Alejandra Oliva
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
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writer, embroiderer & translator | RIVERMOUTH out now | she/her
pinned post!
Happy #internationaltranslationday2023 -- I wrote a book about immigration, God, and how translation can change your life while changing someone else's đź§¶
Olivalejandra.com/books
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Books — Alejandra Oliva
https://Olivalejandra.com/books
about 2 years ago
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Alejandra Oliva
Christian Century
4 months ago
“The work I do in front of the stove, the daily care I take with meals—this isn’t just about sustenance or being healthy. It is an expression of my morals and concerns, reminding me that the smallest of my actions is performed in a web of mutuality and care.” –
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
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Cooking when the world is on fire
These days, daily tasks can feel like a...
https://www.christiancentury.org/voices/cooking-when-world-fire
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new newsletter on the 100th anniversary of mrs. dalloway and reading it from a less-than-generous lens born of my own frustrations
open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...
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Getting the Flowers Yourself
On a Wednesday in Mid-June
https://open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesantalucia/p/getting-the-flowers-yourself?r=6ge&utm_medium=ios
5 months ago
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History is What's Happening
7 months ago
Appropriate, because one of the worker survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire was then deported as part of the first Red Scare.
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Commonweal
7 months ago
"It has become clear to me in the past few months that the immigration legal system has dropped even the slightest pretense of its orientation toward justice."
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
: 'A Way in the Wilderness'
www.commonwealmagazine.org/lent-reflect...
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A Way in the Wilderness
Lent is a season of reflection—but also a season to prepare for the work ahead, to sweep aside everything that has not worked and find new ways through the desert.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/lent-reflection-fifth-sunday-oliva-ice-organizing-immigration
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Terrence Peterson
7 months ago
This is an endemic problem, by the way. Geo Group and CoreCivic regularly deny folks in detention their meds. I witnessed this practiced systematically at Krome for the 5 years I used to visit and communicate with guys there
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Jessica Goudeau
8 months ago
For the Injustice Report today, my colleague
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
wrote a jaw-dropping, must-read post: "Yes, the El Salvador 'Deportations' Are Really Bad'
open.substack.com/pub/injustic...
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Yes, the El Salvador “Deportations” are Really Bad
and not just for the innocent people who got deported
https://open.substack.com/pub/injusticereport/p/yes-the-el-salvador-deportations?r=h677&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
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Juan Martinez
8 months ago
This post has gotten so much traction & I’d just urge everyone to check out Pitzer’s history of concentration camps: we want these things to shout out their evil, to glow red w malign intent, but they begin as seemingly pragmatic, almost ordinary answers to mass containment & transport/transfer.
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William B. Fuckley
8 months ago
if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.
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David Forbes
8 months ago
Since Obama administration, at least, leftists/radicals repeatedly warned that Dems pouring cash into ICE and militarized police was not just evil in its own right, but laying the groundwork for open fascism. We were dismissed, with various degrees of vitriol, for pointing this obvious fact out.
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Melissa Gira Grant
8 months ago
I think the more horrifying thing to sit with is this: the every-day operations of the jail, prison, and immigration detention systems are and have been dehumanizing, and we built them, and they lend themselves seamlessly to the fascist business of stealing and caging even more people
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Silky Shah
8 months ago
This is why we must fight for everyone. Whether they’ve been incarcerated or have had contact with the criminal legal system or are merely undocumented. When you accept that some people are deserving of detention and deportation the scope of who is eligible is always under threat of expanding.
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every time i sit down to write a letter to a new pen pal in ICE detention, im struck mute. what could i possibly say to someone in such a place? here’s a reminder to myself, and an invitation to you.
open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...
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Nature writing for ICE Detainees
Figuring out what to say to a pen pal
https://open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesantalucia/p/nature-writing-for-ice-detainees?r=6ge&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
8 months ago
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i wrote about the remnant prairie behind the artist residency where i work
www.christiancentury.org/article/call...
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The call of a remnant prairie
I’ve seen artists enchanted and haunted by the prairie, their work changed by spending time in the...
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/call-remnant-prairie
8 months ago
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Alejandra Oliva
Christian Century
9 months ago
“The biodiversity of the prairie, its changing face across the seasons: this ecosystem is a community, living and breathing and renewing itself, older than the houses and the trees around it.” –
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
www.christiancentury.org/article/call...
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The call of a remnant prairie
I’ve seen artists enchanted and haunted by the prairie, their work changed by spending time in the...
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/call-remnant-prairie
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I wrote about the ways that the Trump admin has been purposely fucking with the visibility of ICE enforcement/the increased invisibility of undocumented people in daily life/feeling called into visibility as a neighbor
www.commonwealmagazine.org/ICE-immigrat...
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Visibly Invisible
The Trump administration hopes not only to deport migrants, but also to make them feel so unsafe they no longer participate actively in our communities.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ICE-immigration-trump-chicago-oliva
9 months ago
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Felipe De La Hoz
9 months ago
I think most people are intuitively aware of this but something like the official White House account posting an “ASMR” video of shackled immigrants is not just cruel for its own sake, it’s intentional envelope-pushing to ramp up to desensitization over inhumane detention, camps, and deaths
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H.E.D. Houseman
9 months ago
I spent most of the past three years not writing and doing a lot of sewing and somehow becoming a public mender and sewing teacher—I wrote about how it changed my sense of community today in my newsletter.
hedhouseman.substack.com/p/taking-you...
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Taking Your Time is the Point
And it turns out, so are other people.
https://hedhouseman.substack.com/p/taking-your-time-is-the-point?utm_source=substack&utm_content=feed%3Arecommended%3Acopy_link
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well, fuck ICE i guess
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9 months ago
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rachel ida
9 months ago
“We have a choice, these days, to be reborn into these times, to consent to change with them not in resignation to the fascist values …but in resignation to our truer, wilder selves, to shake off the mores of our time and to walk into the prairie.” wow,
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
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i wrote about dying and being reborn ungovernable also perfume and prairies and jackson pollock
open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...
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Something Rich and Strange
A sea change, a perfume, and Virginia Woolf's Orlando
https://open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesantalucia/p/something-rich-and-strange?selection=b3a17bf8-ce50-42df-9267-922067e15963
9 months ago
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every single time jason sits down to read the dog will drag his toy over and stare at him unceasingly until he puts the book away and gets on the floor to wrassle
9 months ago
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Kat Howard
9 months ago
Alejandra's writing is so gorgeous and smart.
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i am literally out here making collages for my newsletter about Orlando (novel), Jackson Pollock, perfume, gender, Shakespeare and decay, pls subscribe
ojosdesantalucia.substack.com
9 months ago
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fully and absolutely bizarre to realize that Wabansia Ave, to Simone de Beauvoir, was one of the most romantic places on earth
9 months ago
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re reading Orlando for newsletter research, and i think i love it so much in part because it just…works beautifully as a novel but it’s also packed full of what feel like inside jokes and asides that you sort of grasp but u know are meant for Vita Sackville-West’s eyes only
9 months ago
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Jessica Goudeau
9 months ago
This piece is SO GOOD
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I’m really excited to get to work with
@jessicagoudeau.bsky.social
on Injustice Report—my first post went up today, on Chicago, ICE enforcement actions, the sensitive locations memo and knowing your rights
open.substack.com/pub/injustic...
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The ICE Raid that Wasn't
Or: why the Sensitive Locations Memo Mattered
https://open.substack.com/pub/injusticereport/p/the-ice-raid-that-wasnt?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=6ge&utm_medium=ios
9 months ago
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Jessica Goudeau
9 months ago
I’m relaunching my newsletter as a shared space with
@olivalejandra.bsky.social
and Lauren Pinkston called The Injustice Report: Reporting that bends the arc of justice.
injusticereport.substack.com/p/the-injust...
We’ll report on community stories of how unjust policies affect real people.
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The Injustice Report
Reporting that bends the arc of justice.
https://injusticereport.substack.com/p/the-injustice-report
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Greg Pak
10 months ago
I don't trust any leader who isn't standing up for immigrants and trans people right now.
