I was hired at the Village Voice in 2010 at 35K & told "everyone" got that. Was horrified to find out a white woman was hired at 42K & a white man (10 yrs my junior) at 55K. I had to quit to force a raise & got rehired a day later. #PublishingPaidMe
When I went to Guardian in '14, started at 25K for 48 columns/yr (about $500 each), no benefits. But I moved up to Writer-at-Large in '15 (50K for about 100 stories/yr, increased to 60K in 2016) + got health ins + a 40K stipend as an NYU grad student #PublishingPaidMe. But...
While I was earning six figures for 1st time at 40, it was by contract (not employment) so lost a lot to employment tax, had no retirement, etc —and only earned it by working two EXTREMELY demanding FT jobs. #PublishingPaidMe
Guardian eventually balked at renewing contract is it was & tried to get me to take a big cut in volume but also per piece. I wound up working as a professor, HIV researcher & book writing, which pay well but required me to earn a doctorate #PublishingPaidMe
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1/4 I filed for tenure today, as has been planned for years. It has been too much pressure being investigated while also filing for tenure (a huge moment in any scholar's life in the best of circumstances), so imagonnatakeaminute to sit with what I have accomplished. I WROTE
Class time: Let's use the Overton Window to discuss how pagers-as-booby-traps is really bad for humanity, and how journalists are already failing at this basic test of ethics and morality.
The Overton Window was developed to address what topics can be debated, or not, in news media. (It is named for political scientist Joseph Overton, who was not an egomaniac; his colleague Joseph Lehman named it for him after his death.)
For instance, in my lifetime and career, gay rights have gone from being too taboo to write about in almost any mainstream media; now, being explicitly anti-gay isn't much allowed in mainstream media (though, notably, being explicitly anti-transgender IS still on the window).
BOOM! I am back in the saddle for the fall as a regular @lithub columnist with an exclusive essay on "False Profits: Why I Am Not Teaching in the Classroom This Fall" lithub.com/false-profits-…
(It’s not often I get to quote my divas @pocojump, Blanche Devereux and Zora Neale Hurston all in one piece)
I wrap up the essay mediating on 2 quotes from MLK's final speech: "Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right."
BREAKING: My fall LGBTQ reporting & virus classes were cancelled & I’m not allowed to teach at Medill while I’m “investigated.” Whatever happens, I’ll be fine— like Medill, I “write boldly & tell the truth fearlessly”— but I’ll neither stay nor go quietly.
I’ll have more to say in an essay soon, but for now, plz watch this @democracynow segment & note that this is an explicit attack on ppl who speak about Palestine, ESPECIALLY on Black/PoC LGTBQ ppl.
@democracynow While I am still being paid while I am “investigated,” Medill has taken me out of the classroom without due process, a violation of NU’s faculty handbook. I’ll be fine, but this is a broadly homophobic and transphobic punishment…
🧵This is a good summary of where we are with monkeypox (MPOX, MPX): most ppl’s frame of reference, understandably, is SARS 2 (Covid), a virus also born in the viral underclass but with a very different virology. For some perspective, in the next tweet…
On average there are currently more new cases of Covid EVERY DAY in the United States ALONE than there are MPX cases currently in the world IN TOTAL
The MPX outbreak is serious but, as I noted the other day, there are two stories:
1. A sexually transmitted strain, from a mutation that formed circa 2016 and broke out in Nigeria that yr & globally 2022-2023 among men who have sex with men, and
I have been thinking through something and it won't go away. I do not in any way want to minimized the horror of Gaza. I have seen three of these solidarity encampments grow, thrive and be dismantled, and I see how they are a metaphor for life in Palestine in some ways.
Each camp is its own little world. Life is modest, and not easy, but people carve out a little world, and they make something beautiful. Jews, Christians and Muslims live together relatively peacefully, until the police or Zionists show up and create chaos and bring violence.
People share what little they have, and give one another a sense of abundance. They make little worlds out of color, language, music, dance, the sun. They share real community. But eventually, either thru deceptive negotiations or brute violence, the little world is destroyed.