque de pago o sus mismos trabajos. Chavan recuerda la presión de continuar su trabajo en medio de su duelo porque no tenía la flexibilidad financiera para perder horas de trabajo pagadas, lo cual gradualmente degradó su salud mental. En la actualidad, solo cinco estados de los E.E.U.U. requieren que los empleadores den permiso de faltar a causa de duelo, dice Fullerton Rico, y solo dos de esos estados requieren que los empleados sigan siendo pagados durante este periodo.

También es crucial “hacerle saber a las personas que no están solas en este dolor,” dice Fullerton Rico. Ella considera que es necesario que más organizaciones que apoyan a los inmigrantes reconozcan esta realidad y brinden apoyo para lidiar con el duelo transnacional. Por ejemplo, podrían ayudar a los inmigrantes a tener acceso a terapia, ofrecer otros recursos de salud mental, o ayudar a organizar rituales religiosos para que puedan conmemorar a sus seres queridos desde lejos. Así, los dolientes enfrentando el duelo transnacional correrían menos riesgo de condiciones como la depresión clínica. Ella comparte el ejemplo de un sacerdote católico que entrevistó en la ciudad de Nueva York, quien ha ayudado a realizar misas memoriales para dolientes transnacionales desde los 1990s. Hoy en día, estas ceremonias funerarias son transmitidas a través de Facebook Live, YouTube o Zoom, ayudando a las familias a sentir algún grado de cercanía.

Experts agree that forming this social support is a key factor in the grieving process. “Grief is something of a social experience,” Bayatrizi says. “It’s an emotional experience that’s shaped through our social interactions.”.

Los expertos coinciden en que la formación de este apoyo social es un factor clave en el proceso de duelo. “El duelo es algo así como una experiencia social,” dice Bayatrizi. “Es una experiencia emocional que es formada a través de nuestras interacciones sociales.”

Chavan dice que la única razón por la cual ella finalmente se sintió lista para afrontar las emociones fué gracias a que su pareja y sus suegros fueron solidarios, proveyéndole una comunidad pequeña pero fuerte en un tiempo aislante. Tras escribir acerca de la experiencia, ella también comenzó a tener más conversaciones con familiares y amigos alrededor del mundo quienes habían leído su artículo, sobre el dolor del duelo a larga distancia y cómo lo habían afrontado ellos.

“Esencialmente, llegué a tener una comunidad, una comunidad global a la cual yo podía recurrir,” dice ella. “Enterarte de que no estás solo en algo por lo que has pasado puede ser muy poderoso.”

Alongside get-out-the-vote efforts that happen right before elections, long-term policy-oriented campaigns are underway nationwide to boost voter turnout in the U.S., including making Election Day a national holiday to give voters time off to cast their ballots, rolling out automatic and pre-registration options, and expanding vote-at-home options. “Generating higher voter turnout is critical toward building a healthy democracy that works for everyone,” says Andrea Hailey, CEO at .

Several factors influence voter turnout in every nation, including voter enthusiasm; candidates and issues; and whether the election is a presidential, midterm, or local election. The U.S. is unique in its complex and patchwork state-led voting system, which creates stumbling blocks for would-be voters at every turn. “One of the largest contributors to low voter turnout in the U.S. [are] the laws that govern voting,” says Gayle Alberda, a professor of politics and public administration at Fairfield University.

Depending on where a voter lives, they must navigate a series of hurdles, including registering to vote, requesting an absentee ballot or locating a polling place, and ensuring they have the documents required to cast a ballot before they even get to the ballot box. These burdens are multiplied for some groups, including individuals with limited English proficiency, students attending college away from home, those in rural or low-income areas, and disabled people to whom registration processes or polling locations may be inaccessible. “This process places the burden of voting on the individual,” says Alberda, making it less likely people will turn out to vote.

Organizations focused on voter education and mobilization, including community groups and national giants such as and , backed by tens of thousands of volunteers, help eligible voters navigate these complexities each election cycle. Their efforts are vital, but the groups are fighting an uphill battle. The nation also needs policy interventions to streamline the burdensome election system and ensure more Americans can access the democratic process. 

Making Election Day a national holiday is one such intervention that has gained steam and even Congressional backers in recent years. “Work-related barriers hold back as many as 35% of non-voters from going to the polls,” says Hailey, citing data from a Pew Research Center survey conducted after the . Currently, “time off to vote” laws vary widely across the country, and require employers to provide paid time off for employees to vote.

Representative Anna G. Eshoo introduced the in 2024 to standardize state rules by making Election Day a federal holiday. Hailey says her organization hopes the bill is passed “so every voter has the flexibility they need to vote.” In the absence of a federal mandate, in August 2024, Vote.org challenging businesses to guarantee paid time off for their employees to vote on or before Election Day. 

While making Election Day a national holiday is a simple way to signal the importance of civic participation, researchers and voting rights advocates say the intervention should be coupled with changes to how people register to vote and cast their ballots. Research from the at Tufts University suggests that automatic and pre-registration options significantly positively impact turnout, . 

With (AVR), eligible voters are automatically registered when they utilize the services of a state agency, such as when they apply for a driver’s license or identification card at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Those who do not want to register to vote can opt out. “Studies show that automatic voter registration does increase voter registration and slightly increases voter turnout as it does eliminate a key barrier to voting, the registration process,” says Alberda. 

Oregon was the first state to implement AVR in 2016, and showed that AVR added more than a quarter of a million voters to the state’s rolls. Of that group, 36% were first-time registrants, and the group was younger and more ethnically diverse than the population of voters who had registered before automatic registration went into effect. A total of nationwide have enacted AVR policies so far. From Oregon’s introduction of AVR in 2016 to the 2018 voter registration deadline, Oregon and seven other states with new AVR programs added a combined .

Another innovation in voter registration is pre-registration, which allows young people to register to vote before reaching voting age. Many states allow 17-year-olds to register to vote as long as they will turn 18 before the next federal election. and allow those as young as 16 to pre-register. This approach eliminates the challenge of reaching would-be voters for the first time when they turn 18, an age at which many are transitioning into college life or new jobs away from home.

Pre-registration also allows young people to become familiar with the election process while still in school and rooted in a community. These factors encourage an enduring sense of civic responsibility and can turn teenagers into lifelong voters, according to Ava Mateo, president of voter organization . “Pre-registering to vote not only provides pathways for younger people to be involved in the civic process earlier, but it also, through our experience, has shown to have a positive impact on youth voter turnout,” she says.

Expanding vote-by-mail is another way to boost voter turnout. With this method, which resembles absentee balloting, the government mails ballots to eligible voters, and the voter marks their ballot at home and returns it before a deadline. Currently, , mail paper ballots to every registered voter before every election. Many voters also got a taste of this system when in-person polling locations had to be closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and . 

Alberda says that shift helped drive “record-high turnout” in the November 2020 election. Most states only offer in limited cases, and moving toward universal mail balloting could give turnout another boost. Similar to making Election Day a national holiday to ensure paid time off for voting, allowing people to vote from home eliminates work-related barriers that prevent so many Americans from getting to the polls. Recent research from the , a research and advocacy nonprofit, suggests that implementing vote-by-mail could boost turnout by as much as in some jurisdictions.

For Barbara Smith Warner, executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute, expanding vote-by-mail is not only a matter of engaging more voters but also of showing respect for voting as a fundamental right. “If you think voting is a right, it should be as convenient and voter-centric as possible, and nothing is easier than sending everybody their damn ballot.”

Some innovations to expand voter access have faced criticism from conservatives, who claim they . However, there is no evidence to back assertions that leads to illegal voting. Errors with automatic voter registration programs are also rare and mitigable. In Oregon, where it has recently come to light that some voters were mistakenly registered through the automatic system without showing requisite proof of citizenship, . The Oregon Secretary of State’s office emphasized that the records show evidence of clerical errors, meaning that clerks had mistakenly identified people as U.S. citizens when they obtained a driver’s license, even though they had not provided proof of citizenship. Previously, in cases such as this, many of the registrants were, in fact, citizens and only needed to provide a missing document to update their registration.

While pro-democracy organizers fight to protect the right to vote and boost the nation’s relatively low voter turnout on multiple fronts, they are also forced to confront harmful conservative narratives that paint expanding voter access as potentially leading to fraud. They are also up against regressive legislation from Republican lawmakers to restrict rather than expand access to the polls. The nonpartisan research group has tracked a surge in restrictive voter identification laws, restrictions on mail voting, and other policies undermining voting rights . 

Advocates argue that the struggle to expand access and boost turnout is nonpartisan, and legislation to restrict voting is a threat to all. “Voter suppression threatens the constitutional rights of every American,” says Hailey. “The best way to safeguard the foundations of our democracy is to empower the electorate and ensure every voter has the opportunity to make their voice heard.”

At first, getting in this much of a tizzy over what to wear to an abortion might seem silly or frivolous. But as Bracey Sherman talked to more people about their abortion experiences, she found that worrying about what to wear was quite common. It is the manifestation of uncertainty that stems from near-constant abortion stigma and lack of knowledge and expectations.

“I wish I had known” is a common refrain. Despite abortion being a near-universal experience, it can be hard to find advice that resonates. That’s the reason we believe a critical part of sharing our abortion stories and changing the narrative is sharing abortion wisdom.

Somatics coach, artist, and abortion storyteller Nik Zaleski taught Bracey Sherman about abortion wisdom—the advice that those of us who’ve had abortions impart to one another to try to make the path forward a little easier for those coming after us. These are the little tips and tricks we’ve learned from experience or that someone passed along to us—the little touches of care that we know to provide when showing up for one another, because we’ve been there, too.

We hope you can create an abortion experience that’s meaningful for you based on the advice of those of us who’ve been there. Although we can’t pick out your appointment outfit for you, we hope you’ll pick out clothes you feel confident in as you begin this next chapter of life.

Confirm What You’ve Suspected

There are a lot of reproductive conditions that mimic pregnancy symptoms, so first and foremost, confirm your pregnancy with a test. Pregnancies can be confirmed through a blood test at a clinic or hospital or by using a urine sample with an over-the-counter pregnancy test at least one week after missing an anticipated period.

Also, despite what the marketing suggests, the cheap pregnancy tests from the dollar store work just as well as the expensive ones at the pharmacy or grocery store, so grab whatever feels right for you and your budget. You may want to pick up more than one in case you don’t believe the positive result of the first one, which is quite common, or in case you take the test too early after your missed period and you need to test again in a few days.

We suggest picking up at least two—one to confirm the pregnancy now and another to confirm you are no longer pregnant a month or so after your abortion. But if you don’t believe the first positive test, get as many as you want. They’ll all say the same thing: It might be time to schedule an abortion.

You should be wary of free pregnancy tests. Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers love to advertise free pregnancy tests to entice you to stop in, only to use the opportunity to proselytize, slut-shame, and misinform you. A lot of really wonderful community organizations, clinics, and abortion funds give out free pregnancy tests because they know tests are expensive—so free isn’t always bad. But if you’re looking for a free test, be mindful about who is giving it out.

Cover Your Tracks

Depending on whom you live with, where you live, and a whole host of other factors, you should be careful about whom you text with, what you search on the internet, and what information about your condition and decision you share.

As Texas-based organizer and We Testify storyteller Nancy Cárdenas Peña explained, it’s often the people who are closest to us who put us at deeper risk. She knows this from experience: “I wish I could have had more time to disclose my abortion story in the manner I felt comfortable with just as anyone should be able to share their story on their own terms.”

Surveillance is a reality of life now and can lead to criminalization for people seeking abortions. Even if you end up not having an abortion, you should be careful about your digital footprint throughout your process.

Talk to people on the phone or in person rather than in writing. Try to use messaging apps with encrypted or disappearing messages or those that don’t allow screenshots. Delete your call log history. Clear the browser history of the search engine you use, or use a private browser that doesn’t save or track your history. Use a lock on your phone and computer so that others can’t look at your messages or browser history when you’re not watching. Protecting your communications can help keep you safe.

Get Your Money Right

One of the most challenging aspects of obtaining an abortion is paying for it. The cost of an abortion (depending on how far along you are and the method) can range from $150 to well over $15,000. If you’re seeking a first-trimester appointment at a clinic in the United States, the average cost is $500. On top of that, you may have to pay for short- or long-distance transportation to and from the clinic, a multi-night hotel stay, meals, childcare, and pain medications. Some state and federal policies ban private and public health insurance from covering abortions. If you are going to a clinic, ask if they accept insurance—some do not.

Prepare for Your Abortion

It’s common to feel scared or embarrassed about asking questions during a medical appointment, even when it’s not an abortion. But the answers to your questions can put you at ease, so muster your courage and ask questions so you can feel as comfortable and informed as possible.

Travel Planning

If you’re traveling for your abortion, save all important phone numbers, including the numbers for the clinic, abortion fund case manager, practical support volunteer, or any other emergency contacts. Download maps to your phone so you can access them offline if cell service is slow or unavailable. Familiarize yourself with directions to and from the airport or train station so you know where you’ll need to go to catch your ride smoothly.

Getting to Your Appointment

Arranging a ride to your abortion can be complicated, because you have to trust someone else with your experience, and they may need to travel across state lines with you. If you trust a friend enough, this is a good opportunity for a bestie road trip. If you have the cash, you can always take a cab or use an app service to book a car, but remember there may be a digital history of your ride to the clinic. If you need to enter a destination digitally, instead of using the clinic’s address, try choosing a spot nearby.

Local abortion funds and practical support organizations can arrange volunteers to drive you from your home, work, airport, or train station—truly wherever!—to your appointment and back.

Be vigilant for police outside of the clinic or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who set up traps on thoroughfares and near clinics, schools, and hospitals to detain and arrest Black and Brown people, undocumented immigrants, and other marginalized groups. This step is critical if you’re crossing checkpoints or borders or if you live in or near heavily policed communities. The morning of your appointment, you might want to check with your community and trusted immigration organizations that document ICE checkpoints.

When you arrive for your appointment, double-check to make sure the place you’re headed to is indeed the clinic. Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers often set up next door to abortion clinics, or an anti-abortion clinic may have a name similar to the name of the exact clinic you’re trying to get to. There are often anti-abortion protesters outside of clinics who scream and yell at anyone walking near the abortion clinic, in hopes of scaring people out of going inside or disorienting them so they walk into the wrong place.

Call “Your Person”

In the first season of Grey’s Anatomy, Dr. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) sits at a bar with Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) as they grieve their failing love lives over snacks. Cristina is pregnant and has an abortion scheduled, but according to clinic policy, she needed to designate an emergency contact on her form, so she wrote down Meredith’s name. “That’s why I told you I’m pregnant,” Cristina tells Meredith. “You’re my person.” Meredith hugs her friend, who receives the hug reluctantly. “Shut up. I’m your person,” Meredith replies.

This short scene in the iconic long-running television show created a beloved shorthand for best friends who promise to show up for one another, no matter what. That it grew out of a supportive abortion decision is just the icing on the cake for us. 

Like Cristina, you may want to identify “your person” to check in on you, hold your hand in the waiting room, or sit with you as you pass the pregnancy while binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy. Ask your clinic whether you can bring a friend or loved one with you. 

You might be a little dizzy after the sedation or cramping a bit if you have an in-clinic procedure, so we recommend having someone else drive you home. We Testify abortion storyteller Cazembe Murphy Jackson suggests finding someone who can attend the procedure with you and be with you in the days following. “Maybe plan out some restful activities that you really like to do or that will keep you happy—shows you want to watch, stuff like that. I think that would have been really helpful for me,” he explained.

If you’re having your abortion at home, you may want to call on someone from your community to sit with you through the process. They can help you get to and from the toilet, clean up, make food, and dote on you as you deserve.

Ask for What You Need

As wonderful as abortion providers are, some are still learning how to better care for patients with disabilities, those who are fat, survivors, or nonbinary or trans people, to name a few identities. Be ready to tell your provider what you need in order to have an abortion experience that is right for you. If your body doesn’t move in a particular way or you do not like body parts to be touched or referred to in a certain way, tell your providers during the counseling conversation.

You may also want to remind them your body requires a different dosage of pain medication compared with other patients. Good providers will be accommodating of your needs. While it is unfortunate you may have to be the one to initiate, you deserve an abortion experience that centers you.

Adapted excerpt from . Reprinted with the permission of the publisher Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright © 2024 by Renee Bracey Sherman and Regina Mahone.

Jones pauses and clears his throat, wiping his eyes. “I get emotional about it,” he says quietly, looking down at the black Labrador retriever sleeping at his feet. “Midnight has done so much for me. I really don’t know what I’d do without him.”&�Բ�����; 

serves individuals experiencing homelessness in Upper Darby, a township on the outskirts of Philadelphia. It is the only shelter in the area to welcome guests along with their “Three P’s”: pets, possessions, and partners of all genders. 

A few years ago, Jones was in a car accident that left him unable to work. As a result, he lost his apartment and began living on the streets. During this time, Jones left his service dog, Midnight, in the care of a friend. Every day, for months, he would take the bus to visit Midnight.  

In addition to his role as an emotional support dog, Midnight is also trained to care for Jones in the event of a medical emergency. Jones suffers from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and relies on Midnight to bring him his medication and phone during cardiac episodes when Jones is unable to stand.  

When Jones finally secured a spot at a shelter that allowed service animals, he found the staff to be confrontational about Midnight’s presence, despite the dog’s status as a service animal. Eventually Jones was evicted from the facility. 

After sleeping in a storage unit for two nights, Charles and Midnight visited the Breaking Bread Community Shelter in search of food. They were immediately invited in for coffee and a meal. Soon after, Charles and Midnight secured a room in the shelter, shared with two other guests, and were able to move in.  

“The first day we came, the staff called us by name, even Midnight,” Jones shakes his head, emotional once again. “They told me they had my back. I felt like I was in heaven.”

Once securing a bed at Breaking Bread, Midnight was given vaccines and other medical care from volunteer veterinarians in the community. “I owe this place everything,” says Jones. “We’ve got a whole new family here.”&�Բ�����;

An Impossible Decision

“Approximately 10% of people experiencing homelessness do so with service animals, emotional support animals, or companion animals,” according to the . However, very few homeless shelters currently accept pets. This means that many unhoused people are forced to make the often impossible decision between safe shelter and staying with their pet. 

Additional research by the Alliance indicates that many choose to remain with their animal, even if that means sleeping on the street or staying in a violent situation. According to the , “50% of domestic abuse survivors would not leave an abusive home unless they could take their pet with them.”&�Բ�����;

Biana Tamimi, a veterinarian and the director of shelter medicine at the Animal Care Center of New York City, believes this decision is only natural. Tamimi explains that for many people, an animal is more than a pet—they are a member of the family. Over her years of veterinary care in New York City, Tamimi has witnessed animals providing critical companionship, comfort, and trauma healing to people experiencing homelessness or poverty.  

“I have met so many unhoused people who say there’s no way on Earth they would give up their animal. [Their pet] is their reason to get up in the morning, a reason to go out and look for food,” Tamimi says. “We all know what it feels like to come home after a hard day and pet your cat or have your dog jump on your lap and give you licks. Imagine in the darkest time of your life, having a companion that’s been with you for years suddenly taken away. We never want that to happen to people.”

The Interconnected Health of Pets and their Owners

In addition to her role at the Animal Care Center of New York City, Tamimi serves as a co-lead at , an organization that believes the well-being of the pet and the owner are inextricably linked. At pop-up street clinics across the nation, the Coalition provides free veterinary care to pets of people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, while also offering social services and medical resources to owners. This model of care is known as the “” approach. Attributed by many to 20th-century veterinary epidemiologist , the One Health movement has gained popularity in recent decades. 

“One Health is a way of providing care that recognizes the connection between human health and animal well-being,” Tamimi explains.  “Practically, what these clinics look like is a veterinary team working alongside human health care providers. For example, I’ll be examining the animal, and maybe there’s a psychiatrist with us, and we’re having a conversation as a group.”

Tamimi shares that, often, the focus of the appointment is first on the pet, utilizing the human-animal bond to help the owner feel comfortable. 

“People want their animals to get the care they need,” Tamimi says. “One of the biggest benefits [of One Health clinics] is getting someone through the door who might have a lack of trust with housing providers, with health care. … We use that bond with the pet to facilitate the human getting care for themselves as well.”&�Բ�����;

At a recent New York City pop-up clinic, Tamimi recalls a man who brought his cat to the clinic, concerned that she was developing asthma. Through conversation with the man, Tamimi and the volunteer social workers at the clinic discovered he was a heavy smoker, which was likely causing his cat’s breathing issues.

“That was a great opportunity to discuss how the owner could smoke a little less,” Tamimi says. “He didn’t realize his smoking was causing this problem, and he said he didn’t want to do that to her. … Our team was able to say, ‘Let’s tackle this problem together, because you’re going to be helping your cat and ��dzܰ��������.’�ĝ

To Tamimi, this illustrates the effectiveness of the One Health model and the power of the human-animal bond to positively influence a person’s life. 

“Pets keep their owners grounded. They keep them well, especially in really dark times of isolation and stress,” she continues. “Humans can get through the most challenging times of their lives because they have an animal there with them that relies on them. … That interconnectedness is really valuable.”

In Texas, a Safe Space for Pets and Owners

in Dallas is also working to keep unhoused people with their pets. The nonprofit has 20 dog kennels in its 750,000-square-foot center, along with shaded walking areas and a full-service grooming room. Recovery center clients are also provided with free dog food, leashes, and toys. 

David Woody, a social worker and the president and CEO of The Bridge, says that in his experience, if a client is offered a spot in a shelter that does not welcome their animal, they often refuse services.

“Here at The Bridge, we’ve developed a real sensitivity to that kind of experience,” Woody says. “Through the kennel program, we offer dogs a safe space while the guest gets their needs met as well. We take care of the whole person, and the canine is just as important as anything else.”

Channon Cavazos, kennel manager at The Bridge, explains that often, guests open up to her about their trauma while talking about their pet. This allows the team at The Bridge to better serve the client’s individual needs. 

Cavazos says there is nearly always a waitlist for The Bridge’s pet-friendly shelter services. In the coming years, she hopes to expand the kennel program, allowing more Dallas residents to receive shelter without being separated from their animal. 

“There are people who will wait on our waitlist for weeks at a time because they can’t part with their animals. A lot of these people have been through a lot. The last thing they want to do is get rid of their animal,” Cavazos says. “I would love to see a kennel in all homeless shelters so that no one has to part with their animal to receive shelter.”

Mobilizing the Public

a nonprofit working across all 50 states, provides food and medical services to the animals of unhoused people. Since it got its start in 2008, the nonprofit has provided more than 2 million pounds of food as well as medical care to more than 30,000 pets.  

“When we first started, our clients would tell us they were giving their pet half of whatever food they could find,” says founder Geneveive Frederick. “And we knew this wasn’t healthy for the person or the pet.”&�Բ�����; 

Feeding Pets of the Homeless relies on donation sites across the country to collect pet food and supplies from the public. These donation sites are located in hair salons, doctors’ offices, pet shops, and other small businesses. The food and supplies collected then gets distributed by social service centers like domestic violence shelters and food banks. Feeding Pets of the Homeless also offers financial support to unhoused clients whose pets need urgent medical care. 

The majority of the organization’s clients are women, Frederick shares. She highlighted that, many times, unhoused women are at and rely on their animals for safety.

“Even the smallest dog can alert them that danger is coming,” she says. 

Additionally, she mentions the among people experiencing homelessness. For some people, pets can provide a reason to seek help, even when they feel hopeless.  

“For many [unhoused people], they’ve lost all hope … but they reach out to us because they feel responsible for their animal,” Frederick says. “Programs like ours can give people hope that somebody out there wants to help them, and their pet, in their time of need.”

That the United States incarcerates people at a higher rate than most countries in the world is, by now, a truism.

But that’s not the only way in which the country is an outlier. The vast majority of people locked up in prisons throughout America cannot vote. In many democratic nations, including Canada and most of the European Union, . Imprisonment itself is seen as sufficient punishment. 

The exclusion does not stop at the prison walls. There are over 2 million other Americans who have served their time but remain barred from voting because of a felony conviction. 

In total, 4.6 million people are locked out of the democratic process in the United States. Nearly . That’s a fundamental flaw in this experiment called democracy. 

Restoring our right to vote would make society safer. It would give incarcerated people a means of pushing back against a system that controls our lives. And it would help America realize a truer, more inclusive version of itself. 

People in this country have a long history of fearing the other. I wonder what people might fear about currently and formerly incarcerated people voting? Is it that we might vote against the interests of fellow Americans? 

Maybe some of us would vote in humane policymakers who mandate , or who challenge  like picking cotton, the major cash crop of U.S. slavery. Others might mark their ballots for lawmakers committed to creating more green spaces and reducing food deserts in under-resourced communities.

Or maybe that wouldn’t happen. We are not a . In fact, inside I have noticed that it’s the working class, across all demographics, who overwhelmingly support Donald Trump. Those with more formal education tend to support Kamala Harris.  

We probably care a lot about what you care about. We want our kids to grow up healthy and safe. We want fair politicians reelected and corrupt ones voted out. We want to fund and strengthen our communities, but not waste money.

For me? I would throw my support behind school board members who would allow my daughter to read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, one of Texas’ most frequently banned books. I would advocate for safe and clean drinking water in rural towns, where prisons are often located. And I would rally behind leaders who protect a broad range of reproductive rights because I don’t believe my daughters should have fewer reproductive rights than their grandmother.��

Meanwhile, by letting us have a say in politics, you are helping us become reinvested in our communities, where . The Sentencing Project released  last year that argued restoring voting rights for people with felony convictions can improve public safety. The right to vote and the act of voting are linked to  for Americans who have been involved with the criminal legal system, according to the report. 

Instead of getting involved in our communities, we’re forced to sit on the sidelines and let the state do with us what it pleases.

A few years ago, Texas began . Before then, I was able to hold letters from my loved ones. I remember tracing the pink crayon-heart indentations of my daughter’s script, and taking in the signature scent of my mother’s perfume, which she sprayed on the page. Now, that simple but profound moment of physical connection is gone, and I can’t do anything about it.

Larger, attacks on our rights and dignity are also occurring while we cry out into the abyss, hoping someone will hear us. Failed forms of  continue to extend sentences for convictions, no matter how old. Marijuana possession is still criminalized in many states, including Texas, a fact responsible for countless ruined lives. And , who in some cases can’t even recall their convictions, are routinely denied compassionate release. Shouldn’t those of us most impacted by these policies have an opportunity to influence them?

Some people think “no.” Supporters of felony disenfranchisement laws tend to argue that incarcerated people gave up their privilege to vote when they chose to break the law. But this view ignores the fact that our legal system treats the poor differently than the rich. 

Consider the financial crisis of 2008. None of its bank CEO architects, who ruined millions of lives and cost the country an estimated $23 trillion, went to jail or prison. Same for members of the infamous Sackler family, whose company Purdue Pharma created Oxycontin and marketed the fatally addictive drug under false pretenses, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths nationwide. Neither the bank CEOs nor the Sacklers lost their privilege to vote, despite breaking the law. 

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, who was found guilty on 34 felony counts earlier this year, continues his run for re-election to the highest office in the land.

But my neighbors incarcerated for bouncing grocery checks at Walmart are left without the right to have a voice in our government? 

������Ƶ than anything, restoring our right to vote would honor the spirit of our democracy. It would signal to everyone inside and out that all voices matter, no matter what.

That would be a novel but no less essential development in the history of America. Since the end of the Civil War, the United States has found ways to disenfranchise Black voters. It started with literacy tests and poll taxes and threats of racist violence. Now, it’s through  and mass incarceration. 

“We the People” includes we the incarcerated. It’s long past time to allow all voting-age Americans the freedom to vote.

A court of teenagers, by teenagers, and for teenagers, Teen Court is exactly what it sounds like: a program giving a new name to justice and serving young people across Texas. The court offers a voluntary alternative from the traditional court system for teens under 17 who commit Class C misdemeanors. Students can avoid a fine and instead receive their penalty in constructive ways such as community service and jury terms in the Teen Court. Once completed, the charge is completely removed from their record.

The program allows young people to plead guilty in front of a student jury that empathizes with their situation and asks them questions about circumstances—their background, home situation, economic status, and what led them to commit the offense. Rather than face a punitive system, teens can avoid unpleasant experiences with law enforcement and move through an alternative criminal justice system that values them.��

Student attorney Alex Gonzalez, who is from El Paso, says the program is a way to avoid pigeonholing teens. “The program shifts the focus from labeling students as ‘offenders’ or ‘juveniles’ in a negative light to seeing them as people who made a mistake and are now learning from it,” she says.

The goal of the court and the student jury is to set teens up for success by making sure the penalty is feasible for each person. In Teen Court, what counts as community service isn’t strictly limited to volunteering; it’s any self-improvement action, such as going to counseling, achieving a higher grade in a class, or joining an extracurricular class. 

Sophia Garza, the juvenile case manager and director of El Paso’s Teen Court program explains how community service is defined broadly to accommodate all students. “I have kids that live on the other side, in Mexico, but they attend school in El Paso. … But as long as they’re doing anything that betters themselves or betters their community, I will take it as community service,” she says.

Sherry Maximoff, Williamson County attorney and Teen Court supervisor, says the volunteer hours also work as constructive punishment for teens because it encourages them to take care of a community they have served. “If you are taught to give back to your community and to volunteer, it gives you a sense of ownership and responsibility over your community. This is my community, and I’m going to clean up those streets, then why would I commit criminal mischief or litter?” she says.

In recent years, Texas has increased criminalization and policing of teens, especially those of color. The state has intensified the number of law enforcement officers on K–12 campuses with larger populations of Latinx and Black students. This has resulted in in arrests, court referrals, and use-of-force incidents. With students of color across the state saying they fear the officers on campuses, Teen Court allows them to avoid traumatizing experiences with law enforcement and have their stories heard without judgment from people within the system.

“[Students are] not dealing with anyone who they identify as law enforcement. That’s the whole point of positive peer pressure, that it is their peers who stand in judgment of them, not law enforcement, not the system,” explains Morales about how the program is a part of the justice system that veers heavily away from criminalizing students of color. 

Garza also says that she notices teens feeling more comfortable once they see other teens on the jury. “When I sit with the youth I can see some are being very cautious. I do see the youth open up more, share a little bit more with their peers, maybe because they feel like if they’re going to be judged, their peers are going to understand their situation a little bit better,” she explains.

As a state that eschews gun regulation, Texas has also used the overpolicing of schools as a temporary for gun violence. At a time when students are being criminalized at such a high rate, Teen Court programs allow students from marginalized communities to have their stories heard. This is especially important because students going through the system are often dealing with issues far too serious for their age bracket and sometimes beyond their control.

Williamson County Teen Court volunteer Audrey Seigman talks about a case in which a teen was involved in an accident while driving their siblings to school. “This person was put in a very difficult position. Their parents made them drive their siblings because they were busy with jobs. The accident wasn’t their fault, but the police found out they weren’t qualified to be driving and cited them,” she says.

Other student attorneys say that they’ve seen similar cases with teens who struggle with issues beyond their control because they come from first-generation families. “[There was] a case involving a student who didn’t speak English. He was charged with theft, but it became clear that he didn’t fully understand what was happening or how the legal system worked. His family had recently immigrated and there was a huge language barrier,” says Gargi Singh, a student attorney with the Williamson Teen Court program.

Gonzalez says that declining mental health is common among teens who enter the program. “Cases involve students dealing with emotional or psychological issues such as depression, anxiety, or trauma. A student might engage in risky behavior as a coping mechanism for their mental health struggles.”

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in “tough on crime” approaches to the justice system, including and harsh from the right. The conservative federal policy agenda Project 2025 seeks to increase criminalization and policing by eliminating training for federal law enforcement. Former President Donald Trump has promised he would increase the militarization of police and expand incarceration and the death penalty if elected. In such a context, Teen Court programs are more important than ever,  offering a crucial opportunity for teens to bypass the. Students are more likely to avoid entering the system later in their lives because Teen Court embodies a form of restorative justice that doesn’t use law enforcement or incarceration for discipline. 

“At the very lowest level, where the consequences are least impactful, we give them a positive experience with the criminal justice system. You interrupt that pipeline there, both with the way the child begins to define themselves and by actually physically dismissing the ticket,” says Morales about how Teen Court directly curbs the school-to-prison pipeline. “We have defendants who have gone through the program and have had such a positive experience at the end that they have chosen to become volunteers,” she adds.

