Recognition and Redistribution: Colonization Was Not an Accident

In March, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as among the most serious crimes committed against humanity. The initiative, led by African nations with Ghana at the forefront, won broad support, passing with 123 votes in favor. Although the resolution met resistance from countries like the United States, Israel, and Argentina, along with several European states, its passage represents an important political gesture on the global stage.

Zinthia Álvarez PalominoJuly 16, 2026Comment

Reconocimiento y redistribución: La colonización no fue un accidente

En el mes de marzo, la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas aprobó una resolución que reconoce la esclavitud y la trata transatlántica como uno de los crímenes más graves cometidos contra la humanidad. La iniciativa, impulsada por países del continente africano con Ghana a la cabeza, obtuvo un amplio respaldo, con 123 votos a favor. Aunque la resolución encontró resistencia de países como Estados Unidos, Israel y Argentina y varios Estados europeos, su aprobación supone un importante gesto político en el plano global.

Zinthia Álvarez PalominoJuly 16, 2026Comment

One Hundred Years in Prison: A Precedent Aimed to Kill Democracy

A man got sentenced to 100 years in prison this week. Seven other people got 30, 50, and 70 years apiece. Their crime, in the government’s own words, was being “antifa”—a word that has no legal definition, no membership roster, no headquarters, and no leadership, because it isn’t an organization. It’s a stance rooted in antifascism. And the government just proved you can sentence people to a century in a federal prison for holding one.

Mishel NoorJuly 9, 2026Comment

Rivers of Sorrow and Rivers of Joy: Marsha P. Johnson and Queer Intersectionality

At the very heart of the struggle for civil rights in the United States stands a Black transgender drag queen and self-identified transvestite. Marsha spent her life battling deep poverty and mental illness, ultimately living out her final years with HIV. Yet, she was a fierce political force. Alongside Sylvia Rivera, a key figure on her own right, she co-founded S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a groundbreaking organization that provided food, clothing, and shelter to homeless queer youth and drag queens.

Lina M. Sánchez BetancourtJuly 6, 2026Comment

Cuba on My Mind. Part Two: My time and travels in Eastern Cuba

In 2016, I entered my doctoral program at Fordham and decided to intentionally intersect my times as a tourist to connect with Eastern Cuba. Habaneros informed me that the East was the Blackest and most Caribbean part of the island. My interaction with Rastafarian community members in Havana, Cuba, also deepened my interest in the East. Additionally, my family and friends have fluid cross-cultural upbringings as Cubans of Jamaican descent and Jamaicans of Cuban descent in the United States.

I took a 16-hour bus ride across the island to Santiago de Cuba and then two motorcycles, a local bus, and a “dollar-van” Ford military-style truck to Guantánamo City. This was my first visit to the British West Indian Welfare Centre. It was 2017.

Lisa V. BettyJune 18, 2026Comment

Selective Silence: Celebrity, Empire, and the Politics of Moral Visibility

Public outrage over celebrity silence often reveals something deeper than disappointment. It reveals a collective desire for moral clarity in a culture built to avoid it.

Recent tensions involving Drake’s criticism of DJ Khaled’s silence on Palestine sparked predictable accusations of hypocrisy. Critics questioned how Drake—a Jewish Black artist who has also avoided sustained public condemnation of Zionism or explicit advocacy for Palestinian liberation—could publicly challenge another artist’s silence while remaining politically ambiguous himself.

Felicia ThompsonJune 4, 2026Comment

No Press Allowed

he press badge sat on my desk for weeks until the ink started fading from the laminate. It was never used for Rosalía’s closed door show at Lisbon’s Primavera Sound festival, a performance staged for ten thousand people but closed to independent eyes. The images that reached the public came pre-approved, pre-lit, and pre-curated.

By midafternoon steel barricades circled the venue like polite cattle fencing, security checked credentials at every entrance, and names like mine were not on the list. Inside, the stage stayed dark while no photojournalists fidgeted with lenses and no critics scribbled notes. Nothing was left to chance as reality was scripted before it even happened. Only hired shooters waited for the director’s cue, moving with the easy confidence of people who know exactly what story they are paid to tell, and the only voices covering the night belonged to those who had paid for the stage. The rest of us were fed the finished product and told it was “truth.”

Eman MohammedMay 21, 2026Comment

The god of Order vs. the God of Liberation

In moments of instability, political power rarely stands on its own. It reaches for something older, deeper, and harder to challenge: divine authority. When legitimacy begins to erode, governments do not simply tighten policy, but moralize it. They wrap enforcement in scripture. They frame control as righteousness.

Felicia ThompsonMay 7, 2026Comment