Weekly Reader

Feminism is often defined by the idea of “choice.” I would like to choose to wake up every day in a society that values me and all other women workers—to have a guaranteed union job, fair wages, social housing, healthcare, child care if I am able to become a mother. Instead, I am told I must choose between scrambling for access to those things, or dying. I could call this for what it is: anti-woman behavior—or sexism. And any other woman could tell me that actually I am the one being sexist for calling these things sexist: it’s my privilege talking; other women would kill to be in my shoes. I know this to be true and I also know that I am allowed to be angry about the ways I and other women suffer. And I also know that conditions for me and for all the women I love can become far worse than they are right now. My desire for a basic social safety net is, in a way, selfish: I want to have a good life. I believe that I deserve that. But I also want the same for everyone else—because I know that ultimately, we are all connected. It’s the same reason that higher union density means higher wages and better benefits even for non-union workers. A rising tide lifts all boats—and a perfect storm of a pandemic and economic recession could sink them. This is the basis of solidarity: if you fall, I could fall too. I am with every single working woman because I am a working woman too, and because I can’t have a good life without them also having a good life. I may suffer less than they do now, but because they are suffering, I am with them. And because they are suffering, I could lose everything and suffer more, too.


The language introduced in the conversations around #MeToo and other mainstream feminist campaigns revealed the power imbalances and types of coercion that might exist within these heterosexual age-gap couplings. But while this language helped to illuminate how men in positions of authority can use their power to coerce or circumvent consent, it also implied that a small segment of the movement believes that men inherently hold authority or power. Implying that all men possess inherent power also implies that they must possess power over something or someone else. The harm in this is that it necessarily insinuates that all women have a power deficit, if not total powerlessness. Through this lens, every heterosexual coupling is subject to scrutiny, lest a man get away with abusing his power over a defenseless young woman. Of course the female subject, awash in feelings and hormones and femininity, is insufficient as the primary judge of whether her relationship is problematic.

Weekly Reader

In the late sixties and early seventies, before she was known as an author, Morrison was a Random House trade editor who almost singlehandedly introduced black radical activists to mainstream American readers. No single editor or major publishing house has surpassed Morrison’s contribution in the intervening four decades. Cofounder of the Black Panther Party Huey P. Newton (To Die for the People, 1972); prison activist and Black Panther field marshal George Jackson (Blood in My Eye, 1971); and Angela Davis (Angela Davis: An Autobiography, 1974) were all published by Morrison at Random House. Morrison did not necessarily embrace these ideologies, but believed it was invaluable that they circulate in the marketplace of ideas—despite their demonization by the U.S. government.

Booker, as a Black politician, is obliged to perform hope for America’s future even as its legacy of racialization and oppression is being brought to bear on him. He has to recognize that he’s being fundamentally devalued by the institution he has invested in (which, indeed, has a long legacy of such devaluing as part of its role in maintaining racial hierarchy). His rhetorical negotiation of the tension between his power as a Senator and his power as a Black man marks his saturation point. He has to stand up and defend a racial justice bill with the entire force of his history as a Black man against the bureaucratic “neutrality” of a procedural argument. It clearly pains him to do so, and the institution eats that pain without any regard for him as a person or his well-being. And the next time it comes up for a vote, he’ll have to do it again.

Riley was also most generous, as generous, with people who didn’t have anything traditionally productive going on, who wanted to be in the mix and hang out or make time; no one needed to justify their existence to be close to him, they were accepted as people… he pulled them close, not what they did, and he would be very cool to them…. it’s nice to see that kind of acceptance. He would also bring massively successful people into the mix as just another friend, or transpose them from one milieu to another… “this is my friend who happens to just churn out comics for a living… that’s how she pays her rent… this fool here makes movies… you guys would totally get along and you have to meet them…” and so we did… and they would be along for the ride or off to the sideline or taking part in some back room somewhere or hearing some story about pissing on a statue in Europe, everyone in the circle as if they had been in the mix with him since he was young in Denton… and that would be a trip for them too.

Weekly Reader

If workers already must contend with employers’ obvious privacy intrusions — including keyloggers, periodic browser history checks, and access to email inboxes — how quickly will their spying within our home workplaces be normalized? Will we gladly take an expensive, ergonomic chair that also tells your far-away boss when you are not at your desk? Will all your smart home devices — the smart refrigerator, the Ring doorbell, or your Alexa — keep track of not only your own work but the relationship between workers? Through facial recognition attached to the camera outside your front door, the voice recognition in, your Alexa, and the MDM software on your devices, your boss would know everything about who was at the organizing meeting you hosted at your house. Then they will fire you on the premise that your smart fridge colluded with your bank to tell your insurance company that all that fast food and beer is putting you at risk for diabetes and they marked you as a future cost liability.

It’s hard when someone you like, someone you think is a good man or woman, is accused of rape. Our first instinct is to not believe it. That’s normal. But when the evidence starts to pile up, when multiple witnesses come forward, as is the case with Tara Reade, saying she told them decades ago about how Joe Biden raped her, it gets harder to not believe it. When Tara’s mother’s voice crosses space and time to ask Larry King in 1993 about a serious problem her daughter was having with a prominent senator, it’s even harder. That’s where rape culture comes in. It gives us an out. Like the mother who said her daughter’s rapist was a “good man”. It makes it easier to move through this world thinking men we like don’t rape, thinking victims are liars. He’s a good man, something must be wrong with her.

Moreover, Rutgers is embedded in three cities that are primarily comprised of working-class populations of color: Newark, New Brunswick, and Camden. Rutgers continually pays lip service to its commitment to those communities. In our vision, by contrast, the university should have a much larger commitment to communities where the university resides. People who live in these cities send their children to Rutgers, or are working at Rutgers, or have a partner working at Rutgers. We envision a university that supports their development with their voices at the center. This entails a very different university—one that values our amazing dining staff, adjunct faculty, groundskeepers, and building staff. We imagine a university that includes and hears everyone’s voices and prioritizes the core missions of the institution: teaching, research, and service, particularly service to the communities in which we are located.

It was these unique conditions which gave birth to an Irish movement whose “distinguishing character,” Marx claimed, was “socialist, lower-class,” “republican” in the universalist sense of the term, and non-sectarian And whereas he and Engels previously thought “it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy… Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.”