Judge Elaine Marshall from Houston, Texas, talks about her Teen Court program and how it has discouraged recidivism among teens in her community. “I started my Teen Court in 2000. From those years I have had no repeat offenders. It says a lot that we’ve had students who come through as offenders wanting to join the program.”&�Բ�����;

For student volunteers, the program is also a unique way to learn about the legal system and restorative justice. Especially in a state like Texas, which from learning about historical injustices, Teen Court gives students a hands-on opportunity to learn about nuances within the criminal justice system.

“[The program] is not about branding students as ‘criminals’ but about showing them that they’re capable of growth. It has shown me how crucial empathy and understanding are in fostering real change,” says Singh.

Teen Court is creating a generation of students who know that reform in the criminal justice system is both necessary and possible. The program bridges gaps between teens and builds community and empathy, giving students the confidence to fight for change.

I was incarcerated for more than eight years in Florida. I’ve been free for 18 months and just recently got the bug to vote again. Problem was, I didn’t know if I was eligible to register. I wasn’t debriefed on the matter when I left prison, and I’d heard different things from different people. Some said: “Felons can’t vote in Florida. Ever.” While others claimed: “You can vote as long as you’re done with your sentence.”������������

I needed guidance. And clearly I wasn’t the only one.  

A new proposal by the Florida Division of Elections seeks to end confusion around restoration of voting rights. If passed, the update to its existing advisory opinion process would provide people with felony convictions the chance to request a formal opinion stating definitively whether their voting rights have been restored. In so doing, it will clarify a complicated state statute that governs the process of reinstating voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. 

“We wanted to figure out a simple question: Whose job is it to determine voter eligibility?” Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, told Spectrum News 13 in August in support of the proposal. 

Confusion Over the Law

The state statute in question, SS 98.0751, dictates that for all crimes other than murder or sex offenses, restoration of voting rights is contingent upon sentence completion, including parole or probation and the satisfaction of all court-ordered fines and fees. People convicted of murder or sex offenses must seek additional permission in the form of clemency from a state-appointed board.

But this alone doesn’t definitively answer the question of eligibility. Many people are not even aware of all the fines they owe post-incarceration, let alone the offense-specific guidelines laid out in the statute.   

Meade said the proposed process, including a special form, would affirmatively address these issues. He added, “The other thing, which I think is huge, is that it provides protection for people against” being arrested for voter fraud. 

Forty-one formerly incarcerated people were arrested in 2022 and 2023 for voter fraud in Florida, according to Southern Poverty Law Center. At least some of them had attempted to vote based on honest misunderstandings of the state statute—yet their prosecutions proceeded. 

In response, some critics charged that Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Republicans were deliberately suppressing the voting rights of felons. 

“Instead of fulfilling its role to enable Floridians to vote, the state has made it more difficult, which is anti-democratic,” said Courtney O’Donnell, a senior staff attorney for voting rights with the Southern Poverty Law Center, in an article posted on the group’s site.

Florida does indeed make it hard for felons to vote. A 2023 fact sheet by The Sentencing Project states that Florida disenfranchises nearly 1.5 million people with felony convictions, more than any other state in the nation.

A History of Controversy

The latest saga in the battle over felony disenfranchisement in Florida began heating up in 2018. 

That’s the year voters in the state approved Amendment 4, which automatically restored voting rights to anyone with felony convictions—minus those convicted of murder or sex offenses—upon release from prison. DeSantis opposed the measure. Not even a year later, thanks to legislative support by his fellow Republicans, DeSantis signed SS 98.0751 into law.   

Legal battles ensued. Opponents of the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said it effectively instituted a “poll tax,” whereby only those who could pay could vote, echoing similar attempts from the Jim Crow era. 

DeSantis said the measure was a safeguard against giving “violent felons” certain societal benefits “without regard to the wishes of the victims.”&�Բ�����; 

Ultimately, the fight reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2020 decided against intervening in a lower-court ruling that upheld the new law. In a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the law “prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida’s primary election simply because they are poor.”

Moving Forward

SS 98.0751 is the law of the land for the foreseeable future. In my case, once I did my homework, the registration process ultimately went smoothly. However, I credit this to my relative privilege in being resourceful enough to conduct such research and pay my fines, coupled with my not being convicted of murder or a sex crime.  Sadly, many others aren’t so lucky.   

The special opinion process proposed by the Florida Department of Elections is not expected to go into effect before the Oct. 7 deadline to register to vote in the fall election, according to CBS News Miami. 

For more information on voting in Florida, visit the website of the supervisor of elections in your county or. You can also review this����from the ACLU of Florida.

When in April 2024, Barrymore referenced that nickname. “That’s a great segue to say that I keep thinking in my head that we all need a mom,” Barrymore said. “I’ve been thinking that we really all need a tremendous hug in the world right now. But in our country, we need you to be ‘Momala’ of the country.”

I thought a lot about that moment while watching Harris debate former President Donald Trump in September. At the start of the debate, before shaking Harris’ hand, which continued throughout the night. Harris was poised, standing firmly on her policies, while Trump struggled to directly answer questions and made and poor Americans.

As Trump made silly faces and referred to Harris as “this one” instead of her name and title, I was reminded of the ways Black people, especially Black women, have long been called upon to be the adults in the room. Thanks to both and , Black people are required to be above reproach, emotionless, and with a heightened understanding of the feelings of white Americans. In many ways, Harris had to embody the role of “Momala” during the debate to assuage the fears of fragile white Americans, and some Americans of color, who were looking for her to be well-behaved, respectable, and unrattled.

Despite Trump’s overt disrespect and disregard for Harris’ station, many voters in the United States were interested in how Harris handled his childishness, his antics, his attacks, and his reactions, rather than judging her debate performance based on her expertise and preparedness for the role.

As I write in , Black women who seek political office are often expected to be hypermasculine superheroes with the ability to save white Americans from problems they themselves have created. These expectations play into the stereotype of the unsexed, unattractive, obsequious mammy, whose only desire is to care for white families, nurse white children, and relieve white women of their household duties. When Barrymore asked Harris to mother the country, that is the stereotype she was referencing—and that’s what white Americans hoped to see at the debate.

This isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed a Black presidential candidate withhold their emotions during a debate while their white male opponent displayed uncontrollable bouts of anger. When then Senator Barack Obama debated the late Senator John McCain in 2008, I distinctly remember McCain referring to Obama as “” and refusing to make eye contact with his opponent.

It’s a level of disrespect seemingly only tolerable when it’s exhibited by white men. But these behaviors are deeply rooted in anti-Blackness and the belief that Black Americans do not deserve the same level of regard and honor white Americans receive. We call that white supremacy.

And yet, in the face of impossible expectations, Harris managed to be pensive, thoughtful, clever, funny, and above her opponent’s demeaning critiques of her as a person. Regardless of your opinions of Harris, there are many people who will find safety and solace in her embodying the role of the country’s mammy, and they will care more about her performance of this insidious stereotype than anything she said on that debate stage.

But if we ever want to move past a political imagination limited to gender binaries and racial hierarchies, we must hope for more from anyone who stands to represent us. As such, it’s likely that those of us who believe in the fullness of Blackness and Black life have largely been left under-satisfied by Harris’ approach to this campaign.

Being white America’s “Momala” may win Harris the presidential race. It might even win her reelection in 2028. But it won’t challenge the expectations of those who see Black women as caricatures and reflections of their darkest fantasies. Being white America’s “Momala” won’t get us any closer to freedom—and it certainly won’t pave the way for the radical liberationist politics we need at this moment and moving forward.

Throughout the book, Giovale faces the dark truths about her European ancestors and pushes through to see an opportunity to create a new way of being and thinking. She explores and acknowledges the atrocities committed by her European ancestors toward Indigenous peoples, the impacts on her own identity as a white person, and the systemic perpetuation of this violence. In doing so, she creates a blueprint for European-descended people living in America to examine their own role in white supremacy—and to heal. 

Read an excerpt from Becoming a Good Relative here.

By embarking on a journey of rekindling ancestral memories, Giovale uncovers the hidden stories and legacies of her own lineage—even those that involve the perpetration of harm or complicity in injustice. She dives deep into the historical context that led her Irish ancestors to emigrate to the United States, including the British settlement of Ireland in the 1600s and its deliberate attack on Irish culture and systems of governance as a means to dissolve communities from within. Generations later, British rule exacerbated the already catastrophic Irish potato blight, resulting in mass forced migration to the U.S., where Irish immigrants were labeled dirty and dangerous. This was the inflection point where Irish immigrants assimilated to American whiteness, leaving behind cultural traditions and practices that connected them to their heritage. That assimilation also required the once-othered Irish to participate in and perpetuate harm and violence toward other U.S. communities deemed “non-white.”

Ancestral aversion is a common experience—the urge to sever ties with the parts of ourselves that relate to painful histories. Yet Giovale urges her white peers to examine their own lineage as a way to build empathy and compassion for their ancestors. While she does not excuse or justify the harms of her ancestors, Giovale shares a road map for forgiveness, a critical first step in creating a personal reparations plan. This process of exploring ancestral narratives can create healing across generations and enable a deeper understanding of how historical traumas continue to impact individuals and societies today.

Giovale’s depiction of her family’s history draws not-so-subtle connections to other Indigenous peoples whose worlds have been destroyed time and time again by European colonizers. It also brings to mind the harmful narratives currently being perpetuated about migrants crossing our Southern border. This parallel is critical and has the power to catalyze healing on a tremendous scale. 

We need more white relatives to face their own truth, though doing so may bring immense discomfort. As we see on Giovale’s journey, it is only through this initial discomfort that she is able to achieve true growth, ultimately uncovering her own cultures and ancestral practices that have been tragically lost through colonization. It is optional for white folks to investigate their whiteness, and that itself is a privilege. Giovale acknowledges that it was many years into her own life until she was confronted by her whiteness, her ancestry, and her own role in white supremacy. 

In a time when division is the air we breathe, Giovale offers our white relatives an opportunity to stop the cycle of extraction, exploitation, and control, and embrace a worldview of human interconnectivity and mutual thriving. This is especially powerful for European-descended individuals who also have ancestors with Earth-based traditions and beliefs, whose ways of being were destroyed through the same colonialist mindsets that created the environment we live in today.  

Giovale’s story reminds us that discomfort begets connection. Her encounters with Indigenous people from around the world, and her exploration of how their practices can be applied to her own life and lineage, illuminate our commonalities—and our relatedness. Her journey, and this book, demonstrates a deep truth: All our suffering is mutual—and so is our healing.

But as we face the prospect of another potential Trump presidency, the architects of Project 2025 have made it clear that overturning Roe was just the first in a multistep plan to eradicate access to safe abortion. Though the Republican Party removed a federal abortion ban from its official party platform, there’s something more sinister that’s been hiding in plain sight for 150 years.

, signed into law in 1873, made it a federal offense to disseminate contraceptives, abortifacients, and information about either across state lines or through the mail. Named after Anthony Comstock, an anti-obscenity crusader who inspired the title of the biographical book , the Comstock Law had far-reaching tentacles. Even married couples who used contraception could be sentenced to up to one year in prison.

Over time, various challenges to the Comstock Act, including in 1936, which made it possible for physicians to distribute contraception across state lines; in 1964, which established the constitutional right to contraception; and, of course, in 1973, essentially made it unenforceable. However, the law was never repealed and has instead become a “zombie law,” a term used to describe laws still on the books that have been overruled by other legal cases. Take, for instance, Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban, a zombie law that became legally viable after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. Though , it still remained on the books long enough to instill fear in those .

Now, after the fall of Roe, Project 2025 plans to revive the zombie Comstock Act and make it workable. Since it’s already on the books, Congress isn’t required to pass the Comstock Act. Instead, a president and appointed judges can choose whether to enforce it. Project 2025 architects hope that, if given another term, Trump will do just that.

A Significant Threat to Abortion

in the U.S. Since Roe fell in June 2022, every single time the issue has been on the ballot, even in traditionally conservative states like Kansas, Montana, and Ohio. While a national abortion ban could threaten congressional seats for Republicans, it would also require control of both houses of Congress and the executive branch, a higher threshold than simply winning the presidency. So, it seems, the architects of Project 2025 have developed a workaround to meet their aims.

After Roe was overturned, issued guidance about whether the Comstock Act could be used to criminalize someone who receives mifepristone and misoprostol through the United States Postal Service. “We conclude that section 1461 does not prohibit the mailing, or the delivery or receipt by mail, of mifepristone or misoprostol where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully,” the memorandum opinion states. “Federal law does not prohibit the use of mifepristone and misoprostol,” the memorandum continues. “Indeed, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (‘FDA’) has determined the use of mifepristone in a regimen with misoprostol to be safe and effective for the medical termination of early pregnancy.”

But under a Trump presidency, the DOJ would likely have a different view, especially since Project 2025 explicitly calls for “against providers and distributors of [abortion] pills.”

Additionally, the spate of radical, far-right judges Trump appointed during his first term have already proven their willingness to to curb access to abortion. In 2023, , who has deep ties to the anti-abortion movement, defied court precedent to suspend the approval of mifepristone. “The Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” he wrote in his decision. “But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns—in violation of its statutory duty—based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.”

If Trump is able to appoint even more partisan judges like Kacsmaryk to the federal bench, it’s possible they would use the Comstock Act to criminalize folks sending or receiving mifepristone and misoprostol (or even information about it) through the mail. “If the Comstock [Act] were enforced, it would seriously impact the work we do,” says Sneha S. Nair, partnerships coordinator at , a collection of online platforms that provides abortion and contraception information and services. “We rely on digital platforms to share [sexual and reproductive health] content worldwide, and restrictions like the Comstock [Act] could lead to significant censorship and suppression of vital information.”

But even the threat of Comstock being enforced is concerning for abortion advocates and providers. “What people believe the law to be is just as important, if not more so, than what the law actually is,” says Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director at , a legal organization that aims to transform the policy landscape to make reproductive justice a reality. “When people have to second-guess what their options are and they just know that there’s a sort of vague and looming fear of criminalization … that is not a risk that everybody has the privilege to tolerate.”

For Black and Brown people, who have already for pregnancy outcomes, even the threat of an enforceable Comstock Law could be enough of a deterrent to prevent them from seeking necessary care.

Refusing to Be Silent

While Project 2025’s architects may be banking on the Comstock Act, they will have to contend with a network of providers and advocates refusing to put the genie back in the draconian bottle. For example, ’s post-Dobbs campaign, “,” promotes information about and access to medication abortion online.

Similarly, the , a DIY medical collective, has literally turned into medication abortion. Embedded in the cards are three doses of misoprostol, which can be used on its own to induce an abortion, and since it’s a paper card, the pills are harder to detect.

Others believe the best way to combat Project 2025’s insidious ploy to use the Comstock Act as a backdoor abortion ban is to refuse to be cowed into silence about the revolutionary power of being able to terminate a pregnancy in your own home.

Today, the in the U.S. are induced through medication, most often a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. Telehealth for abortion care, in which a provider virtually prescribes these drugs to patients, has become , even in states with abortion bans.

“The number of people served through telehealth has just grown exponentially since the pandemic,” says Elisa Wells, co-founder and co-director of , which promotes access to medication abortion online. “[When people find out] that you can get an abortion by the mail, which is a really new idea … they think, ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’”

Research from the revealed that in the second half of 2023, more than 40,000 people in states that restrict telehealth or ban abortion were able to receive medication abortion from providers in that protect providers from being criminalized. Plan C’s website traffic has surged since Dobbs; Wells says they now receive approximately 2 million visitors annually.

There’s also the option of self-managing abortion with abortion pills. For people in states with severe restrictions or bans, self-managed medical abortion with pills has become an option for many who otherwise wouldn’t have access to abortion care. Plan C, for example, showcases many sites that prescribe and mail medication abortion to folks directly, including and .

There is a vast digital ecosystem of medication abortion information and services that abortion seekers can have mailed right to their door—unless Project 2025 goes into effect.

“​​What we are most concerned about is that people have access to accurate information about how to get the pills, how to use the pills, and the fact that in some states there might be legal risks associated with using the pills,” says Wells. “Every day is a risk assessment, and people can make good decisions about their lives. It’s not for me to say about somebody else’s life. What’s the best choice for you?”

And while an overabundance of water is a major threat to the Netherlands, the even greater threat for the country is actually a lack of it. “The concept of droughts in the Netherlands is new to most people,” explains Frank van Gaalen, a researcher with the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). “It doesn’t match the image of the Netherlands as a country that lies, for a large part, beneath sea level, is surrounded by sea, and contains rivers, lakes, canals, and ditches.”

When van Gaalen published a report that pointed out the danger of droughts this year, people—even locally—reacted with “amazement and disbelief.”

Having too little water and having too much share a common cause: climate change. “We know that climate change is already happening and will continue. The way we are dealing with water in the Netherlands will have to take all these threats into consideration together,” van Gaalen says.��

So while leaders work to combat both floods and droughts, they also have to consider the fact that the land itself is sinking—a process called subsidence. And some researchers are pointing out that the measures the government has been implementing against floods are insufficient and overly reliant on technological solutions, such as dikes. 

“If we keep on increasing our coastal protection only with grey structures—for example, a concrete dike—subsidence behind the dike will continue and sea level will rise,” says Marte Stoorvogel, a researcher at Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). “At some point you’re creating some kind of situation where when it goes wrong, it will go really badly wrong.”��

For the last 20 years or so, various Dutch initiatives have tried to tackle the problem. For example, the Amsterdam district of IJburg is known for its floating houses that move with the rise and fall of a lake called IJmeer. Since the severe river floods of 1993 and 1995, the government introduced a new approach, a project called Ruimte voor de Rivier ), which tries to give back swaths of land to previously regulated rivers, letting them meander, and even overflow as necessary. Dunes are also getting more attention, not just as beautiful nature preserves, but also as dynamic, biodiverse areas that can offer an additional buffer against the effects of climate change.

The sustainable solutions that Stoorvogel and her team are working on envision a transition zone that incorporates both water and land. The work also includes making sure people in the Netherlands don’t only see the sea as a threat. 

“Instead of keeping the boundary between sea and land very sharp, we need to start incorporating the sea more into our landscape,” she says. 

A ������Ƶ Spiritual Solution

For Stoorvogel, inspiration to solve this issue came from an unlikely source: a powerful but little-known goddess called Nehalennia. While the goddess was worshiped in the Netherlands in pre-Christian times, Stoorvogel is now hoping to introduce her to more of the modern Dutch population as a way to “reconnect with the water in a spiritual way and see also the beauty in it.”

Nehalennia—goddess of the sea, as well as fertility and rebirth—plays an important role in Dutch neopaganism today. According to Hanneke Minkjan, an independent researcher who wrote her , Nehalennia was declared the most important female deity in the Netherlands during the 2006 Goddess Conference, despite the fact that not much was known about her.��

“People immediately embraced the scarce evidence because they had something tangible, something that was really there,” explains Peter Versteeg, a cultural anthropologist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam who specializes in neopaganism and religion. “She was a goddess of seafarers and travelers, and her altar was found in the sea. I can imagine that this has been very inspiring to a lot of Dutch neopagans.”

Even though the majority of the population in the Netherlands identifies as non-religious, Stoorvogel set out to create an altar to Nehalennia. She teamed up with the Berlin-based art studio Nonhuman Nonsense, which describes itself as “a research-driven design and art studio creating near-future fabulations and experiments somewhere between utopia and dystopia.” comprises natural components, such as wood and mud, as well as an AI-generated triptych of the goddess and a space that allows visitors to listen to the sounds of the sea through a shell.

The project, called��“Mud and Flood: The Return of Nehalennia” won the Bio, Art and Design (BAD) Award in 2022 from a consortium of various scientific and cultural institutions in the province, demonstrating that the goddess can garner interest from scientific, artistic, and environmental communities as well.

Stoorvogel hopes that becoming aware of Nehalennia’s importance to this country—as well as her function as a medium between the sea and humans—could help change the stance of people trying to keep water out at all costs. “The water doesn’t always have to be a threat,” she says. “Instead of letting water into our landscape and seeing it as a gigantic loss, [we can see] the beauty of it.”

A return to nature is an overarching theme in neopaganism, which is “firmly associated with nature spirituality, the worship of nature, the energy of nature, the energy of the elements,” explains Versteeg. “This is another form of inspiration, and that’s when people turn to nature and try to become aware of it.”&�Բ�����;

That awareness can be an essential tool for combating climate change. 

From Landscape to Seascape

At a time when the lack of water in the Netherlands is becoming an even bigger threat than an overabundance, it becomes crucial to consider what the sea, lakes, and rivers truly mean to a country so long defined by them. “With climate change bringing more, longer, and more extreme dry and hot periods, we have to find a new balance between discharging of excess water and conserving water for dry periods,” van Gaalen says.

While attempts to fight drought are less known than the struggle against the water, they do exist. For example, the Ijsselmeer—a reservoir that provides fresh drinking water to Amsterdam and its surroundings—has fluctuating water levels. This makes it possible to store more water in the wet winter months that can then be used during the drier summer months. 

The Dutch government has also implemented measures for spatial planning they call , or “water and soil guiding,” which involves, among other things, opting for and no longer building apartments or houses in areas prone to flooding.

Implementing so many systemic changes would require a paradigm shift. “The most important aspect in these considerations is adapting our activities and land use to the possibilities and restrictions of our water, soil, and natural systems,” explains van Gaalen, “including accepting that not all activities are possible on all locations.”��

But maybe solutions can be found in a more spiritual approach alongside a purely technological one. 

“Nehalennia and her history and characteristics are a way of showing people that we don’t have to fight against the water,” Stoorvogel says. “It’s about trying to open up to the idea that it’s part of our landscape.”

But in the words of Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah in their 2019 book “White America could not perpetrate five hundred years of dehumanizing injustice without traumatizing itself.” 

On the night of December 31, 2015, I learned about my ancestors’ long-standing history on this land. The next day, January 1, 2016, the process of unraveling our family’s amnesia began. As I began sharing my ancestral discoveries with my white friends and family, I encountered blank stares and shrugging shoulders, accompanied by a quick change of subject to something more timely, relevant, or entertaining. I was often told reassuringly, “Well, that was a long time ago. Everyone thought differently then. You shouldn’t feel guilty about that.” Far from being placated, I wanted to scream. People literally could not hear what I was saying. I felt isolated in a process that was rewiring my core identity.

What I had discovered in my own family history posed a threat to the person I thought I was, and to the person I was taught to be. Looking back now, it felt like I was receiving an ancestral push toward truth and healing after many generations of silence. The process went far beyond a tidy phrase like “white guilt.” Over time, I began distinguishing guilt from accountability. Staying stuck in guilt is not helpful. Moving into accountability catalyzes necessary change. I was rapidly becoming someone I did not recognize. 

What was now glaringly obvious and “in my face” all the time was being actively ignored by well-meaning white people all around me. Overwhelmingly, I felt pressured to calm down, behave, and just stop talking about it. Why? Talking about the shadows of colonialism and enslavement contradicts the heroic American mythology that we learned as children. Within the Euro-American diaspora, our capacity to deal with our ancestral legacies is compromised. We are part of a culture that is more invested in maintaining a narrative of innocence and denial than in embracing truth and healing.

I imagine this work to confront our collective amnesia will continue for the rest of my life. I hope it will persist into future generations as well. Over the years, I came to see our amnesia as .

When our European ancestors carried to Turtle Island their diseases, poverty, disrupted communities and families, severed cultures, and violence, it did not expunge their own historical trauma. Establishing dominance over the unique civilizations that were already thriving on this continent did not make us whole again. Kidnapping African leaders, healers, holy people, Elders, mothers, fathers, and children to build us a wealth-accumulating economy did not bring us peace. 

In her book , Euro-descended Elder Louise Dunlap shares how she perceives the suffering of our settler ancestors: “…a nightmarish, button-your-lips suffering that warped the mind, closing it to compassion for other humans and encouraging brutality against perceived enemies and the Earth itself. These ancestors struggled with a punishing legacy that still afflicts us.”

Our ancestors’ punishing legacy went into the underbelly of our society. Today, it hides out behind a polite mask of denial. Almost everything in Eurocentric culture conspires to keep us asleep. Amnesia is the path of least resistance. 

I am grateful that the ancestors have shown me the unpopular truth: Unleashing their tears and reviving their memory might just be the messy, raw, healing balm for the wounds our people sustained and perpetrated so long ago. If we muster the courage to traverse these shadows, who might we become on the other side of all that pain? Who are we underneath the denial, amnesia, grief, guilt, and shame? 

Let’s find out.

This essay is excerpted with permission from by Hilary Giovale (Green Writers Press, 2024).

“Over [two] months ago, I decided to permanently stop treatment for my autoimmune illnesses,” Alexandria wrote. “The side effects were absolutely horrendous and the treatments only provided a temporary fix that has to be administered again and again for the rest of my life to stall the illness, which isn’t a cure.” She ended the post by naming her dual diagnosis, which she had been largely private about aside from .

For people with rare diseases—estimated to be between —finding the right doctors and treatments can feel like a Herculean feat, a reality Alexandria knew all too well. “There is no long-term cure,” she wrote. “I’m very very very sick, things are progressing fast. I’m wheelchair or bed bound most of the time. I had 16 seizures yesterday and over 30 stiff person attacks.”

In the United States, rare-disease patients often go into significant medical debt to pursue treatment, even traveling to different states to see specialists with months-long waiting lists. In addition to the monetary burden, those seeking treatment for rare diseases also face a mental, emotional, and spiritual toll. 

“I wake up with excruciating pain,” says , a disabled adaptive fashion influencer and one of just a few hundred people in human history to have been diagnosed with , a cancer disorder that causes bone tumors and vascular lesions most often in the hands and feet. “There’s not a moment that I don’t have excruciating pain, which is awful for a variety of reasons. It obviously takes a toll on your mental health and your social and interpersonal and professional life. The first thing I have to do in the morning is wake up, take my opioids, and then wait an hour just to be able to get out of bed and do anything at any capacity.”

In the face of these obstacles, rare-disease patients like Durán must relentlessly call insurance companies and medical offices, create and share resources, and form care networks to lift some of the burden—and help keep them alive.

Routine Misdiagnosis

As a baby, Durán was misdiagnosed with , which similarly causes bone tumors in different parts of the body. When her father sought a second opinion, she was again misdiagnosed, this time with , which occurs when scar-like tissue replaces healthy bones.

“They ran with that diagnosis until I was 18,” Durán says. “The treatment is similar in that I still got leg lengthening, but I was also supposed to get annual cancer screenings with full-body MRIs or full-body CT scans with radiation, and they weren’t doing that.” The Cleveland Clinic notes that Maffucci syndrome patients , with up to 50% of Maffucci patients developing chondrosarcoma, a bone cancer that begins in cartilage cells. (Durán estimates her odds of getting cancer at 55%.)

Just before Durán graduated high school, her doctor misdiagnosed her with cancer and referred her to orthopedic oncology. However, when she showed up for her appointment, she learned she’d been kicked off her when she turned 18. To continue treatment, she had to apply for adult benefits or find other insurance, which would severely delay care.

In 2017, Durán was officially diagnosed with Maffucci syndrome. “[Maffucci syndrome] is so rare that when I was diagnosed, they didn’t even know what gene caused it,” Durán says. Unfortunately, Durán isn’t the only rare-disease patient who’s been misdiagnosed more than once.

Miranda Edwards, a.k.a. , was dismissed by multiple doctors for “anxiety” when she had a malignant tumor in her adrenal gland. Due to the delay in care, her tumor became untreatable. She has been “” since 2014, sharing each step of her journey online as well as resources she’s created herself—like a —so others can advocate for their health.

In 2023, Edwards asked for help raising thousands of dollars to pay for life-saving molecular testing of her thyroid after she was outright denied surgery to remove a Grade 5 tumor because of her existing condition. Edwards, who is based in Canada, said her health care would have paid for the testing if the tumor had been Grade 4 or lower; essentially, she was once again put at extraordinary risk because of doctors dragging their feet with the “watch and wait” approach.

Tools for Progress

In many cases, rare-disease patients are forced to become the foremost experts on their conditions, putting them in the position of educating the medical professionals who are supposed to be treating them. “I think a lot of health care professionals give up on finding answers beyond our rare diseases,” Durán explains. “I was at a Maffucci syndrome and Ollier disease patients summit at Johns Hopkins last year, and my researchers told us that when doctors see a rare-disease patient, they often focus on the rare disease and forget [the patient] can have common diseases too.”

Durán describes seeing multiple doctors, independently researching her test results, and persistently asking questions of her care team, particularly when they didn’t have an immediate answer for symptoms that didn’t line up with her Maffucci diagnosis. Eventually, she was diagnosed with both hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and Hashimoto’s disease. “We already deal with a lot of health issues,” Durán says. “Stress is a notoriously bad thing—for lack of a better word—for pain, for chronic pain and energy levels and mental health. I think having an advocacy group to help patients navigate the system would definitely improve the quality of our lives.”

Since 2008, the last day of February has been celebrated as , a patient-led effort coordinated with more than 65 global organizations, including the European Organisation for Rare Diseases (EURORDIS), to raise awareness for lesser-known diagnoses and the people living with them. Stanislav Ostapenko, who’s been director of communications at EURORDIS since 2021, says rare-disease patients must have strong support networks, including online, to effectively navigate their illnesses.

“We know that patient populations are very scarce,” he explains. “We know that for certain diseases there are just a handful [of] patients across the globe. So it is very important to know that you belong to a community and you can be accepted, you can be understood, and you can also speak to people who have the same condition as you do and that you can find support.”

A major component of Rare Disease Day is translating and adapting tool kits for multiple languages and impairments so anyone can use them, even if they lack expertise. EURORDIS uses this tool to encourage us all—those with rare diseases and those without—to be good patient advocates.

The Significance of Burnout

A from the physician network MDVIP and online random-probability panel Ipsos KnowledgePanel indicates that 61% of polled patients see the U.S. health care system as a hassle and that one in three are “burned out.” One-third of patients reported deferring care in the last five years because they couldn’t get a timely enough appointment to address their concerns or they had a bad experience with a provider. The survey also states that at least one in four Americans who did seek care suffered a negative impact on their mental health, had worsening symptoms, or were misdiagnosed.

All of these factors lead to patient burnout, with chronically ill, disabled, and rare-disease patients facing these issues on a more frequent basis because of how often they are forced to seek care for symptom management, procedures, and medications.

In her 2022 book , Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about the importance of learning both one’s own and their loved ones’ “care languages” to create inter-abled care webs in which everyone can get what they need without harming others and getting caretaker burnout: “When I think of the care webs I am a part of that mostly work, they are a complex moment-by-moment dance of figuring out what we need that is a lot like consent negotiations in sex,” Piepzna-Samarasinha writes. “Raw embarrassment, messiness, confusion, working through shame at needing something (or anything), figuring out what I might need to even begin to ask for.”

Piepzna-Samarasinha also writes about the necessity of employing “a diversity of care tactics” so people can, for example, seek help chasing a referral from a doctor to another doctor to the insurance company and back again, or assistance applying for financial aid from organizations such as the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) to help offset the costs of medication, diagnostic testing, travel assistance, and caregiver respite.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, mutual aid and collective care became even more important for people with disabilities, including people with rare diseases. Whether it’s nondisabled people offering rides, helping call doctors or email insurance companies, or assisting with documentation and organization, advocacy networks—no matter how small—have become essential for rare disease patients.

In 2022, disability-justice activist Alice Wong wrote about that ended with her family expending great financial and personal resources to prevent her from having to move to an inpatient facility: “The safety net is not a net!” Wong wrote. “It’s a big fucking hole.” Without Wong’s family advocating for her, she would have had few choices for continued care: “The system drives people toward institutions,” she wrote. “It is designed to segregate expendable and ‘non-productive’ disabled and older people like me. Out of sight, out of mind.”

Advocacy networks can help patients fight for their needs with insurance companies, which are often quick to dismiss medications that are “too expensive” or treatments that are “not medically necessary.” They can work with NORD to launch local registries, promote or host funding drives for patient-focused drug development, and work directly with existing disability-rights organizations to streamline processes and/or build out their volunteer base.

Durán, like Wong, relies heavily on her nondisabled family members for help with daily tasks, which can include bringing her food and water or cleaning her room (the latter which she pays them to do). “As disabled people, we’re already grappling with our health and it already bleeds into every aspect of our lives,” says Durán. “If we had nondisabled allies caring about accessibility or ableism at any capacity and advocating on our behalf, or just calling out ableism or inaccessibility even when we’re not in the room, I think it would make a world of a difference, especially because I think a lot of disabled people already face a lot of burnout because of our health or lack thereof.”

Highly visible advocates like Durán and Edwards use their platforms to educate their followers, but ultimately they shouldn’t be tasked with radicalizing nondisabled people into confronting and seeking to improve the medical system. “No one is immune to becoming disabled,” Durán points out. “It can happen to quite literally anyone.” If that doesn’t radicalize nondisabled people, perhaps nothing will.

On June 11, a week after a police training facility in Richmond, California, broke ground, organizers from the  marched to the Overaa Construction headquarters in protest. Citing concerns over rising police militarization and repression in the predominantly Black and Latino area, the protesters—joined by local residents—called on Overaa workers to boycott .

“By furthering the militarizing and surveillance of our city—and coordinating law enforcement resources across the region, including ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]—they’re actually making our cities into Cop Cities,” said Refilwe Gqajela, a community organizer with the  in California’s Bay Area.

Gqajela said organizers in Northern California have been working to form the coalition since the facility was announced in August 2023. They’ve expressed their opposition at , saying the money should instead be put into other programs that would benefit the community.

Of course, California isn’t the only state where Cop Cities are being built. The term first captured national attention in January 2023, when  while  that’s displacing one of the largest urban forests.

The influx of these facilities parallels the emergence of the Defund the Police movement, which—following the murder of George Floyd in 2020—saw thousands of people across the country mobilize to decry police violence against Black and Brown communities. Within the last five years, there has been a across the country. 

This development is raising concerns with anti-police organizers, especially when it comes to the impact on marginalized communities and movements. There is now a facility in almost every state and, according to researcher and mutual aid organizer Renee Johnston, at least 10 states have multiple police compounds. 

“This nonsense with ‘the training needs to improve’ has been on a slow incline,” Johnston said. “2020 marks that period where, if we’re looking at a graph, there would be a sharp uptick in how quickly [Cop Cities] were going up.”&�Բ�����;

Groups like , , and Stop Cop City Bay Area have been fighting these new police facilities in their communities by way of canvassing, holding rallies, petitioning, and more—similar to the effort in California. 

At least seven cities, including Chicago and Baltimore, have allocated more than $100 million to their Cop Cities—and many are meant to host international police training programs like . Activists and scholars have said that Cop Cities are replicated after Israel’s own Cop City,  against Palestinians. This would be an expansion of already existing police training exchange with .

“We’re told that police are here to serve and protect the public and they care about the community, but I just don’t think any of that is true,” Johnston said. “That’s why training doesn’t work, because there is no training that you can give that’s going to change the nature of a system.”

While Cop Cities have been rolled out , activists around the country have been vocal about their opposition. Many have decried the multi-million dollar allocations to policing, and called on their local leaders to instead invest in resources needed by their communities.

Divestment From Police, Investment in Communities

Tennessee lawmakers are throwing $415 million into their , an 800-acre facility to be built in a historically Black Nashville neighborhood currently experiencing a housing crisis, extreme displacement, and gentrification, according to Erica Perry, executive director of Nashville’s .

“$415 million is a huge amount of money, especially in a state where we ranked low in health, literacy, education, and housing,” Perry said. “That’s extremely frustrating because we know that money could be spent on things that would help people have healthy, thriving, safe lives.”

In response, the Southern Movement Committee began advocating for in the creation of an office of youth safety, community centers, and alternatives to police in schools—programs they say the community actually needs. In June, $1 million of this budget was approved by the Nashville City Council.

“We’re trying to approach our budget work in a way that addresses safety and creates alternative forms of safety that do not require cops, courts, and cages,” said Southern Movement Committee Arts and Culture Director Mike Floss.

Activists in Chicago have shared similar concerns. In the years before the , the city had seen the closure of, as well as  in U.S. history. Naturally, many residents were outraged when the new multi-million dollar police training facility was announced, especially considering the Chicago Police Department already had seven other training facilities in the area.

“Why is there suddenly this new investment available, when we were told that the city was broke when we were asking for investments in our own communities?” asked Benji Hart, an adult ally with the youth-led No Cop Academy Coalition.

Chicago’s Cop Academy came after the police-killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was  by a Chicago police officer in 2014. Not long after, youth organizers from the Stop Cop Academy campaign began spreading information by canvassing and passing out fliers, as well as leading more disruptive actions like taking over trains in large groups chanting, passing out flyers, and talking to other passengers about the campaign. They also blocked city council building elevators. Eventually, they grew the effort into a coalition of more than 100 local organizations. 

 “The initial thought was that there has to be a challenge to this narrative,” Hart said. “It can’t just be that the city announced it was going to build this thing. There needed to be some evidence of pushback and opposition to the construction, and calling for different funding priorities on the part of the city and for investments in community resources.”&�Բ�����;

For many organizers, the work is about making it known that crime isn’t the biggest threat—it’s houselessness, rising rents, food deserts, and the myriad other issues plaguing communities competing for funds with Cop Cities.

“The safest communities in the United States are not the communities that are over-policed,” said Kamau Franklin, a lead organizer with the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta. “They are the communities that have resources that benefit the young people in their communities, that give people outlets, and make sure schools are satisfactory and building your mind. Those are the ways in which these resources could and should be used.”&�Բ�����;

Repression of Movements

Within the last two and a half years, local activists have been leading the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta through canvassing, demonstrations, rallies, town halls, and creating petitions that garnered more than 116,000 signatures, growing the mobilization into a national conversation.

They’ve faced pushback from the other side. Dozens of  and . According to Franklin, this a coordinated effort to criminalize activism and scare organizers. He said a large part of the facility will be built by the end of the year, even though that 59% of residents don’t support it.

Over the last year, repressive policing has extended beyond Stop Cop City organizers to encompass Gaza solidarity student encampments as well. Tamera Hutcherson, an organizer with Stop Cop City Dallas, said the city council held secretive meetings and used vague language around “public safety” to get  that gave $50 million to a police training facility. Soon after,  Gaza solidarity student encampment. 

“For students peacefully protesting, they came in riot gear and in tactical gear, they looked like they were ready for war against civilians,” Hutcherson said. “I think most residents are concerned about what this means, not just for the city of Dallas, but for Dallas county and North Texas as a whole.”

While Hutcherson said there are still not many people in Dallas who are aware of the facility being built, she is starting to see more conversations happen as organizers continue canvassing, going door-to-door, and making phone calls to community members. 

“Not just in Atlanta, but around the country, the militarized police are on full display, meant basically to derail and destroy movements, to scare people,” Franklin said. “Cop City is a way for them to organize that policing and practice those tactics and strategies even more so.”

In the Bay Area, Refilwe Gqajela said activists have faced increased police and city council repression amidst their efforts to host rallies and town halls. For example, when residents attended city council meetings to speak out about Cop City, the normal three-minute public comment period would be cut down to one minute. The San Pablo Police Department also shut down one of their attempted town halls at Costa County Community College. Nevertheless, Gqajela and others have continued to organize.

“We understand this to be a direct threat to our organizing—this is a state repression tactic,” Gqajela said. “We know that this isn’t just going to impact the people of San Pablo. It’s a regional training facility to organize the policing forces in the Bay Area to squash the kind of organizing that’s being done right now for Palestine, for example.”

The Movement Continues

Activists vow to continue their advocacy, despite the pushback. Along with Black Youth Assembly, the Southern Movement Committee has been meeting with Nashville city officials to get their Varsity Spending Plan on the city council’s radar. 

“It’s our work to help people see what is happening—when it comes to their health and education needs—is connected to the state’s insistence on spending $415 million on this campus,” Perry said. 

As the organizers with Stop Cop City Dallas continue to strategize and mobilize, Hutcherson said that she sees the mobilizing of students across the University of North Texas system as a victory. Four of the five campuses have to pressure administrators to back out of the partnership with the Dallas Police Department through protests and organizing.

“We are continuing to educate the public, and also figure out and strategize ways to continue applying pressure to ensure that this is not built,” Hutcherson said.

The organizers with the Anti Police-Terror Project and the coalition in the Bay Area have been holding town halls and rallies to stop their Cop City from being built—and teachers, students, environmental activists, residents, and health care workers have been mobilized to join the cause. They’ve also been organizing alongside the Ohlone people, who are native to Northern California where this project is being built and have been  being built on their land. 

In Chicago, activists were able to delay the Cop City project, but not its eventual construction. Undeterred, Hart said that some of the youth organizers involved in the No Cop Academy coalition successfully campaigned for  contract with the Chicago Police Department, which eventually led to the contract’s end.

Around the country, activists and organizers have been building solidarity with the struggle in Atlanta and other states, as well as Palestine. As Hart noted, solidarity is important during this “clear orchestrated push for militarization and hyper investment in police—in the wake of arguably the largest protests in U.S. history calling for the defunding of the police.”

“We need to be supporting each other across city and state lines, and not just treating these as a bunch of little battles against individual Cop Academies or Cop Cities,” he said. “Our response needs to be as orchestrated as the police state’s response to our organizing.”

Cultural queerphobia is nothing new. In many ways, this recent wave of legislation is an overt escalation of the long-standing and long-normalized homophobia and transphobia in U.S. culture, not unlike ” of the 1950s.

Queer and trans people are deeply familiar with the myriad, relentless ways they experience daily discrimination, erasure, and misrepresentation interpersonally, institutionally, and through dominant beliefs and values. The cultural platforming of these values creates an environment for bigoted, discriminatory politics to be framed as legitimate, logical, and even “necessary.” Cultural attitudes build the stage that anti-LGBTQ politicians love to preach from.��

However, there’s nothing inevitable or permanent about anti-LGBTQ sentiments or cultural beliefs, according to , a queer studies and education scholar and professor at California State University. “Restrictive, binary understandings of gender and heterosexuality as the ‘norm’ are ideas that don’t start out ‘naturally,’ but rather get reinforced through repetition, social stigma, or restrictive policies,” says Mattheis. “We can just as ‘naturally’ direct people to expand their perspectives rather than restrict them.”

There are many ways cultural beliefs “happen.” The American educational system, and in particular K–12 public schooling, is one of the most prominent places where young people learn what’s considered normal, desirable, and valuable—and what isn’t. In this sense, education is both a window and a mirror, reinforcing certain worldviews and creating space for alternative perspectives. 

Because students are a captive audience and spend a significant portion of their formative years in the classroom, schools are, logically, a key site to change—or codify—cultural attitudes. Modern , , and anti-LGBTQ activists have been working to ensure schools mirror the existing power structures and exclusionary attitudes that benefit them, at the expense of everyone else. As a result, much of the recent anti-LGBTQ legislation targets youth and public schools, including book censorship, , and other and administrators, , and exclusions . And this list doesn’t even touch on the predatory that disproportionately targets youth of color and youth with disabilities.

As devastating as it is for the LGBTQ community, this legislation pales in comparison to Project 2025—a sweeping initiative developed by former Trump officials and the Heritage Foundation, a shadowy, conservative, . Project 2025 is a for the next conservative president to overhaul the federal government and implement an authoritarian regime of widespread surveillance, mass censorship, and discrimination. Project 2025 would dismantle the Department of Education, eliminate Head Start and other programs designed for low-income youth, revoke federal protections for LGBTQ students, and threaten schools that protect trans kids or develop inclusive curriculum with lawsuits. Public education would .

In short, queerphobic attitudes and increasingly prevalent anti-LGBTQ policies form two sides of one toxic bridge, mutually reinforcing one another and making life hellish for queer and trans people of all ages. Project 2025 merely scaffolds itself onto existing queerphobia and takes anti-LGBTQ policies in education to new heights. 

Still, schools can be a window. For every horror story, there is a knowing English teacher who slips a queer kid a life-changing book. There are the no-nonsense coaches who ensure trans kids are welcome on and off the field. And there are the lessons, friendships, and classes that offer all students a chance to connect, collaborate, and think critically across differences. Schools are sites of incredible potential—and spaces that can effectively intervene against homophobia and transphobia.

Sparse Support for Teachers—and Students

Creating an environment where homophobia and transphobia are challenged—and where LGBTQ youth feel seen, safe, and valued—requires understanding the challenges facing many students and educators on the ground.

Rebecca* is a third grade teacher in Florida—ground zero for much of the country’s anti-LGBTQ legislation, given the state’s proudly regressive political leadership. (Editor’s note: Rebecca asked to use her first name only, out of concern about professional retaliation for speaking candidly. Read YES!’s policy on veiled sources.) She says teachers in her district lack the support they need to navigate both age-appropriate conversations around identity and a provide culturally responsive, LGBTQ-affirming curriculum (which is ). 

At 8 and 9 years old, Rebecca says her students are already starting to use the word “gay” as an insult and parrot reductive gender stereotypes. In her experience, students don’t always have the social-emotional skills to understand corrective discussions. Educators are often left to address issues of identity or name-calling ad hoc—and Rebecca says many aren’t equipped or don’t feel comfortable with the responsibility.

“Some of my own teammates will get into [these situations] and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, “gay” means happy, so consider it a compliment,’” Rebecca says. Educators who know better, meanwhile, are caught in an impossible bind—trying to support students, teach kids and colleagues how to respond to these incidents, and not run afoul of state laws that in some cases prohibit the very mention of sexual orientation or gender identity.��

Though her school’s administration has been supportive of her personally, as a lesbian teacher, Rebecca says the school district does not invite discussions about LGBTQ issues, figures, or history in or outside of the classroom. Instead, LGBTQ topics are swept up under the umbrella of teaching “respect” and anti-bullying efforts. Rebecca sees her district as mostly reactive to bullying rather than proactive about inclusive curriculum, culturally responsive staff training, and social-emotional learning opportunities for students.��

In the absence of any meaningful presence of more inclusive, expansive cultural models, many students are absorbing restrictive, queerphobic norms by default.

Even in states with , there’s little direction on how to actually enact inclusion-focused policies. As a result, many of these responsibilities end up falling through the cracks or onto well-intentioned but overburdened teachers. “In California, state education code describes multiple aspects of school life in which teachers are expected to actively support and include queer and trans youth,” says Mattheis. “However, most teachers receive little to no introduction to state laws and policies as part of their preparation and are unfamiliar with these protections and requirements.”

Taken together, these factors—from top-down policies and lackluster curriculum to underresourced teachers and underprepared students—create an environment where all kids can struggle to shine and grow.��

Shaking Up the Syllabus

Building an LGBTQ-affirming classroom starts early, according to Erica Castro, MSW, a facilitator and educator at , a Denver-based organization serving queer youth. A large part of Castro’s job is going into schools, summer camps, and nonprofits—anywhere kids are growing up—and providing educator training and organizational audits.

“Particularly in elementary, there is this stigma and idea that talking about gender and sexuality does not belong,” says Castro. But Castro says that by the age of 2, kids are and differentiate between boys and girls—meaning the adages that kids are “too young” or “can’t understand” age-appropriate conversations around gender and sexuality just don’t hold up.��

“Being able to get into the elementary schools and do these workshops has been, I think, transformative for the ways that teachers are able to build foundational, cultural, and policy-level structures [from the] first day of school,” says Castro. 

In shaping workshops for all ages, Castro works directly with youth to identify what resources they want and the types of training their educators need—including using and respecting pronouns, creating gender-support plans in the classroom, and connecting to free or low-cost therapy and mentorships for LGBTQ youth. Castro also partners with educators to diversify and update curriculum. (As a jumping-off point, Castro recommends .)

Aside from comprehensive, and above all, consistent education for students, educators, and their families, it’s also important to consider two more factors: the physical environment and policies at a school.

“Am I seeing visual cues of queerness [or] that the school is openly accepting?” asks Castro when making an assessment of a school environment.  “And beyond it looking safe as a checkbox, what does it look like for our young people to actually feel safe?”

The implementation of many of these resources occur at the intersection of physical space and policy. Gender-neutral bathrooms, for example, are —but the policy doesn’t necessarily guarantee the resource is in place. At one Denver high school, Castro says a group of queer students were forced to cross a busy road to access a bathroom at a local library. “[LGBTQ students] were just holding it all day, or they would just go home and stay home. There were attendance barriers that impacted their education tenfold.” Access to sports, too, can be make-or-break for many queer and trans kids.��

To truly support their LGBTQ students, most schools need a major shake-up when it comes to the variety, consistency, and depth of resources they offer queer and trans youth, their families, and communities. The good news is that, by and large, these tools already exist. As their own program faces closure largely due to , Castro believes a school district’s budget and priorities must reflect .��

“What made us want to become an educator in the first place is to protect all students,” says Castro, who taught high school for five years themselves. “[LGBTQ youth] are experiencing so much at home, in addition to homophobia and transphobia, and it is our responsibility to be that safe place for them.”

Beyond the Classroom

In an ideal world, every school administration and teacher nationwide would hitch their wagon to the potential and needs of LGBTQ students and families. But as Nereyda Luna, a community organizer and former case worker for the gender-expansive community in New York City, points out, trans youth can be bullied at the kitchen table just as easily as in the classroom. 

“People often think that youth exist in this whimsical world. And no, I think that youth are very aware of what is happening around them,” says Luna. “They know that ‘If I come out, if I present myself to the world for who I am, this is going to be hard.’”

Community spaces often provide much-needed educational opportunities for caregivers to disrupt a queerphobic culture. Outreach to cisgender and heterosexual parents—particularly those with misconceptions about LGBTQ people or those unaware of the impact of anti-LGBTQ legislation—is especially important, because these adults vote, raise queer and trans kids, and take their values to all areas of public and private life.

“The most effective way to help families and ensure people break through cultural norms is through personal connection and stories,” says Rev. Ray McKinnon, in North Carolina. “The most effective way to reach people is not with data; it’s not going to be some incredible argument. It is humanizing the person, it is taking these means and scare tactics and [putting] a face on it.”

Through PFLAG, McKinnon and his colleagues offer peer-to-peer support and workshops for adults—primarily the parents and grandparents of LGBTQ kids. Last year, PFLAG Charlotte offered 29 workshops to more than 1,200 total participants. ������Ƶ than 600 people—ranging from their 20s to 70s—used PFLAG Charlotte’s peer-support services. To better serve their community, McKinnon says they’ve recently launched Apoyando con Amor, a Spanish-speaking peer-support group, and plans to start groups for Black and gender-expansive families as well. “We also firmly believe that it is not the responsibility of queer people to educate straight people on these things, and it especially isn’t the job of queer kids to do that,” McKinnon adds.��

Though the organization is nonpartisan, PFLAG Charlotte also offers voter outreach and education on local legislation and policies that target LGBTQ people. “Advocacy, allyship must always have an action,” says McKinnon. “You are not just accumulating information when you come to the workshops … it’s for a purpose. It’s to give you tools so that you can become an accomplice who is walking lockstep with us.”

Those accomplices—in schools, churches, community centers, and culture-setting institutions nationwide—will be integral to cementing a culture shift that not only makes U.S. society safe for LGBTQ people, but welcoming and affirming. Building an LGBTQ-affirming culture requires a healthy dose of imagination, problem-solving, and critically, the willingness to become a life-long learner (and un-learner) to help map out a more just culture—in and out of the classroom.

Though a world away from my daily life as a climate communicator in Boston, I found myself returning to a pressing question: “Is it too late to address climate change?”

It’s a question that marine biologist and self-proclaimed “policy nerd” Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, with her own family connections to Jamaica, is intimately familiar with. In her latest book, (One World Press, September 2024), Johnson offers an evocative exploration of possibility and transformation in the face of climate change. The collection of essays, interviews, poems, and art began as an attempt to spark conversation about climate solutions in popular culture, but it evolved into something much bigger: “This book is my response to anyone still wondering whether all of our climate efforts are worth it,” Johnson told me when we spoke on the phone in September as she was traveling for her book tour. 

Johnson, who co-edited the bestselling 2021 anthology All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solution for the Climate Crisis, builds on her previous work to deliver a timely and urgent guide for envisioning and implementing climate solutions. The book is not just about understanding the problem (though Johnson and climate scientist Kate Marvel make clear “the atmosphere is fundamentally different now” due to human activities); it’s about contemplating—and in a way, manifesting—the various paths we as a society can take toward a livable future.

Find your people, whoever that might be, or bring your people. Don’t feel like you’re supposed to go it alone. This requires community.” —Brian Donahue

One of those paths must inevitably involve looking to nature for solutions. In a section of the book entitled “Replenish and Re-Green,” Johnson and others imagine a world where food systems are regional and regenerative, biodiversity is valued, and human stewardship of other species is the norm. Brian Donahue, a professor, farmer, and New Englander like myself, proposes a novel plan to revitalize rural America by growing more food closer to home and repopulating small towns. 

As a Black woman with dreams of leaving urban life for a country homestead, I’ve often felt afraid of the conservative values that typically come with living in rural communities. But Donahue offers sage advice: “Find your people, whoever that might be, or bring your people. Don’t feel like you’re supposed to go it alone. This requires community.”

Community is a throughline of the book, and not just the human variety. Animals and insects, ecosystems, and various natural cycles are incredibly important for planetary health. But they remain enigmatic for most of us. Take, for example, the fact that even documenting the number of species on Earth is a never-ending effort. Yet Johnson writes that “the climate solutions that nature offers can comprise more than one-third of the CO₂ mitigation needed to hold global warming to below 2 degrees C.” A crucial part of unlocking this potential for change is having greater respect for—and ceding decision-making power to—the naturalists, conservation scientists, and Indigenous communities already stewarding the natural world.

What if we had systems that loved us and, by extension, the planet?”

Just as the book homes in on specific solutions, it also zooms out, taking aim at the cultural values undergirding many of our modern systems. In an interview with author and activist Bill McKibben, Johnson draws connections between the capitalistic values of short-term growth and the funding of new fossil fuel development. The book lays bare the fact that money that companies and consumers have sitting in major banks produces more carbon than the average American does in a year. 

According to McKibben, a reimagined financial ecosystem might rely more on credit unions and locally owned banks that keep money in a given community: “That should be happening as we start to rely more on renewable energy, because oil and gas are in Texas and Saudi Arabia and Russia, but happily, sun and wind are everywhere.”

Through the exploration of subjects from media and labor to transit and legal systems, Johnson and co-conspirators answer a deeper question about the climate crisis: What if we had systems that loved us and, by extension, the planet? In the section she calls “Away From the Brink,” Johnson sees these ideas to their rightful conclusion: Advertisements for fossil fuels and gas-powered cars would be an aberration. Climate change would be embedded in all local journalism, not viewed as a niche topic. We would evolve beyond the climate-apocalypse box office flick, and climate realities would become the backdrop of every genre of television and film. The influence of fossil fuels in politics would be reigned in, and our democratic system would become more representative. Exploitative labor practices would be abolished, and a livable wage would be commonplace. Seeing this vision laid out with striking specificity, it feels to me like it’s within our grasp.

Johnson admits that on the role of electoral politics in climate action, and the climate impacts of mega industries like fast fashion, the book is a bit light. These are two topics Johnson plans to cover in her new podcast debuting on her in the fall of 2024. “This is such a useful question—what if we get it right?—that this book can’t fully answer,” she tells me frankly. “So I want to keep the conversation going.”

Whether you’re an activist, a parent, or simply curious about climate, you are likely to find pieces in this collection that appeal to you—and that’s intentional. The book does not argue for one-size-fits-all solutions. “Too often, the climate movement and the media tell everyone to do the same things: Vote, protest, donate, spread the word, and lower your carbon footprint,” Johnson writes. “But all too rarely are we asked to contribute our specific talents, our superpowers.”&�Բ�����;

For my part, I saw myself in the book’s Afrofuturist agricultural artwork by Olalekan Jeyifous. And reflecting on Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use” inspired me to view my climate work, with its many ups and downs, as an exercise in perseverance. It encouraged me to recommit to incremental change and stay invested for the long haul. 

We need to live as though we understand this crisis is real.” —Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

The variety of pieces in the book and the many forms they take serve as a reminder that everyone has a place in these climate futures and a hand in bringing them to life. Johnson’s climate action Venn diagram aims to pinpoint the intersection of what brings you joy, what you’re good at, and what work needs doing. That, she says, can be your place in the climate movement. For me, it’s probably something involving but the book overflows with inspiration and starting points for anyone struggling to picture a replenished world.

That’s not to say that this world is without sacrifice, though. In a concluding entry, Johnson and ocean farmer Bren Smith are clear-eyed about the necessary work and change ahead. “We’re going to have to say goodbye to some things we hold close to our heart,” Smith says, remarking on the many natural wonders we’ve already lost. Johnson adds, “We need to live as though we understand this crisis is real,” which means trying out a range of solutions and having a healthy relationship with failure. 

A book of this kind, with its cautiously optimistic view on climate, might read as wishful thinking. To me, it is a prayer for the modern era: where practicality meets possibility.

Hell’s Kitchen, the loosely based on Alicia Keys’ upbringing, follows 17-year-old Ali (Maleah Joi Moon) as she searches for purpose and freedom in ’90s Manhattan. Ali’s being raised by Jersey (Shoshana Bean), her overprotective single mother who Ali believes is “suffocating” her.

As a Black woman, who’s also biracial, grew up in the ’90s, and navigated early adulthood in New York City, I was enthralled by the show’s colors and effervescent characters, some of whom have curly hair like mine. Within the musical, Keys’ familiar, soulful songs reverberate and shatter spaces that diminish women while making space for vulnerability to become the loudest melody.

While Hell’s Kitchen’s premise is promising, the perspective of Black women slowly withers away as other characters’ development and traumas are prioritized. When Ali meets Knuck (Chris Lee), a man who drums a bucket near her apartment, she develops a crush on him, though it is unclear why they’ve fallen for each other. “What y’all even got in common?” Ali’s friends ask her, before saying, “Don’t waste energy on this.”

Their relationship quickly becomes unhealthy: Ali follows him to his job at a construction site, while he lurks outside her apartment. Though Jersey says they are “babies in grown-up bodies,” the reality is Knuck is in his 20s, while Ali has just barely passed the. Their relationship reaches a boiling point when Ali sneaks Knuck into her apartment when her mother’s not home. Though Knuck knows he shouldn’t be there, the musical portrays Ali as the sexual instigator: “[Jersey’s] at work, we got plenty of time,” she tells Knuck. “Let’s do it, baby.”

When Jersey walks in on them, she calls the police, who arrest Knuck without explicitly charging him with a crime. Since Ali supposedly didn’t tell Knuck her actual age and Black men, including Knuck, are overpoliced, Jersey’s actions are framed as a betrayal. “Every time she [Jersey] tries to speak to me, I remember what she did to Knuck,” Ali says.

In her angst, Ali turns to her piano teacher, Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis), who belts a heart-wrenching tribute to her son and all the Black people who have been murdered by the police. However, juxtaposing Jane’s son’s murder with Knuck’s arrest feels manipulative, especially considering that .

Both realities can be true: Knuck’s history with the police is dehumanizing, and Ali’s unspoken trauma in her problematic affair with him (and within systems) also matters. By prioritizing one struggle over another, Black women’s traumas, triumphs, and stories are silenced. In essence, Ali becomes an audience member—a vessel for the people and systems around her rather than a stand-alone character. I left the theater asking, “Who’s Ali? Why was she portrayed that way?”

Theater’s Minstrel Show Roots

Theater’s depiction of Black women has deep roots in that reinforced Jim Crow segregation and reduced Black people to stereotypes. In a 2011 paper, historian , Ph.D., writes that these shows fueled negative characterizations of Black women in theater and broader culture, including perpetuating stereotypes such as the oversexualized, aggressive “jezebel” and the “mammy,” who’s a “natural caretaker.”

In the 1960s and ’70s, Black women playwrights began producing plays that resisted these dehumanizing characteristics and offered a more layered worldview. “Women playwrights of the Black Arts Movement followed a tradition of Black women intellectuals who actively resisted controlling images of Black womanhood,” writes La Donna L. Forsgren, Ph.D., in her 2018 book, . Rather than reinforcing “distorted images of Black womanhood,” these playwrights, including Pearl Cleage and Ntozake Shange, used art to challenge and complicate the portrayal of Black women as “scapegoats for the ills within Black communities.”

Forsgren argues that through plays such as For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1976) and Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman’s Guide to Truth (1990), playwrights began focusing more on Black families rather than solely Black men while also revealing hidden truths about Black women’s traumas and joys.

There might be no better example of this approach than The Color Purple, an award-winning play adapted from Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1982 book that explores three Black women’s experiences with sexism, racism, and intimate-partner violence. While the book’s film adaptation in 1985 for its portrayal of Black men, remains a touchstone for Black women seeking understanding of themselves and their experiences.

“When it was first released in 1985, The Color Purple was a cinematic outlier,” NPR host Aisha Harris notes in a . “For the first time, many Black women saw a movie that reflected their own experiences at home. Characters like Celie and the free-spirited Shug, who’s played by Margaret Avery, or Sofia, the self-assured force of nature who’s played by Oprah Winfrey. They were women who had seen or experienced abuse firsthand and pushed to seek happiness in spite of it all.”

Yet even plays that don’t feature explicit stereotypes about Black women can be harmful. In the musical Hamilton, Sally Hemings, the woman Thomas Jefferson enslaved, was only portrayed briefly caring for Jefferson. Also, the young Maria Reynolds (white in real life, but not in Hamilton) seduces the older Hamilton—before trapping him in a scandal, the very epitome of the “jezebel.”

While not all theater characters require tragic backstories, plays should depict Black women as layered—not foil characters.

Trauma-Informed Theater Practices

Though musicals purvey joy, there’s also a responsibility to be trauma-informed. Theater productions should consult mental health professionals, scholars, and even members of the production itself. In May, , Hell’s Kitchen’s lead actor, publicly revealed her battles with depression. “I wasn’t getting out of bed,” she told The New York Times. “I was missing class … it got really bad.” Imagine if Moon, with this lived experience, helped write Ali’s journey. 

Broadway plays haven’t often done this work, though the jukebox musical Jagged Little Pill is an exception. In 2021, after the play’s producers , they and revisited the script. They also with mental health organizations, recognizing the impact that theater has on trauma. “We are very proud of the show we made and its transformative power,” the lead producers said in a statement. “It is precisely because we have made this show about these charged and nuanced issues—a show about radical empathy and truth-telling, about protest and vulnerability—we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

Even if Hell’s Kitchen’s writer, Kristoffer Díaz, isn’t solely responsible for Ali’s character arc, playwrights should be trained to understand trauma responses so they can better be conveyed onstage. Perhaps Ali made these choices because women often blame themselves for trauma—because it gives them control when the world feels out of control.

Imagine if Miss Liza Jane told Ali that she wasn’t responsible for Knuck’s trauma and suggested support beyond the piano? What if playwrights held characters like Knuck accountable and showed how systems and environments inform a character’s choices? 

There are some organizations, coalitions, and producers attempting to address these issues, including , , , and

In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, more than 300 theatermakers of color released “,” a statement demanding “a more equitable and safe space for BIPOC communities in our nation and inside of the American Theater.” The statement—which holds the theater industry accountable for actions such as dangling “opportunities like carrots before emerging BIPOC artists … at the expense of [their] art and integrity”—offers a number of demands. One such demand is for productions to “provide therapists or counselors on site for the duration of a rehearsal process and production run when producing/programming content that deals with racialized experiences, and most especially racialized trauma.” Another demand asks for theater companies to diversify the plays they offer by not having the BIPOC plays in any given season centered solely on “trauma and pain.”

If Hell’s Kitchen is any indication, theater is still struggling to meet these proposed standards more than four years later. While more than 100 theater organizations have —making changes that lessen the harm BIPOC performers, producers, and directors experience—there is still more work to do to create a more equitable theater industry.

Theater professionals don’t just imitate life—they shape it. Keys said she crafted Hell’s Kitchen , so its writing should remind audiences that women’s inner “” of bright colors shouldn’t dim because people around them are struggling to find theirs.

Since the 1960s and the election of President John F. Kennedy, younger voters have supported Democratic candidates, while older voters leaned Republican. But , and now, in 2024, large numbers in both groups are bucking traditional assumptions about their political affiliation.

This shift challenges the age-old political adage that youthful idealism gives way to conservative pragmatism with age. As pollsters and pundits scramble to explain the phenomenon, one intriguing theory emerges: It may .

The Unhappy Vote for Change

I am an  and the co-founder and co-director of the . Our lab investigates and analyzes public opinion and political trends nationwide. With the upcoming election, I’ve been specifically examining the potential influence of happiness on voting patterns.

Research worldwide indicates that happy people prefer keeping things the same, and they . Voters who aren’t as happy are more open to anti-establishment candidates, seeing the government as a source of their discontent.

These findings may help to explain the Democratic Party’s waning support among young people.

