Sunday night’s celebration of the 59th Grammy Awards was filled with jaw-dropping moments. From solidarity with Senator Elizabeth Warren to a straight-up protest of President Donald Trump by A Tribe Called Quest, the myriad emotions spilled by our stars had people talking well after the performances were over. Sure, the Grammys didn’t shirk the political…
Month: March 2019
On centrism and independence in Spain
Colmenas» de la M-30 (Madrid, 1953). Flickr/Alvaro Ibáñez. Some rights reserved. After the regional elections I’m done with extremes. Extremes never reflect the complexity of reality. Reality is much more radical than the purity of ideals. Reality is always a mix. Even so, electoral politics – like sport – is still a space for the…
A Surf Camp For The Gay Community Grows In Brazil
This week, a group of surfers will hit the beach in Florianópolis, Brazil, for what’s known amongst participants as “gay surf camp.” This year’s retreat may be the most important yet—and the reason has little to do with the swells. “Now that we’re facing huge setbacks in LGBT rights both here in Brazil and in…
Love versus fear
Credit: Stephen D. Melkisethian. Licensed under CC BY 2.0. This morning I woke up and made breakfast for my daughter, and thought to myself: we have entered the age of terror. Terror is not new to the USA. Terror—the infliction of extreme fear—runs deep in our economy and political system, from the enslavement of African…
A New Database Helps Women Find Reproductive Health Care Outside Their Hometowns
Click:ARCOTRONICS MKP 1.44/A GPD/LS SH 14152465 Capacitor Procuring reliable reproductive health care can be a difficult task under the best of circumstances. Factor in increasing political restrictions on basic health care and the unfamiliarity of traveling to a new area and the search can seem like more trouble than it’s worth; a circumstance which ultimately…
The re-emergence of social cleansing in El Salvador
A members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang displays his tattoos inside the Chelatenango prison in El Salvador. Moisen Saman/Flickr. Some rights reserved. Twenty year-old Dennis Martínez never knew what hit him, or why. He died instantly after being shot execution style inside the little shack where he lived in the San Blas coffee plantation in…
Beyoncé Celebrates ‘Lemonade’s’ One-Year Anniversary In The Best Possible Way
It’s hard to believe it’s already been a full year since Beyoncé unveiled “Lemonade,” known technically as a visual album and accurately as an artistic masterpiece. It seems like just yesterday we were all scrambling to find a quiet place to watch the hour-long cultural event and cry happy tears—that was my approach anyway. To…
An unlikely home
Abkhazia may be an unlikely home for Syrian refugees in the South Caucasus, but since war broke out, this small de-facto state on the Black Sea, considered by most states to be Georgian territory, has welcomed a few hundred refugees fleeing the conflict. The Abkhazian authorities’ decision to accept these refugees was not one made…
San Diego Will Get To Vote On Whether It Wants A New Stadium
Starting this fall, San Diego will be short a professional sports team. After the city’s voters rejected an initiative last fall that would have funded a new stadium for the San Diego Chargers, the NFL team has moved to Los Angeles. This leaves the hulking, midcentury concrete block of a stadium where the Chargers used…
Stepping up deportations of Central American refugees from the US
Central American migrants. Peter Haden/Demotix. All rights reserved. As revealed in a recent Washington Post article, the Department of Homeland Security plans to begin targeted raids in the New Year: "The nation-wide campaign, to be carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as soon as early January, would be the first large-scale…