Today I am meditating on two of Baldwin’s quotes about children— “For these are all our children, we will all profit by or pay for what they become” and the one below. They both mirror how I feel about students—as teachers, they are all ours to protect. I am a college professor, and I teach and learn with (and from) adults, and I do not mean to infantilize them. But I do feel protective of them, and I am aware that all faculty have a responsibility for the wellbeing of students, whether they are on our campus or others.

Greetings friends from Lincoln Park, Chicago and Day 5 of DePaul University’s Liberation Zone. It’s a GORGEOUS day. To counter the lies fed to you by cops, uni admins, the mainstream media, the White House & Netanyahu himself, let’s look around at what’s happening here! This is a Catholic Vincentian school and its Christian values are being interrogated by students in many places. As you enter the Liberation Zone, there a wall (50 feet long?) of names of children killed in Gaza.

BREAKING: for weeks, @shahanmufti & I have worked together to co-author & gather 50 signatures for a letter demanding the New York Times commission an independent investigation of "Screams Without Words." @laurawags has the story @washingtonpost washingtonpost.com/style/media/20… Our letter was signed by more than 50 professors of journalism and communication at more than a dozen universities across the United States and Canada. It was delivered to A. G. Sulzberger and the NYT editor of standards and can be read in full here: washingtonpost.com/documents/adc3…

No, I am not tenured. How will I account for yesterday and today and tomorrow? Will our board forgive me when I go up and let me stick around? Doesn’t matter. This is the job: to speak about important matters. And protecting our students is the only thing that matters right now. We must speak against the genocide. We must speak about the state and corporate suppression of free speech on our campuses. And we must backup our brilliant, brave, creative and wonderful students—putting our bodies between them and uni admin or cops if we must.

Wrapping up my first shift as an EJP faculty support for the Northwestern Gaza Solidarity encampment. An exciting day, and I’ve never felt more connected with my students. Heading home before my shift tomorrow, but first, let me share some things about the camp. The camp is a sight of music, political education, mutual aid and sign making. The students are experimenting with how to teach, feed each other, make art and organize together.

As night falls and waking up at 5 AM, flying to New York and 8 hours of street reporting non-stop catches up with me, I am about to leave this party and let these young ppl who welcomed me into their space carry on. But first, some final thoughts… First, THIS is what university life should be! I saw and experienced some extraordinary things: running into old friends, having substantive conversations with students (from here and even Northwestern/Medill), learned from students, learned in teach ins....But most of all...

1. PHEW. I am overwhelmed seeing all the photos in Pulitzer Hall at @columbiajourn of all the Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza and Lebanon 2. Can’t even see them all in one photo

A side note to the Berkeley law dinner fiasco: Professors shouldn't have work events with students in their homes!!! This is a problem which extends beyond this situation. "Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, says that the incident is the latest in antisemitic attacks on him and that free speech does not extend to his home." OK, then don't have work events in your house! latimes.com/california/sto…

Cheap rent made Philip Glass possible too, who told me in 2012: “The problem is, when I came to New York, it’s much more difficult now. You could work 3 days a wk loading a truck or driving a cab, and you’d have enough money to live off of" the other 3+ weeks to do your art!

https://twitter.com/marxforcats/status/1778089805676474853

“Work," Glass said, "was a seasonal business! Can you imagine??? "You worked the weekends around the first of the month. And then you had the middle of the month to do your sculpture or your painting or your poetry or whatever you do." Cheap rent made that possible!

As the sheriff evicted an elderly couple and was removing a handicapped woman with Parkinson's disease from their home, her partner doused himself with gas and set himself on fire. "This," Aaron Bushnell so presciently said, "is what our ruling class has decided will be normal." The framing of this story is wild - the headline makes it about the neighbors' reactions, and the sub headline says the sheriff's office "saved one life today, but the outcome wasn't what they wanted." But the deputies' actions took a life, they didn't save any lives.

This is very sad, but I have some thoughts. I think Cecilia would have wanted the truth out there (I certainly do) as she didn't want anyone to feel shame about anything, but I think she'd be sad the major response is to arrest and prosecute the dealers. patch.com/new-york/new-y…
I never feel comfortable when young-ish people die and no one says why. It's usually because they died of overdose or suicide (or, going back a few decades tho sometimes still now, AIDS). Treating them as unspeakable only increases stigma.

Cecilia didn't do stigma.