This group is still reliably blue. Vice President Kamala Harris , with 50% favoring her over former President Donald Trump’s 34%. U.S. voters ages 18 to 35 mainly prefer Democratic views on  and . Yet they are more likely to vote Republican than they have been in the past, especially young men.

Youth Are No Longer Carefree

Declining life satisfaction and happiness levels among young Americans may help to explain their changing political preferences.

Our  found that 55% of respondents ages 18 to 34 reported dissatisfaction with their lives, compared with 65% of the general population.

These findings, , challenge the common belief that young adulthood is one of life’s happiest periods.

 suggests that older voters, long a Republican base, are trending blue in 2024. As of September 2024, Harris leads among older voters, with somewhere between 51% to 55% favoring her over Trump.

These happy seniors appear to be concerned about sweeping changes that could occur under another Trump administration, like . The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 erased what was seen as a major milestone and accomplishment for that generation.

Older Americans are also focused on retaining , a Democratic priority that Trump has wavered on, and maintaining lower prescription drug costs. Both of these programs help keep older Americans happy and healthy. They barely register for young people.

Polls are notoriously slippery, and they’ll keep changing. But, increasingly, age is no longer a very good indicator of party affiliation.

Happiness Matters at the Ballot Box

I am not suggesting that happiness drives all voting behavior or explains changing political preferences in the United States. But I am saying that it should not be ignored.

My research indicates that to understand why people vote the way they do, it’s essential to examine happiness alongside other key factors like the economy and personal experiences. By studying how happiness connects with age, life experiences, and engagement with social media, researchers can gain clearer insights into the changing voting behavior of both young and old voters.

The 2024 presidential candidates seem to have intuited this. The Harris campaign is all about “joy” and . The Trump campaign adopts an angrier tone and a grievance-filled approach.

Ultimately, happiness is more than just a mood. Just as much as ideology, the literal pursuit of happiness may be shaping decisions at the ballot box.

This article was originally published by��. It has been republished here with permission.��

Yet, in stark contrast to this thriving collection of lives, quiet, depleted areas of the forest and old logging trails tell a different, darker story. The wild beauty of this place used to expand to every horizon before it met a violent history of colonialism. I was raised in the woods of western Massachusetts, not far from here, but my feelings of innate connection to the environment were profoundly altered when I learned the history of this stolen land. My sense of belonging was replaced by questions about my place in the world as someone whose ancestral roots stretch to Scotland and the Middle East, among other lands shaped by colonization and dispossession. 

If you’re not on the land and part of the land, then who ultimately speaks for the land?” —Àdhamh Ó Broin

When my partner and I purchased Mount Owen two years ago, the idea felt like a grotesque misnomer: a false claim of ownership over life impossible to possess, since plants, fungi, and more-than-human animals inherently belong to themselves. Trying to figure out the right word to describe the uncomfortable transfer of “ownership” we were negotiating, my partner and I landed on the word “stewardship.”&�Բ�����;

While the word expresses our intent to nurture the local ecosystem, it doesn’t acknowledge the land’s original guardians. Today, we hold a land title rooted in a legal system that views land as property, not as a living entity with inherent rights. It is a title linked to historical theft, genocide, and dispossession. Mount Owen rises 1,500 feet above the traditional homeland of the Nipmuc Tribal Nation, stewards of this land for more than 12,000 years. We are working hard to move forward locally and culturally to dismantle colonial land laws and embrace a more respectful understanding of the living Earth. 

Àdhamh Ó Broin, a friend and colleague dedicated to helping to decolonize the Gaelic people of Scotland through reconnection with Indigenous culture and language, highlights the importance of direct communion with the land. Without an intimate relationship, he argues, authentic advocacy for the land’s well-being is impossible: “If you’re not on the land and part of the land, then who ultimately speaks for the land?” 

On Mount Owen, we are moving slowly, learning from the land and its original stewards, and building community rooted in respect for Indigenous people and their knowledge. We are working toward a future where the land has been restored its rights and agency—as well as deep love.

Countering Settler Ecologies

How can we transition from exclusionary, extractive practices to a system that honors Traditional Ecological Knowledge and prioritizes the well-being of Earth? This is one of the questions I posed to Irus Braverman, author of . Her book explains how “dispossession of Palestinians in the hands of the Zionist settler state occurs, centrally, in the ecological realm.”&�Բ�����; She coined the term “settler ecologies” to describe the oppressive situation, arguing that the territorial reach of Israel’s nature protection advances the Zionist project of Jewish settlement and the corresponding dispossession of non-Jews from this place.

Just as olive trees embody Palestinian identity and deep connection to place, pine trees represent Jewish claims and settlement expansion.

The environmental damage and confusing arguments surrounding “native” and “non-native” species add another layer of devastation. Non-native species are ; some like plantago major provide ecosystem services like improved soil quality, erosion control, habitat, and food sources for wildlife. Plus, a fixation on their potential negative impacts can overshadow other, perhaps greater threats facing native species, like habitat destruction and pollution. Braverman describes how these arguments, mirroring the human struggle for land and belonging, position various creatures—fallow deer, gazelles, wild asses, griffon vultures, pine trees, and cows—as Israeli “soldiers” against their Palestinian counterparts—goats, camels, olive trees, hybrid goldfinches, and akkoub. 

Just as olive trees embody Palestinian identity and deep connection to place, pine trees represent Jewish claims and settlement expansion. 

The Aleppo pine has become a tool of erasure, obscuring the ruins of Palestinian villages beneath a green veneer. Braverman describes pine forests as being central to the earlier Zionist mission and “the imaginary of the European forest.” While the Aleppo pine is native to the Mediterranean region, widespread planting in areas where it was not historically present has led to ecological concerns. The trees’ aggressive growth and dominance in certain ecosystems has raised questions about whether it should be classified as . 

To complicate and confuse matters, olive trees are sometimes labeled “non-wild,” which in turn legitimizes ecological violence toward them, such as their uprooting from nature reserves, even with evidence that olive tree cultivation dates to the Chalcolithic period (3600–3300 BCE). Where exactly does the timeline for “wild” and for “native” begin? ������Ƶ than just crops in Palestine, olive trees are woven into the fabric of the culture. Yet hundreds of thousands of trees have been destroyed in recent decades to make way for Israeli settlements and for the separation wall, threatening livelihoods and the environment. 

When people are distanced from land, they lose the intimate knowledge necessary to be effective stewards.

Throughout the world, this pitting of native and non-native organisms and species harms not only plants and other animals, but also displaced humans seeking refuge in new lands. In a , Charles R. Warren, a professor of environmental management at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, argues such labels are outdated and misleading and that they ignore the dynamic reality of ecosystems while promoting a view of nature as static and unchanging. The focus, as the article suggests, should be on how species interact within the environment, not their origin. He writes, “The native/alien paradigm purports to be about flora and fauna, but actually it is all about us—our perceptions and preferences about where other species belong and our ethical judgments about how to treat them.”&�Բ�����;

To Forage Is to Connect

Foraging is one of the many ways people have interacted with their environment for generations. Beyond a means of sustenance, foraging for specific herbs and ingredients represents a cultural connection to the land. Layla K. Feghali, author of , emphasizes this point, stating that ancestral landscapes of the SWANA region in Southwest Asia and North Africa have “inspired every aspect of our relationships, rituals, beliefs, and identities.”

But throughout the world, fines and arrests for trespassing sever this vital connection. In the United States, the right to forage began to erode in the mid-19th century, leading to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and those who lived close to the land. In 1977, Israel enacted laws that criminalized foraging on designated nature reserves. Criminalizing foraging divorces people from local flora, weakening ecosystems and unraveling cultural traditions. And of course, when people are prevented from foraging, they must often buy plants that the earth gives freely; leading to unnecessary economic burdens.

When people are distanced from land, they lose the intimate knowledge necessary to be effective stewards. So how can we navigate this? In spaces we inhabit, how can we protect plants, fungi, and other animals we don’t know or understand? How will we recognize their absence if we don’t notice their presence?  

“Recentering our relationship with the earth can begin to transform the traumatic wounding of colonial ruptures,” Layla K. Feghali writes. 

On Mount Owen we’re exploring ways to develop a reciprocal stewardship framework that honors the land’s rights as well as those of humans, who are also part of the ecosystem. Effective stewards know, love, and understand their local ecosystems. That is why my partner and I are working to foster an emotional connection to the land so we don’t lose sight of whom and what we’re protecting.

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 10:02 a.m. PT on Oct. 1, 2024, to correct the spelling of Àdhamh Ó Broin’s name. Read our corrections policy here.

The upcoming presidential election will be critical for these growing unions and their workers. The candidates offer contrasting approaches to engaging with organized labor and regulating the world of work. While former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, have tried to fashion themselves as , experts, including those leading some of the nation’s largest unions, call this rhetoric bogus.

“[We’ve] seen what a prior Trump administration did for workers, like replacing an Obama overtime rule with a less protective version, trying to make it easier for employers to take workers’ tips, and making it easier to misclassify employees as independent contractors—taking away their rights to minimum wage and overtime,” says Rajesh Nayak, a fellow at the Harvard Center for Labor and a Just Economy. “Those policies can undermine organizing by making workers feel like the laws are stacked against them.”

Nayak says he expects more of the same anti-worker policies from Trump if he were reelected this November. “You can see it in Project 2025, which promises to undo many of the pro-organizing positions taken by the Biden National Labor Relations Board [NLRB],” he says.

Project 2025, the presidential playbook drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, to which at least contributed, promises to disrupt labor agencies, including the NLRB, a low-profile but high-impact government office tasked with enforcing labor laws in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. 

President Joe Biden made pro-union appointments at several federal agencies, including the NLRB. Under Biden, the board has that make unionizing easier for workers, including widening the scope of protected organizing activities and implementing a more protective threshold for determining whether employees have been misclassified as independent contractors and are being denied their rights. 

A second Trump administration is expected to reverse this momentum. Project 2025 calls on Trump to fire the NLRB’s Biden-appointed general counsel after taking office, despite precedent that the general counsel serve the remainder of their four-year term even under a new administration. (Biden was actually the first to break this long-held precedent when he in January 2021, 10 months before Robb’s term would have ended, to replace him with a candidate who would be less hostile to unions.)

Project 2025 also calls for cutting budgets at labor agencies “to the low end of the historical average.” While the NLRB has been stronger under Biden than it was during Trump’s first term, it still it needs to fulfill its mission. Additional cost-cutting could weaken its enforcement powers further and heighten barriers for workers and unions to seek recourse for unfair labor practices or access other essential support. 

Nayak also expects a second Trump administration to bury unions in paperwork, for example, by reinstating duplicative reporting rules that in 2021. “Project 2025 threatens to repeat a long-running anti-union playbook of layering more and more reporting requirements on unions that go well beyond transparency and just serve to slow them down,” he says. 

It’s not only Project 2025 that promises a hostile approach to workers and unions. Trump offered a grim preview of his labor policies during his first term in office, appointing anti-union officials to labor agencies, rolling back , and selecting the conservative Supreme Court justices who would go on to rule that the nation’s entire public sector is “right to work.” That decision in made a in the member-fees-based revenue of public sector unions. (Though it should be noted that the ruling has as much as the anti-union firm that argued the case might have hoped.)

If he were reelected, Trump is expected to take aim again at unionized public sector workers. Project 2025 urges the administration to “consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place” and promises to revive a trio of executive orders that Trump was unable to force through in his first term. The orders would shorten the timeline for unions and agencies to negotiate contracts, reduce the time workers would be allowed to improve their performance before being terminated, and reduce the hours that union representatives are allowed to spend doing union-related activities on government time.

Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents tens of thousands of federal workers across 35 departments and agencies, says these executive orders “were designed to decimate federal employee bargaining rights and the ability of unions to represent them.”

The highest-profile threat that a second Trump administration poses to federal workers is an executive order called . If passed, it would remove civil service protections for many federal employees and reclassify them as at-will appointees who can be fired for any reason. This policy would allow candidates in critical government positions to be hired and fired based on their partisan leanings and willingness to follow orders rather than their qualifications and skill sets.

“The policy makes it easier for politicians to push bureaucrats to act in ways that allow them to violate the law and undermine the public interest,” explains Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. “Civil servants take an oath to serve the Constitution, but Schedule F would force them to choose between serving that oath and serving whoever occupies the White House,” he continues.

Trump tried implementing Schedule F at the end of his first term in 2020, but it was never fully realized. “If Schedule F had been fully implemented in 2020, thousands of employees could have , been fired at will, and replaced with partisan loyalists,” warns Greenwald. 

The policy could have wide-ranging effects far beyond the federal workforce. Many people would experience this in the breakdown of vital government functions that are often taken for granted, such as enforcing food or workplace safety regulations. If qualified experts are forced out of regulating agencies in favor of appointees who are politically aligned with the administration, those agencies will become less competent and less able to deliver results.

Moynihan says Schedule F is a dangerous policy under any administration—Democrat or Republican. However, under Trump, it carries unique risks. “That is because Trump has shown himself to embrace authoritarian positions, ignoring the rule of law and wanting to use state power to suppress dissent and attack his enemies. With Schedule F, he would be able to do what authoritarians in other countries have done to consolidate his power—purge the bureaucracy of anyone who opposes democratic backsliding.”

To refuse the hostile anti-worker and anti-democracy policies of a second Trump term, many of the nation’s largest unions are backing Kamala Harris for president. As soon as she announced her candidacy, Harris gave the keynote address at the . That union and almost every other major union nationwide has . 

The groups aren’t just opposing Trump, they are also bracing for a potential second Trump term. In July, Gwen Mills, president of Unite Here, which represents workers in the hotel and food service industries, told that she expects her union to be forced to “play defense” if Trump is elected. 

For Greenwald of NTEU, the best defense is a good offense. To help protect employees against future implementation of Schedule F, NTEU proposed a new rule reaffirming that employees keep their rights even if they are involuntarily reclassified. The Office of Personnel Management earlier this year. 

NTEU is also renegotiating contracts now to avoid having to do so under a possible Trump administration. “Our experience from President Trump’s first term is that his administration did not negotiate in good faith when contracts came open,” Greenwald says. “It only makes sense that employees would fare better if there are fully and fairly negotiated contracts in place and not subject to renegotiation during a second possible Trump term.”

Nayak urges other federal employee unions to do the same. He also suggests that all unions and other labor organizations be informed about what the candidates’ platforms offer to help their members understand the possible outcomes and make informed decisions at the ballot box.

He offers one silver lining: “If President Trump wins this November, he’s not going to automatically reverse the very real momentum that unions have had in this country. We’ve seen it both in public opinion surveys and on-the-ground organizing activity, and it’s not going away that easily.” Greenwald agrees, saying union leaders are “prepared to fight” if the next administration is anti-labor.

As both a facilitator and a participant in group experiences, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of well-held containers. I remember one particularly memorable session when I unintentionally triggered traumatic memories for some participants. That was a wake-up call for me. It underscored the importance of taking people only as far as I’ve gone, and being mindful of my social location and privileges and their potential impact on group dynamics. It reiterated and the need to create resilient and supportive spaces for all, in ways that honor everyone’s identities and prioritize their well-being.

I’ve also experienced the profound benefits of well-held containers. A guided visualization that asked me to imagine saying final goodbyes to loved ones was particularly transformative. In that session, the facilitators created a sacred space among us participants and gradually increased the risk we took while building trust. This showed me the power of building trustworthy relationships, facilitated rituals, and consensual boundaries in fostering deep exploration and growth.

Creating a transformative container—a space where magic can unfold and meaningful change can occur—is something I approach with deep intentionality, wisdom, and an understanding of the principles that guide such a process. For me, it’s not just about setting the stage; it’s about cultivating an environment where individuals can safely explore, grow, and transform. Here’s how I approach this work:

1. Set a Vibe—and Keep It Going

The energy I bring to a space sets the tone for everything that follows. Whether through lighting, music, scent, or even the way I greet participants, I am creating an atmosphere that signals what’s possible. Setting a vibe isn’t a one-time act; it’s an ongoing practice throughout the experience. I work to maintain that energy, ensuring that it aligns with the goals of the session, and I adapt as needed to keep everyone in the right headspace and heartspace. For instance, I’ve found that a carefully chosen playlist can guide the emotional flow of a session, from energizing participants at the start to creating moments of introspection and reflection later on.

2. Reveal the Context and Beware of Assumptions

Transparency is critical in creating a container for transformation. I make it a point to reveal the context—why we’re here, what the goals are, what’s at stake—to help participants understand the bigger picture and feel more connected to the process. This helps to minimize misunderstandings and assumptions that could lead to tension or disengagement. I strive to be clear about my intentions, the purpose of the session, and any background information that could influence the direction of our work. The more context I provide, the more equipped participants are to engage fully and authentically.

3. Containers Need Boundaries to Be Able to Contain

A container without boundaries can’t hold the energy, emotions, and transformations that occur within it. I believe boundaries define the space—physically, emotionally, and energetically. They create safety by delineating what is acceptable and what is not, allowing participants to explore and take risks within a defined framework. Clear boundaries prevent the container from becoming chaotic or overwhelming, ensuring that the energy within is focused and purposeful.

4. Consent Is Key 

For boundaries to be effective, there must be mutual consent. Everyone involved needs to agree on the rules of engagement. I usually start sessions by co-creating explicit agreements, where participants commit to respecting the space, each other, and the process. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and feels respected, which is essential for maintaining trust and safety within the container. Without consent, boundaries can feel imposed and restrictive rather than supportive and empowering.

5. Face the Tensions in Justice-Loving Ways

Transformation often involves surfacing tensions—unspoken conflicts, buried emotions, or systemic injustices. I see these tensions not as obstacles but as opportunities for growth and healing. To navigate them effectively, I prepare myself to face them with love, justice, and a commitment to liberation for all. This means creating space for difficult conversations, acknowledging power dynamics, and addressing issues in ways that honor the dignity and humanity of everyone involved. Justice-loving practices ensure that the process of transformation isn’t just about personal growth but also about collective liberation.

6. Shape Change and Be Changed

I’ve learned that transformation isn’t a linear process but an emergent one. It evolves as the group evolves, adapting to new insights, challenges, and opportunities. I draw from the principles and elements of emergent strategy, which emphasizes the importance of being responsive and flexible in the face of change. Rather than imposing a rigid plan, I allow the process to unfold organically, shaping change as it happens. This requires me to be open to being changed myself—learning from the process, adapting my approach, and growing alongside the participants. It’s about co-creating the path forward, guided by the collective wisdom of the group.

7. Bring Everything and Everyone With You

When I’m creating a transformative container, I bring all of myself—my knowledge, experiences, skills, and even my personal quirks. This includes everything from my outfit selection to my playlist, my understanding of feng shui, my knowledge of Indigenous circle practices, and my love of Latin root words. Each element I bring adds richness and depth to the space, making it uniquely mine—and uniquely capable of holding the transformation that needs to happen. By bringing everything and everyone with me, I create a space that’s not only authentic but also inclusive, where every aspect of the self—both mine and others’—is welcomed and valued.

8. Be Trustworthy

Trust is the foundation of any transformative container. Participants need to know that they can rely on me to hold the space with integrity, care, and consistency. Being trustworthy means showing up fully, honoring my commitments, and being transparent about my intentions and limitations. It also involves creating an environment where participants can trust each other, fostering a sense of safety and mutual respect. Trust allows participants to take the risks necessary for deep transformation, knowing that they are supported and held throughout the process.

9. Practice Till Presence

Presence is the ability to be fully in the moment, attuned to what is happening within the container. It’s about listening deeply, observing closely, and responding authentically to the needs of the group. Achieving this level of presence requires practice—cultivating mindfulness, grounding myself, and honing my ability to stay focused and connected. The more I practice, the more naturally presence will come to me, allowing me to be fully available to the group and the process. Presence is the key to facilitating transformation with grace, fluidity, and impact.

As I reflect on these principles, I encourage you to think about how you can incorporate them into your practice—whether you’re creating formal containers for group participation, or informal ones as you build and co-create community. What unique elements do you bring to the table? How can you cultivate a sense of trust, presence, and adaptability in your work? By integrating these principles, we can create containers that not only hold space for transformation but actively foster it, allowing magic to unfold and change to take root in profound and liberating ways.

A forget-me-not wildflower bloomed in the clearing. This is where the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians have been restoring their oak savanna meadows, after decades of fire suppression and the removal of large, fire-adapted trees under federal management.

In addition to land they bought from private owners, in 2018, the Tribe received 17,519 acres of land from the U.S. government for the Tribe to manage under its own authority. This came as part of the ; this bipartisan legislation in trust in order to return the restoration of these lands—and the related economic activity and job development they created—to the Cow Creek Umpqua and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians.

The Cow Creek Umpqua government hired foresters to study the landscape, which was dotted with decades-old Douglas fir stumps from clearcuts. They discovered that before the area had been overtaken by conifers, it was historically an oak savanna meadow, a pocket in the Willamette Valley that stretches the length of the Cascade Mountains and the Oregon Coast Range. This finding matched Tribal elders’ stories about a time when game was abundant, and grasses thrived as the tribe practiced cultural burning.

“We are not living the way that we want to live,” says Jackson, Cow Creek Umpqua member and education coordinator for the tribe. His ancestors, the Nahánkʰuotana, moved seasonally between homes in the foothills and in the valley. When leaving their summer camps in the foothills of the Cascades, or Umpqua mountains, they would burn the land before moving down to their winter camps at lower elevations. They did the same when coming back up as the weather warmed. The Nahánkʰuotana would return to each place to find healthy soils enriched by the charcoal left from the fire, which came from burned wood and plant debris that acted as a natural fertilizer.

“We are a burn culture,” Jackson says. “We would say that we burned here since time immemorial. Anthropologists or archaeologists would say that we burned here 20,000 to 40,000 years.” In any case, Jackson says, the feds have “messed up” that legacy in the past 200 years by not continuing these age-old land practices.

The U.S. Forest Service’s fire suppression policies began in the early 1900s and to the tribe’s current struggle with wildfires that burn larger, hotter, and out of control. To reduce this risk—to both the Tribe and the nearby city of Roseburg, Oregon—and to revitalize their cultural resources, Cow Creek Umpqua is blending Western science with traditional ecological knowledge to manage the landscape and safely reintroduce fire. Despite the challenges posed by climate change in finding suitable conditions for burning, outcomes from the managed areas so far are promising.

But to bring fire back, they first needed their land back. 

The Knowledge to Thrive

Despite the historic theft of the Tribe’s land, many members, like Jackson’s ancestors, never left. 

When the Treaty of 1853 was signed, the Cow Creek Umpqua viewed it as a government-to-government agreement between two sovereign nations. In exchange for land “ownership,” the U.S. government would provide the Tribe with health care, housing, and education. However, the U.S. government didn’t follow through on its promises. Rather, it claimed more than 500,000 acres of Cow Creek Umpqua’s land, and while the agreement was to pay the Tribe just $0.02 per acre—a fraction of the $1.25 per acre the government charged settlers who quickly moved in— they never received even this low sum.

Many people of Cow Creek Umpqua resisted the U.S. government’s efforts to relocate them to reservations, and instead lived in seclusion. They held onto their culture and continued to hold council meetings as they had for countless generations. 

In 1954, the Cow Creek Umpqua pursued justice with the U.S. government. After being forcibly terminated under the , the Tribe filed a land claims case, resulting in its recognition as a sovereign tribal government and a $1.5 million settlement in the 1980s.

In the following decades, the Tribe started buying its land back. In 2018, the Bureau of Land Management returned around 3% of the Cow Creek Umpqua’s ancestral lands under the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act. It was returned in trust, meaning the federal government holds legal title, but the beneficial interest remains with the Tribe. Elected leaders who supported the passage of the law called it an in righting the injustices toward Indigenous peoples.  

Then, in 2019, a wildfire came through. 

The Milepost 97 wildfire destroyed nearly a fourth of what was returned to the tribe: 3,634 of their 17,519 acres. The fire raged when it reached the burn scar of the 1987 Canyon Mountain wildfire. Years’ worth accumulated snags and thick brush prevented firefighters from quickly accessing the area and added dangerous fuel to the flames.

“When I first went up there, it was like an atomic bomb had gone off,” Cow Creek Umpqua Chairman Carla Keene this year. “The trees were gone. It was just black, and it was just the most depressing sight I’d ever seen.”&�Բ�����;

The Cow Creek Umpqua Tribal Board of Directors resolved to restore the forest, initiating efforts to salvage and repurpose the charred logs. Today, that lumber is showcased in the construction of the Portland International Airport and the Tribe’s remodeled government office. These structures display the tribe’s principle that forests and people are meant to have a hands-on connection. 

“For people that have not had their voices heard at many tables for a long time, our [Tribal] voice is starting to be heard and starting to be cherished,” Jackson says. “You’re starting to see Western scientific knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge start to do this, like they should.”&�Բ�����;

After the fire, the Tribe hired Wade Christensen, an enrolled member of Choctaw Nation, as a forester. He was trained in silviculture—a practice focused on managing forest health and growth to meet specific land management objectives, such as ecosystem restoration through thinning and burning. He creates detailed maps and work plans focused on cultivating the oak savanna and reducing the conifer monocultures that had been introduced for timber.

To make this happen, Christensen coordinates closely with the Forest Service and neighboring landowners for prescribed burns. Foresters like Christensen refer to it as a “prescription” because, much like a doctor treating a sick patient, they are writing a plan to restore the land to health. 

Early in his time working for the Tribe, Christensen was following a prescription on land the Tribe had purchased from a timber company. As he began marking trees for removal, he quickly realized the plan didn’t account for the meadow ecoregion. Within it were Oregon white oak trees, a species with thick bark that can survive fire. Moving forward, he knew he had to adapt. He worked to gain a deeper understanding of the landscape, not only to reduce wildfire risk, but also to promote cultural resources like berries, native grasses, and ​medicinal plants that flourish in recently burned soil and under an open canopy.

“I’ve got this understanding of the benefits of burning in the forest, and I’m all in on prescribed burning,” says Christensen, who has a degree from Oregon State University in sustainable forest management, “and I work for a Tribe, so I’m learning why it is important to the Tribe.”��

That learning is ongoing. Christensen recalls hearing a speaker at a conference say that he knows to light the trees when the acorns drop: “I was like, I am not at that man’s level.”

Christensen was listening to Frank Lake, a Karuk Tribal descendant and leading research ecologist with the Forest Service’s Southwest Station, who explores social-ecological frameworks to understand the impact of colonization—like fire suppression policies—. Lake’s research underscores that between federal agencies and tribal nations is essential, something Christensen understands well.

“You really got to dig deep with these guys and spend a lot of time with them,” Christensen says. “I’m using [fire] for fuels reduction, and hopefully I do things right, and we have other benefits. I am trying to get to where I understand where we can apply it to help a plant that we gather off of, but that takes time, and that takes a lot of conversation.”&�Բ�����;

Healing Cultures and Landscapes

In an era of climate change, government agencies across the U.S. are increasingly recognizing the need to actively apply traditional ecological knowledge to mainstream land management practices—balancing these institutions’ often short-term, extractive values with an intergenerational perspective. 

To mobilize, the National Science Foundation to launch its Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledge and Sciences last year. The center has set up hubs from the Pacific Islands to the Northeastern United States. 

Leaders in the Land Back Movement have relied on a limited set of policy tools. For example, the Department of the Interior for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, a similar trust structure that returned land management to Cow Creek Umpqua. There’s also co-management agreements—like Forest Service with tribes in the Midwest and Western states—and conservation easements—like the one Oakland used to in the hands of the Ohlone people. 

Critics argue that while these actions may return land to tribes, they often do so under federal, state, and municipal terms that in managing their lands.

That’s where purchasing lands outright comes in—a strategy the Penobscot Nation used in 2022 when nearly 30,000 acres of private forest lands went up for sale in Maine. The Nation worked with Trust for Public Land, . Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization focused on expanding outdoor access, has collaborated with more than 70 tribes and Indigenous groups to help them acquire and preserve their homelands and culturally significant sites. The organization tries to facilitate a tribe or nation’s right to self-governance. To do so, it has adopted internal policies that don’t require legal agreements that limit land use to conservation. 

“When you impose restrictions or conservation easements or those types of things on the property, then you’re really not supporting the tribal sovereignty,” says Ken Lucero, director of tribal and indigenous lands at Trust for Public Land. Lucero is a member of the Pueblo of Zia, who historically practiced dry farming and waffle gardening, which harnesses the little bit of rain that falls in the Southwest desert. 

“By having Indigenous knowledge and land back be at the center of the new definition of conservation, then we have a lot of good things that can come of that,” he says. “If we can put land back, land return, and Indigenous knowledge at the center of conservation … we really can support a global solution to climate warming.”&�Բ�����;

Indigenous peoples are considered by dangerous weather brought on by climate change, though they have contributed the least to the greenhouse gas emissions driving it, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Public health researchers stress that climate justice, as exemplified by the Land Back movement, requires addressing the harms of settler-colonialism past and present. 

“There’s a lot of healing that has to happen,” Jackson says. “I’m one of the few that was never ripped off these lands. That’s why I live here, and why it’s very special to me.”&�Բ�����;

In May, Jackson visited an 800-year-old Douglas fir called the Grandmother Tree for the first time since the U.S. government gave the Cow Creek Umpqua back some of their land. The tree is a few miles away from where Christensen and the Tribe’s forestry team have been restoring the meadows. 

So far, finding a time to burn has been tough. Challenges like climate variability from season to season limit how much they can burn each year. But near the grandmother tree that day, there was a glimpse of what’s to come. 

Jackson turned to a patch of wild strawberries and pulled out a leafy green that smelled like a mix of eucalyptus and mint. The plant in his hands is native to the Pacific Northwest and commonly known by its Spanish name, yerba buena, which means “good herb.” Jackson, whose grandmother Dolla was one of the last medicine women and healers in the Tribe, called it a perfect example of a medicinal plant that returns with fire, growing abundantly in sunlight. 

As Jackson’s traditional ecological knowledge tells him, this is the kind of growth the landscape will see again as the Cow Creek Umpqua manage fire for open and clear savannas, benefiting the land and people there for generations to come. 

This story was produced in collaboration with . Reporting for this story was made possible with a fellowship from the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 11:24a.m. PT on Sept. 24, 2024, to clarify that Christensen attended Oregon State University, not University of Oregon. Read our corrections policy here. 

The that started shortly after the debate and continued through the weekend forced evacuations and closures of government buildings, hospitals, a university, and schools in Springfield. Although Trump’s words have imperiled Haitian immigrants, he has not withdrawn his claim; he has doubled down on it. On Sept. 12, while campaigning, he suggested Haitians had ruined “beautiful Springfield” and were not in the city legally, although Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said . Trump also insinuated the immigrants are involved in sexual violence against “young American girls,” continuing his pattern of linking immigration to the  

The targeting of Haitians in the small-town Midwest has led to an outcry of support from the public, policymakers, and immigration advocates. The National Parents Union, a women-led organization made up of parent advocacy groups fighting for equity in education, criticized “the reckless and irresponsible comments” from Republican leaders and announced that it “stand[s] with the families of Springfield” in a statement on Sept. 13. 

But no one empathizes with Springfield’s Haitian community like Haitian Americans themselves. The 19th spoke with scholars and immigrant advocates, mostly women of Haitian heritage, about the repercussions of Trump’s words. They contend that his claim—and the hate before and after it—are nothing new: Due to the unique ways race, religion, and resistance have intersected in Haiti’s history, immigrants from the Caribbean nation have experienced a specific brand of xenophobia in the United States, even as Black immigrants in this country lack visibility.

“This kind of narrative has been going on since at least the middle of the 19th century,” said Danielle N. Boaz, professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “We can connect all of this back to the thing that Haitians did that was unforgivable to people of European heritage, which is they had this … rebellion that started in the 1790s and culminated in what historians have sometimes called the only successful slave rebellion in history, where they were able to defeat not only the French but other foreign powers.”

The 1804 creation of Saint-Domingue, later Haiti, left slaveholding societies terrified that the human beings they held in bondage would also rebel. For securing their freedom, Haitians were demonized, with the often used to make wild claims against them, Boaz said.

“So, over the years, the narrative just kind of increases about how Haiti is this barbaric place,” she said. “It’s run only by Black people.”&�Բ�����;

Trump reinforced the barbarism messaging by implying that Haitians are “savage criminal aliens.”&�Բ�����;

Despite Springfield Police denying any “credible reports or specific claims” of Haitians abusing animals or committing other crimes, Trump’s allegations have reverberated nationally. Christopher Rufo, who has led the national push against in schools and is a trustee for the New College of Florida, where hundreds of books on gender and diversity were discarded last month, offered a $5,000 “bounty” to anyone with evidence of . In Florida and New York—the states with the largest Haitian American communities— condemned Trump’s remarks and of Ohio. 

