Cashing in on citizenship privilege

Sunday, May 6th was Mother's Day. One of the movements that has drawn my attention and respect is the movement to bail out poor Black mothers from jail, where they stay for weeks, months or longer simply because they cannot make pay the cash bail set for them. This year was the third year that …

Not all immigrants are “nice”: critiquing the good immigrant trope in immigrant rights activism

2019 has begun with pain, exhaustion, and uncertainty for many people in the United States, and hope has been hard-won and tenuous. I volunteer with New Sanctuary Coalition, whose executive director, Ravi Ragbir, was forced to attend an ICE check-in this morning, one of many techniques that the government has been using to intimidate immigrant …

Learning to be silent and stand by: accompaniment training to support our immigrant friends

The word friends was included without quotes in the title of this post because the unadorned word properly reflects the core values of community, solidarity, advocacy, and recognition of humanity expressed at an accompaniment training held at New Sanctuary Coalition, an interfaith/nonfaith group fighting for immigrant rights, in midtown Manhattan this past Monday. Accompaniment as defined …

Crying us a river: the New York Times’ lament of the poor education of detained migrant children

The expression "cry someone a river" according to Wiktionary has two definitions: (idiomatic, often sarcastic) To weep profusely or excessively in the presence of another person. (idiomatic, usually sarcastic, by extension) To try to obtain the sympathy of another person by complaining or sniveling. I'll focus on the first definition. The New York Times published an …

The gravitational forces of public institutions: community-building for more just policing in New York

Being a student in one of the two largest public university systems in the country is an amazing experience. CUNY is powerfully connected to its complicated history with New York City, and there are few people who are not proud to study or teach there (or both, as many of our graduates continue on as …

“Adjuncts: Underpaid, Overworked and Mobilizing on International Women’s Day” (article for Left Voice)

I just published an article for Left Voice, a progressive news source where several of my friends and colleagues from the GC collaborate to dig in to news that affects us as workers, students, citizens, and human beings. So proud to offer my services again! Here's the link, and here's the text below... In “Living …

“Tell us what to think”: the Florida shooting and media’s subtle shushings

I watch PBS Newshour sometimes when I'm waiting for DemocracyNow! to come on in the mornings. The reporting on PBS is well-intentioned though influenced by corporate and wealthy sponsors in order to make up harsher and harsher cuts in government support over the years. It's a decent source of information, a more polished, slightly more toothless …

Is love an emotion or an act?: White nationalism as a complicating complement to Bakhtin’s philosophy

Is love an emotion or an act? I recently asked this in a student working group where we discuss topics including whether men have a right to contribute to the shaping of public discourse about sexual harassment (appropriate as the #MeToo movement has emerged to inspire and to generate new questions) and how community college students can …

A case against charter schools: send back your saviors

As a professor, I work with public school teachers who are in the process of becoming certified to teach in the New York City Department of Education in a program called the New York City Teaching Fellows. These new teachers support students from all over the world, many of whom are immigrants or children of …

“Zines as creative resistance”: authoring the world, authoring ourselves

The Graduate Center library and first-floor hallways have spaces for exhibitions of art by artists with a variety of commitments and visions, some of which are beautiful, raw, terrifying, playful, and sometimes – in my favorite cases – all of the above. Below I've collected a group of images of zines which explore topics of race, queer …