staff writer, @newrepublic.com // author, A WOMAN IS AGAINST THE LAW (2KTK, @littlebrown.bsky.social) + PLAYING THE WHORE (Verso) // melissagiragrant.com » melissa@melissagira.com » tips (encrypted): melissagira.01 on Signal @nyguild.bsky.social member
and save us please from people evaluating for an audience whether our deaths or imprisonment have been politically useful to them
Melissa Gira GrantHeaven help us all, to have our political strategies analyzed based on a prosecutors’ selection of Signal messages, when we are in federal prison and can’t meaningfully explain them ourselves without enormous risk
+1000 and: the front-row seat to the utter uselessness of police that is trying to get a restraining order……
Em, midlyIt’s so funny when people are like “sure you’re an abolitionist now but wait until you’re the victim of a property crime.” Buddy, the most useful thing the police have ever done for property crime is put the form you need to submit to your insurance online.
can’t believe someone hasn’t thrown their all into Velvet Goldmine: Music From The Original Motion Picture, there’s so much
Stop Calling Me FrankYou have a month to write a 33 1/3 book about the album of your choice. Which record are you going to write about? (No previously covered albums allowed; new shit must come to light: see below.) (For all books in the series: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_1/3) (H/t @monostich.bsky.social
“I’m concerned that those with discursive and agenda-setting power in exile from a MAGA-controlled DC will continue to view themselves temporarily embarrassed wielders of state violence, reassuring themselves if they can just take it back, we’ll be OK…”
Keep Your Friends CloseIn which I offer a rebuttal to a "strategic" critique of the Prairieland defendantscooperativeoverlapping.substack.com‘“I thought about Alex Pretti because he was a nurse. He was helping someone up off the ground that had been shoved,” Bowe said.’
Candice NorwoodNorma Bowe, a nurse in New Jersey, runs a mobile health clinic that stops outside Delaney Hall detention center, where she provides blood pressure checks, stroke assessments and other care. Yesterday, she told me about the day she says she was assaulted by an ICE agent. My latest via @19thnews.org
A WOMAN IS AGAINST THE LAW // LITTLE, BROWN // 2027
Melissa Gira GrantI understand the impulse to draw sharp lines between yourself and people who are criminalized based on the presumption that it will protect you because that’s what the criminal legal system is designed to coerce us into doing and accept as normal and natural
A lot of “taking the prosecutors’ word for it” here to make an argument that requires being inside the heads of a disparate group of people who we only think of as a group with concerted strategies because prosecutors said so
Liberal Currents"Their actions ensured that they struggled to achieve sympathetic media coverage outside of a few left-wing outlets, struggled to attract material or legal support (the ACLU, for instance, refused to touch the case), and failed to achieve positive virality in the larger culture."
Absolutely shameful— Amnesty UK has gone from sounding the alarm to running cover for anti-trans groups.
Lee HurleyAmnesty have issued an apology to JK Rowling and the rest. Adjust your expectations, and donations, accordingly www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/an-ap...
“Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”
‘We can’t make it better again’: what Europe’s wildfires tell us about the climate crisisIn this week’s newsletter: As France and Spain battle huge fires in this summer of relentless heat, will it be enough to spur us to take action?www.theguardian.comhonestly excited to hear what people are thinking here, it's a v clarifying opportunity to figure out what is about building power and what is about fear
Hamilton NolanThe left needs a candidate it can unite around in the 2028 primaries and AOC is the only real choice. Nobody else checks all of the boxes. Every other option is worse. If she doesn't run, it's a missed opportunity of historic proportions. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/aoc-must-r...
I wrote about how immigration arrests are at all-time highs, even as ICE is trying to assume a lower public profile. How are they doing this? Look to your local police.
ICE’s Secret Weapon Is in Your CommunityWhile attempting to maintain a relatively lower profile, ICE is managing to arrest record numbers of people. Here’s how it’s doing that.newrepublic.com“Immigration camps in the United States today disappear people politically before, all too frequently, they disappear them physically. To combat the suffering we should use language that reveals the inhumanity rather than conceals it. The word camp does just that.”
Don’t call them ICE detention centers. Call them camps | John WashingtonI’ve spent a decade reporting on immigration enforcement. The word ‘camp’ best captures the political function of these facilitieswww.theguardian.com