I have been getting really angry at liberals lately. I am not wholly sure why, but it has something to do with feeling gaslit when they pretend like verifiable truths aren't true, in (likely vain) the hopes Biden will stay in power because it benefits them, if almost no one else. It is provably true that 2.5 as many people have died of Covid under Biden than under Trump, even tho the latter had the vaccines & the former did not. And it's true that death by genocide, record homelessness, and this latest ban on gay pride flags happened under Biden.

There is a video of an Israeli drone that is so disturbing, it is worse than the most horrifying, torture porn scene Hollywood could ever imagine. I can't fathom the terror of the last man killed, hunted after seeing his friends blown up, knowing the end is coming. But selfishly— what I find equally is terrifying is that there isn't an elected Democrat in Washington, or federal spokesperson, who will condemn it. It could be narrated in all its horrors and Matt Miller or Kirby or Jean-Pierre will look bored and say, "Yeah, so what?"

The list Biden supporters want voter to overlook is getting long:

— "killed by an illegal"

— Record deportations

— 900,000 dead from Covid (2,000+ more every week)

— 30,000 murdered in Gaza, 2 mil starving

— Record (Black & other) ppl killed by police

— Record homelessness —No minimum wage increase

— End of Roe w/o federal abortion protections

— Record rent burdens

— Dismantling of Covid safety net

— Record number of gas & oil leases

— Widely popular Medicare for All dead on arrival

— Failure on student debt relief

—Record household debt

I've said this a few times these past months: I will never be the same after seeing the tank flattened human, the child without a head, the lynched baby girl hanging from the building, the child turned into soup carried in a plastic bag by their screaming father, the girl

https://twitter.com/jasebyjason/status/1763523847100244398

wither her intestines gushing out, that other child without a head, the screams that gave me nigtmares from the first nights of bombing (back when there buildings), the rotting decomposing bodies, the splayed women in the streets who's been shot next to a dead mule, the ziptied

There are a few ways I think queer theory can be helpful in thinking about Aaron Bushnell. This isn't about his sexuality or an abstract thread on philosophy. But as an AIDS and queer studies scholar, I see various stories where queer theory might help some readers. This is one. First, "family": queer theory developed in the early shadow of AIDS, when LGBTQ ppl have no legal connection to each other. Lovers & friends were often shut out of being able to speak about the deceased, whom they know better than the dead's (often estranged) family of origin.

1. So, I looked up the cop who killed himself and the first person he ever arrested, Tabitha "Tabby" Smith, and the way his memorial page uses cop imagery but doesn't mention he KILLED A WOMAN AND HIMSELF while texting is something to behold...Let's read it closely...

https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1758976661721055635

First, notice it says "Upon completing the police academy, he became a deputy sheriff at the Meigs County Sheriff’s Department, where he instantly became part of the family. He truly loved his brothers and sisters in blue." But what's missing here?...

Gather round: this @abcnews story is not only one of the most horrific, violent, mysogonist police murder nightmares possible, it's maybe the most depraved framing I've ever seen in copaganda—starting with the headline omitting the woman the cop killed! abc7.com/tennessee-depu…
As @alixabeth pointed out, everyone seems indifferent to the woman who was killed, including reporter @MeredithDeliso and whoever wrote the headline that doesn't even mention her! abc7.com/tennessee-depu…

https://twitter.com/alixabeth/status/1758954994034786751

So something really touching and heartbreaking just happened. I had my sign of some journalists martyred in January, and a person came up to me and gently took my sign in his hands. English wasn't his first language but he made his point clearly... He pointed to Mustafa Thuraya in the corner and with tears in his eyes said, "my friend."

THREAD: In Dec, much lauded sociologist Mathew Desmond (@just_shelter) wrote an essay in the
@nybooks with 2 false claims abt the Viral Underclass. After seeing me complain on here @emserre wrote to me asking me to write a response, misleading me into thinking they'd publish it. For reasons I can't fathom, after @just_shelter was paid to write false information and I sent a detailed (unpaid) response with true information (and receipts) , @nybooks has neither published the response they asked for, nor corrected verifiably untrue info on their site. So...

northwestern update: in a deeply problematic letter, the student publishing corporation, which oversees @thedailynumbers, says it will legally intercede to try to protect 2 black northwestern students (good) but the letter has many problematic notes (bad) dailynorthwestern.com/2024/02/06/top… first, this board of accomplished journalism faculty and alum, including at least one pulitzer prize winner, acts as if no one knew what happens when you sign a "complaint" with the police