The bomb and shooting threats targeting Haitians disproportionately place pressure on mothers, said Taisha Saintil, senior policy analyst for the UndocuBlack Network, which advocates for Black immigrants. Often children’s primary caregivers, women rearrange work schedules, stay home, or make childcare plans when schools close, losing household income in the process.

“Women are often the ones managing the day-to-day fears, picking up and dropping off children, and trying to shield them from the psychological trauma of these threats,” Saintil said. “This gender dynamic adds another layer to the stress, as women feel pressure to keep things normal for their families while silently shouldering the weight of their own fear and frustration.”

Having immigrated to Florida from Haiti in 2006 at age 9, Saintil said that she feels for Springfield’s Haitian community. Before moving to diverse Fort Lauderdale, Florida, she briefly lived in a white community where she said her classmates taunted, spat on her, and called her a cat-eater. 

“I remember … the fear, waking up every single day knowing that I’m going to get bullied, nobody wanting to talk to me, sitting at the lunch table by myself,” Saintil said. “When I compare it to what is happening now to the newly arrived kids, I think about just how … the bullying will mark them for the rest of their lives.”

Lured by manufacturing jobs, an estimated 15,000 Haitian immigrants have settled in Springfield—a mostly white town of just under 60,000 people—. Before then, Springfield experienced an economic downturn caused, in part, by population decline. Then, the immigrants arrived, .

Valerie Lacarte, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program, said that immigrants typically settle in areas because they know they can find reliable employment or their ethnic community already lives there. Springfield wasn’t previously home to a Haitian community, but state officials reportedly advertised the city’s livability and jobs, news that attracted migrants.

“You have employers who are hiring these people, so from the job-market perspective, that’s a good thing. You have a match,” Lacarte said. 

But this mutually beneficial development did not prevent tensions, which worsened last year after a Haitian immigrant crashed into a school bus, killing one child, Aiden Clark, and hurting nearly 30 others. Still, Nathan Clark, Aiden’s father, spoke out at a city commission meeting last week to denounce . Anti-immigrant residents, meanwhile, have complained that Springfield lacks the infrastructure for population growth.

“It’s tempting to think the growth of immigrants, that’s what’s causing the problems,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, coauthor of Framing Immigrants: News Coverage, Public Opinion, and Policy and a University of California, Berkeley, researcher. “It’s the politicization of immigrants, and especially in places that have significant Republican voting populations, the scapegoating of immigrants tends to be higher. This is an issue we’ve seen time and again in the American heartland, places that are depopulating, places that are short of workers, that actually benefit from immigrant workers, but you have people … tapping into these national dynamics, when it comes to race and xenophobia, to win elected office.”

Officials must “be intentional about social cohesion” to avoid conflict between the longtime residents and the Haitian transplants, said Lacarte, the daughter of Haitian immigrants. It’s important to make sure that both the U.S.-born and foreign-born community members get the attention and resources needed to grow together as a diverse community.

Longtime residents may misunderstand why people who look and sound different from them are moving in, Lacarte said. They witness the demographic shift, but they don’t realize these changes can be helpful. Then, bad actors deepen anxieties by spreading disinformation about immigrants. 

“Immigrants have been not only filling these jobs and helping grow the economy. They have their own demand for goods and services,” Lacarte said. “They send their kids to school. They even, in some cases, create businesses … and that grows the economy.”

During the presidential debate, Trump did not portray foreign-born workers as a positive but as a threat to Americans, accusing . This framing overlooks that immigrants fill jobs the native-born population doesn’t pursue, Lacarte said, and that more workers are needed as birth rates decline and the white population ages. It also belies the fact that Black immigrants exist. 

About , the Pew Research Center reported in 2022. Africans have driven Black immigrant growth; their population increased by 246% between 2000 and 2019. In 2005, The New York Times reported that than at any time since the . Today, Africans make up 42% of the Black foreign-born population, while Caribbean immigrants make up 46%. Of the latter, most come from two countries: Jamaica and Haiti. 

After in Del Rio, Texas, went viral in 2021, Saintil said she received multiple messages disclosing, “I did not know there were Black immigrants. Where did they come from?” She assumed, due to her profession, that people knew the United States had Black immigrants.

“Most of my work now has been to raise visibility of Haitian and Black immigrants,” Saintil said. “We’re the most detained, the most placed in solitary confinement. Our bail bonds are higher. So, the same things that are happening to African Americans in the criminal justice system are happening to Black immigrants in the detention center. Our asylum claims are the most denied because immigration judges don’t trust our pain.”

Long before the debate, Trump disparaged Black immigrants. In 2017, he reportedly said that   The following year, he labeled Haiti, African nations, and El Salvador “.” In Springfield, local Republicans have echoed Trump’s remarks. In addition to the pet-eating allegations, they’ve accused immigrants of being in gangs, spreading disease, and practicing “voodoo” rituals, claims police have denied.

As Haiti became the yardstick for measuring whether Black people could participate in society equally, attacks on its character escalated. By the 1880s, stories spread about Haitians engaging in cannibalism and human sacrifice, especially of white children, Boaz said. Told repeatedly, these stories inform the rumors about Haitians in Springfield today, and they may jeopardize women.

“Historically, women in marginalized communities, whether immigrants, ethnic minorities, or refugees, have been specifically targeted for intimidation,” Saintil said. “This may be because some view them as ‘easier’ to attack or harass than men. … In this context, when Haitian women are being targeted for threats, harassment, or even racial slurs in public spaces, the consequences are far-reaching. This not only creates an atmosphere of terror for women but can also ripple through the entire family.”

Haitian American anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse, a professor of humanities at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that she’s tired of defending her personhood and identity. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Ulysse wrote a book called because she found the dehumanizing remarks about Haitians then disturbing. 

“We’re always having to refute as opposed to having an identity that is an affirmed one,” Ulysse said. “There is a profound disappointment that in 2024 that I am listening to someone who is running to be the president of the highest nation in the land say something this surreal, this absurd. But I’m also someone as a Black woman, as a social scientist, as someone who understands race and racial construction, [knows] what that is meant to do, and that is to paint Haitians as the ultimate ‘others,’ cannibalists, and otherwise, so that it can keep fueling this narrative that’s necessary to strip people of their humanity.”&�Բ�����;

Ulysse said that the broader immigrant community faces xenophobia, too. One study concluded that the level of today rivals , a period that restricted Chinese immigration. Chinese immigrants have also been accused of consuming dogs and cats, insults revived during the onset of COVID-19, which Trump called the “China virus.”&�Բ�����;

“He’s gone from talking about Mexican immigrants as predominantly being criminals and rapists to then talking about immigrants as vectors of disease and now using similar kinds of dehumanizing language to talk about … not just what they eat, but the kind of the social threat they supposedly pose to American society,” Ramakrishnan said. “I think the kinds of emotions it’s supposed to evoke are emotions of disgust, of othering and reduced empathy, and also support for drastic measures like rounding up and deporting people who are not deemed to be American.”

If Harris becomes president, she would not only be the first woman in the Oval Office but also the first person of South Asian and Caribbean heritage. Might that change perceptions and policies related to Caribbean immigrants? 

“No matter how well-meaning one person may be, they’re part of a social structure and a system that makes decisions,” Ulysse said. “She’s not going to make decisions by herself, so what difference does it make that she’s from the Caribbean? She’s got advisors. She’s got to think about Congress. She’s got to think about the Senate. She’s got to think about geopolitics and history.”&�Բ�����;

When Trump took aim at Haitian immigrants during the debate, Harris laughed in apparent disbelief but did not rebuke him. Ulysse finds it disturbing that many people laughed at Trump’s claims because, as absurd as they are, they’re endangering Haitians. 

On Friday, President Joe Biden called the attacks on Haitians “simply wrong,” noting that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is “a proud Haitian American.”

Along with being terrified and traumatized, Saintil said the Haitian children and parents impacted by the threats and smears likely feel betrayed. 

“You’re getting it from a country that you thought you could be safe in,” she said. “You’re getting it in a country that you’ve been hoping to be in because you thought your life would be better, but now you’re being treated worse than dirt. You’re being called a savage. … How do you go on from there?”

This story was originally published by and is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license.

self-portrait as the ocean or Fofie’s wisdom��

study the tides of
the ocean shored by your skin 
each ripple each wave

know not all water 
is meant to quench dry throats or
to be waded through

know not everything 
that is left in the waters 
is an offering

reminders for my (impatient) selves��

don’t force what won’t come
what is for you is either
coming or waiting

closed mouths (and full ones)��don’t get fed

ask for what you need
ready yourself to receive
as well as release

a lesson learned from June��

i been wrong…and still
wrong ain’t never been my name
pronounce me correct

pronounce me (w)hol(l)y
won’t answer to all i’m called
act accordingly

train your timid tongues
sound out all my syllables
i been a mouthful

you are your own��

because you were both 
the cost and the one who paid
a terrible price

But even as she galvanizes this new wave of political energy, . The ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli genocide remains a focal point for young liberals, presenting a challenge that Harris will have to navigate, both on the campaign trail and, if elected, in the Oval Office. Furthermore, many are looking for her policy specifics, beyond TikTok memes.

From the start, Harris’ campaign ignited a wave of political engagement, particularly among young voters. The launch of her campaign led to a notable surge in voter registrations in Maine, a state where  according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement’s . In July alone, signed up to vote—the largest number since November 2023. Nationwide, the impact was even more stark; to vote in the two days after Biden dropped out, representing a staggering 700% spike. ������Ƶ than 80% of these new registrations were among people between the ages of 18 and 34.

Lauren Barton, a 19-year-old from Tennessee, shares, “One of my friends is especially excited. She was going to register to vote, and I feel like this finally pushed her into doing it.” Daijah Wilson, also 19 and from New Jersey, spent this summer registering voters. “A lot of my family members were not going to vote because they felt like it was the same thing again—lesser of two evils,” she said. “Now that Kamala is running, I know a couple of my cousins who have registered to vote, and they said they keep encouraging their friends to vote. … People who were on the fence are now jumping off the fence.”

Suraj Singreddy, a 20-year-old from Georgia, another state that YESI identified as a key battleground where young voters could significantly influence the 2024 presidential race, expressed that a common frustration had been the redundancy of Trump against a moderate white Democrat. “I think in 2016 and 2020 people were tired of being told, ‘Oh, wait for the next election cycle; there’ll be better [candidates] available,’ and then that constantly not being the case.”&�Բ�����;

The fact that Kamala represents something new—at least, on the surface—is exciting. Claire Sorge, a student at the Hawai‘i Conservatory of Acting, shares, “I’m glad it’s a woman of color. I’m glad it’s not an old white man.”&�Բ�����;

But Barton brings up that “there’s obviously the huge elephant in the room—her stance on the genocide in Palestine … [but] the idea of our first female president is exciting.”

For young Americans of color, the fact that Harris is multiracial is Wilson, who is Black, planned to vote third party when Biden was on the ticket because of his ceaseless support of Israel, but now plans to vote for Harris. She explains, “I don’t think representation is our savior, but it is a move towards progress to see a woman, a Black woman, a multiracial woman, lead this country and be the face of America for the next four years.”

Another break from the democratic electoral monotony of the past several years is simply that Harris is fun in a way Biden and Hillary never were. Whether she’s soliloquizing on or proclaiming , .” Singreddy believes Harris is finally a candidate with a magnetism that can rival Trump’s. “Trump is entertaining, but in a way that makes you go, ‘Uh… .’ Harris has just been so unintentionally funny … it makes her seem genuine.”

“People are going to vote for the president that they’d want to sit down in a bar with and share a drink with,” he adds. 

and the creative team behind Harris’ hugely popular TikTok account, , which constantly churns out clever content, have captured Gen Z’s spirit of “brat summer.”

Barton explains, “She’s very relevant right now in all of the [TikTok] audios and the memes.” While Barton characterizes young voters’ enjoyment of such s as partially a humor-based coping mechanism for the fact that Harris’ policies are not ideal, she acknowledges it is genuinely appealing. 

Wilson adds, “Trump has a hold on Twitter/X. I feel like Kamala or her team has tried to strategize by taking over the app that actually has a lot more [young voters].” Referring to how Harris’ TikTok videos humanize her, she points out, “We want to see that; it’s about looking past the facade of the politician.”

On the other hand, Harris risks infantilizing and alienating her young voter base if she doesn’t offer them something more substantive to hold on to. Some already feel that relying too much on internet trends and memes could “I feel like it could very quickly turn and become too much, in the same way that ‘’ did in 2016,” Singreddy says. 

Singreddy also feels that because Harris and her campaign have focused on pushing mostly vibes in their messaging to young voters, it is unclear what Harris’ actual policies are. “Right now, I’m in a place where my interest is piqued, but I still don’t understand exactly who I’m voting for or what her policies are. … I just wonder how she’s going to get that out to people because it’s not as easy as viral trends and memes,” he adds.

Unfortunately for Harris, the issue that young voters seem most aware of is the situation in Palestine and Israel. Wilson, Sorge, Barton, and Singreddy all cite her role in the current administration and its involvement in the ongoing as a significant deterrent in voting for her. 

Additionally, when Singreddy thinks about the policies he would like to see, he says, “First and foremost, it is trying to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza. After that, it’s the status quo Democrat [policies]: protecting the right to abortion, health care, and general stuff.” Wilson adds that even while she plans on voting for Harris, she will continue attending protests and rallies to push for a cease-fire. 

Harris can’t take her , and there is a concern that she “Kamala has a chance [at winning the election], but only if younger people vote for her,” Sorge says.

For nearly two centuries, working-class, pan-Asian immigrants were the majority of migrants coming to the Western Hemisphere: , , , and in California and the Southwest, or the indentured servants in British South American and Caribbean colonies. These were all poor, working-class immigrants from across the Asian continent. 

Working-class, pan-Asian communities have historically been integrated and in solidarity with Black and Brown communities. For example, in , , and the , South Asian migrant workers integrated into Puerto Rican, Dominican, Black, and Mexican families and communities for protection against white supremacist violence and economic exploitation.

In California in the 1970s, Chinese immigrant students and families fought alongside Latine families for language access in public schools, which resulted in a favorable . 

Japanese and Filipinx farmworkers fought side-by-side with Mexican farmworkers in the .

Southeast Asians and settled in largely Black, Puerto Rican, and Mexican communities in Massachusetts, New York, California, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Minnesota, forming shared struggles around equitable education access. 

This is a very different reality than the that pan-Asian communities include mostly wealthy business owners, doctors, and engineers who are actively working to assimilate into whiteness. White Americans, particularly within academia and mass media, have perpetuated the model minority myth to weaken the organizing for racial and economic justice by Black and Brown communities and create further roadblocks for working-class Asian people to contribute to those struggles. 

The Current Political Moment

We are experiencing the in white supremacist, Zionist, and Christian nationalist forces in decades. These forces are joined by multiple Asian right-wing forces emerging internally from our own pan-Asian communities, such as the Chinese American Right and South Asian Hindutva (Hindu supremacists). ������Ƶ and more, for right-wing forces across the U.S. in a multitude of contentious political issues. Despite Asian communities’ long histories of working-class and multiracial solidarity, these Asian right-wing forces have a dominating influence on public narratives about pan-Asian communities. While Asian conservatism in the U.S. has long existed, groups like the and have become more effective in how they organize and mobilize Asian communities and more strategic in how they create powerful alliances with white supremacist, Christian nationalist, and Zionist agendas. 

There are many examples of these strategic allyships across the nation. White supremacist groups convinced Chinese American plaintiffs to join their Supreme Court case to . In California, Hindu supremacists have pushed for the , and throughout the state. Christian nationalists have recruited conservative Asian faith-based groups to . Wealthy Asian landlords have worked alongside corporate real estate lobbyists to . Most recently, Hindu nationalists both and . have made public their deep ideological and political alliances with Zionist forces in Israel.

The growth of these proto-fascist movements has serious consequences for all people in the U.S., regardless of race, ethnic background, and class, but the connecting line is clear: The most systems-marginalized, the most poor and working-class parts of all our communities are most negatively impacted while also being misinformed and recruited by right-wing formations.��

White supremacists, Christian nationalists, and Zionists are once again using pan-Asian communities as the driving wedge against social justice movements, making it more difficult to retain historical, hard-earned, progressive wins. This is once again creating division and hindering progressive organizing and multiracial solidarity. We are the co-directors of (GAR), a national network of 34 grassroots organizations rooted in working-class, pan-Asian immigrant and refugee communities. Our member organizers are directly dealing with the ramifications of the right-wing’s growing power. We know that if we want to win the material changes our communities need and deserve, we need to build a movement powerful enough to make justice inevitable.

To deepen our collective understanding about the growing contingents of right-wing forces within Asian and Asian American communities, GAR has facilitated to share their experiences. Through this, we uncovered the vast infrastructures of right-wing forces and seen how far their influences have reached within Asian communities. Many organizers raised concerns about the prevalence of right-wing ideas in our communities through in-language content, local ethnic media, and cultural and religious community spaces. These are the spaces that many people flock to in order to build relationships and have a strong sense of belonging.  

According to Pew Research Center, Asians are predicted to be the largest immigrant group in the U.S. by 2055, surpassing the size of the Latine population. Working-class, pan-Asian communities are rapidly growing in critical battleground states such as Michigan, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Various right-wing forces have already begun organizing in working-class, pan-Asian communities, including Christian nationalists from Asian churches, temples, and mosques and the Republican Party in ethnic enclaves with the hopes of swaying elections.

There are few grassroots organizing groups made up of directly impacted people leading and directing the work of providing social services or engaging in advocacy and policy in pan-Asian communities. This void is currently being peddling a proto-fascist agenda. 

Organizing is the clearest and most consistent tool we have at our disposal to change this dynamic, that has had the least investment. The ecosystem for community organizing in working-class, pan-Asian communities has to grow and meet the needs of the demographic trends across the U.S. Otherwise, we are left responding to one crisis after another, and with weak infrastructure for leaderful and powerful movements. 

If we want to build a multiracial democracy, which is needed now more than ever, our movements must that addresses working-class, pan-Asian issues. In fight after fight, we are witnessing the use of pan-Asian communities to advance right-wing and proto-fascist agendas. Building shared working-class interests is how we can build unified fronts for a multiracial democracy. If we don’t, progressive causes will continue to lose. 

As a network, GAR is committed to nationally uniting local organizations to grow our capacity to effectively organize working-class, pan-Asian communities. This includes for in-language political education to raise political consciousness; strong, local organizations committed to building working-class membership bases; and political and strategy alignment in working-class pan-Asian communities. 

Asian Americans have a history of working-class struggles, anti-war movements, solidarity, and powerful organizing. With Asian communities growing across the U.S., we must remember our history of organizing for working-class interests and solidarity, and return to the roots of our working-class, migrant, pan-Asian communities. We must take continued action in the current political moment we find ourselves in. 

Our ancestors grounded themselves in their working-class interests when they built meaningful relationships and mutual solidarity with Black and Brown working-class communities and won important racial, immigrant, education, and economic protections that we all continue to benefit from. Let’s remember and continue this legacy. 

Maali’s family comes from the occupied West Bank. She says, “My father is older than Palestine,” when it was partitioned by the United Nations in 1948. Wearing a long keffiyeh-patterned dress that skimmed the grass, Maali was joined by several friends waving Palestinian flags and holding up posters denouncing President Joe Biden as “Genocide Joe.” They were among 3,000 demonstrators that drew heavily from Chicago’s “,” the largest Palestinian community in the country.

When asked how the movement for Gaza could pressure Democrats and presidential nominee Kamala Harris to end the Israeli genocide, Maali says, “Hold out our votes.” She asks, “What else do we have besides our votes? That is our only power.”&�Բ�����;

Nearby was Satnaam Singh Mago, who wore a T-shirt with a T. rex grasping a Palestinian flag. Like Maali, Mago has voted for Democrats faithfully all his life. Now, however, he rejects the idea of “the lesser of two evils” and “voting based on fear.” But he is also hopeful. “We have the power to change an election. … What we are trying to tell Kamala Harris is you have to earn our vote.”&�Բ�����;

I interviewed a couple dozen people the week of the DNC and asked protesters about pressing issues like abortion rights, Project 2025, and the dangers of a second Trump presidency. Almost all protesters told me things like, “Genocide isn’t a single issue, it’s the only issue,” “I can’t vote for genocide,” and “Trump is worse on some things, but there is nothing worse than genocide.”

The protesters reflected my own thoughts. We have real power. The more voters declare, “No arms embargo, no vote,” the more pressure it puts on Harris to capitulate to our demands ahead of the election on November 5. 

Let’s not kid ourselves. Harris supports the genocide of Palestinians. On four high-profile occasions she has declared, “Israel has a right to defend itself”: after with Benjamin Netanyahu in July, during , during , and , when she also reiterated the widely debunked claim that mass rape was committed by Hamas during its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. American politicians have long  In the context of Israel wiping out Gaza in the name of “defending” itself from Hamas, that phrase is a dog whistle for genocide.

It’s hard to accept that we are complicit in genocide. It’s easier to say that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame, that we are not responsible, that Biden cannot end arms transfers with a phone call, that Harris will end them after she is elected.  It’s also easier to treat genocide as a transactional issue: Gaza is bad, but the threat to abortion rights and democracy and Project 2025 are bigger risks. Or, Trump will enact a worse genocide in Gaza.

We need to hear other perspectives. Outside the DNC I talked to one woman, who didn’t want to give her name, who told me she had lost more than a hundred relatives in Gaza to Israel’s attacks. She said, “Every morning I wake up in anguish. I don’t know who survived last night. Many days I can’t get in touch with anyone. I have cousins whose families have been wiped out. One aunt is in a wheelchair with a heart condition. A cousin has diabetes and can’t get medicine. They’re dying.” She burst out crying while speaking to me.

Can we honestly tell her to vote for the party slaughtering her family? Why is it that we won’t save her from a violent America, but we expect her to save us from a different face of that same violence? If this was happening to you, would you be telling people to vote for the party wiping out everyone who knew and loved?

In Chicago, protesters showed us what solidarity looks like. It means seeing the world through the eyes of the people you are supporting, and to work to achieve their goals. Palestinians are being crushed by the American empire. We benefit from the empire in terms of wealth, power, jobs, and lower-cost goods and resources. Solidarity means putting the needs of oppressed peoples before our own.

The defeat of the American empire by the Vietnamese inspired international solidarity movements of all types. A mass movement of Americans in solidarity with the people of Central America  Reagan from invading Nicaragua. The anti-apartheid movement helped bring down the brutal Afrikaner regime in South Africa. 

Now we need to be in solidarity with Palestine and say, “End the genocide immediately.”&�Բ�����;

Genocide is the worst political act possible: the extermination of an entire people. “Never again” does not mean “never again except for Palestinians.” If we think we can’t stop this, then we are nihilists. We are saying politics is useless.

It starts with hope. Student protesters for Gaza last spring had a rock-solid conviction they could force universities to divest from Israel. While have divested so far (it is always a trickle before it is a flood), the protests worked. They triggered an of and , , and that have made Israel an . With students returning for the fall, pro-Palestine protests are despite universities new methods to free speech and assembly. 

By continuously emphasizing ironclad support for Israel, Harris is revealing that support is actually fragile. This gives us an opening to force her to earn our vote by making it contingent on an arms embargo and an end to the genocide. This is hardball politics. It’s what billionaires do. They cut million-dollar checks to candidates and demand much more in return. Harris recently to from billionaires to drop a proposed tax on the ultrawealthy.

We have something more precious than dollars. There are horrified by the genocide and who want it to end immediately. But many of us are scared to use our power. Right before the DNC, of nearly in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. It found that 34% or more of voters in those states would be likelier to support Harris if there was a permanent cease-fire or an arms embargo on Israel.

In Chicago, a protester named Chris, a member of the Starbucks Workers United union, says, “It’s a genocide happening in real time, and people don’t want to call it that.” Still, he plans to vote for Harris, saying, “I will make sure to hold her accountable the whole time she’s in office.” When asked how he can hold Harris accountable after the election, Chris says, “I don’t know. It’s tough.”&�Բ�����;

This is the problem. Instead of using our power over the Democrats before the election, when it is most potent, we surrender to them. It’s because they have perfected a formula to terrorize us. Every four years they hold a gun to our heads and say, “The world will end if you don’t elect us.” The name on the gun changes—Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, McCain, Romney, and Trump—but the threat remains the same.

The Democrats have trapped us. We vote them in. But then not only do we get nothing in return, they do the dirty work of Republicans. And we ignore it.

This strategy was honed during the 1964 campaign with the infamous “.” The commercial shows a little blonde girl plucking petals off a flower as she counts. She freezes as a loudspeaker at a test site starts counting down. A thermonuclear blast fills the screen, and President Lyndon Johnson intones, “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live. Or to go into the dark. We must either love each other. Or we must die.”&�Բ�����;

Subtle, it wasn’t. Johnson was saying a vote for Barry Goldwater was a vote for annihilation, and that he, in contrast, was the candidate of love. Except exactly one month before the ad aired, Congress handed Johnson a for a U.S. war that eventually killed 5 million people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. 

They have been using this trick for 60 years. Democrats have us so terrified of the right that we will sign off on any atrocity as long as Team Blue does it. Bill Clinton , Obama supersized the war on terror, and Biden is to blame for the Gaza genocide, not Trump. 

Democrats have sat in the White House for 20 of the past 32 years. They Wall Street, after it blew up the economy, and criminal bankers from prosecution. Democrats climate change accords and a historic and boom that has baked in climate catastrophe. They , passed , the far right to the courts, mass incarceration, the “most intrusive surveillance apparatus in the world,” and a massive immigration prison system.

Harris promises more of the same: more border cruelty, more global warming, more genocide. ������Ƶ of the same threats we hear every election: “This election … is the most important of our lives.”&�Բ�����;

Instead we should beware that Gaza is a threat of genocides to come.

I have reported from border cities such as Tijuana and Matamoros that have become killing fields as a result of our policies that have spawned brutal wars, criminal cartels, and climate chaos. By 2050 climate refugees could number 1.2 billion, according to . Harris’ vow to be “” than Trump on the border means more violence, deaths, and racism. Ratcheting up anti-immigrant policies as their numbers increase could bring genocide to our borders.

We cannot throw 90% of humanity under the bus. If we don’t end the razing of Gaza, we will throw open the gates of hell. Genocide is like COVID-19 and climate change: Borders won’t stop it. 

We can succumb to defeatism and believe Harris will never agree to an arms embargo and permanent cease-fire. 

Or we can remember that every movement that has made the world better—labor, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, LGBTQ rights—had an absolute belief they would win. They refused compromises, half measures, and surrendering. 

There can be no compromise in the fight for Palestine. If not now, when?

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit��.

What she was looking for wasn’t an accountability process for her abusive ex-boyfriend, however, but a means of addressing the trust broken by her friends who didn’t believe that the abuse was real.

Space for Change is a collaborative program that aims to hold community members accountable for domestic violence, provide education to prevent future violence, and offer healing circles that bring the survivor together with loved ones who were not supportive when the survivor needed them. It was this last option that Trixie needed.

Trixie’s case is not a rare phenomenon. Because social isolation is such a common side effect of domestic violence, and because loneliness is one of the most cited reasons why people end up returning to unsafe relationships, we advocates saw a great need for ways to heal the harm that can ripple out from these situations. Often, friends and family who don’t believe survivors, who side with the abuser, or who walk away when they are needed most can lead the survivor to feel like they do not have the emotional or logistical support to leave the relationship.

Several of Trixie’s friends didn’t believe her when she first told them about the abuse in the relationship. She was “just overreacting,” they said. Her boyfriend was “such a great guy.” “How could he be responsible for the things she claimed he was doing?” they asked.

Now that she was out of the relationship—and without any support from those friends—she wanted to know if there could be a way to salvage those friendships, or if she should give them up as a casualty to the abuse so that she could move on.

How to Set Up a Healing Circle

Our Space for Change program is a collaboration between our domestic violence organization and the Conflict Resolution Center of Santa Cruz County, another local nonprofit. Using restorative justice approaches to domestic violence is relatively new for social service nonprofits, so we’ve found that having our domestic violence advocates work alongside experienced mediators in general restorative justice programs, neighborhood courts, and juvenile re-entry programs is an effective partnership. Each organization is able to fill in the gaps of the other’s knowledge and skill sets.

Space for Change offers three avenues for restorative justice that participants can choose from: a community accountability process for the person who caused domestic violence, which is common in many restorative justice programs; community education, which aims to teach allies and loved ones of survivors about the dynamics of domestic violence so that they can be safer, more effective support people for their survivor; and healing circles.

When setting up a healing circle like Trixie’s, there’s a lot of initial work from the service providers long before any meetings take place. Either a mediator or an advocate meets individually with the people involved to see where that person stands in regard to the situation at hand. Does everyone have the same understanding of what occurred? The timeline of events? The material facts of the case, setting aside personal emotions and interpretations about those events? A Walnut Avenue advocate might also be present at some or all of the meetings to address domestic-violence-specific concerns, such as correcting a misunderstanding about coercive control or offering peer emotional support for a moment of processing.

The purpose of so much work prior to actual group conversations is to gauge each person’s willingness to participate, their openness to having their perspective challenged, and whether their goal for a facilitated conversation (or series of conversations) is something both realistic and within our scope of service. Otherwise, we run the risk of inviting people with conflicting needs and agendas into a space where judgment, defensiveness, victim blaming, and re-traumatization are high possibilities.

A Path Forward

Trixie’s case is still ongoing. Unfortunately, some of her friends have chosen to side with her ex-boyfriend, and although it’s been painful for Trixie, she’s also expressed relief that at least she doesn’t have to wonder about those friendships anymore. She can grieve them and, eventually, move on. Other friendships appear to be salvageable, with time and careful communication. Although she has not found everything she’d hoped for, Trixie has expressed gratitude for the healing circle and how it has helped her clarify what she needs to receive from her loved ones to move forward and identify which people she wants involved in that healing process.

In crisis intervention, our focus is on the survivor and the person causing harm, and rightfully so. But this view doesn’t include the ways in which domestic violence ripples out into those two people’s family, friends, and community—and this is where restorative justice could be one of the most useful tools we have for addressing the casualties of other relationships, mitigating isolation of the survivor and encouraging accountability for the person who caused harm.

I’ve found restorative justice to be one of the most challenging approaches to domestic violence, but also the most rewarding when the people involved are participating with genuine desire to find a path forward. It allows personal autonomy and a tailored approach to justice that historically has not been a common experience with the legal system. This allows survivors, families, and communities to strengthen their own relationships together. I’ve been honored to be a part of that process with survivors like Trixie.

This story was by , and is reprinted here with permission.

Harris walked directly up to Trump, extended her hand, and leaned in, even after it was clear that he had no intention of greeting her. In introducing herself, Harris pronounced her name, “COMMA-LA,” clearly and correctly, leaving him no excuses to ever mispronounce it again.��

Harris was confident, in control, and in command of the night.��

Gender dynamics were on display for much of the high-stakes debate, which Trump spent showing and telling his brand of masculinity to voters. He was divisive, demeaning, and distracting, much of his behavior a reminder of his four years in office and his continued words and actions on the campaign trail. During most of the 90-minute exchange, he ignored the two Black women on stage—avoiding eye contact with Harris and rarely addressing moderator Linsey Davis—intentionally choosing to largely engage the only other white man present, moderator David Muir.��

When Harris addressed Trump, she referred to him respectfully as “the former president.” But at no point did he address Harris by her first or last name, nor by her title. Instead, Trump made frequent references to “her boss” when mentioning President Joe Biden in an effort to diminish Harris’ leadership and agency. 

The candidates’ microphones were muted while their opponents spoke, a rule set when Biden was the candidate and one that Harris unsuccessfully fought to reverse. But her facial expressions, ranging from exhausted to incredulous to amused, did the talking as an often scowling Trump made various false statements on , , and his repeated claim that he won the 2020 election.��

He tried to control the stage—and at times attempted to dominate Harris. “I’m talking now, if you don’t mind, please. Does that sound familiar?” Trump said sarcastically at one point when Harris attempted to interject, referencing Harris saying “I’m speaking” to Vice President Mike Pence in a 2020 debate after he tried to interrupt her. Toward the end of the debate, Trump essentially tried to shush her again, simply saying, “Quiet, please,” during an answer on how he would handle the war on Russia. 

