“I find myself remembering where I’m from, these days, after many years of putting it behind me. I find myself remembering what I had known when I was growing up: that whiteness will always find someone to violate, and that nothing is more violent than an insecure masculinity.” I just finished listening to S-town this week while weeding carrots, and so I especially appreciated Aaron Bady’s look at the airbrushing of Woodstock, Alabama, and particularly the white supremacy of the characters, in the hit podcast.
White supremacy remains vibrant in Canada. Police in Surrey, BC arrested a 16-year-old last week, violently and without cause.
In Texas, a police officer killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards by opening fire on his car.
“If I must choose between a newspaper column and the actions I must take to liberate myself and my community, I choose activism in the service of Black liberation.” Desmond Cole will no longer be a columnist for the Toronto Star, after the newspaper reprimanded him for his activism and his disruption of the Toronto Police Services Board meeting.
“Each click of my camera, I see as trying to capture what does a free world look in which black, queer and trans people can just be whoever they want to be.” I love Mikael Owunna’s light-filled portraits of queer Africans:
“On the map, great gasps
of land are already gone. When we sleep
we are heaving about power.” A new poem by Stephanie Anderson, in Guernica
Read Jia Tolentino on Ivanka Trump!
This new poster – The Dance of Decolonial Love – from Erica Violet Lee, Angela Sterritt, and the Graphic History Collective is gorgeous and free to download!
On growing up poor and queer in a French village
Dainty Smith is empowering women of colour in Toronto through burlesque
“When you talk to a fat patient about their weight, it is not the first time they have thought about it. It probably isn’t even the first time that day.” On being fat in medical school
Meet Collander: The Sick, Crip Femme Making Literal Bedroom Pop
A history of the mighty fight for Muskrat Falls
“If you write about your own community, to your own community, it’s not just a politically pointed idea — it also just makes for better writing, more intimate writing, better books.” Casey Plett is a brilliant writer and reader and a generous thinker, read her!
A predictive policing syllabus from The New Inquiry
On the overlooked history of Black women artists in second-wave feminism
There have been over 100 victims of sexual assault at the Canadian-owned Barrick Mines in Papua New Guinea. Survivors who travelled to Toronto to have their voices heard by shareholders in the company were silenced at the AGM last week – read their stories here.
“When I first arrived, I lived in a bunk-house with 62 other colleagues. We had and hitherto have no Internet to communicate with our families. I started my day at 5 a.m., just to get to one of 13 burners on the stove shared between all of us. I relied on energy drinks for the extra push to work above and beyond the expectations of management. If we don’t like something, they remind us that there are several workers lined up in our home country willing and available to take our places.” For May Day, Gabriel Alladua writes about his experiences as a migrant farm worker in Leamington, Ontario.
You can participate in Mama’s Bail Out Day and help mothers who are incarcerated because they can’t afford bail spend Mother’s Day with their families! If you know of any similar initiatives happening in Canada, please let us know.
And finally, some beauty for your Sunday:
