Now up: Noah Kulwin reviews Seth Harp's new book, "The Fort Bragg Cartel," tracing the historical continuities between Vietnam War era drug smuggling operations and the overwhelming present-day criminality taking place at the Fort. proteanmag.com/2025/11/12/a...

Excited to be in conversation with Abby Anderson, part of the Budding Roses collective, organizers of an excellent youth liberationist project here in Portland.

That’s all very fair but my most recent story literally compares AI to Victorian grave robbers, like let’s think about who we’re piling on before going off proteanmag.com/2025/10/31/r...

Our sincere thanks to all new patrons. Your support makes a big difference. Right now, we're running up against budget constraints that limit our ability to publish. If you've ever found value in our work, we hope we can ask your help. Tiers start at just $2 a month. patreon.com/proteanmag

man it'd been a while since my last real chortle of glee

always, always, always read Mel:

I was fighting fascism with the power of love and kindness and just really getting my ass handed to me. proteanmag.com/2025/11/01/w...

pleased as ever to have work from Luke O'Neil in the magazine. these three new stories are some of my all-time favorites, but having read We Had it Coming, i highly recommend the whole thing. "I was fighting fascism with the power of love and kindness and just really getting my ass handed to me."

happy Halloween—enjoy this next entry in Protean’s tradition: we have Kim Kelly once again exploring more fascinating and macabre historical narratives, and making the case that we still show just as much ghoulish disrespect to human values and our fellows to this day.

it is SIGNIFICANTLY more dangerous to work as a school crossing guard than as a cop. apnews.com/article/scho... www.bls.gov/charts/censu...

You can still snag a print edition of our most recent print edition—Protean Magazine Issue V: Contra Temps. proteanmag.com/product/prot...

Read the ORB interview with Luke on the part of his book that was about California, and "quotes-California": www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/we-have-the-...

get this fuckin garbage off MY GOD DAMNMED MICROSOFT WORD!!!!

this is a really, really fascinating article from Greg Afinogenov about his relative that participated in organizing before the Russian Revolution. this appeared in our third print issue—worth reading online now if you didn't get your copy at the time (in which case i still don't forgive you)

We thank you for your support of Protean Magazine. Protean depends on our Patreon members—and thanks to your generosity, we're able to continue publishing the work we love. patreon.com/proteanmag

thanks for the shoutout nathan j. robinson! talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/why-i...

From the Protean Archive - “In the years since I discovered that piece of paper from the Archive of the Revolution, I have found myself pulled toward two diametrically opposite conclusions.” proteanmag.com/2024/06/16/f...

i really thought this bio was a joke at first

I have a new poem in @proteanmag.com proteanmag.com/2025/10/16/s... 💎⛰️🪞💙

a remarkable story here: Rebecca Ruth Gould was able to interview the Nasrallahs, a Gazan family, in Egypt. Rachel Corrie died to save their home in 2003—though Israel ultimately demolished it. their second home was destroyed in 2023. they remain in legal limbo in Egypt, as do many other refugees.

unless Kaiser Permanente management returns to the table at the last moment—which did happen in 2021—it looks like this gigantic cross-Kaiser walkout of 23 unions may well go forward tomorrow! i spoke with unionized healthcare staffers of the OFNHP here: truthout.org/articles/23-...

i spoke to the good folks of OFNHP AFT Local 5017 for this article about the authorization of a massive strike at Kaiser Permanente—chronic understaffing and low pay have become so intolerable, the OFNHP and 22 other Kaiser unions may walk out en masse on Tuesday. truthout.org/articles/23-...

help us out! subscribe! our illustrious next installment is close at hand...

i just saw this lol. Jake and i both decided to show a little skin

humbly, we ask your aid—to support independent and uncompromised leftist publishing and journalism, and art and poetry too.