There was also no live audience at the debate, but the audience Harris was speaking to was clear. She had two goals on Tuesday: to speak directly to voters who may just be learning about her candidacy, which is still barely 50 days old, and to expose Trump to viewers, reminding them of his temperament and tone.

She did both with a smile and a laugh, which he has also ridiculed, while using Trump’s own tactics to draw him out. When asked a question about immigration—a thorny issue for her as vice president—Harris’ response quickly shifted the subject from one that inflames voters to one that inflamed Trump: his rallies, and in particular, the implication that his crowds are starting to dwindle. 

“He’s going to talk about immigration a lot tonight even when it’s not the subject that is being raised,” Harris said before proceeding to change the topic herself.

“I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said. “What you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you, the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you.”

Instead of responding to Harris’ claims that Trump intentionally sabotaged federal legislation to reform immigration or attacking her record on the issue, before repeating a bizarre, racist, and false claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in small-town communities across the country. Contrast shown. 

Heading into Tuesday night, Trump had referred to his opponent as “crazy,” “dumb,” “crooked,” a liar, “grossly incompetent,” “low IQ,” and “weak.” While it was initially unclear whether he would show his contempt for Harris on stage, he was ultimately unable to resist.��

By the end of the night, Harris shut down every stereotype he has tried to pin on her. When he doubled down on questioning her Blackness, Harris pointed to the response as part of a stale playbook rooted in racism and sexism that should be a relic of our politics. 

Ahead of the debate, Trump insisted on Truth Social that “no boxes or artificial lifts” be allowed during the debate for the shorter Harris, implying that to do so would be a form of cheating. In the end, it was the former president, almost a foot taller than Harris, who came across as smaller.

This story was originally published by and is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license. This column first appeared in The Amendment, a by Errin Haines, The 19th’s editor-at-large.

Among the greenery, he has spotted an orchid: Dracula morleyi. Blotted in black with a flash of white at the center, it’s barely bigger than a fingernail. “This place is full of so much biodiversity,” he grins. “Scientists don’t even know about most of it.”

Ovando is a guide at Los Cedros Protective Forest, a of cloud forest in the northwest Ecuadorian Andes, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas.

This tropical haven—home to a , including the critically endangered black-and-chestnut eagle and brown-headed spider monkey, jaguars, endemic frogs, more than 300 species of birds, 600 kinds of moths, and 200 varieties of orchids—is at the forefront of a global movement to recognize the legal rights of the natural world.

The movement is rooted in the common Indigenous belief that nature—from the Andean mountains to Amazonian rivers right down to a single soldier ant—is a system to which human beings belong and with which they must harmoniously coexist. The legal theory argues that these ecosystems and species have intrinsic rights that should be protected in the same way as those of humans.

“The idea that rocks, rivers, and animals are alive and so should be granted a legal status is a core aspect of Indigenous worldviews,” says César Rodríguez-Garavito, professor of clinical law and director of NYU School of Law’s , an initiative attempting to further nonhuman rights and the larger web of life. “Indigenous peoples have turned that belief into practices of reciprocity with nature, through ceremonies, use of medicinal plants, and more.”

The planet faces a human-led that has already wiped out entire species and risks destroying whole ecosystems. This destruction would accelerate under authoritarian regimes and right-wing agendas around the globe, including Project 2025 in the United States. Los Cedros is the world’s leading example of how non-anthropocentric laws can be used to effectively defend the planet.

“By putting ourselves [humans] outside of nature, we’re hurting ourselves,” says , an ecologist at the University of Oregon who first visited Los Cedros in 1998 and has since returned many times. “We live within the system of nature, we rely on it, and it’s part of us. The rights of nature recognizes this in a way that old laws haven’t.”

WATCH: Does a Forest Have Rights? In Ecuador, It Does.

So-called “rights of nature” arguments, a novel conservation strategy dating back to the 1990s, have been lodged in 397 cases across 34 countries and even the United Nations, according to the . These cases have been brought from Bolivia to Brazil to Uganda, as well as Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. 

Some cases have broadly recognized the rights of , , , and even the entirety of , whereas others have focused on species like in the North Sea, in Panama, or a specific animal, such as , who was living in a cage in New York. In one particularly creative case this year, campaigners succeeded in getting music streaming platforms to .

In Ecuador, the groundwork was set in 2008 when, thanks to lobbying from Indigenous groups, the country that included the rights of Pacha Mama, in essence stating that Mother Nature has the same rights as people.

But Los Cedros’ story began much earlier. Today, the reserve is owned by the state, but in 1988, the land was purchased by Josef DeCoux, an American environmentalist who managed a scientific station at the heart of the reserve until his death in May 2024. Photo by Bitty Roy

Bit by bit, with the help of friends and nonprofits including Friends of the Earth Sweden and Australia’s , DeCoux bought land in the area in order to preserve it. For many years, he lived in a shack deep in the forest.

“I fell in love with the unique beauty of the place,” said DeCoux, during a visit to the monitoring station in Los Cedros shortly before his death following a years-long battle with cancer. “I immediately knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to this forest. And that’s what I’ve done.”

DeCoux worked with Indigenous communities in the surrounding Manduriacos Valley to build local support for the effort, resulting in Los Cedros securing state conservation status in 1994. “People stopped shooting all the monkeys,” he added.

“They appreciated the reserve and its value, and how it protects the watershed.”

As a result, Los Cedros—which ranges from 3,000 to 9,000 feet in altitude and is crossed by four rivers—thrived, in contrast to the suffered by the surrounding, highly endangered Andean cloud forest. Under an open-door policy aimed at raising the profile of the reserve, scientists came from across the world to study its wealth of biodiversity, with more than now published.

“I could spend time studying a single square meter of Los Cedros and still not understand everything there,” Roy says. “Western Ecuador is head and shoulders above the rest of the world in terms of amphibian, bird, and plant biodiversity.”

However, conservation efforts hit a major stumbling block in 2017 when the government granted the state-owned mining company ENAMI EP rights to mining concessions for copper and gold in more than two-thirds of Los Cedros’ landmass.

This is where the rights of nature legislation came into play. Before extraction could begin, a legal challenge was tabled at the Provincial Court by the local government of Cotacachi, a region home to 43 Indigenous communities. After an appeal, the case was then taken to Ecuador’s Constitutional Court. The claimants argued that if mining was to proceed in Los Cedros, it would violate the forest’s constitutional rights, and they demanded the protection of its “right to exist, survive, and regenerate.”&�Բ�����;

After a years-long legal battle, in December 2021, judges at the Constitutional Court finally annulled the concession that had been granted to the mining company, in effect turning a theoretical constitutional text into a tangible, real-world policy.

The unprecedented was one of the first times that any court in the world had ever recognized the rights of nonhuman organisms—and the judges went as far as to state that the law not only applied to Los Cedros and to other protected areas, but, under the terms of the constitution, to any kind of nature within the country of Ecuador.

“There was no case before this, there was no precedent,” added DeCoux. “It was a case of science winning over extractive industries.”

In Los Cedros, the miners were forced to remove their machinery immediately and the court banned all future mining and other extractive activities.

Now, 24 hours a day, the reserve thrums with activity, from the early-morning roars of howler monkeys among the dense canopy to the afternoon squawks of toucans and the buzzes of nocturnal bats swooping after the many critters that fill the night sky.

“It is a great pleasure to observe the greatness of the animal kingdom here every day,” says Ovando, as he watches a pair of yellow-beaked toucans in the distance. “Life is calmer here now. The wildlife is more at ease.”

Follow-up monitoring has also confirmed the early impact of the ruling. As part of a published by the ������Ƶ Than Human Rights Project in June 2024, Rodríguez-Garavito visited Los Cedros twice and found that mining equipment and staff had been removed from the reserve, which remained a “sanctuary” for biodiversity thanks to the ruling. The report concluded that the enforcement of the rights of nature and rulings like Los Cedros “can be effective tools to protect endangered ecosystems.”

“I was positively surprised,” Rodríguez-Garavito says. “Especially because Los Cedros is in the midst of the region with many active mining projects. It should not be taken for granted that these rulings will be properly implemented.”

Proponents argue that the successful use of those rights to defend an ecosystem like Los Cedros has set a powerful precedent, and it is already influencing rulings in Ecuador and beyond. In July, the Indigenous Kitu Kara people won a claiming pollution violated the rights of the Machángara River, which runs through Ecuador’s capital, Quito. In March, Peru the rights of the Marañón River to be free of pollution after a lawsuit was brought by the Kukama Indigenous Women’s organization against the oil company Petroperú. A recent claim relating to Ecuador’s Fierro Urco wetlands even .

“It’s a phenomenon that’s catching fire and that’s spreading very rapidly around the world,” Rodríguez-Garavito says. “Because the Los Cedros case is a sophisticated and detailed judicial decision, it’s being referenced by other courts.”

Nicola Peel, an who first visited Los Cedros in 1999 and testified during the Constitutional Court case, argues that the ruling marks a turning point in global conservation. “I absolutely believe that the time has come for the rights of nature,” she says. “This feels like the natural progression for a new era.”

However, plenty of concerns remain over the long-term success of the ruling in Los Cedros, and rights of nature cases more generally, in the face of powerful extractive industries and limited resources to monitor and enforce legal protections.

“The courts move on to new cases,” Rodríguez-Garavito says. “But the argument behind my study is that researchers, policymakers, and advocates must continue paying attention to implementation. We need to follow what happens after.”

The Ganges River, for example, which is considered sacred by more than a billion Indians, was by the highest court in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, which is home to part of the river, as a “living entity” in 2017, but sewage and industrial waste has continued to pollute the river since then and it mostly .

Rodríguez-Garavito’s findings also highlighted other threats to Los Cedros: mining activities in nearby areas that risk a “spillover effect,” a growing problem with organized crime in Ecuador that could hinder efforts, “grossly insufficient” resources for park rangers, and the passing of DeCoux, who led the movement.

An ongoing challenge is also maintaining the support of locals, some of whom—in situations of poverty, without alternative sources of income, and barely any support from the state—have been tempted by the pay offered by mining. “Companies always offer them good jobs,” Ovando says.

Others are concerned that the ruling could simply boost illegal hunting, logging, and mining outside of the reserve’s borders, which could result in mass biodiversity loss.

“My worry is that Los Cedros will become an island surrounded by private lands that get degraded,” Peel says. “How can we ensure the protection of other areas too?”

But few disagree that the case of Los Cedros, with its beguiling, mist-covered forest, has provided a vision of a future where the rights of the natural world are actively and effectively protected.

“Mining isn’t going to happen here again,” said DeCoux, in a typically direct tone that has driven the conservation success in Los Cedros. “People need to get that into their heads.”

Around this time, my grandmother was poisoned in an inter-clan conflict. On her deathbed, she had a vision and told the family that if they followed the voices from the planes they would weaken, get sick, and die. My grandfather, devastated after her death and trying to avoid an inter-clan war, decided to heed the voices. 

My father was a small child then. He and some of my aunts and uncles have told me these stories since I was a little girl. They walked for a month, from the old lands, now Yasuní, to the river where the bocachico fish run, now Pastaza. On the walk my great-grandfather, Nenkemo, had a dream. In the dream he abandoned his daughter-in-law, my grandmother who had died. The next morning he woke up, ate breakfast, and refused to continue on with the rest. He said that his knee hurt, but everyone knew that he wanted to remain in the forest he loved. The others kept going, and Nenkemo turned back with his spear and blowgun. 

My grandfather and his family had seen the metal machetes, knives, and pots left by previous invaders and thrown from the planes. My grandfather thought of the power of the metal blades that were so resistant and did not rot. Perhaps they will have more of these upstream. They walked to the missionary communities in Pastaza. There they heard the talk of the devil and God and salvation. And within six months, they began to die. 

My grandfather and his brothers, themselves sick and dying, were terrified and irate. They wanted war. The lead missionary, a white woman named Rachel Saint, convinced the Waorani women to break all the men’s spears. She offered them clothes and processed food like sugar and flour, and she preached. The men and women who got close to her got sick. They became racked with fever, many became paralyzed, and many died, including a number of my aunts and uncles. My father, only still a small boy, crossed the river and hid, surviving on raw shrimp. Rachel preached salvation. My father saw slow torture and death. Our resistance was born there. My father later said: We will pretend to go to her church, but we will not believe in her god. She killed our family.

I grew up in the missionary village of Toñampare. My father told me these stories and taught me the beauty and bounty of the forest. At the same time, Rachel seemed to be everywhere, always scolding us, calling us savages, and trying to prohibit our songs and dances and sharing of dreams. Sometimes she would receive visitors from her world. My little brother and I would compete to see who could hear the approaching planes first. And we would sneak to the dirt landing strip to watch the people who seemed to descend from the sky. Once a young white girl visited and I thought she looked so pretty. I harmed myself terribly in a deluded attempt to look more like her. 

I became enchanted with the white people’s things and their promises of salvation. I wanted to learn to speak Spanish, to wear light cotton dresses, to have blue eyes and straight, white teeth. I wanted to know this god who offers eternal life and see what was beyond the horizon, the place that the planes came from. My worried mother tried to dissuade me, a tactic that rarely works with teenagers anywhere in the world. My gentle father did not approve, but did not stand in my way. My desire to learn led me into the arms of the missionaries, led me to face, survive, and escape from forms of abuse I had never imagined, led me to glimpse into the savior’s world and then, like my great grandfather, to turn back to my own.

And my world, the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, was at that moment facing an existential threat. The government had auctioned off Waorani territory to multinational oil companies behind our backs. I joined other Waorani and people from distinct Indigenous nations, some of which had a long and disastrous history of oil exploitation in their territories, to fight the government and oil companies. I realized that they too promised salvation. Oil, they said, would save us and the entire country from the very poverty they created. 

My relatives had sickened and died from polio upon contact with the missionaries. I soon met men and women from Indigenous Kofan territories whose relatives died from cancer and whose children died from bathing and drinking water in rivers contaminated by the oil companies.

And then it hit me: The authors of our destruction are the very ones who preach our salvation. Salvation from what? From being Waorani? From living healthy and rich lives in the forest? From discussing our dreams in the morning? From being irreverently funny and laughing all the time? From dancing naked in our palm-thatched longhouses? From living in harmony with the very place they want to destroy? 

If you would like to invade our territory and destroy our home, our people, our language, and culture, have the courage at least to say so. Stop offering salvation to the people you want to eliminate. And allow me to be clear as well: We will resist. We will fight to continue to make our lives in the forest, to speak Wao Tededo, to share our dreams in the mornings, to laugh at you and each other. We will fight to keep your oil companies from poisoning our land and rivers. We will fight, it turns out, even for you, by stopping the global devastation brought on by climate injustice. We will fight to continue to be Waorani. And we will not be saved. 

This essay is inspired by Nemonte Nenquimo’s forthcoming memoir,

Almost no one has asked what men need to do in order to remedy the problem that the job has been off-limits to more than 50% of the talent pool since … forever.

At the 2024 Democratic National Convention, that changed. Democratic men made choices that were entirely new, or exceedingly rare, in support of a woman presidential candidate and in service to the nation. It was unprecedented.

As a , I’ve argued that the biggest impediment to electing a woman as president is not a dearth of qualified woman candidates but a . The fault is not in the candidates but in American culture.

As it turns out, men in politics were also to blame.

When faced with competitive women as presidential candidates, many men historically have leveraged their power and privilege in ways that undercut women’s candidacies. But the Democratic convention was different.

For the first time in history, men in a major political party offered unified support for a woman candidate. They refrained from strategically deploying the stereotype that strong women are not likable, as .

They accepted the party’s overwhelming support for a woman candidate, instead of insisting on being , as Bernie Sanders did in 2016.

And they put their career on hold to support their spouse’s candidacy instead of undercutting it by offering support to primary campaign challengers, as Bob Dole did when .

“Relinquishing Male Power”

Rhetorical choices reveal the underlying motivations of individuals and groups. The messaging of Democratic men at the 2024 convention signaled that their party was finally ready to do something that no major party has ever done. They were not only nominating a woman candidate but relinquishing male power and privilege.

Biden surprised everyone when he pulled out of the race from flagging poll results, skeptical donors and party leaders, and nervous down-ballot candidates. Any resentment he may have felt, however, did not turn into pique or pettiness at the convention.

When the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Joe,” he instructed, “,” and promised to be “the best volunteer the Harris and Walz camp have ever seen.” He didn’t just give up his candidacy. He ceded his authority—to the people and the party, but also to Harris, specifically.

Although Secretary of Transportation and may still harbor his own presidential aspirations, he did not use his convention speaking slot to audition for the 2028 campaign. Instead, he performed the role that historically has been reserved for women at political conventions: pitching the party’s message via the perspective of a parent whose primary concern is “, .

The convention speech given by the presidential nominee’s spouse has historically been an opportunity for prospective first ladies to portray their husbands as patriarchs of an ideal American family. In his speech, second gentleman Doug Emhoff of a “complicated” and “blended family” with no patriarch but two active partners, equally capable of professional success and deep commitment to family.

When Harris selected Tim Walz as her running mate, and the who deemed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro the best strategic choice. Walz’s by one news outlet as the message of a “Midwest ‘man’s man’” and the “antidote to toxic MAGA masculinity.” Even Ms. magazine touted it as a “.”

But Walz did something Americans are not used to seeing “man’s men” do. He made it clear that he could work not just with, but for, a woman. And that everyone should.

After that the election was in the metaphorical “fourth quarter,” the team was “down a field goal,” and the offense was “driving down the field,” Coach Walz made it clear that, as in his high school coaching days, . Their leader was Kamala Harris, and “Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is experienced. And Kamala Harris is ready.”

Contented Second Fiddles

To be clear, Harris’ early success as a presidential candidate should be attributed, first and foremost, to her to a series of unprecedented events and to the of the Black women who have long sustained the Democratic Party.

But the men of the convention made a collective choice to embrace “,” as an Axios reporter described it, and treat Harris like a commander in chief. That should be unremarkable. Women have been doing it for presidential candidates since … forever. But to see so many white men stepping back so enthusiastically for a woman of color was almost unbelievable.

Stepping back is not the same thing as stepping away. That’s important, because the broader message of the convention was about how to create an inclusive, democratic community. When you need to make a circle wider, and let more people in, you step back. That doesn’t leave you out of the circle. It makes your circle bigger.

The convention offered an expansive circle that includes , , and serve as , and .

It also includes a presidential candidate who looks like no other president in U.S. history. That’s a big step forward for the country.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

As the debate floated among leftists on social media, the argument shifted from whether this well-known neo-Nazi slogan is acceptable to use to whether it is an accurate reflection of our current reality. “[It] would appear we have a Zionist Operated Government,” a with more than 40,000 followers suggested. “Has anyone ever noticed that?”

White nationalists fashioned the term “ZOG” to refer to an antisemitic conspiracy theory in which “Zionist” is used to reference a shadowy global cabal of Jews who have infiltrated the United States. According to this conspiracy theory, this ethnic other has now taken the reins of power to undermine national sovereignty, racial integrity, and refashion the U.S. to act in the interests of a demonic power. 

Though this idea is overwhelmingly found on the right, this term’s brief revival also lends credence to concerns over antisemitism on the left and reveals a key misunderstanding of Israel’s role in global empire. Israel is not controlling U.S. policy. Instead, it is global Western empire itself determining the future of Palestine.

A Western Colony

The claim that Zionists control the U.S. can sometimes emerge from the “Israel lobby” thesis, an unfounded allegation that a network of pro-Israel lobbying groups are primarily responsible for manufacturing America’s Zionist consensus. This theory is often highlighted to critique real pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who .

But this framework is also often used in more dubious ways, suggesting a small, elite cadre (usually of Jews) are pulling the strings of geopolitics. However, that framing misunderstands the way both historical Zionists and Western political leaders view Israel as an outpost for Western interests in the Middle East.

While the earliest Jewish Zionists were motivated by what they saw as perennial antisemitism, they always acknowledged their success required imperial sponsorship. Zionism’s founder, Theodor Herzl, always wanted Israel to be a client state of Western empires, even reaching out to South African colonialist to aid this quest.

As , William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University, notes in an interview with , Herzl “was not wedded to the notion of a Jewish state.” Instead, he “wrote about many different forms of political organization” ranging from “an autonomous province in the Ottoman Empire” to “a crown colony,” and even “a protectorate under European control.” Ultimately, Herzl and the overall Zionist movement desired “a Jewish national home … secured by international law.” Similarly, Zionist theorist Leon Pinsker never envisioned Israel as an independent country but as simply one component of a European imperial arrangement.

While Zionism often used the language of national liberation movements, which were popular at the time, this was again part of the re-nativism common to colonial movements: to imagine yourself as the land’s new indigenous people. In reality, Ashkenazi immigration was intentionally allowed by the British during their mandate between 1917 and 1948, who also positively affirmed the creation of a Jewish state as a way of maintaining a stronghold in the formerly Ottoman-controlled region. This was not out of an abundance of care for Jewish immigrants escaping pogroms and the Holocaust, but as a way of maintaining British interests in perpetuity.

In 1920, Winston Churchill, who was soon to be prime minister, noted in the that supporting Zionism was a way of subverting communism. He thought he could use Zionism to refashion Jewish identity and challenge the Bolshevik revolution in Russia by offering Jews Israel instead. Since Herzl wanted to create a European-style country in the Middle East, this could become a trade hub to move Western economic interests and control the increasingly important oil trade.

The logic harkened back to European political ideas, with figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte urging Jews to “return” to Zion during his Palestine Campaign as a way of undermining British trade pathways to India. Laurence Oliphant, a Christian Zionist who encouraged survivors of the 1881 Kiev pogrom to head to Palestine, argued in 1879 that if Ashekanzim created settlements in historic Palestine (which he originally called the Plan for Gilead) then he could secure “the political and economic penetration of Palestine by Britain.”

This process became clearer after World War I when the political and economic importance of the region came into focus for Western powers, and especially so after World War II, as the U.S. became an economic hegemon. The U.S. began looking to Israel as its own outpost, acknowledging in 1966 that it could no longer remain a global watchdog and would need friends in the region. As Arab countries experienced decolonization that often challenged U.S. corporate interests, the U.S. knew it would need a regional ally they could flood with defense spending.

This became a form of “military Keynesianism” through which the could fortify domestic consent, and then push back on the growth of Arab nationalism and insurgent movements across the Global South. “Israel proved its ability to militarily overpower its neighbors,” writes Jason Farber in a 2021 article. “If made an ally, American power brokers realized, the United States could use Israel to exert control indirectly.”

U.S. support for Israel only escalated after the Six-Day War, when Israel became an even more important part of the U.S. strategy in the region, pushing countries like Egypt into economically subservient partnerships. By 1973 the U.S. had offered more than . In 1974, Pres. Richard Nixon increased that sum to a staggering $2.6 billion. Since then, aid to Israel has steadily increased, with $3.8 billion being offered in 2023 and an additional $14.3 billion offered in April 2024. The War on Terror only further motivated a direct U.S. investment in Israel, and the U.S. has sent a slew of military leaders to Israel to train them on the methods of counterinsurgency that were then used to squash uprisings in Palestine.

As the dollar amount increased, Israel became a lynchpin of Western domination in the region. As Egyptian-born scholar pointed out in 1969, when the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights were newly captured, the majority of Israeli companies that invested in Africa were “owned by Western monopolies,” such as those in the U.S., Britain, France, and West Germany. “Israel as an outpost of Western capital and neo-colonialist ideologies fulfills the prophecies and aspirations of the imperialists,” El-Messiri wrote.

One Empire, Many States

If pro-Israel forces were occupying the U.S. government, that would imply there are two different interests at play, but this misunderstands the relationship between Israel and the U.S. Rather than the U.S. and Israel operating as two independent states brokering a self-serving relationship, the U.S. and Israel operate as a single hegemonic system that mobilizes the Zionist project to stabilize profits and Western interests.

All the while, —birthed by a colonial situation and modeled on Germanic romantic nationalism—is being allowed to decimate indigenous Palestinian communities because political leaders have decided that having a compliant Israel is better than having a rebellious Palestinian republic. The U.S. therefore ensures a state of perpetual conflict, one that has further empowered the defense sector to escalate its investments and profits.

Since 1990, Lockheed Martin, one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the U.S. and a key supplier of arms to Israel, has spent more than $330 million in lobbying efforts. In contrast, AIPAC, the Israel lobby of record, has been a minor player in lobbying, only spending $60 million during that same time period. Lockheed’s stock price skyrocketed over the past year, with one of the biggest jumps happening between Oct. 5, 2023, and Oct. 10, 2023, a trend seen among several other weapons manufacturers.

Even AIPAC has evolved, becoming less a single-issue lobbying group and more of a vessel for corporate and conservative interests, of which Israel is a piece. In the end, a pro-Israel political vision is one that fits nicely in the world of hegemonic transnational corporations that would rather provide their friends with overwhelming control over the future of the Global South than enforce universal human rights.

The strength of the “Israel lobby” actually comes from a decidedly non-Jewish source. Evangelical Christians are the largest pro-Israel constituency in the United States. In fact, Christians United for Israel is the largest pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S., though these Christian Zionists support Israel based on an eschatological belief that Jews must return to Israel so they can face genocide or forced conversion when Jesus returns.

As support for Israel’s genocidal mission in Gaza declines among U.S. voters, there may come a time when the U.S. will need to seek a new ally in the region. If that were to happen, it would force massive shifts in the war through the loss of unquestioned loyalty and military aid, thus opening a window to a new future in the region.

But even that positive change says nothing about the overarching political reality that the U.S. and other powerhouse countries would simply look for other potential allies that will enact their interests across the Global South. In order to get to the heart of this crisis we have to look at the ongoing systems of colonialism and capitalism themselves, which are baked into the country we live in and drive its foreign policy. We have not been captured by an alien power; this is who America has been all along.

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 11:00 a.m. PT on September 27, 2024, to acknowledge the existence and influence of Israel-focused lobbies.��Read our corrections policy here.��

When I interviewed my maternal grandmother, I asked her whether there was ever a bully at her school. Her answer surprised me; she said she was the bully. “I always had soap in my mouth,” she said, punished for “talking back” to her teachers—and punished for speaking her first language: Blackfeet. 

My grandmother was a student at , a church-run, assimilationist boarding school on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. She told me stories about the horrific punishments she endured simply for being Blackfeet and about her classmates who were buried on the school grounds.

Unfortunately, my grandmother’s story is not an anomaly. Instead, her experience is representative of generations of genocidal federal policy. Beginning in 1801, more than operated across the United States, including government-run schools in operation between 1819 and 1969. During this time, multiple generations of my family attended boarding school, including 12 people I’m directly descended from on my maternal side: my grandmother, all four of my great-grandparents, and seven of my eight great-great-grandparents. 

Boarding schools were part of aimed at “civilizing” Native people and eradicating our nations, communities, cultures, languages, religions, and family ties. Indigenous families were either forced or coerced to send their children to boarding schools. Families who refused were denied the money or goods paid to them in exchange for land, as designated in treaty agreements. This coercion was enshrined in an that allowed the secretary of the interior to “withhold rations, clothing and other annuities from Indian parents or guardians who refuse or neglect to send and keep their children of proper school age in some school a reasonable portion of the year.”

Indigenous children were often taken to schools far away from their homes because, as , an Indian school superintendent, said in 1886, “only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated.” My grandmother first attended St. Ignatius Mission, which is about 200 miles south of her home on the Blackfeet Reservation. She later attended the Chemawa Indian Training School in Oregon, 700 miles west of home and two states away. 

Once at school, children experienced what the described as “systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies.” Before stepped foot in a classroom, their long hair—culturally significant for many tribes—was cut to imitate white hairstyles. They were also required to wear military, non-tribal clothing as uniforms, and they were required to speak English—a language many didn’t speak at home. 

It is important to reframe what we mean by “school.” These were sites of exploitation and cultural genocide, not places where Native children were educated. The dominant narrative about boarding schools often excludes or de-emphasizes the role of forced labor, or what some scholars conceptualize as . Many of my family’s stories about boarding school are about working rather than being educated. In fact, unpaid labor was the goal.

A by the Department of the Interior, the first ever to examine the extent of federal boarding schools in the U.S., highlighted the breadth of unpaid labor Native children performed at school: “lumbering, working on the railroad—including on the road and in car shops, carpentering, blacksmithing, fertilizing, irrigation system development, well-digging, making furniture including mattresses, tables, and chairs, cooking, laundry and ironing services, and garment-making, including for themselves and other children in Federal Indian boarding schools.”&�Բ�����;

My family members performed other unpaid duties: My grandmother’s brother worked as a butcher and a barber, while my great-grandpa worked as a rancher. Some children were also taken out of school to perform unpaid labor in the surrounding community. In California, thousands of Native children were on white ranches, farms, hotels, and households.

A 1928 report by the Institute for Government Research on the social and economic conditions of Native peoples, known as the , notes that Indian boarding schools violated child labor laws in most states. And though it was released 12 years before my grandmother was born, the findings did not lessen the impact of her experience at boarding school.

In addition to robbing children of their cultural and linguistic identities, boarding schools had other devastating impacts. Children were beaten and . They experienced overcrowding, food deprivation and , and widespread , including tuberculosis. 

They were forcibly separated from the love and connection and support and validation of their families and communities. They spent years working as unpaid laborers without receiving an education that could aid them after graduation. Some children died before ever having the opportunity to become parents or eventually elders. These experiences have left generational wounds on survivors, their families, and broader Indigenous communities that continue to hurt to this day. 

Agenda of Assimilation 

Boarding schools were just one part of the federal government’s efforts to eradicate tribal nations. As boarding schools sought to eliminate tribal languages, religions, and cultures among Native children, the federal government passed policies making these cultural practices illegal in Native communities. In 1883, the banned tribal religious practice. The Indian Religious Crimes Code was reversed in 1934, but it wasn’t until the passage of the that all legal restrictions on practice were lifted. Still, issues remain today, particularly when it comes to and . In 1887, the use of tribal languages was ; this was not reversed until the 1990 passage of the , or NALA. 

The of 1887 also had devastating economic, cultural, and political consequences for tribal communities. The act converted communal tribal land into private property and turned individual Native men into private property owners. Tribal landowners were forced to make land agriculturally productive, even in areas where the land was not suitable as such, and the U.S. government assessed their success, or lack thereof. This assimilative tactic drastically shifted, or attempted to shift, Native peoples’ relationship to the land at the same time that their children were being removed from their homes and forced to labor for white people. 

The impacts of boarding school and these policies can be understood through the lens of , a term conceptualized by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Ph.D., a Hunkpapa/Oglala Lakota social worker, in 1995. Historical trauma is the idea that intergenerational, compounded trauma has measurable impacts on the mental health of the descendants of traumatic events, including the forced separation of Native children from their families. 

that asked Native participants how often they thought about historical losses, such as the seizure of land and boarding schools, found that “perceptions of historical loss are not confined to the more proximate elder generation, but are salient in the minds of many adults of the current generation.” This generational trauma has impacted how families interact with each other: My grandmother didn’t teach my mother Blackfeet because she didn’t want her to be discriminated against for speaking English with a Blackfeet accent. 

Boarding schools have also impacted the physical health of Native Americans: Research suggests that boarding school survivors are more likely to have , such as diabetes, hypertension, and arthritis, than Native people who didn’t attend boarding school. 

Boarding schools have also had other material impacts on Native communities. The jobs students were training for often available back home, making it difficult to find meaningful employment after leaving school. Today, Native people continue to face higher rates of and , and lower rates of homeownership compared to white people. Native children also continue to be , and are disproportionately impacted by child welfare reports, investigations, and out-of-home placements.

Native people know that the legacy of boarding schools continues to impact our communities’ physical health, mental health, housing and economic stability, educational attainment, parenting and family functioning, cultural knowledge, and more. And yet, there has been limited storytelling—in media, academic research, and government reports—that measures these impacts.

Contemporary Truth Telling

For many people in Indian Country, it is quotidian to share stories about boarding schools. Boarding schools are openly discussed in my family: My grandma, and great-grandma when she was alive, spoke about their time as students, about their friends who died of poisoning from the lye in the soap placed in their mouths, and about the labor they performed. I grew up having family picnics on the grounds of the boarding school my great-grandmother attended; her grandmother is buried in the school’s cemetery. 

