It’s back to school time! Actually, this time is so important it should be treated like a proper noun, so let me try again. It’s Back to School Time! Reactions to this time are mixed for parents, kids and teachers. For some, this time is celebratory. For others it’s anxiety producing, or a relief, or a realization that time really does go by so fast, or an excuse to buy a new pair of sneakers, or all of the above. There’s one feeling, though, that has become universal: fear.
Better to Be Woke, than Asleep
I recently read the Washington Post editorial by Perry Bacon, Jr. detailing the abrupt fall of CNN’s Chris Licht. And I couldn’t agree more with his sentiment that there is a problem with centrist, anti-woke sentiment. Then I started thinking more about it, and thinking about it as a self-identified woke, anti-racist, feminist. All the attacks and the name-calling from the right, the constant drumbeat against trans kids and drag queens and the LGBTQ community as a whole (if I have to see one more person claiming that LGBTQ people just living their lives are “cramming it down our throats” one more time in a comment section…), the racist othering we see conservatives doing to asylum seekers and immigrants while cheering as they are illegally marched onto busses and chartered planes to dump in a “blue state,” the science denialism that the planet is warming. All of these things serve to prop up the current late-capitalist patriarchy that we all call home.
As Anti-trans Bills Dominate State Legislatures, Mass Shootings Increase Unabated
I have a public service announcement: transgender/gender queer/nonbinary people are human beings and the concerted extremist attack on the right for transgender people to exit is deeply, deeply sick. As of April 3, 2023, at “least 417 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the United States since the start of the year,” according to CNN.