More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Luxuriating in unlimited Black queer potential for pleasure—while staying present, even taking pleasure in life’s inherent uncertainty—Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure experiments with a therapeutic process as much as an artistic one. The album celebrates neurodivergence and sun-kissed, ocean-deep, lusciously melanated Black queer love.
Black women across the country are making history winning elected office and leading political organizations, in greater numbers and at higher levels than ever before. Yet, we are still being asked to do more with less because of a massive gap in funding.
Even with the significant headwinds Black women face, people are choosing us to lead during one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history. That’s not an accident. Americans know we have the solutions these times require.
For generations, Black parents have sat their children down for “the talk”—not about the birds and the bees, but about the pigs.
This rite of passage occurs as adolescents become independent and need to learn what is likely to be in store, what to be wary of, and what they can do to protect themselves. With the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion has taken center stage. Parents must incorporate into their talk the stark fact of abortion restrictions and the implications for their adolescent children, especially their daughters.
In her book, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty, Annelise Orleck not only shares the history of Clark County Welfare Right Organization’s (CCWRO) ascent and activism but also provides an insightful guide to community organizing.
“I loved the CCWRO’s insistence that poor women are experts on poverty and can run their own programs better than so-called professionals. And they did! … They demanded to know why a state that took tax revenue from gambling and prostitution was considered morally acceptable, but mothers trying to feed their kids were called cheaters. They were fearless.”
We have entered the year 1402 in the Iranian calendar. And the writing is on the wall. The Islamic Republic’s time is up.
“Woman, Life, Freedom” is not three words. It is one breath—a revolt against all death. The face of a new Iran is breaking out of Khomeini’s tomb.
Safety is our most fundamental need, but the U.S. denies it to women—especially women of color. Every attack on our safety stands in the way of our freedom. We need to get serious about the problem with serious policy solutions.
Securing safety for women is possible. State legislatures across the country are proposing legislation to ensure that people who have committed violence can’t get access to guns, support families who experience domestic violence, improve investigative processes for missing Indigenous people, and fund mental health crisis services.
(This essay is part of The Majority Rules project—an artful essay and op-ed series from Ms. and Supermajority Education Fund.)
Republicans in multiple states have introduced bills that would allow authorities to criminally prosecute women and pregnant people who have abortions and prosecute parents for obtaining gender-affirming care for their children. Reproductive justice advocates are concerned that police and prosecutors in these states will attempt to find these people using digital dragnet surveillance of their search histories and location data.
On Feb. 14, California Assemblymember Mia Bonta (D-Oakland) introduced Assembly Bill 793 to protect people from unconstitutional searches of their data. “No one should face or fear criminalization for their abortion or gender-affirming care. When we decide to end our pregnancies, we should be able to do so with dignity, and without fear of being arrested, investigated or jailed.”
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.
This week: The Grammys saw wins (and losses) for women performers and feminist causes; Republicans in Congress call for a nationwide abortion ban; Iowa state rep compares women to cattle; Florida educators reject ban on books in classrooms; NYC city-run clinics to provide free abortion medication; Lisa Marie Presley dies at 54; Biden administration releases plan for renter’s bill of rights; Utah Governor Spencer Cox approves ban on youth gender-affirming care; and more.
I have spent the last few months scouring catalogs and websites, receiving hundreds of books and even more emails from authors, publicists and publishers, reading your book Tweets and DMs, all to find out what books are coming out in 2023 that I think you, my exceptional, inquisitive and discerning Ms readers, will want to hear about.
Here’s your TBR (to be read) for the year. Enjoy!
In recent months, historians have clashed over whether history should be used as a tool for the politics of the present. But Peniel E. Joseph’s latest work, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century demonstrates that not only is the personal political, but the past is too.
Joseph argues the dynamics of the present are never truly knowable until we anchor them to the contours of the past. This means to look at the Black women and queer Black people who have guided movements for social justice throughout American history.