“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”: Mr. Rogers, the separation of immigrant families, and the complicated notion of “love”

Last night I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor?, a biopic about the life and work of Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister and TV personality known to people of my generation as the host of PBS show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Rogers donned his iconic cardigan sweaters and talked to the audience through the camera in every …

The struggle to define who is worthy: mass incarceration and mass deportation

I just finished watching an interview with Susan Burton, author of "Becoming Ms. Burton" and founder of A New Way of Life, a re-entry program for women of color who are adjusting to their new lives after prison, and Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow," on Democracy Now!. Alexander wrote the introduction to Burton's book, in …

The eye in the sky and “low-status” domestic workers

Not long ago, I watched a PBS Frontline video called "Rape on the Night Shift," an expose delving into the abuse of and violence, often by their own supervisors, against female immigrants who work as janitors for poor wages in buildings that I would wager the majority of Americans have frequented for one reason or another. One …

Discourse, voice, and rightness in an animal rights activist talk

Tonight I attended a talk at the Blue Stockings Bookstore on Allen Street in lower Manhattan with a friend, where we partook in a conversation about animal rights called Animal Rights Campaigning and Racism. Interesting questions framed the talk: How can we campaign for animal liberation while being self-aware of privilege, xenophobia, imperialism, and the …

This runaway beast

I’m on my way home for Thanksgiving on a bus that has been delayed several times due to traffic. What should be a 4-5 hour ride is looking like at least 7 in total. Weird that a group of people who don’t know each other (except for those who bought tickets together) are found careening …