For every photo and video you see of the Minneapolis general strike, there are organizers behind it. Some from labor, some from the faith community, some from their street who just wanted to help. The working class has power.

Healthcare workers standing up for their community. www.fox9.com/video/fmc-nf...

Not exaggerating when I say that the collective action in Minnesota will be studied for generations if not centuries to come

Education Dept. Drops Appeal of Court Order Blocking Anti-DEI Guidance First Amendment advocates and higher ed leaders are declaring victory, and some say it’s the “final defeat” of Trump’s attempt to rid colleges of race-based student supports. https://bit.ly/4jTBGNH #EDUSky #AcademicSky

As tomorrow's Minnesota-wide shutdown gathers momentum, here are some of the less visible ways workers and unions are helping each other survive to fight another day, by delivering food to workers hiding in their homes with the lights off. My report from Minneapolis.

These type of people are America's only shot at ever being great. In other words, they are the opposite of empathy-free Donald Trump and his terrorizing Gestapo goons who are destroying our country. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/u...

Some thoughts: 1. The deadline for nominating a person or group for the Nobel Peace Prize is Feb. 1. 2. History professors are qualified nominators. 3. The people of Minnesota have been awe-inspiringly peaceful in the face of state violence. 4. He would be so mad.

this list by @naomikritzer.bsky.social is excellent & helpful, & of course i hate that we need it, but we really need it. please read & share. everyone can do at least one thing from this list every day & that's a fact. naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/h...

🧵ICE's tactics for arresting and holding observers and protestors is ever-shifting, and I'm hearing lots of different stories. Right now, my perspective is that these are your best practices:

Historic Win: Staff at the Metropolitan Museum of Art voted overwhelmingly to unionize with UAW, with about 76% voting in favor after years of organizing. https://seiu.co/4qw2qq3

Please enjoy this local news: “Lehigh County Executive Josh Siegel said he is evicting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit from a county-owned building where it has occupied an office for about three years but never paid rent… “We’re going to deport ICE,” Pinsley said at the news conference”

TWIN CITIES FOLKS WHO WANT TO HELP AND DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START: I put together a big list of resources. Do you want to deliver groceries? do people's laundry? work in community defense? I want to help you get connected! naomikritzer.com/2026/01/19/h...

Do I have any trans followers from Maine who are part of organizing efforts against ICE? I'm in MA and can travel to report on Maine happenings, but I won't unless I can connect with people on the ground who would know my work and have reason to trust that I won't exploit people or sell them out.

Talked to a Somali man today who said his mosque last night was surrounded by neighbors ready to protect them against ICE if needed. Made me feel proud to live in this city.

that’s right

I just read this post aloud because it was so beautiful

Every time I poke my head up to glance at the news out of the WH, I hear Goneril's voice from Act 5 of Lear: "The laws are mine, not thine. / Who can arraign me for't?"

You love to see it. Cannot overstress how important organizing in faith communities has been for protecting Minnesota's values over the past 15 years.

Good news: reports say HHS is restoring funding to NIOSH, the agency that researches workplace safety. The labor movement led the fight to restore this critical funding. We made it clear: worker safety isn’t optional. Restore NIOSH workers!

Please understand this is happening in literally dozens of locations around the city simultaneously. If an ICE vehicle stops, community members materialize in seconds and do everything they can to stop the kidnappings. We are under siege and using every tool to fight back.

If you need inspiration to keep going right now, may I recommend the story of Robert Smalls, who stole a confederate steamboat and piloted his family and almost 20 others to freedom and went on to become one of the first Black people elected to Congress ✊🏽 www.usatoday.com/story/life/b...

