Both violent surveillance and disease risk were integral to Atlantic slavery. That same war against Black people continues today.
Politics
Editors: Ivan Ascher & Joanne Randa Nucho
Global Inequality and the Corona Shock
COVID-19 is the first truly comprehensive crisis of the Anthropocene era, affecting virtually everyone on the planet.
Covid Blindness
Withholding accurate information obscures both the impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable and the resurgence of institutional violence.
Are We in Denial about Denial?
Across the political spectrum, people deny how bad the state of the world is. No wonder the far right’s lies have such purchase.
Emergency Urbanism
Housing-justice movements ask: How can unhoused people be considered trespassers on state-owned land?
To Heal the Body, Heal the Body Politic
Before 2020, the relationship that is the body was already ailing. COVID-19 heightens the need to heal it.
Defund the Police and Refund the Communities
The dueling crises of the pandemic and police brutality have brought many problems to the surface of our society and made them impossible to continue to ignore.
Pandemic Déjà Vu
The COVID-19 global pandemic has been described as an unprecedented global event. Yet for some, the virus arrives with uncanny familiarity.
America Comes Out
Once, “coming out” was something done within gay social worlds. Today, new groups do so to refute stigma, and to reclaim that stigma as pride.
What Birders Don’t See
Rather than studying birds—and birders—in isolation, the time has come to see both as linked to the crises of racism and climate change.
“We Don’t Want the Program”: Jill Lepore on How Tech Can’t Fix Democracy
“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”
Experiments in Feral Futuring
Two futurists ran an experiment: What happens when a room of strangers plan for the future together?
The DJ Is a Time Machine
Let’s rupture and reject the “timeline,” a flawed and colonial form of teaching history.
Let’s Polarize Together
Humans can adapt to almost anything. So if social media forces us into permanently hostile camps, we will learn to stop seeing any other way.
Public Housing and the Right to the City
Not simply a roof over one’s head, public housing nurtures its inhabitants’ demands for an even greater stake in the life of the metropolis.
The Kardashians’ Multiracial White Supremacy
The many faces of the Kardashians are the many faces of the monstrous hydra of blackface. They must be critiqued to a cultural halt.
Money Is the Gatekeeper of Politics
Rather than taking money out of politics, we should inject more money into politics: but money in the service of the public good.
The Oligarchs’ Charter
Today we know that, just as Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson predicted, economic elites will never relinquish supreme power easily.
More (Public) Money in Elections!
The money given by big donors distorts the British political system. How should the voices of ordinary citizens be heard?
Transparency Alone Can’t Save Democracy
The institutions created to ensure transparency in the funding of politics find it difficult to carry out their mission.