In our era of political “bromances” between leaders who value aggression and belittle sensitivity, it’s easy to forget that expectations […]
Empty Chairs at the Cancer Center: The Threat of ACA Repeal
I spend a lot of time in the place no one wants to be — the cancer center. Every two […]
Referendum on a Life in the Woods
For three decades, my dad’s brothers framed houses. The three of them had a small construction business in rural Connecticut. […]
Silence and Noise: What AIDS Activism and Social Memory Can Teach Us
In the mid-1980s, when I was a twenty-something college dropout, I met people my age or older who knew a […]
When the Man Gets You Down… Or the Power of Transnational Feminism
Over the last fifteen years, Latin America has seen the rise and fall of women in politics. A decade before […]
Best of 2016
Let’s face it, 2016 was a dumpster fire and we’re glad to see it die a fiery death. But in […]
Housewives Against Dictatorship: The Bolivian Hunger Strike of 1978
On December 28, 1977 four women and fourteen children arrived at the offices of Archbishop Nelson Manrique in La Paz, […]
Nurse-Midwives are With Women, Walking a Middle Path to a Safe and Rewarding Birth
In childbirth politics as in all politics, extreme viewpoints make the news, and sensible centrists are ignored. A couple of […]
Protesting the ERA
Like many of my fellow Americans, I was glued to the television on election night. After months of the media […]
Emotion and Fantasy: Marcus Garvey and a Blueprint for Modern Protest Movements
Here’s a trivia question: what was the largest African American organization in history? Hint: It wasn’t the NAACP, not SNCC […]