Over the past 50-plus years, there have been a handful of federal government programs attempting to reckon with the tragedy of boarding schools. In 1969, a decade after my grandmother left boarding school, a scalding report titled “” illuminated the disastrous impacts of boarding schools, noting that they were “a failure when measured by any reasonable set of criteria.” In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, was passed, which prioritized placing Native children with family members and tribal members before placing them with non-Native families. 

that “there is no resource that is more vital to the continued existence and integrity of Indian tribes than their children.” Advocates for the bill recognized that removing Native children from their families—through both boarding schools and the child welfare system—had devastating impacts on both the children and their broader communities. In 1990, NALA passed, allowing the use of tribal languages in schools for the first time since the late 19th century. These legal efforts focused on ensuring Native children stayed connected to their families and cultures but stopped short of collecting testimony from boarding school survivors.

In recent years, there has been increased media attention paid to boarding schools, notably after were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada in 2021. There’s also been in-depth reporting in about the extent of sexual abuse in boarding schools in the U.S., and an episode of , a hit FX show that aired for three seasons from 2021 to 2023, about the traumatic impacts of residential schools. 

Since Deb Haaland, a , became secretary of the interior in 2021, there has been a surge of federal interest in truth telling from boarding school survivors and their descendants. In 2021, after decades of advocacy from tribes and Native organizations, the Department of the Interior launched the , which included an extensive federal report on the impacts of boarding schools, the first-ever inventory of federal boarding schools, and the collection of testimony from boarding school survivors. 

Part of the initiative is the project, launched in 2022, in which Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland toured the U.S. to collect testimony from . Boarding school survivors and their descendants were also invited to publicly speak about their experiences. For some survivors, this was their first time speaking about their boarding school experiences. Each event had and break rooms to support survivors. 

The Department of the Interior is also funding the , a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, to continue to gather testimony from boarding school survivors over the next few years and create a public oral history repository. These efforts will ensure that the stories and experiences of survivors are preserved for future generations and, survivors hope, help for the atrocities perpetrated. 

Survival and Resistance 

On the legislative front, advocates are pushing for the passage of the , which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2023 and the U.S. House in 2024. Truth and reconciliation efforts are not an uncommon response to violence like cultural genocide. Dozens of states across the globe have attempted truth and reconciliation efforts. Some consider Argentina’s to be the first major effort, though the 1995 , led by Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, is perhaps the most well-known. There have been a handful of commissions focused on the impacts of colonialism, including one in and one in Maine examining the placement of since the 1970s.

The truth and reconciliation effort that may most closely mirror what is being proposed in the U.S. is Canada’s on the legacy of Indian residential schools, which is a result of the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history. Like the U.S., the Canadian government and Christian churches operated assimilationist boarding schools for Indigenous youths in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

This commission was not the Canadian government’s first attempt to support boarding school survivors. In 1998, it established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which distributed to Indigenous community initiatives that addressed impacts of residential schools until federal funding was cut in 2010. After the truth and reconciliation lawsuit, the commission interviewed more than 6,500 witnesses between 2007 and 2013. In December 2015, they released a document with , ranging from adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a model for reconciliation to providing stable funding for community-based alternatives to incarceration for Indigenous peoples. 

However, progress to fulfill these calls to action has been slow. The Yellowhead Institute, which tracked progress of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission over five years, noted that at the rate the Canadian government was moving, it wouldn’t finish implementing the until 2081.

An unintended consequence of the commission has been the growth of boarding school “denialism” among non-Indigenous people in Canada. In a from the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, the increase in denialism was identified as a top 12 concern held by boarding school survivors, descendants, and families. For example, after mass graves of 215 children were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in 2021, some people, including political commentators, priests, and Danielle Pierce, the premier of the province of Alberta, downplayed the news as a . Some denialists went so far as to to the Kamloops site to “see for themselves” if children were indeed buried there. 

Denialism is the final “” in Genocide Watch’s 10 stages of genocide, a widely used policy tool developed by Gregory Stanton, Ph.D. This increase in denialism necessitates the importance of storytelling. Truth and reconciliation—or in the case of the U.S. bill, truth and healing—is not a panacea for the material and psychological impacts on individuals, communities, and families. But allowing people to tell their stories is an important step. If passed, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act would establish a commission tasked with investigating the genocidal practices of boarding schools and would require the federal government to hold public hearings with survivors, their families, and communities to help create this document. 

The commission would also attempt to make a record of the number of children who attended federal boarding schools; document the number of children who were abused, went missing, or died in federal boarding schools; and outline the ongoing impacts of boarding schools on survivors and their families. As Native communities throughout the country continue to record their stories—and the Truth and Healing bill advances through Congress—many questions remain. 

What does it mean for the same government that created these violent policies to lead a so-called “healing” process mere decades later? Does the focus on reconciliation rather than healing focus too much on perpetrators and those who benefit from colonialism “coming together” with those they harmed, versus focusing on support of victims and survivors? Is truth telling inherently beneficial to the truth teller? Or might it be traumatic for people to share their stories without tangible action coming from it? 

Boarding school survivors and tribal communities have made one thing clear: A nuanced reckoning of the expansive, intergenerational impacts of boarding schools is absolutely necessary, and tribally driven solutions based on Indigenous healing—not government or church abdication—must be centered. 

When my grandmother’s older sister passed away in 2020, my family got access to 30 pages of scanned files from Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon, which they both attended. In these files are report cards, notes on her medical needs, comments from teachers, and other correspondence. One report card includes a “citizenship” section, which lists her “good” behavior (one item, “dragging mattress down hall in dust”) and “poor” behaviors (12 items, including “did not go to church”). Throughout the scanned documents are references to the sisters’ supposedly “unstable life” at home on the reservation. 

Further down in the files is a scanned letter from my great-grandparents written on Nov. 10, 1954. On one side is a letter asking that their daughters, my grandmother and her sister, be sent home on the train. They were 14 and 15. “You send them home this week” is the last sentence, written in pencil with each word underlined in blue ink. On the back, they wrote the train schedule from Salem, Oregon, where the boarding school was, to Browning, the main town on the Blackfeet Reservation. They also sent train fare. The next page is the response from the principal of the school. “We are at a loss to understand just what your intention is in the matter,” she wrote. But by Nov. 15, 1954, they were both withdrawn from the school.

Native people have always resisted colonialism and fought to protect our families, communities, cultures, and nations. When my grandmother and her sister were at boarding school, their parents tried to be actively engaged in their children’s lives—and worked proactively to get them back. When tribal religions were illegal, my family continued to practice, pray, and hold ceremonies. 

As I am writing this, wild mint, yarrow, bee balm, white sage, and sweet grass that I collected last night with my mother are drying in my room. I’ll use them for medicinal teas and smudging throughout the year, and we’ll gather more next summer. My family continues to gather, prepare, and use Blackfeet plant medicine. Despite policies intentionally trying to obliterate our culture, my relatives still passed down this ancestral knowledge and love.

We are running out of time to capture the vital stories of boarding school survivors. My grandma is the last living boarding school survivor in my family; her parents and her siblings who attended boarding school have passed away. Advocates say the impacts on parenting, family relationships, and tribal communities and economies—both psychological and very material—need to be part of the conversation to truly understand the impacts of boarding schools and the contemporary disparities and injustices still facing Indigenous communities today. 

Boarding schools took a lot away from my family. Truth telling is one step toward government and church accountability, public education, and perhaps most importantly, helping families like mine rebuild what was taken from us for future generations. Truth telling can help us rebuild our relationships to each other, strengthen and revitalize our cultural practices, and begin to heal, on our own terms, from the ongoing violence of colonization. ��

But today’s truths—especially those deemed uncomfortable—are more often disregarded and downtrodden, contested and challenged. Whether it’s the true cause of the Civil War, the Big Lie that fueled a deadly insurrection, or trans children deserving access to medically necessary care, every issue is treated as if it has two equal sides worthy of being debated. But more often than not, the hard truth is that one “side” aims to uphold the greater good, while another hoards power, resources, and control. 

Our “Truth” issue, the last print magazine we’ll release before the 2024 presidential election, puts the responsibility of both telling the truth and upholding it squarely in the realm of the collective. As it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate fact from fiction, we offer some clear signposts for consideration: Texas high-schooler Marium Zahra makes the case for children to be free from the threat of gun violence. Journalist Nico Lang reports on drag queens standing up for our collective right to express ourselves. And, as public libraries are subjected to budget cuts and undue scrutiny, Erin Jones chronicles radical bibliophiles who are finding creative ways to get books in the hands of the children—and adults—who need them.

As we face a presidential contest that again includes a candidate who intentionally weaponizes misinformation, it’s critical to hone our ability to recognize the truth. This isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon, but it is an accelerating one, with the rise of artificial intelligence, “deep fakes,” and disinformation making that task more difficult—which is why this issue closes with an insightful game about how we can better differentiate between fact and fiction.

In these moments, calling upon our history—the movements and the moments that help us reckon with where we’ve fallen short—is imperative. Abaki Beck, a fifth-generation descendant of Native “boarding school” survivors, thoughtfully probes whether truth and reconciliation commissions can live up to their title, and whether “reconciliation” is even possible in the face of cultural genocide. And, as we consider how history influences our understanding of the truth, James Tracy spotlights Stonebreakers, a documentary that examines the complicated movement to remove confederate and colonialist statues.

We think about each issue of YES! as a time capsule, one that readers can return to in the future to better understand this moment. Our deepest hope is that this issue will be exactly that—a transparent snapshot of a moment where we, collectively, decided to hold the truth above all else.

Be well,
Evette Dionne

For decades, people in the sex trade have been raising awareness about on their livelihoods and well-being. Their demands have largely remained the same: Sex workers want , the , and an environment that allows them to when it happens. 

Unfortunately, the rampant criminalization of sex workers and their clients has remained a barrier to these basic human rights. However, , an anthology that I edited, suggests an immediate step: Bolster harm reduction within the sex trade to arm sex workers with the knowledge and resources necessary to prevent and respond to violence and exploitation within their work and personal lives.

Shame is not a productive agent of change, and robbing people of resources only decreases their chances of survival.”

As I write in the book, harm reduction is “the understanding that shame is not a productive agent of change, and robbing people of resources only decreases their chances of survival.” Sometimes, harm reduction can include providing safety supplies, such as condoms, lube, sanitizer, boric acid, and bad date lists. Other times, harm reduction can include safety planning and ensuring there’s community accountability and room for self-care. Harm reduction can also include broad access to low-income and affordable housing, safe drug-consumption spaces, and rights-based policy reforms. Harm reduction is a “blueprint for survival and the belief in something beyond survival,” I write. “‘Just say no’ isn’t as effective as ‘What do you need to be OK?’”

Currently, the war on sex trafficking is the dominant sociopolitical approach to the sex trade in the United States. Most local, state, and federal conflate consensual sex work with sex trafficking, thereby pushing sex work underground, where trafficking, , and are actually more likely to occur. Most everything the mainstream media tells us about sex trafficking is and , including the number of people being trafficked. When social services count consensual sex workers as sex trafficking survivors, it , further stigmatizing sex workers and endangering those who are victims of trafficking.

In contrast, consent, self-agency, and sex worker leadership are central to harm reduction. 

Harm-reduction programs that center sex workers—including in Baltimore; , a Black trans-led advocacy organization in New York City; and Aileen’s, a peer-centered organizing and hospitality space for sex workers in Seattle—offer individualized care and classes that help sex workers navigate police harassment and other forms of state violence. These organizations also offer occupational health and safety supplies; meet sex workers where they are, whether on the street or online; and provide peer support free of shame, stigma, and sensationalism. In these programs, sex-trafficking survivors self-identify as such and are connected to additional services as requested. 

Body Autonomy illustrates the ways in which sexuality and sexual labor have been colonized and weaponized against women, femmes, and queer and trans people of color. It includes antidotes from healers of the global majority that encourage us all to reclaim the sanctity of our bodies and our bodily autonomy. “If everyone on Earth felt fulfilled, healed, whole … or at least knew how to access a platform for healing … the world would be a different place,” Melodie Garcia, an erotic service provider, harm reductionist, and writer, says in her piece in Body Autonomy. “It is absolutely true that people can find this through sex, kink, art, and drugs.”

The truth is marginalized sex workers, including sex workers of color, transgender sex workers, undocumented sex workers, and sex workers with disabilities, in the sex trade, from criminalization to sex trafficking. When policies and social services are with these populations, who are the most marginalized, in mind, everybody benefits. 

As the consensual sex workers I worked with for Body Autonomy affirm, sex work is work—and it is neither inherently disempowering and exploitative, nor is it inherently empowering and glamorous. Like most work, it can often be a combination of all these characteristics and more. If we as a society can embrace this truth, then we can work toward a world where compassion, care, and collaboration are prioritized. 

In order to keep sex workers safe, we must re-learn and re-frame concepts of public safety and public health, uplift compassion, and consider new worlds. Embracing harm reduction can help get us there. 

On the front of her white sheath gown were the names of the 22 children killed during mass shootings in the cities of Uvalde and Allen. After waiting 13 hours, she finally got to speak against , a Texas bill criminalizing drag performances, and accused GOP lawmakers of failing victims and their families by “spending more time in this legislative session targeting drag queens than gun violence.” The provocation struck a nerve: After a Texas House committee member attempted to cut Bandit off before she had concluded her remarks, security escorted Bandit from the room.

Bandit, who resembles a harlequin Dolly Parton when made up in drag, had addressed the Texas Legislature once before: in March of 2023, opposing S.B. 12, which sought to criminalize drag artists who engaged in “sexually oriented performances” in view of minors with a $10,000 fine and a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. In March, Bandit was so nervous that her voice shook during her speech, but during her second visit to the Capitol, she says she was “really fucking angry.” Three children were among the nine people killed after a gunman opened fire in an Allen shopping center on May 6—just four days earlier—and the empty sentiments from conservatives about “protecting kids” rang hollow, she says.

“They don’t actually care about the truth,” she says. “The first time I went to the Capitol, I had a little bit of hope: Oh, they don’t know what they’re talking about. We just need to show them. But these people want to continue to spread their lies. They don’t care about the way this is affecting our community. They just really don’t care.”

Bandit is part of a nationwide grassroots movement of drag performers fighting back against anti-LGBTQ legislation—whether by speaking at state legislatures, joining lawsuits challenging drag bans, organizing rallies and marches, or any other way they can raise their voices. This advocacy has been extraordinarily effective in helping to move the needle on discriminatory laws. Four months after Bandit’s first speech, a federal court declared S.B. 12—which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed into law on June 18, 2023—to be unconstitutional. 

According to the , six states enacted laws over the past few years that could be used to restrict public drag performances; only two of those are currently enforceable, neither of which explicitly names drag performances, while all others have been blocked in court. Courts have issued temporary injunctions pausing drag bans in Florida and Montana as civil rights groups fight to repeal the laws entirely. And in June 2023, Tennessee became the first state to see its anti-drag law, which banned drag from being performed either on public property or in front of minors, fully struck down. was particularly harsh in its scrutiny of drag artists: Repeat offenders were subject to a Class E felony, resulting in a maximum six-year prison sentence.

As one of the faces of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit challenging Texas’ S.B. 12, Bandit says she wept the day that the district court enjoined the law. She thought of how much drag has meant to her and what a profound impact it has had on her life since she first began performing in 2018. She had recently left an “intensely abusive relationship,” she says, and was living in her mother’s house after cramming all the belongings she could fit into her Fiat. “I had nothing,” she recalls. “I didn’t know who I was.”

Bandit says finding drag helped her unlock an inner strength she never knew existed. She no longer felt the need to make herself small for other people’s comfort and stopped putting everyone else’s needs before her own. Drag became her suit of armor: a protective shield that allowed her to feel strong and ultimately use her voice in defense of the community that has shown her nothing but unconditional love. Although Bandit says that being part of the ongoing lawsuit against Texas has made this “one of the most challenging years” of her life, she intends to keep fighting to make sure others have the same opportunities to experience the beauty and power of drag.

In a time of unprecedented anti-LGBTQ legislation, it’s fitting that drag performers are helping protect the decades of hard-won civil rights victories they themselves were instrumental in securing. Two of the leading figures in the early movement for LGBTQ equality were Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, trans women of color who sometimes referred to themselves as drag queens. As a nod to their groundbreaking work with the activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which provided housing for unhoused LGBTQ youth, Johnson and Rivera are often credited with kick-starting the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn. The landmark six-day demonstration against police brutality was among the earliest and most visible LGBTQ-led protests in the U.S., inspiring the first Pride parades the following year.

They want to make us look like the enemy. They want us to look like we are the problem. If we show them the complete opposite, we can show what drag actually is, which is love.”
—Athena Sinclair

������Ƶ than 55 years later, drag performers are yet again on the front lines of LGBTQ activism, at another critical moment for the queer community. So far in 2024, more than 500 bills have been considered in states across the country seeking to curtail basic rights and protections for LGBTQ people, according to data provided by the National Center for Transgender Equality. That number has already surpassed the historic 499 anti-LGBTQ bills considered in 2023. The vast majority of those proposals are aimed at restricting the ability of trans youths and adults to access necessary medical care, educational opportunities, public bathrooms, and IDs that match their lived gender identity.

While this wave of GOP-led legislation has resulted in nearly half of U.S. states banning medical care for trans and nonbinary people, and limiting trans sports participation, the conservative crusade against drag is already waning. Of this year’s crop of bills targeting public drag performances, not a single piece of legislation, to date, has been signed into law. Most of 2024’s proposed drag bans have been killed in committee, not even advancing to floor debate. 

Across the country, drag performers have played a direct role in countering legislation restraining their freedom of expression. When a Senate committee debated South Dakota’s Senate Bill 184 in February, the Rapid City–based drag performer Dixy Divine calling the legislation “unnecessary, un-American, and unacceptable.” If passed, S.B. 184 would have banned drag artists from exhibiting a “gender identity that is different from the performer’s biological sex” in view of minors. Dressed in sparkly gold leggings and a modest black dress, she pointed out that drag has a long history in popular culture, dating from the comedies of William Shakespeare to the Robin Williams farce Mrs. Doubtfire: “We’ve been enjoying theater, dance, and plays that don’t take gender too seriously for centuries.”&�Բ�����;

The committee ultimately voted down South Dakota’s drag ban 5-1, marking a year in which no explicitly anti-LGBTQ laws have been passed in the state thus far, according to the ACLU of South Dakota. , a vaguely worded bill that could potentially be used to restrict the performance of drag on college campuses, was quietly signed into law by Gov. Kristi Noem (R) in March. H.B. 1178 restricts state universities from funding or hosting “obscene live conduct,” but what comprises obscenity is left undefined.

Arkansas signed its anti-drag bill into law despite protests from drag performers, but local activism helped to significantly restrain its scope. Athena Sinclair, a local drag artist and former Miss Gay Arkansas, on the steps of the state Capitol in opposition to , a bill written so broadly that critics public gender nonconformity. Sinclair, who also testified before a state Senate panel, led protesters in a rendition of “Seasons of Love” from the Broadway musical Rent, a demonstration that drew hundreds of attendees. The version of S.B. 43 ultimately enacted that it didn’t even explicitly mention drag at all.

Sinclair says the choice of song was a pointed message to lawmakers who have claimed that drag performers are predators and “groomers”—even though no data exists to support those incendiary claims. “It’s so easy to get angry,” she says. “It’s so easy to lash out, but at the end of the day, that’s what they want. They want to make us look like the enemy. They want us to look like we are the problem. If we show them the complete opposite, we can show what drag actually is, which is love. Drag, to me, represents love because it is self-expression, and I don’t think that there is any better way to love than to love yourself. That’s what drag has done for me. It’s made me love myself and trust myself in everything that I do.”

Another reason so many of these legislative efforts have failed is that, in the words of drag performer Flamy Grant, the bills are “so on the far side of absurd that it’s just exhausting.” “We aren’t gonna go quietly,” the singer-songwriter and podcaster from North Carolina adds. “Drag performers are showing up in drag at their city council offices and their state governments and saying, ‘This is who I am. My art doesn’t exist to destroy society. It exists to make people know themselves and love themselves. It’s not to tear down values. It’s to expand what we value.’”

They know that the power of this art form is that it’s liberating. It’s freeing. It’s empowering, and it helps people feel seen.”
—Flamy Grant

Grant (whose moniker is a reference to the Christian recording artist Amy Grant) was among the performers who fought against the enforcement of Tennessee’s drag ban, which was revived by a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that dismissed the case in July 2024. Flamy Grant was scheduled to be a headliner at Blount Pride in East Tennessee when the September 2023 event . Although the drag ban had already been struck down in court, the county’s attorney general, Ryan Desmond, . With Grant as a plaintiff, the ACLU against Desmond, allowing the Pride festival to move forward as planned.

Grant knows that drag can play a major role in resisting anti-LGBTQ hate because she has seen it firsthand. Her post-show meet and greets, which deal with themes like surviving religious trauma and finding joy, are often longer than the performance, Grant notes, because bringing forward those dialogues gives people a space to heal. There are a lot of tears, she says, but a mother who lost her child to suicide once came up after a show to thank her. “You’re literally saving lives,” the woman said.

That’s why Grant says protecting drag is so important: because it has the potential to reach people who really need to hear the message. “When you really get to know the drag community, the fearmongering is so silly,” Grant says. “The goal of drag bans is to isolate people from each other. Drag bans try to remove us from public life and keep us in dark corners of the world. They know that the power of this art form is that it’s liberating. It’s freeing. It’s empowering, and it helps people feel seen.”&�Բ�����;

That day, her church’s reverend told her that the Municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital city, was expropriating the property where they congregated. “We were shocked,” she says. Nebot could not believe the municipality was threatening to strip the church of the building it had existed in for 50 years. The church sat on Arzuaga Street, one of the main streets in Río Piedras, teeming with small, locally owned businesses.

Nebot and the reverend immediately set a meeting with , the office that serves as a liaison between the University of Puerto Rico, the community, and the government. During that meeting, they learned that San Juan’s then mayor, , had announced a development, , that included the demolition of more than 100 buildings in Río Piedras. “He wanted to rebuild Río Piedras by destroying Río Piedras,” recalls José Luis González, a resident of García Ubarri, one of eight communities that surround the historic center.

That summer, 180 people gathered at the First Baptist Church of Río Piedras to form the Community Board of the Río Piedras Urban Area, with representatives from the eight communities surrounding Río Piedras. Attendees signed a community manifesto that established an alternative plan to Río 2012, one that would secure affordable housing.

After five years of organizing, the Río Piedras community successfully blocked Santini’s plan from being implemented. “The community board at that time did a lot of advocacy,” says Mónica Ponce-Caballero, director of CAUCE. “With proposals and data, we paralyzed the project. That has been our most significant achievement.”&�Բ�����;

After that victory, the community succeeded in amending the Río Piedras Rehabilitation Act to include a land trust that ensures affordable housing and helps avoid gentrification. The community board’s involvement in policymaking, campaigning on social issues, organizing neighborly meetings, and debating ideas is an example of how people civically engage beyond election day. Above all, it’s an instance of a community working toward issues that matter to them in a context where there is no real democracy.

Disenchanted But Not Disempowered

“Puerto Rico is not a democracy because it is a colony. And in a colony, by definition, the people do not give themselves their own laws,” says Joel Colón-Ríos, professor of law at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. “However, this does not mean that democratic spaces cannot exist in Puerto Rico.” A true government by the people should not only be about participating in discussions, but about “making binding decisions about the rules and policies that apply to the community,” he adds. “For that to happen, it usually requires a change in the legal system.”&�Բ�����;

Although and , the U.S. government does not recognize the Puerto Rican people’s sovereignty, and therefore the island’s government and is through non-U.S. ships. Congress can decide when to exclude Puerto Rican residents from or available to other U.S. citizens. The archipelago chooses a resident commissioner in Washington, D.C., who is a delegate of Congress, . 

In Puerto Rico, local elections have become irrelevant for many people, particularly since 2016, when the U.S. imposed a that and uses its veto-like powers to . Austerity measures within the municipal and central government—along with bureaucracy—complicate even small requests from the community, such as repairing sidewalks. “The construction for [a] sidewalk [in Río Piedras] took more than a year and they did a bad job,” says Rahisa Delucca Morales, a representative of the Blondet residents in the Community Board of the Río Piedras Urban Area. “In a way, the community organization enables it to be done and to be demanded, but delaying the process and doing it badly discourages people.”

As a result, many communities in Puerto Rico don’t get the support or resources they need, and they have become disenchanted. “Because of the situation in the country, people are very tired,” says Jackie García-Flores, current president of the Río Piedras community board. “When you invite people [to get involved], they ask themselves: What for?”  

Political apathy is an increasing global phenomenon, particularly . In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, population decided not to participate, according to the University of Florida Election Lab. The 2020 election held the highest turnout in more than a century, but voting turnout has not surpassed 80% since 1888 and 70% since 1900.

The voter turnout rate has been lowest among people between and non-white populations over the past 38 years. And since this data only refers to eligible voters, it excludes a large portion of the population: An estimated 30 million people are prohibited from voting because they have a felony, are a noncitizen, or live in a U.S. territory. But voting is far from the only way to participate in a democracy, and for those who choose not to vote or who are denied the right, communities are coming up with creative ways to have their voices heard. 

An Undemocratic System

The U.S. is typically described as a “” because people elect representatives who make laws. Colón-Ríos says electing officials is just the first part. “For a system to be described as a ‘representative democracy’ it is not enough to have an elected legislature, but rather an elected legislature that adopts laws consistent with the preferences and interests of the people,” he says. And that should include all voters in the U.S. and its territories. 

The problem in the U.S. and other purportedly democratic countries is the clear disconnect between people’s desires and the laws that are passed. there is general support in the U.S. for to fund essential services, , and . Meanwhile, are legislating gun control, increasing access to reproductive health care, and reducing the causes of climate change. Yet legislation relating to these efforts regularly .

This disconnect is partly because many legislators come from economic and social classes whose interests they defend, Colón-Ríos explains. According to , a nonpartisan nonprofit tracking money in U.S. politics, more than half of U.S. congresspeople in 2018 were millionaires. That’s a huge contrast to the who have assets higher than $1 million. Furthermore, while white males represent 30% of the population, they represent 62% of officeholders, according to a 2021 analysis by the . “The result is that the laws they adopt often protect the interests of certain groups over the interests of the majority,” Colón-Ríos explains. 

In fact, the according to the People’s Action Institute. An increasing number of organizations are working to change that. The Reflective Democracy Campaign proposes shifting power from donors, politicians, and influencers who control endorsements and funding to grassroots leaders. The campaign gives grants to grassroots organizing groups like Michigan United, Take Action Minnesota, and the Texas Organizing Project to train their members to advocate for their communities in a variety of roles—as activists, organizers, campaign managers, and elected or appointed officials. 

This model was also adopted by the , which focuses on building power for poor and working people through training, endorsing, and campaigning. The institute works as a coalition of 42 state and local grassroots organizations that developed a “people’s platform” and endorses candidates who pledge to implement it. They say that in 2022, on millions of doors, made millions of phone calls, sent a million texts to support endorsed candidates, and helped to federal office and 75 to state legislatures. 

Some , including the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative and Advance Native Political Leadership, are focused on increasing diversity and the representation of historically marginalized communities, while to make government more responsive to the community, like participatory budgeting. For example, the facilitated a process with Bushwick schools in Brooklyn, New York. Their task was to collectively determine how best to spend $250,000 from the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President for a school safety program. Students, family members, and staff brainstormed, created proposals, and finally voted on a plan to renovate gender-neutral bathrooms and expand a restorative justice program. 

Voter Apathy Is Not Political Apathy 

Displeased with their political representation and government bureaucracy, some groups prefer to create nongovernmental institutions where they have a say. Such is the case of the farmers who in 2010 organized the , which was formalized as a nonprofit in 2018 after Hurricanes Irma and María. 

“When [Hurricane] María landed, things were excessively precarious,” says Carlos Figueroa Robles, operations manager at the Institute. In the aftermath, Puerto Rico was receiving donations from both individuals and foundations, but in order to receive those funds, projects needed to be incorporated as nonprofits and have permits, such as a 501(c)(3) status. Figueroa Robles says the Institute had to become a legal entity that could facilitate the process of accessing these funds. 

“For the state, agroecological farmers aren’t farmers,” he says. Many agroecological farmers do not meet the Department of Agriculture’s requirements to be certified as a “bonafide farmer” because they do not make enough income, have enough land, or cannot provide proof of ownership. On the U.S. Department of Agriculture side, much of the paperwork and English proficiency. These barriers limit access to benefits and funds. “These obstacles result in poverty for these families,” adds Figueroa Robles, who is pursuing a doctorate in social work at the University of Puerto Rico.

The Institute for Agroecology is run by an advisory board composed of nearly 100 individuals, most of them member-farmers. Twice a year they meet to tell the nonprofit’s working group what their priorities should be to better serve their members’ needs. In 2022, the Institute for Agroecology joined forces with other organizations to create the Fiona Fund, which offers five months of supplementary income to 50 agroecological operations. “The goal is to accompany all these initiatives in order to reduce the administrative burden imposed on them and thus be able to generate well-being and validate their practices through research and participatory assistance efforts,” says Figueroa Robles. 

The rising cost of rent is another challenge for farmers in Puerto Rico. In the past 40 years, Puerto Rico has lost more than 511,000 acres of agricultural lands, according to the Federal Agricultural Census. This is largely due to the and . “We are being displaced,” says Figueroa Robles. “Instead of containing power and centralizing it, we need to democratize it so that the people who are custodians and work the land can make decisions and have democratic governance mechanisms to implement it.”

Melmary Aguilar Ríos, a third-generation farmer from Mayagüez, a town in Western Puerto Rico, turns the produce she harvests into juices and food that she then sells from her food truck, Echando Raíces. For the past five years, she’s been restoring the soil of a farm she holds under usufruct, but now the owner wants her out. Since she’s a founding member of the community land trust the Institute for Agroecology launched in 2023, she now has the opportunity to work on land she co-owns with other members of the collective. “Thanks to the trust, I can feel more secure about having a space where we can go to farm and they won’t take it away from you,” she says. 

Colón-Ríos says democratizing society requires us to work collectively from the bottom up, but he emphasizes that the “making of binding decisions depends on the political system recognizing the validity of these spaces—that is, recognizing the decisional power of these spaces.”  

For this recognition to happen, Colón-Ríos says that groups struggling for change need to build a wide political force, either by forming a social movement or a political party. He pointed to as one example, and the as another. “To achieve systemic change it is necessary to identify demands common to all groups struggling for change,” adds Colón-Ríos. 

So with the 2024 U.S. presidential election fast approaching, it may be time to focus less on voters and more on those who are trying to guarantee everyone’s voices are heard. While Puerto Rico may not have sovereignty, there is a growing number of groups coming together to create spaces that can lead to a more dignified life. 

Despite the restless work campaigning and celebrating assemblies, García-Flores, the president of the Community Board of the Río Piedras Urban Area, is clear on one thing: “Without the community board, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”&�Բ�����;

This kind of local organizing and insistence on participatory democratic processes are tools every community can use to ensure their lands and resources are being designed with them in mind. In the meantime, Figueroa Robles is focused on defending laws that allow Puerto Ricans to create systems of participatory democracy: “We cannot hope for an ideal scenario in order to start creating other worlds and other realities.”&�Բ�����;

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 12:13 p.m. PT on Sept. 4, 2024, to clarify that Melmary Aguilar Ríos held a farm under usufruct rather than renting it.��Read our corrections policy here.

“They didn’t remove me from the situation because my grandparents provided the ‘safe nuclear home’ while they were out transforming the world,” she says. Simmons’ parents were activists. Her father was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. Her mother was beaten and jailed for registering Black people to vote during the Jim Crow era. But despite their involvement in radical movements, her parents did not protect her, Simmons says. “I always think it’s important to name that, particularly in activist circles,” she adds. “It’s important to do the external work, but in the words of my teacher , ‘If your house ain’t in order, you’re not in order. It’s easier to be out there than in here.’”

Simmons has since dedicated her life to examining the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and sexual violence as a cultural worker. Her 2006 film, , shone a light on intraracial rape in the Black community. “Black people are under siege,” she says. “To speak about the violence against [Black] women, you were viewed as a traitor.” Her work has since expanded to amplify the experiences of Black LGBTQ survivors, and today she advocates for survivor-centered healing, non-carceral community accountability, and using intersectionality when uprooting abuse from our society. “This entire hemisphere was founded on rape, genocide, and enslavement,” she says. 

In the United States, a person is . . have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. And are the populations most likely to be victimized. But despite these statistics, Simmons rejects the idea that abuse is inevitable. “I don’t believe that we are born rapists,” she says. “I don’t believe that we’re born settlers. I don’t believe that we’re born misogynist [or] capitalist. We’re taught it. It’s indoctrinated.”