An excerpt of Mousa Alsadah’s foreword to the collected writings of Wasim Said, forthcoming from 1804 Books. Said is a Gazan survivor who, writing as he fled the killing, recorded stories of suffering and terror amidst "generosity, selflessness, truth[.]" proteanmag.com/2025/09/23/e...

humbly, we ask your aid—to support independent and uncompromised leftist publishing and journalism, and art and poetry too.

an elegantly argued review (which comes as no surprise, as the author is Charlotte Rosen) on a completely fascinating and morally appalling history. this spree of burning people to death for profit is one of the more grotesque indictments of capital's perverse incentives.

An awesome read to begin September. 🍁👻 @kimkelly.bsky.social proteanmag.com/2022/10/31/s...

“[A] blueprint for mass deportation, marketed as development.” theguardian.com/world/2025/s... proteanmag.com/2025/02/27/s...

my latest is on the Climate and Community Institute report that examined the relative triumph of Vienna's dual-modality social housing: state-owned and "limited-profit" housing furnishes highly desirable multi-income units at the lowest rent of any major city in Europe. truthout.org/articles/vie...

Charlotte E. Rosen reviews Bench Ansfield's new book "Born in Flames"—a revelatory historical analysis of the systematic, profitable, and deadly arson schemes perpetrated by landlords and insurance companies in the Bronx of the 1970s. proteanmag.com/2025/09/07/i...

BREAKING: Callow Opportunist Reads Room

this interview contains a lovely and thoughtful set of reflections on writing, injustice, trees, the land, and a lot more. Lupita Limón Corrales is a talented poet who has previously contributed to Protean; i highly recommend her excellent 2021 piece here: proteanmag.com/2021/06/24/t...

Mallika Singh interviews poet and organizer Lupita Limón Corrales, whose new collection, ESTA BOCA ES MÍA, has now been published by nueoi press. Corrales’s poems, Singh writes, are “a testament to the dissolution of self, to the collective voice.” proteanmag.com/2025/09/02/l...

"Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that the Committee to Protect Journalists has ever documented." cpj.org/full-coverag...

latest piece: on the successful campaign of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) to force logistics giant Maersk to give up shipping certain Israeli goods linked to illegal settlement and genocide. a major win and organizing lesson on pressure points in the arms trade: truthout.org/articles/pal...

to rest peacefully after a life beautifully and brilliantly spent, this i wish for Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books, someone i knew, respected, and loved

this is a genuinely exquisite piece; i hope you'll read it now that it's online. Kate is comprehensive on Mihelič's fascinating life and work, while using them as a prism to illuminate a dialectic: how life and grief are infused in art, and how art in turn inflects our ways of seeing and our lives.

wrote last year (it’s finally online) about my favorite artist, the Yugoslav painter France Mihelič for @proteanmag.com proteanmag.com/2025/07/25/b...

From Issue V: Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell.bsky.social) on the art and life of Yugoslavian painter France Michelič, known for his depictions of folk deity Kurent. Stamped by the 20th century's trials, he became a searching interpreter of nature, ritual, and death. proteanmag.com/2025/07/25/b...

Print submissions for Protean Magazine: Issue VI are now open. Send us your most affecting poems, or your best essay pitches and/or drafts—we want to read your incisive, rigorous, lyrical critiques of American decay, social pathology, and imperial decline. Guidelines: proteanmag.com/submissions

"You can see that what I am denouncing is the idea of comfortable certainties and soothing convictions. Truth should not give us rest from the search for truth but should stimulate it. Stupidity is not quite the same as error and ignorance." –Frédéric Gros proteanmag.com/2025/05/27/a...

Farewell to The Pink House—depicted here in a piece by 20th Century Collages that appears in Protean Issue IV. Read Luke's Issue IV story, "Newburyport, MA": proteanmag.com/2023/07/31/n...

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“it ultimately matters little whether violence is meted out by the police, the hospital, or both working in concert. Then, as now, the challenge is in building the political consciousness and systems of care necessary to move towards a healthier social order.”

@oksanamir.bsky.social and I have a new piece up on Protean Magazine where we explore how the current repression of pro-Palestinian activists echoes the First Red Scare.

we count on our readers to keep the magazine alive—thank you so, so much to the helpers. however, we're still deeply limited. despite that, we publish work that's just as good or better than outlets with, literally, 1,000x more money. we need your help to power the real, independent left media.