🧵Today is one of the darkest days yet in modern journalism. I want to write a thread about the martyrdom of journalists Abu Hatab & Omar Zaino, who are among the 30+ people massacred at a café journalists used for its WiFi, and about Bayan Anu Sultan, who was badly wounded.

https://twitter.com/malonebarry/status/1939722593310834810

First, say his name: Abu Hatab, journalist, photographer, friend of many. Murdered today by US/Israel

For people who think I am close-minded and unbending: I have done a 180° on assisted suicide, and I changed my mind by reading and thinking with disabled scholars and activists

https://twitter.com/jennfrey/status/1862512034446721160

I actually do think people should be able to end their lives if they wish, with compassion and as little pain and stigma as possible. (My biological mother took her life in a gruesome, violent way.) And I think almost everything should be decriminalized. Unfortunately…

https://twitter.com/ryan_deitsch/status/1862646940594307139

This is *still*’ interesting. When Oprah was the host of the Oprah Winfrey Show and endorsed Obama, the candidate did not pay for the show—Oprah (Harpo Productions) did. When Oprah endorsed Harris, the candidate paid for the show. An important power shift in media.

https://twitter.com/oprahdaily/status/1856362848261149169

Of course Oprah, a billionaire, could have paid her staff as her quite legal contribution to the cause. Instead she let, perhaps, Black women earning minimum wage who wanted to see Harris elected and gave their meagre earnings to the campaign pay for it instead.

If you accept the truth that under Obama/Biden/Harris, more people

— were deported
— died of Covid
— were killed in genocide and wars w US weapons & $

then there is no need to panic about Trump/Miller/RFK. Hold onto your folks, your values & your work. Stay the course. Calm! Panic, in general, helps no one. It keeps you from breathing right, it keeps you from seeing clearly. Lots of folx have been working hard to get vaccines (Covid/flu/mpox) out as Biden dismantled Covid vax infrastructure. Work & learn w us, we’ve been at it for yrs now

https://twitter.com/cd52356411/status/1856185524857499662

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 2/4 I TAUGHT

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.)

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)

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.

https://x.com/democracynow/status/1831708624277643739?s=46

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.

🧵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

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.

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.