This is Minneapolis: -drop the kids off for a day with their grandparents -go to brunch with your wife -get a text from neighbors who don’t have enough food & can’t leave home or they might be abducted by fed govt -get groceries as helicopters roar overhead -deliver food & this vehicle passes you

For those keeping score, Bellingcat, The New York Times Visual Investigation Team, & Washington Post's Visual Forensic team have all published analysis showing the ICE shooter wasn't in the path of Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle when he shot her, contradicting statements by the President & his cronies

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of finding one constructive real world offline thing you can do to use your particular skills in service of fighting fascism as a psychological defense against the constant drumbeat of fuckery

This is a great thread. Anger and panic are reasonable responses to everything that’s going on, but imbibing a steady stream of anger and panic from hundreds or thousands of people, without any opportunities for action, probably does us more harm than good.

look we're all making a big bet on AI! and if it pays off as big as we hope, well, it's going to make a handful of people super rich and you're going to lose your job but get to watch mickey mouse fuck geralt from the witcher. if it doesn't pay off well then you get to pay for the bailouts

Gender is immutably determined by biology… and by what dog you own, I guess?

“Learning is not a problem to be solved; it’s a process to be undertaken.” Lots of great stuff in this essay!

Watching Brazil as is our Christmas tradition, and the hill I will die on is that Sam’s break with reality, after which we can’t trust that anything is “real,” happens at the second department store explosion.

The spirit of the holiday season appears to have overtaken their furry hearts.

This cat, the clumsiest cat I’ve ever had, tried to leap from the back of the couch onto one of the cat shelves, but only half made it. Looked up to see his fat butt hanging off and his back legs peddling wildly in the air trying to get himself up. Before I could help him, he fell on my head.

Literally one of the reasons I’m skeptical of gAI is because I’m a historian and technology is one of the things I study, but also who looks at the recent history of Silicon Valley and trusts a single word they tell us

I’ve started requiring students at all levels to submit all their sources to try stave off anyone developing this bad habit. I can’t know that they’ve read them, but at least this way I know that they exist!

A quick thread on what happened when I incorporated science of learning principles into my Brit Lit survey this semester: I started doing short, 10-15-minute retrieval practice into almost every class meeting. We did quick Kahoot quizzes, passage IDs, timelines, "brain dumps," etc.

And another thing: anyone willing to allow their grievances to be weaponized by the fascists in this of all moments is decidedly not someone to be taken at face value.

I had such a great experience working with @ksupress.bsky.social, and I’m very proud to have The Art of Pity on this list!

As part of a project to run a study session for the final exam, my students did a literary charades game where they acted out passages. It was creative and lively and the students did a stellar job answering questions about the texts, and I wheeze-laughed myself into a coughing fit. It was glorious.

I keep thinking about that Atlantic piece on accommodations and wondering how different everything would be if we focused on making sure every person has what they need rather than trying to ensure that no person gets something they don’t deserve.

There is no balance required, you just trust people. Because disabled people are met routinely with mockery, suspicion, neglect, discrimination and outright hate, we do not feed the ableism machine with more suspicion. If a few people get away with ‘cheating the system’ that’s just how things are.

The piece also oozes with the implication that "real" disabilities--the kind the ADA is "supposed to be for"--are physical, visible ones, and everyone else is probably faking. It's just gross.

When this same writer was doing her "kids can't read anymore" piece, she contacted me for a quote, but when I said I'd need to know more about the angle of the piece before I'd commit, we "lost touch." She then quoted our then Dept chair Dan entirely out of context to fit the pre-set narrative. Hack

InFURiating that we all have to write/think/talk about vaccines this much, outside of celebrating new successes (HPV vax largely *eliminating* cervical cancer, my god), this shit was settled as one of the great scientific and public health triumphs EVER and now these dipshits are trying to ruin it

Leo is not sure how things got this far…

I am correspondent to command. The Art of Pity came out last May and explores what Early Modern English lit has to tell us about why reading literature is valuable then and now! www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2024/the-art...

Teaching is hard, and it's frustrating when students don't buy into our passion and values. But if we're not articulating those values in the design and implementation of our courses and not modeling those values in our work as educators, claiming that "literacy is liberation" is bullshit. 8/8

I was honored to be invited to give the annual Dotterer Lecture Series in Literature talk at Salisbury University yesterday. It was great meeting new people and catching up with old friends!

At this point a person would be hard-pressed to identify this as the desk of a literary studies scholar.

As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history. Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX

No creature on earth happier than a cat sleeping on a heating vent.