We’d be in a much stronger position right now if mainstream Democrats had taken a common sense stand for First Amendment principles instead of piling on undergraduate standing up for Palestine.

I've taught a range of map-related classes since 2009. We almost always started with Pedro Lasch's Latino/a América, which was such an evocative way to convey the politics + poetics of cartography, and the importance of cartographic *materiality* — how maps carry traces of their own journeys

Liberals say the Supreme Court had destroyed our democracy. They're wrong—it has destroyed our Republic.

supreme irony that the party of lincoln is now the party of taney

NEW: In what appears to be one of the largest expansions of surveillance in IL history, we found hundreds of new Flock license plate readers—all paid for by AG Kwame Raoul's office in the last 3 years. Issues with Flock Safety's data sharing practices are mounting. Will our sanctuary status hold?

And then this. As always, everywhere, "tough on crime" policies require no ACTUAL data to back them up, just breezy correlations, bc they are seen as the natural, obvious solution. I doubt making low-level things tougher has led to a big increase in safety. But I can't compete w gut instinct.

I mean, it's the Platonic ideal:

Some of the people in line to apply for other companies are being handed these pamphlets. Hotel security here less than thrilled.

Happening now: protesters in Chicago are interrupting a hiring fair at the Congress Hotel, where U.S. Customs and Border protection is recruiting today. Banner reads, "stop kidnapping our neighbors!" It's quite the scene in here, and the DHS table has been blocked for several minutes already.

This bill was never only about eviscerating social services or enriching oligarchs, bad as that is. It’s also about using state power to build a private police force for the fascists—and spreading fear and destroying solidarity. Being brave and building solidarity is a big part of how we fight back.

Our guide to public records for Chicago tenants is now available online! In this series of videos, senior reporter Maya Dukmasova walks you through how to use free government databases to learn about any property’s building code violations and ownership. www.injusticewatch.org/knowyourbuilding

I just submitted my book for peer review. After 15 years of thinking, researching, and writing, and, as I keep saying, an NEH this year to finish up. I’m furious about the gutting of that institution, which makes so much knowledge possible. I hope this book eventually lives up to that honor.

All of the talk about "peaceful protest" makes me think of all the times I have been part of a protest where the police cracked someone over the head and then charged that person with assault. They will call you violent. You can't control that or other people.

Happening now: in Chicago, activists are holding a rally in Pilsen this afternoon in opposition to CPD's collaboration with ICE earlier this week at an immigration check-in site.

One thing is for certain after this week: Local cops in sanctuary cities—Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York—are working in lock step with DHS and ICE.

An archive of two decades' worth of exhibitions at the Leventhal Map & Education Ctr @ the Boston Public Library (@bplmaps.bsky.social) — from imaginary, climate, subterranean, and computer maps to school geography, women mapmakers, and cartographic deception

Between the El and Deep Dish, Chicago is sadly designed to be anti-Ninja Turtle

Justice Taney’s infamous Dred Scott line that black Americans had “no rights the white man was bound to respect” represents a dismally consistent thru line in our politics as applied to marginalized groups. But it’s also a fundamentally brutal and losing position. lpeproject.org/blog/outrage...

Maybe an apple print is more affordable than apples? At any rate, this one is for all the teachers. https://www.starshaped.com/small-prints/apple #letterpress

Cops out of traffic enforcement

Outside Cook County Jail yesterday, we chanted, “Free Our Moms, Free Them All!”

hello from outside division 10 of the cook county jail in chicago. i’m here for the free our moms day gathering. through testimony, poetry, and music, this annual event demands freedom for incarcerated mothers and people imprisoned everywhere—from immigration detention centers to palestine.

A report from the scene of a horrifying kidnapping on the streets of Worcester, MA today by @billshaner.bsky.social www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-ne...

youtu.be/d_YZhjWbBnI?... Premier explaining turntablism to Leno is the appetizer and then Guru says “Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal” and sends it out coast to coast for the main course

Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through!

And remember, cops aren’t workers :) www.teenvogue.com/story/what-t...

Scenes from Chicago today, where some brief rain was no match for thousands of May Day protesters. Organizers and electeds vowed to protect undocumented workers from ICE snatch squads as they marched from Union Park all the way to the lakefront.

Massive Crowd at May Day protest in Chicago!

Lameham Methol Shamesbury Blight Falls West Lameham

Chicago! On May 22nd, 6:30 to 8:30 pm I'll be part of a discussion organized by @prisonculture.bsky.social at Walls Turned Sideways: "Why Make Zines in 2025: Information Control Under Fascism." Also participating are Lewis Raven Wallace, and K Rochelle R-Drennan. Come! whyzines2025.eventbrite.com

Very, very important piece about a part of the CECOT story that's gone barely discussed. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/inside-...

A US citizen with a learning disability who has just suffered a medical emergency asks a CBP officer for directions outside the emergency room. He ends up detained in an icebox for ten days and has the assistant secretary of DHS lying about him to the public at large. popular.info/p/us-citizen...

It’s not a prison but a concentration camp. It’s not deportation, it’s abduction.

"a broad cross section of americans do not like the idea of sending people to foreign gulags but you shouldn't talk about it because of salience"

vance is a detestable liar and an open enemy of the constitution. the central load bearing factual claim here is completely false and even if it wasn’t the constitution contains two explicit guarantees of due process

The New Bedford Light has more detailed reporting on this. This story should be everywhere. Fucking gestapo shit.

today was my last day of parental leave so I did what any mother would do and took my daughter to see the graves of William and Henry James

This plan, though, also tells us the horrifying reason why Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not already back in the U.S. www.lawdork.com/p/trump-told...

If the U.S. government is going to take the position that, once removed from the United States, folks can’t be brought back, then it sure seems to me that federal courts should be reflexively and categorically barring *all* removals until they’re 100 percent certain that the removals are lawful.

Although prison abolition is often dismissed as naive idealism, I am often struck by another form of wishful thinking---that with just a few tweaks, we can have "humane" prisons that rehabilitate. I think the distance between the status quo and that reality is just as large, compared to abolition.

130 (130!!!! ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY!!!!!!!!) people came to the Winterthur Library tattoo inspiration open house (new attendance record for a Wint Lib event) and I am walking on fucking air

I know this sounds like pedantic scolding but I really do believe that doubling down on the idea that criminal records are a meaningful distinction is like carefully digging a pit that we can be shoved into.

DREAM panel at the Houghton Library May 1st— I’d ♥️ to see you there! Co-sponsored by Harvard English and organized by @cejacobson.bsky.social w/ @drbibliomane.bsky.social, Jen Bervin, & Mande Zecca. I’ll be sharing new work in queer craft and archives.