More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Single women—particularly single women of color—are far more likely than single men to be severely cost-burdened by housing.
Ensuring families can stay in their homes is one of the most basic and vital roles government can play in strengthening our economy.
I have been a professor for almost 25 years and can’t imagine any other job. One of the most gratifying parts is being there for my students, but by June of every year, I’m tired. Especially after teaching The Power of Feminist Writing.
Misogyny induced pain and trauma shouldn’t only be acknowledged and validated in a gender studies classroom. The students and I should feel confident that *anyone* would believe our trauma is real. But we all know that is not the case, which is why many of us were sad to see the class end.
“Imagine if culturally we understood that protecting Black women meant protecting all of us,” said Patrisse Cullors, renowned for her activist work with Black Lives Matter, a global network she co-founded in 2013 with Alicia Garza and Ayo Tometi. “I think that’s what this show means to me.”
The show referenced here, “dedicated to all Black women and femmes around the world,” is the exhibit Between the Warp and Weft: Weaving Shields of Strength and Spirituality—an introduction to Cullors as an artist wielding her protection spell over Black women. The exhibit opens Saturday, June 15, at the Charlie James Gallery in downtown Los Angeles.
This month, citizens across Europe headed to the polls to vote for their representatives to European Parliament. Representatives are directly elected by voters in E.U. member states every five years, and European Parliament is responsible for passing a wide array of laws, including human rights and equality measures.
Far-right parties made significant gains, even going so far as to elect representative from neo-fascist parities. This will mean substantial setbacks in gender equality. In the past, far-right parties have cut funding for tackling gender-based violence, restricted access to reproductive healthcare and abortion, and suppressed speech around gender equality issues and LGBTQ+ rights.
Reproductive rights advocates breathed a sigh of relief on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit attempting to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone and telehealth abortion nationwide.
“While the Supreme Court did the bare minimum today, we know anti-abortion extremists aren’t stopping any time soon.”
The fall 2024 elections are critical to maintaining abortion pills access. The president appoints the head of the FDA, who controls the status of mifepristone. A Trump administration could rescind the FDA’s recent expansions of access to abortion pills or even try to withdraw mifepristone from the market altogether.
Abortion court cases often turn on questions that are part law and part science—questions such as when a fetus becomes viable or what constitutes a threat to the health or life of a mother. Judges receive no formal training in scientific and medical literacy and few students with STEM backgrounds attend law school. Yet, judges play central roles in gatekeeping what science gets brought into the courtroom and, eventually, into a judicial opinion.
But what can non-lawyers do about this issue? Remember that judges are often elected, and if not elected, then appointed by other elected officials.
An extraordinary grassroots activation took place this past Saturday at 8 a.m., when two buses full of organizers, activists, celebrities, politicians, doctors and influencers braved the Phoenix heat—which would top out at 107 degrees by the afternoon—to set out on the inaugural Vote for Abortion Bus Tour and Rally, a nationwide campaign to register voters and protect abortion access and reproductive healthcare during another contentious and precarious election season.
Front and Center offers first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. First launched in 2018, the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT) is about to enter its fifth cohort, bringing the number of moms served to more than 400 and making it the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country. Across the country, guaranteed income pilots like MMT are finding that recipients are overwhelmingly using their payments for basic needs like groceries, housing and transportation.
“One of my goals while in the program is to go back to school. …
“One of the other fun things I’ve been able to do with my son is take him to the new little kids museum. I always felt bad that I couldn’t do it before. When we went, he said, ‘Thank you, Mom. I thought you would never take me, you’re the best mom!’ It made me cry.”
We are currently in the midst of a maternal health crisis. Despite being one of the wealthiest and most highly resourced nations globally, the United States continues to struggle with shockingly high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity. This crisis is a matter of public health and also reflects systemic failures and disparities within our healthcare system.
The good news is we already have something that works: midwives. The bad news is that some places in the U.S. have made it difficult for midwives to provide the care that we so desperately need.
An excerpt from Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M. Shaw’s new book, Surviving God: A New Vision of God Through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors:
“The God of our childhoods was terrifying. Sure, He (and it was always ‘He’) loved us, but we also knew He could destroy us in a moment if we displeased Him. Poof! Like Lot’s wife, we’d become a pillar of salt. God knew us intimately and had complete control over us. Like an abuser, He asked us to love Him even as he threatened us with the torments of hell if we didn’t.”
