Our beloved Alice Wong has joined the ancestors. It was one of the great honors of my life to call Alice my friend, co-author & co-conspirator. She was a true genius, a force of nature the likes of which the world has never seen before. I love you, Alice, and am equal parts grateful and devastated

What an amazing essay from the former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin. I'll share a few sections in the reply but seriously, read the whole thing. It's all insightful and beautifully written. lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

I’m joyful, proud of NYC, and having a little FOMO, but my new town of Maplewood, NJ also rocks & voted wisely in today’s school board elections.

I love you, NYC.

Teen Vogue took young people seriously. It's impossible to overstate how important, how rare, and how profoundly needed that is.

Baseball is really fun. How long until spring training?

Will Smith with the first extra-inning home run in a winner-take-all game in World Series history

Baseball!

BASEBALL

Hope folks feel less alone today, that people join with others to take further and deeper actions, and that everyone fights like hell to protect those most vulnerable to this regime.

Fun and play are often a part of social movements as the people trust the larger group to hold their values as the conflict with the state expands. The anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 were full of folks dressed like loggerhead turtles and dolphins and stuff dancing to RATM. Very fun + serious.

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion. As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

If you're upset about Jimmy Kimmel being "canceled," I'm sure you were just as furious when you heard about Joy Reid and Tiffany Cross or Amber Ruffin or Karen Attiah or Jemele Hill Because Kimmel might still have a job if you were

Feeling grateful for my awesome trans family and friends and furious at the absurd, insistent effort to scapegoat & demonize trans folks.

“We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.” - Nicola Yoon

“Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared.” — Alynda Segarra, inspiring us and making us braver at tonight’s Hurray for the Riff Raff concert.

I’m embarrassed by how sad I feel about the Columbia capitulation because it illuminates how desperately I want to believe in institutions and their expressed values.

“Anyone who thinks the administration will mutely walk away after the ink is dry needs to look at both the past behavior of autocratic regimes in general and this administration’s in particular,” writes Suresh Naidu, a professor at Columbia University.

Fantastic and timely intervention by the indispensable Dave Pozen on the true meaning of the Columbia shakedown for higher ed: replacing the rule of law with regulation by deal, which ultimately undermines both regulation and education. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

Andrea Gibson, Presente! Your legacy will stretch across time and space. Thank you.

a disaster for many reasons, but I’m especially livid thinking about countless disabled students whose families who will have even less in the way of recourse when their kids’ educational rights are violated

"When a human dies the soul moves through the universe trying to describe how a body trembles when it’s lost, softens when it’s safe, how a wound would heal given nothing but time. I can’t imagine it, the stars say. Tell us again about goosebumps. Tell us again about pain." --Andrea Gibson, Tincture

There’s no framework for any kind of discussion about the fears or the safety of Muslim New Yorkers. It’s as if there’s an entire part of the population that remains invisible until feared.” — Hanif Abdurraqib www.newyorker.com/news/essay/z...

Hanif Abdurraqib is one of my favorite essayists, and essays like this are why. It’s beautiful.

the core idea that can radicalize people is so simple: there is enough. there is enough food to feed everyone. enough resources to house everyone. money and technology and medicine to stop the suffering of people around the globe. once you accept that there's only one question: why don't we?

"There's sweetness to Springsteen's vision.Things are rough, the weight of the world a burden few shoulders can bear, yet there's love, yearning & desire amid the hardships.There will be loss & heartache, you'll love & lose but find strength to go on." @nikostratis.com thequietus.com/culture/book...

The New York Times was more skeptical of the academic qualifications of a black woman who had secured tenure and become the president of Harvard than they were of a white man who washed out of a grad program with a massive scandal and then became a white nationalist troll.

If Mamdani had checked just Asian or say, Asian and white (bear with me) NYT would never have run that story. The only reason they ran that story is because of the cultural belief that being Black gives you leg up in society despite research that says that isn't true.

people seem really confused about racial categories maybe we should have some educational programs to teach how these historically constructed categories structure our entire society in insidious ways we could even do programming in workplaces to improve how people communicate with each other

Natasha Cloud knows what it means to be a New Yorker.

These people think they’re at the end of a story — that they ARE the end of a story — and they are wrong. More than that: the story is changing around us all the time, in the ways that people who think they will always have the power to write it cannot even begin to anticipate.

Shame on UPenn. Trans people are not a bargaining chip for negotiation with a fascist government. If they’ll trade trans people’s humanity, what else are they willing to give up?

If you think trans people are a danger to anyone and not fascists and patriarchs and billionaires and bullies and zealots, or think universities don’t have power to resist, you are being manipulated by the bad guys or you are choosing the wrong side of history, that’s it.

“History provides a warning: In this country, when circumstances are right, the fragile norms around race can be dislodged, and freedoms can erode and then evaporate.” Nikole Hannah-Jones, connecting dots about ways white supremacy gets codified into law & policy. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/m...

In my panel yesterday I said this, and said it in particular to my fellow white dudes. Clean up the trash. Offer to be the note-taker. Volunteer for childcare duty.

Really important piece about universities and the Trump Administration from Ryan Enos and Steve Levitsky: "This Isn’t Negotiation. It’s Authoritarian Extortion". www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Lander and Mamdani really demonstrated how we can show up for each other and I could not be more proud to be a New Yorker tonight.

New York City! I’m flying, emotional, sleep-deprived and really really happy.

Very happy that New York will be ending anonymous child welfare reprting, a small step toward dismantling the system of family surveillance that disproportionately harms children and families of color. Https://www.propublica.org/article/how-trump-budget-cuts-harm-kids-child-care-education-abuse

"i asked chatgpt" yeah well i went to the doctor, i went to the mountains, i looked to the children, i drank from the fountains there's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line and the less I seek my source for some definitive closer I am to fine

the destruction of chattel slavery is one of the great accomplishments in our nation's history and the reason conservatives hate celebrating it is because doing so legitimizes the black counter-narrative of the united states

I was deported by the U.S. for reporting on the Columbia University student protests. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Thread about Brad Lander, stunts, and our responsibilities to one another.

Because what Rosa Parks was doing—and what Brad Lander was doing—was refusing to accede to unjust state action. That's not a stunt, that's exercising your moral rights as a human being.

My dear friend and colleague Comptroller Brad Lander was just violently detained by masked ICE officers while escorting folks out of immigration court. This is disgusting and horrific. He must be released immediately.

These authoritarian tactics are rooted in white supremacy and anti-immigrant sentiments. There has long been a stance that equality/access for Black (and non-white) people equals discrimination against white people. So, as political and social power and access grows, white backlash intensifies. /1

I appreciate this thread, and the concept of democracy framing.

NEW BLOG POST: Breaking Down Family Policing Copaganda in the New ‘Lilo & Stitch’ - by @syddanel.com 🎬 The new movie is poised to impact the way millions think about family policing and the termination of parental rights, and we need to talk about it. ⚠️ upendmovement.org/2025/06/09/b...