Category Journalism
A Different Kind of Welfare Reform
Welfare rights activists are rallying behind a bill that would rewrite the rules on who receives assistance, how and why. The Rewriting to Improve and Secure an Exit out of Poverty, or RISE Out of Poverty Act, recently reintroduced by Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.), recognizes the work of mothers and revises the country’s Temporary Assistance for […]
The High Cost of Cash Bail
“It’s modern-day bondage. Our folks are being held hostage for ransom.” This statement was made by Mary Hooks, co-director of Southerners On New Ground (SONG)—an Atlanta, Georgia-based LGBTQ and social-justice advocacy organization that helps bail Black women, queer and transgender folks out of jail. Hooks was referring to the US cash bail system—a corrupt, for-profit complex […]
Illicit Art in Syria
The conflict in Syria has been called a civil war, proxy war, a regional conflagration, even a foreign conspiracy. These representations reflect a militaristic conceptualization of conflict that renders the Syrian people invisible and silences their intimate day-to-day lives. Yet if we start thought from the life of an object – from the statues of […]
The Sound of Dissonance
I love words – words that rumble and resonate with the incessancy of a raging bull. Words like deliberate, precocious and prowess, which seem to exist entirely by their own volition. And then there are those like, ethereal,transience and willingly, whose delicacy curves and flows like quicksilver. I love the art of transcription, of translating […]
Jessica Merino 