������Ƶ than five years after was brought into the mainstream, abuse still has deep roots in many of our , , and . While the hashtag became increasingly associated with encouraging survivors—particularly in Hollywood—to tell their truths, society has yet to truly center them. “While I do believe that the truth has the power to set us free, it also has caused a lot of harm for the survivors coming forward,” says Simmons. “I’m still navigating that legacy of not being believed, of being told, ‘Are you sure you’re not dreaming? Are you sure this really happened?’ Or ‘What were you doing there?’”

As interpersonal violence becomes more widely discussed, survivors like Simmons, community organizers, and social workers are reshaping how to address it. Through anti-carceral approaches in schools, queer-inclusive standards of survivor care, and holistic community responses rooted in anti-oppression, they are embracing the possibility of freeing our communities from violence—and putting survivors’ needs first.

Surviving the Institution

When Drew Davis experienced sexual violence and sexual harassment in college, they began the school’s Title IX protocol seeking resources and support. Instead, the process became an exhausting period of having to self-advocate for their basic needs. “The violence and harm caused by the institution that I attended really was so much worse than what had originally happened,” they say.

, the civil rights law protecting those in federally funded education programs from sex-based discrimination, is widely recognized for helping address gender-based violence in schools. But the narrowed the definition of “sexual harassment” and limited the types of sexual misconduct universities were required to investigate. These updated guidelines of sexual violence than survivors themselves. 

Though new regulations under President Joe Biden’s administration include , Davis says it is not enough to rely on Title IX to end gender-based violence in schools: “The institution bears such a large responsibility for the harm and the trauma that is being enacted on, through, and against students on a daily basis.”

Enter , a survivor-led project by Advocates for Youth that provides education, training, organizing, and direct support to students seeking more understanding about Title IX. As an organizer for Know Your IX, Davis helps build and advocate for community-based support systems that “insulate students from institutional violence.” In 2021, the project released a report that showed who reported violence to their schools experienced a “substantial disruption” to their education, including leaves of absence, transferring, or dropping out altogether.

But Davis says organizers are developing the knowledge and resources to change those numbers. This includes challenging an institutional culture that conflates self-advocacy with empowerment. “Institutions, and folks who are higher up in administration, really value this idea that self-advocacy is a good thing, and that students should be able to be independent and do it themselves,” Davis says. “It’s that whole American ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ vibe and belief that [are] really violent. And I think that’s what is keeping these systems where they are.”

To counter this, Know Your IX advocates for and empowers survivors to receive support that is responsive to their individual needs and experiences, including having confidential advocates at schools “who have the ability and institutional authority to navigate and move the institution to support a survivor however they need.”&�Բ�����;

Those needs may not always be obvious, and for some survivors, their needs might require nixing the punitive, carceral methods schools often use to address violence. One confidential campus advocate drove more than an hour to buy wish paper from a craft store so that a survivor could burn it as part of their healing process. “That is abolition. It catered to the individual’s needs and their healing in such a specific way that I could never have anticipated,” Davis says. “Being responsive … that’s the key.”

Know Your IX not only addresses sexual violence on college campuses; the organization also works with students in K–12 schools. Davis is creating a workbook that will help middle and high school students better understand Know Your IX’s abolitionist approach. “[K–12 students] don’t live [at school] in the same way that you do on a college campus,” Davis says. “They don’t have access to the press like a lot of college students do” or “funding to do organizing.”

As a result, K–12 survivors are invisibilized. “Every single person needs to challenge that and needs to start thinking about how they can value young people and value children in a way that really holds them, and is just like, ‘Yeah, you are a full human, too,’” Davis says. “There is something so profound about when young people see something that is wrong—and name it as wrong—that is such an excellent moral register for us.”&�Բ�����;

Revolutionizing Queer Survivor Care

While are now protected from gender-based violence at the federal level, lawmakers continue to dehumanize queer communities. ������Ƶ than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced, defeated, or are advancing in states across the country. “A lot of trans folks are literally afraid to go outside of their house—for work, for school, for help, for anything,” says michael munson, co-founder and executive director of , a nonprofit organization that empowers violence-focused service providers and crisis-intervention groups to offer culturally responsive, trauma-informed care for trans and nonbinary survivors. “It’s not just the legislation,” he says. “It’s the culture that we’re living in.”

Since 2009, FORGE has received federal funding to concentrate on the sexual and domestic violence that trans and nonbinary people experience, as well as stalking and hate crimes. It originally began as a general peer-to-peer support group for transmasculine individuals, then pivoted after munson noticed that at least half of group-meeting attendees were survivors. In 2004, focused on trans survivors of sexual assault. Now it offers training and technical assistance to medical providers, coalitions, and organizations, and direct support to survivors. 

Trans and nonbinary survivors are often failed by organizations stuck in a gender binary. “Some of the barriers that we see are just total denial of care,” munson says. “People literally get turned away at the door if they seek help.” Or, survivors may not seek care out of fear of discrimination. “They might be asked for an ID that doesn’t match how they appear,” he says. “They might be trying to seek shelter and people say, ‘Oh, well, we only shelter [non-trans] women and men.’” 

But FORGE is disentangling trans-exclusive care and forming partnerships with other organizations to normalize inclusion wherever a survivor may seek support. One partnership with the helps train nurses across the country to provide proper care to trans survivors. “That’s helping people see beyond the binary, because they’re literally going to be able to see real-life trans people” in their curriculum. It can encourage a nurse to allow a trans patient to self-swab when collecting evidence after an assault, which “empowers the agency of that person,” munson says. “I view that as the standard of care, which is different [from] the cultural response.”&�Բ�����;

To munson, survivor-centered care is culturally responsive care. “I don’t think it can be care if it’s not culturally responsive,” he says. “All of those words go together. And if they aren’t all there, it’s going to be a disservice to survivors.”

Queer folks are also meeting the needs of their local survivor communities through community-based organizing and service work. In Boston, (TNLR) works to end partner abuse in LGBTQ, kink, and polyamorous communities. “Folks can live at the intersections of these communities,” says Cristina Dones, TNLR’s director of outreach, education, and organizing programs. “For folks who practice kink, there’s this idea that … if there’s abuse involved, that’s because you wanted it. There’s this stigma that polyamorous communities are promiscuous.”

Dones first joined TNLR around 2011. She worked for the organization’s , responded to prison mail, and conducted outreach at events throughout Massachusetts. She credits TNLR, a survivor-led organization, with helping her to process how normalized domestic violence was in her childhood home. “I actually didn’t even realize it was abuse until I took [TNLR]’s training,” she says. “Then I realized it was happening in some of my relationships as well.”

Other services TNLR provides include —a 30-day emergency shelter program for survivors and their families—and a transitional housing program, which provides up to two years of rental assistance. TNLR also offers telephone-based for LGBTQ survivors of partner abuse, as well as specifically BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) LGBTQ survivors; educational for survivors and service providers; and . It does not require that a survivor want to leave an abusive partner to receive services.

teaches domestic violence service providers how to “distinguish between who the survivor is and who the abuser is,” Dones says. “It’s about one person trying to maintain power and control, and one person trying to reclaim control over their own life.” , TNLR links partner abuse to the “larger violent culture which condones and rewards interpersonal, institutional, and imperialist abuse of power.”&�Բ�����;

“Abuse, in all of its forms, is informed by oppression,” says Dones. “The tactics behind each to maintain power and control are the same. If we understand that, then we can change our approach to center the survivor.”&�Բ�����;

The (AVP) is another anti-oppression organization using education, organizing, counseling, and advocacy to empower LGBTQ and HIV-impacted survivors of all kinds of violence. It offers a free , , and , and is the coordinator for the . 

“[AVP] really puts up-front into public consciousness … that violence does not exist in a silo,” says Aditi Bhattacharya, AVP’s deputy director of client services. “The biggest challenges right now continue, unfortunately but not surprisingly, to be the same challenges as 40 [to] 45 years ago—which are people’s reproductive rights, people’s rights to exist in the identities that they want, people’s rights to express their identity, their orientation, their truth, and their reality early on—and feel supported by their schools, by their families, by their churches.”&�Բ�����;

As a whole, the organization’s teams work together to develop a holistic approach to violence. “We figure out among each other how we can actually balance what a collaborative community response within AVP looks like.” This often means recognizing and adapting to a survivor’s experience with both interpersonal and systemic violence. “Our legal team has had clients that they have held for more than 10 years,” Bhattacharya says. One client was an immigrant whose needs “traversed the spectrum.” “There was immigration-related support, systems-related support … there were benefits-related issues connected to housing, connected to violence,” she says. “This entire arc of this human being’s experience as an immigrant coming in with all of their identities and experiencing the Venn diagram of violences … is one example of how we’ve been doing this work.”

Reimagining Accountability

In addition to helping survivors navigate systems, AVP holds a support group for people who identify as being at risk of causing harm—a preventative measure that isn’t rooted in criminal justice. “Criminal justice kind of colonizes the movement of people who’ve experienced violence having the right, and the share of voice, to determine what healing would look like for them,” she says. “The country at large is slowly but surely recognizing that there needs to be a true reexamination of how systems have been allowed to exist and dictate the terms of healing.”&�Բ�����;

Policing and prisons have been repeatedly exposed for their perpetuation of systematic, anti-Black violence. But they also carry an unpayable debt for the ways in which they reproduce abuse. ������Ƶ than are sexually abused each year in the U.S. Abolitionists have strengthened calls to end incarceration because of it. Still, it can be challenging for some to imagine alternatives to addressing sexual violence. 

Though Simmons was raised in a radical household, she once believed incarceration to be the solution for rape. “That whole journey of making the [NO! documentary] helped me to see that no prison is going to stop rape,” she says. But the onus of figuring out what to do with those who cause harm shouldn’t be on survivors. Rather, “How do we, as a community, hold the harm-doers accountable?” Simmons asks. Part of this, she says, is encouraging people to think about the spent on policing and prisons. “If we siphoned off a fraction of that money and put it into counseling, healing—for clearly the survivors but also for the harm-doers—that, for me, is what survivor-centered accountability can look like.” Another part is giving survivors the space to use their personal experiences as the foundation for how we think about accountability.

In 2019, Simmons published , an anthology from AK Press featuring the works of 40 Black diasporic survivors, ranging in sexuality and gender, tasked to “envision how we can disrupt and end this epidemic without relying on the criminal justice system.” The project was born out of her own work holding her parents accountable for their lack of response to her step-grandfather’s abuse. “We learn in the family to keep things quiet … to protect the family,” she says. “That’s the first institution. Then it just ripples out to the school, to the church, the mosque, or synagogue, to the entertainer … the politician.” To Simmons, accountability requires that we not only focus on one individual as responsible. “It’s like plucking a leaf off a tree. We have to focus on the community [and] the structures that allow it to happen.”&�Բ�����;

“We really need to be [doing] a lot of cross-movement organizing,” Davis says. “That’s the only way that we’re going to get anything done—if it’s happening everywhere.”&�Բ�����;

While survivors like Simmons and Davis make way for decarceration, Bhattacharya emphasizes the need for organizations like AVP. “In the movement in anti-violence, especially community-based programs that work with multiple marginalized communities like LGBTQIA+ people, we do need more resources that seek to have these conversations … on our terms, informed by us,” she says. “Not dictated by mainstream systems.”&�Բ�����;

This shift will determine whether collective healing and liberation can happen. “It remains to be seen, because it also means that it turns the current, existing economy of anti-violence work right on its head,” she says. In the meantime, centering survivors brings us one step closer. 

Our Ancestors’ lives are intricately woven with the seasonal availability of food, and each cycle was celebrated. Ethical harvesting and foraging techniques have been the cornerstone of their approach, encompassing pruning, coppicing, reseeding, fertilizing, and burning. These practices are not mere acts of sustenance but rituals of reciprocity, practiced with gratitude and foresight, ensuring the continuing vitality of the land and its inhabitants. 

Indigenous communities that identify as “agricultural” have long ensured food sustainability through careful observation and preservation during seasonal changes. Discerning the best specimens to save for future planting and eating is a key aspect of natural resource management and agricultural traditions. 

“That made the difference between whether an agricultural community lived or didn’t live,” says Terry Maresca (Mohawk), a professor and family physician with more than three decades of practice who integrates Western medicine and Indigenous plant medicine. “That really took skill to be able to discern that, and to save that and preserve that.”

“That is the seed saving and the gifting that has gone on for generations, and how those seeds and foods came to us—because someone loved them into existence and preserved them for us,” she said on a recent episode of . Understanding the historical context of food cultivation unveils the wisdom embedded in our heritage, nurturing not only the land but also the health of communities.��

As we stand at the threshold of modernity, the relevance of ancestral cultivation practices resonates more than ever. Integrating this knowledge into contemporary agriculture’s efforts to engage in regenerative methods offers a pathway toward resilience. It is a journey of rediscovery that gives the credit for innovation where it is due—to the Ancestors. 

This is a moment where we can collectively reclaim our connection to the land and heal a colonized food system. By embracing sustainable food practices inspired by ancestral skill, we subsequently embrace a vision for the health of future generations. Our call to action echoes through the ages, urging us to tend to the Earth with care and appreciation. 

The essence of our collective well-being lies in the interconnected webs of food, health, and the environment. Let us embrace the truth that sustains us—a truth rooted in reverence for the land and its bounty. In cultivating our foods, we become part of a long legacy of reciprocity, nurturing both body and spirit. Let us tread lightly, with gratitude and humility, as we weave a sustainable future guided by the timeless proficiency of our Ancestors.  

“Wild” food harvesting has become a trend, and as an educator, I’m deeply concerned that sharing this knowledge might lead to overharvesting and exploitation. Ethical harvesting begins with knowledge and respect. If you choose to search for “wild” foods, advocate for our natural resources by fostering a sustainable relationship with the Earth and future generations. 

Here’s a recipe for ethical harvesting:

1. Learn to identify plants accurately. Seek guidance from experienced harvesters.
2. Always harvest from clean environments and make sure you have permission to be there.��
3. Take only what you need and harvest during the peak seasons for the best quality. 
4. Use all of what you take, minimize waste, and honor nature’s gifts.
5. Show gratitude by making an offering of water, saying a prayer, or cleaning up the area.

As a high schooler in Texas, a state with , living and learning under the fear of gun violence is the norm. Instead of preventing a massacre, officials in my state waste instruction time forcing us to prepare for one, from monthly lockdown drills to increasingly policed campuses. As these officials shy away from regulating guns—completely ignoring the drastic effects the impending threat of gun violence has on our mental health—students, myself included, fall between the cracks. 

One week after the 2019 shooting, we were set to return to school. But instead of the giddiness I usually felt on the first day of school, the open wound of the massacre pushed fear to the forefront of my mind. In the months following the massacre, I was filled with fear about leaving my house, even to buy necessities like uniforms and school supplies. I couldn’t enter big shopping centers, malls, or even public parks. But most of my dread came from attending school.

Instead of working on school assignments, I focused on finding a seat far away from the door or a glass window. I wouldn’t leave the classroom and avoided using the school bathroom in case there might be an emergency. After months of constant fear, the COVID-19 lockdown was a welcome reprieve. 

Three years after the shooting, when the dust had finally begun to settle and it felt as though my community was healing, we were hit with the devastating news of the in Uvalde, Texas, that took the lives of 19 children and two teachers. Though there were many other mass shootings between El Paso and Uvalde, this massacre hit too close to home, not only because it was in my state, but because it reminded me our schools aren’t secure. 

Uvalde’s victims could very well have been me and my peers. All I could think of was another massacre, another community facing more death, more pain, more fear, more “thoughts and prayers.” Most of all, more of my state doing absolutely nothing to prevent the next shooting. 

As of 2021, Texas no longer requires a license to carry a firearm, making it easier to get a gun than to get a puppy. In no functioning world should it be easier to obtain a lethal weapon than a pet.”

As of , Texas no longer requires a license to carry a firearm, making it easier to get a gun than to get a . In no functioning society should it be easier to obtain a lethal weapon than a pet. As of 2022, are the in children between the ages of 0 and 19 in the United States, confirming the fear felt by young people like me. We cannot expect to lower instances of gun violence if our state lawmakers maintain their negligent approach. 

Meanwhile, students like myself across the country are envisioning a world in which classrooms are used for learning instead of for hiding. “If I didn’t have to worry about gun violence, I think I would have a little more trust in authority figures or law enforcement,” says Scotty Meza, a sophomore at Young Women’s Academy (YWA) in El Paso, Texas. “I feel like, as a Texas student, the solution is so easy, and that’s why it’s so frustrating.”&�Բ�����;

Tiffany Correa, a sophomore at YWA, agrees, saying, “I wouldn’t have to constantly look for the closest exit door, or what position in a room would be the hardest angle to shoot. Freedom from gun violence to me means that we limit who can get a gun.”

For Sravya Reddy Guda, a sophomore at Parkway West High School in Ballwin, Missouri, a gun-free world is a world where “students aren’t afraid of opening a school door out of fear of a shooter being on the other side, and parents don’t have to worry if a tragic accident that happened to another family
is going to happen to their own.”&�Բ�����;

“It is the difference between constantly being stressed and being relaxed over something that should be as simple as getting an education,” expresses Aruja Misra, a sophomore at Coronado High School in El Paso, Texas.

It seems as though every time we get close to healing from a massacre, we are bombarded with the pain of the next one and propelled into an endless cycle of gun violence. 

This has to stop. We should be able to attend school knowing we will return home at the end of the day. Schools should provide a safe environment rather than serve as a place of anxiety, and the only way to achieve true freedom for students is to protect us instead of guns.  

College campuses in the United States are considered ,��and those who graduate .

But the type of education matters. A found that alumni from U.K. private schools were twice as likely to vote conservative as public school alumni, even after accounting for the fact that wealthier, more conservative people tend to choose private schools.

A found that students with more experiences with diversity—especially through diversity classes and positive interactions with diverse peers—are more likely to think critically (and confidently). 

Even those who believe ideas like critical race theory are “indoctrination” agree that learning about social justice—formally or informally—leads people to understand that systemic inequities are the cause of most socioeconomic differences. In 2023, social scientists from the conservative Manhattan Institute that students taught that the Black–white pay gap is mainly due to were 14 percentage points more likely to agree with affirmative action policies in hiring. 

Exposure to multiple perspectives is also valuable in media consumption. Viewers who rely on networks known for misleading coverage—like Fox News—tend to take in fewer outside sources, while viewers on the liberal end of the spectrum .

Exposing people to more truthful news sources can push their values to be more progressive. hundreds of Fox News viewers, mostly Trump supporters, became measurably more progressive after being paid $15 an hour to watch up to seven hours of CNN a week for four weeks in 2020. 

While truth fosters justice, it turns out that justice also fosters truth. In , researchers found that children and adolescents with cognitive empathy—who could imagine themselves in another’s shoes—were less likely to deceive others for their own benefit. 

The truth can set us free.  

But 2.5 million children across the United States are enrolled in districts without libraries, . On top of that, too many books . Of the thousands of children’s books published in 2023, only 12% had a Black primary character, 10% Asian, 7% Latine, and 2% Indigenous, according to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. 

Since books can reflect and , as well as give them a view into worlds unlike their own, it’s important to expand beyond the whiteness that has long dominated children’s literature. These radical librarians, educators, and bibliophiles are working to get books in the hands of more children, and ensuring the characters in those books look and live like them.

Iesha Malone, the Book Lady of South Side

Iesha Malone is on the front lines of increasing book access in Chicago’s South Side. “Roseland is one of the and one of the most violence-stricken,” Malone explains. Growing up there, she was instilled with the importance of reading by her father, and she turned to books as a form of escape. 

As Malone, her sons, and her neighbors were demonstrating in the 2020 uprising for Black lives and then rebuilding in the aftermath, she realized she had to travel outside her neighborhood to find books with meaningful representation. As a teacher and reading specialist, she began dreaming about bringing these kinds of books to Roseland. “I wanted new books—books that represented the community. Books with Black protagonists. Books with people who went through stuff and overcame,” she says. 

And so, in 2020, Malone started Rose Café, named after Tupac Shakur’s poem “.” “It talks about how roses and beautiful things still can rise through adversity,” Malone .

Malone put out and was overwhelmed by the response. In the early days, she distributed books by hand, including leaving them on public transit for children to pick up. Rose Café has since grown into a series of pop-up shops at community events throughout the city. To date, Rose Café has given away 15,000 books, conducts , and hosts book clubs. “The dialogue between these different genres of women—older women, white women, Black women—was really good, and I had to keep going on with it,” Malone says.

Malone currently runs the organization alone, while teaching full time. But she’s still dreaming about Rose Café’s future: Malone is , which she imagines as a coffee shop, bookstore, and gathering space for her community.  

Ultimately, Malone hopes that increasing book access will help to counter violence in the community. “Access to literacy, reading more books, and seeing how some people have overcome and done things the nonviolent way brings a different perspective on how to change things,” Malone says. “There’s a better way to do it.”

Storybook Maze, Radical Street Librarian

When Storybook Maze was a student, her teacher read aloud Pride and Prejudice and “opened the road of reading” for her. As an adult, Maze read aloud to her nieces on her front stoop in Baltimore, and neighborhood children began to gather around to listen. Some said they did not have books in their homes. She realized that her neighborhood was severely lacking in . “I had assumed that urban areas are not seen as book deserts, but they can be,” Maze says, adding that the presence of a library does not always mean children have the ability to access it.

Maze decided to shift her career from English teacher to librarian, which brought her to multiple branches in the greater Baltimore area. Seeing how every community’s needs were different inspired her to start thinking of creative, out-of-the-box approaches to introducing books to young people—like installing free book vending machines around the city. “One of my favorite parts of the job is seeing the kids light up when they see a book that represents and reflects them,” Maze says. “People come back more and more, because I pair them with the perfect book for them that opens up that world of reading.”

Maze hosts pop-up book giveaways in and around Baltimore, always curating the collection to represent the community she’s in. At an event in a predominantly Spanish-speaking community, Maze brought a collection of books in Spanish. A father at the event received a book and told Maze that with it, he would be able to read a book to his child for the first time since they traveled to the United States. “He was tearing up,” Maze recalls.

Maze is now as a way to combine her pop-up giveaways with her street-corner story times—“an ice cream truck but with books,” she calls it. Maze hopes that her story will inspire other radical street librarians to join her mission in their own communities. “Start small, even if you have only a picnic table, and see how it goes.”&�Բ�����;

Mychal Threets, aka Mychal the Librarian

Mychal Threets is on a mission to spread “library joy.” The solace he found in books, and the characters he grew to love, helped him through his childhood mental health challenges. “I loved Junie B. Jones and Encyclopedia Brown,” he says. “I think they just meant so much to me because of struggling to make friends and fit in.” As a college and grad student, Threets worked at a local library in the Bay Area and went on to work in multiple branches of the Solano County Library, “from a shelver to supervisor,” Threets says. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Threets started a to share that the library was open, and to raise awareness of the resources the library offered. With excitement and the characteristic “Yes!” that has become his trademark, he came to be known as Mychal the Librarian. 

Threets’ library joy is contagious, as evidenced by his nearly . Threets’ mission and message goes deeper than fun, though. He wants to encourage reading by continuing to establish the library as a place of belonging and inclusivity. “That’s the beauty of literacy, of access to books, that we all have these stories,” he says. “All of our voices should be heard.”

In March 2024, Threets left his job in the public library system to care for his mental health. Threets, who has , views his career move as analogous to putting your own oxygen mask on before helping others. “I always encourage people to treat the library people with kindness,” he says. “They’re superheroes who wear cardigans instead of capes.”&�Բ�����;

Threets is now using his platform to help destigmatize mental health issues. “There’s no shame in taking medication,” , and goes on to commend his viewers for taking care of themselves and choosing to stay another day. “Live, laugh, Lexapro!” he says with a smile.

Threets, who recently became PBS’s resident librarian, got to the aardvark, whose library card is tattooed on Threets’ arm. Threets continues to share videos and find library joy “remembering the truth that they belong in their local library just as they are.”

Whether talking about books or mental health, Threets’ main message remains the same: “Really all I’m doing is just trying to get people to remember that they do matter.”&�Բ�����;

Still, despite the caliber and depth of this reportage—and the vital work of organizations like the and (the latter of which I am a member)—the media industry often leaves LGBTQ reporters, stories, and subjects in the cold. 

“I could count on one hand the number of trans journalists I know,” says Lex McMenamin, Teen Vogue’s news and politics editor. We’re talking over Zoom about the state of journalism, LGBTQ rights, and the 2024 presidential election. When I name the other journalists and media workers I interviewed for this article, McMenamin nods, already knowing them all. 

A 2024 report from confirms McMenamin’s perception. The report found that in 2023 The New York Times—often considered a gold standard in journalism—excluded trans voices from 66% of its articles about anti-trans legislation. Additionally, 18% of those articles platformed anti-trans misinformation and activists without sufficient fact-checking, context, and in some cases, disclosures of sources with extremist anti-trans backgrounds. This lack of competency isn’t just reserved for “.”&�Բ�����;

In 2021, GLAAD gave major media outlets, including CBS News, CNN, The Hill, The New York Times, and Newsweek a “” for their coverage (or lack thereof) of the historic , which would have prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation at a federal level.

As the 2024 U.S. presidential election approaches, this media landscape matters more than ever. Accurate, factual, and culturally responsive journalism protects the public, safeguards democracy, and can help push back against efforts to use LGBTQ people for political leverage on both sides of the aisle. On one hand, many Republicans to whip up their base and , though these strategies actually aren’t effective. 

Lex McMenamin

Teen Vogue’s news and politics editor

“We’re up against some really dated and unuseful conceptions around objectivity.”

And on the other, Democrats often see LGBTQ people as a core, , reliably blue voting bloc, regardless of on any promises to our communities. Ironically, historically marginalized people often face blame during election cycles for not voting in greater numbers, despite the many citizens, especially those in Black and Brown communities, experience.

In fact, it is often our identities that make queer journalists (and others from historically marginalized communities) so uniquely equipped to meet the challenges of this media landscape and provide the nuanced, equitable reporting that everyone—not just LGBTQ communities—so desperately needs. Journalists with lived experience in the communities on which they report can sniff out sources with a shoddy agenda, are likely to avoid harmful stereotypes, and can use their experiences to inform how they approach a story, asking pointed questions that outsiders may not consider. 

At a time when LGBTQ people are censored and sensationalized on and off the page, it is queer and trans journalists who are able to flip the script, expose tired and violent narratives, cultivate equitable relationships with sources, and recenter our humanity.

First and foremost, journalism needs to reckon with its own around “objectivity,” which mandates reporters be neutral, third-party observers. In practice, this often means a reporter’s identity, contextual knowledge, or firsthand experience of an issue is seen as a detriment to their coverage, rather than a simple fact of their existence—and a benefit to their reportage.  

I’ve experienced this firsthand. There have been people and stories I’ve been able to access solely because of my identity; some people have been so burned by journalists and their poor handling of LGBTQ stories they will only agree to speak with members of their own community, who have an established history of fair and accurate coverage. 

“We’re up against some really dated and unuseful conceptions around objectivity,” says McMenamin. “We hear from reporters at local outlets who are maybe the one out person at the office and are being told they can’t cover book bans because they’re queer.”

As a result, reporters who are not white, male, and/or cisgender are often prevented from reporting on their own communities, covering their beat, or providing factual context or relevant critique because of those identities. After the 2016 election, for example, trans journalist Lewis Raven Wallace wrote a Medium post criticizing objectivity standards—and was promptly . 

Likewise, in 2020, Alexis Johnson, a Black reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was barred from after a tweet, which her editors alleged expressed bias. The end result is that the journalists who are often most qualified to report on their beat are held to a punitive standard, while their often cis white male counterparts are still seen as “neutral.”

Likewise, in 2020, Alexis Johnson, a Black reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was barred from after a tweet, which her editors alleged expressed bias. The end result is that the journalists who are often most qualified to report on their beat are held to a punitive standard, while their often cis white male counterparts are still seen as “neutral.”

Imara Jones

Journalist, news producer, and creator of TransLash ������Ƶ

“It’s ridiculous to say that because you’re trans you can’t report on the trans community. Who better to report on the trans community than trans people, because you know your beat.”

“It’s ridiculous to say that because you’re trans you can’t report on the trans community,” says Imara Jones, journalist, news producer, and creator of TransLash ������Ƶ. “Who better to report on the trans community than trans people, because you know your beat. No one ever says because you are a white man in New York City that you can’t cover other white men in New York City.”&�Բ�����;

Aside from these problematic norms around objectivity, there are other forces shaping how queer and trans stories are told and by whom. 

In her investigative podcast series , Jones and her team track the ways anti-trans ideas bleed into mainstream media and politics. Through their work, they uncovered a “disinformation ecosystem”—created and funded by a shadowy and , the mega-wealthy, and other right-wing organizations and politicians—that effectively disseminates anti-trans lies through some of the in the U.S. (Disclosure: I worked with TransLash ������Ƶ as a News and Narrative Fellow in Spring 2023, and Jones edited my work for the site.)

Before long, anti-trans advocates (and their pseudoscience) in outlets like The New York Times or The Atlantic, which publish articles that are then in legal proceedings, forming a violent feedback loop between media, policy, and public opinion.

Sports are the perfect example. Freelance journalist Frankie de la Cretaz says sports media was completely unprepared to cover the anti-trans rhetoric that has overtaken women’s sports. “The anti-trans movement, particularly around sports, has been able to leverage sports as one of the few [and] first places they could gain ground,” de la Cretaz says. Trump and other GOP candidates, for example, are to exclude trans women from sports teams.

“We have seen it coming for years,” says de la Cretaz. “And now it is here and publications just do not have the ability to cover it with the attention or nuance that it deserves. … There’s really no trans people in the room.”

Frankie de la Cretaz

Freelance journalist

“Publications just do not have the ability to cover [the anti-trans movement] with the attention or nuance it deserves. There’s really no trans people in the room.”

This is especially concerning as many people lack the media literacy skills required to identify poor journalism or disinformation. , 62% of adults lacked any opportunity to learn about or analyze media messaging in high school. Even for media consumers who do have the skills, many lack the time to research the backgrounds of the writer, publication, and each source or expert included or excluded in the article and analyze for bias. (Sites like , however, cover and debunk anti-trans messaging in the media and beyond.)

“Christian nationalist media is the singular most powerful media in the country,” says Jones. “It has like no other media. There’s no other rival to it because it acts as a continuous pipeline from the darkest corners of the internet to more mainstream places on the internet that are then fed into places with enormous reach like Daily Caller and Daily Wire.”&�Բ�����;

Taken together, this means many newsrooms and media outlets are not only siphoning qualified reporters from some of the most urgent political issues in the country, but also that the industry itself is unable to properly identify and respond to coordinated threats from extremist, anti-LGBTQ factions. And this says nothing of the slashed budgets, relentless layoffs, strikes, and union busting that undermine journalism as a whole.  

This election season, LGBTQ journalists are gearing up to tell accurate and nuanced stories in their local communities, on the campaign trail, and across the country—but they need support, too.

Daniela Capistrano

������Ƶ worker, editor, founder of DCAP ������Ƶ

“Investing in local, ongoing reporting is how we’re getting more stories about resistance from the Midwest and the South.”

James Factora, a staff writer for the LGBTQ-focused digital publication Them, says they’ll be focusing on the community organizers ensuring there are “networks of care for queer and trans people,” regardless of who’s in the White House. “The most marginalized trans people, namely Black trans women and trans women of color, are still going to experience systemic violence, and it’s important to highlight that the people who really have our backs are our communities,” Factora says.

Daniela Capistrano, a media worker, editor, and founder of the digital strategy company DCAP ������Ƶ, says there needs to be more public funding for and emphasis on local journalism—especially since so much anti-LGBTQ legislation is being proposed and passed in the South and Midwest. Investing in local, ongoing reporting is “how we’re getting more stories about resistance from the Midwest and the South,” they add. 

On an industry level, Capistrano says increased union representation for media workers and more equitable access to grants, mentorship, and funded opportunities would also support journalists and their work. While the process of unionizing can be complex, Capistrano points to the as a helpful resource for workers to begin exploring their options. 

For Jones, protecting trans people requires two things: telling trans stories from a range of trans people and telling the world what trans people are experiencing. And the stakes are high, she explains: “We think that those two things together are the way that we can both save trans lives and protect democracy.”&�Բ�����;