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Lynda Lopez
10 months ago
This is probably the most helpful resource I’ve seen so far in terms of keeping up with verifiable news on what’s happening around immigration raids in Chicago. No paywall too.
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Feds start making immigration arrests across Chicago area: Live updates
Trump border czar Tom Homan and TV personality Dr. Phil are in the city to observe the operations, according to reports.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/live/ice-raids-immigration-chicago-sunday
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talking to
@johndownesangus.bsky.social
’s class was one of the highlights of last year—incredibly jealous of this reading list
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10 months ago
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wrote like 2,000 words of newsletter today, coming soon to an email inbox near you.
ojosdesantalucia.substack.com
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Ojos de Santa Lucia | Alejandra Oliva | Substack
An erratically published missive on writing, justice, and my own personal canon of lady-saints. | olivalejandra.com. Click to read Ojos de Santa Lucia, by Alejandra Oliva, a Substack publication with ...
https://ojosdesantalucia.substack.com
10 months ago
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Alejandra Oliva
pseudonym jones
over 1 year ago
even a worm will turn
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
10 months ago
I reskeeted this earlier but there is now an extremely important correction: Secret Service says it was their agents that went to the school in Chicago, not ICE.
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unspeakably furious after seeing this. grateful for local news, prepared educators, and a city with policies that stand by its people
blockclubchicago.org/2025/01/24/i...
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ICE Agents Denied Entry At Chicago Elementary School, CPS Officials Say
Immigration agents arrived at Hamline Elementary School in Back of the Yards Friday, officials said. CPS administrators followed protocols and didn't let immigration agents in.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/01/24/ice-agents-denied-entry-at-cps-school-in-back-of-the-yards/
10 months ago
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me, literally five pages into a new romance novel:
10 months ago
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
10 months ago
Sharing an incredible resource for people looking to follow the legal changes on immigration under Trump. A law professor and numerous students at Yale Law and Stanford Law will be tracking and summarizing every change in immigration policy.
immpolicytracking.org/home/
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Immigration Policy Tracking Project
A comprehensive and dynamic catalogue of immigration policies issued by the Trump administration since January 2017.
https://immpolicytracking.org/home/
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made a stew feat. the entire ham bone left over from christmas and the temptation is proving too great for my dog, who is sitting at my feet and alternating between gently growling and snorting at me with the very occasional whine
10 months ago
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MercuryCobra
11 months ago
Every time I ask someone what immigration policy actually accomplishes, including the immigration attorneys I know, there’s always a lot of handwringing to cover up that the answer is “racism, mostly.” And yet “then maybe we should get rid of it?” is treated as an unthinkably extreme solution
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feeling very seen by these gifts from my in laws
11 months ago
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cat sitting my nephew is going great he has not tried to bite my feet even once actually
11 months ago
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fanny howe via claudia rankine, what a set of lenses to snap into place
11 months ago
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Marcus McCann
11 months ago
The You’re Wrong About Extended Universe Starter Pack (let me know if I’ve missed anyone)
go.bsky.app/5GFwwXq
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YESSSS i am SO EXCITED to read this, one of those absolute chef kiss combos of writer and subject
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11 months ago
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Alejandra Oliva
if you donate $50+ to the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund today and DM me proof, i will send you a signed copy of my book, RIVERMOUTH! consider giving today:
secure.givelively.org/donate/midwe...
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https://secure.givelively.org/donate/midwest-immigration-bond-fund/giving-tuesday-2024
12 months ago
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A.V. Marraccini
12 months ago
Thanks to Jack Hanson for this astute, thoughtful reading of Weil and her legacy. This really gets to the core of a lot of our own self-fashioning on the left now.
www.thedriftmag.com/whose-weil/
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Whose Weil?
Simone, Patron Saint of Everyone
https://www.thedriftmag.com/whose-weil/
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man is it a bad day for givelively to be shittin' the bed
12 months ago
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if you donate $50+ to the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund today and DM me proof, i will send you a signed copy of my book, RIVERMOUTH! consider giving today:
secure.givelively.org/donate/midwe...
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https://secure.givelively.org/donate/midwest-immigration-bond-fund/giving-tuesday-2024
12 months ago
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