Plantains in Heaven
This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate-fiction contest produced by Grist Magazine. Imagine 2200 asked writers to imagine the next 180 years of equitable...
View ArticleThe Isle of Beautiful Waters
This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate-fiction contest produced by Grist Magazine. Imagine 2200 asked writers to imagine the next 180 years of equitable...
View ArticleTo Rescue a Self
This story is part of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, a climate-fiction contest produced by Grist Magazine. Imagine 2200 asked writers to imagine the next 180 years of equitable...
View ArticleIn Fighting Fascism, We Must Choose Our Battles Wisely
“They’re not trying to impose dictatorship from a position of strength, they’re trying to impose it from a position of weakness and fear.” —Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin “In the midst of discontent, talk,...
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How Restorative Justice Helped One Family Move Forward
In the middle of the room, a couple places objects that are sacred to them: a singing bowl, a trombone. Two shiny, beautiful instruments, full of potential for beautiful sound. The couple rejoins the...
View ArticleInsulin Should Be a Right, Not a Privilege
Even before President Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, he had his eyes on the Inflation Reduction Act. In September 2023, Trump stated his desire to “rescind all unspent funds” for the ambitious...
View ArticleMurmurations: Dawn of a New Beginning
Dear Beloved Murmurations Readers, I am writing with an exciting update about this column. Since we launched “Murmurations” in 2021, we have collectively survived, witnessed, and lost loved ones,...
View ArticleWhat Leonard Peltier’s Freedom Represents for Indigenous Futures
Minutes before leaving office, former President Biden issued executive clemency to Leonard Peltier, commuting the remainder of his life sentence to be served at home. While the most just outcome would...
View ArticleMothering for Justice
On March 10, 2013, Dallas police officer Clark Staller was called to an apartment complex by a resident because Clinton Allen, 25, refused to leave the location. Though the facts of that night are...
View ArticleMemory Crafters Preserve Black Women’s History
The crater from the wrecking ball stood hollow in the center of the home at 2335 Arapahoe Street in the summer of 1983. Concerned community members scrambled to pause the imminent demolition to the...
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A Tale of Two Co-ops
You’d be forgiven if you passed by St. James Towers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, or Southbridge Towers in Lower Manhattan without noting their exceptional qualities or sensing the tumult within....
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Recovery in San Diego a Year After the Floods
Jessica Calix has tried to make the 33-foot travel trailer she and her son, Chago, share at a north San Diego RV Park feel like their old rental home in the Southcrest neighborhood. She’s set up...
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7 Ways to Rise Up Against Trumpism 2.0
Since Donald Trump’s second term began on Jan. 20, 2025, his administration has aggressively launched a deluge of multipronged attacks on immigrants, transgender people, racial equity initiatives,...
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A Feminism for the Many
On that hazy June day in 2022 when the Supreme Court ruled that there was no constitutional right to abortion, one thing was clear: This had been a long time coming. Feminists needed to roll up our...
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A Violence-Prevention Helpline for Those Who Want to Change
Jacquie Marroquin spent much of her childhood living in fear of her father. A child of undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Marroquin—who grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s—worried that speaking...
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The Queer Organizations Protecting and Supporting Trans People
As Donald Trump’s second presidency gets underway, grassroots organizers are steeling themselves to protect their communities from anti-trans policies and rhetoric. There is already work to be done....
View ArticleMurmurations: Climate Solutions Require Black Ecology
The dominant narrative of the climate crisis goes something like this: “The burning of fossil fuels has produced so much carbon dioxide that our atmosphere is being damaged, our climate is changing,...
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Immigrant Farmworkers Keep Each Other Safe from the Avian Flu
Every month, around 50 dairy farmworkers filter into a church basement in western New York after a grueling day of work. They order dinner from a local Mexican or Puerto Rican restaurant and settle in...
View ArticleA Beautifully “Wicked” Approach to Disability
When I went to see Wicked, which is up for 10 Academy Awards on Sunday, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Of course, the film’s inescapable buzz piqued my interest, but I was mostly driven to the theater...
View ArticleSafe Havens for Trans Migrants on the U.S.-Mexico Border
If Indi Tisoy has a single dream, it is to reach the United States. Her desire is so strong, in fact, that she waits at the border because it makes her feel closer to that dream. Tisoy, who is a...
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Why Is It So Hard to Watch this Oscar-Winning Documentary?
For many low-budget, independent films, an Oscar win is a golden ticket. The publicity can translate into theatrical releases or rereleases, along with more on-demand rentals and sales. However, for...
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What Frogs Teach Us About Queerphobia in Science
My favorite meme about so-called gay frogs—feared to be feminized by toxic chemicals—is captioned “You have to be male or female!” Directly beneath this exclamation is a cartoon drawing of a...
View ArticleAbove and Beyond Restoring Roe
Taylor Young has never wanted to be a mom. From the time the now 27-year-old began dating, she experienced persistent anxiety around the thought of getting pregnant in Ohio, a Republican-controlled...
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A Prison-Based Program Interrupts the Cycle of Violence
When Cecilia Gonzalez told family members she had volunteered to share her life story with men in prison, they were shocked. Gonzalez, 56, had spent most of her adult life recovering from the pain and...
View ArticleThe World We Owe Gaza
Organizers of the Palestinian liberation movement welcomed news of a tenuous ceasefire agreement in Gaza in January 2025, but it did not signal the end of their ongoing campaigns. The ceasefire came...
View ArticleApocalypse Chow: Don’t Let Corporations Define Vegetables
YES! Media is excited to present a new column, Apocalypse Chow, by Arun Gupta, investigative reporter, French-trained chef, food tour guide, and author of the forthcoming eponymous book, Apocalypse...
View ArticleSelf-Determined: Climate Resilience Is Sacred
As a tidal wave of authoritarianism crashes across the U.S., it may seem as if nothing is sacred. But in these moments of uncertainty, it is the sacred to which we must return. For the Indigenous...
View ArticleImmigrants Fight ICE Raids
One day a week, 70-year-old Javier Gastelum sits beneath a shade tree outside a bakery near his home to chat with old friends and sell a few pounds of fresh Mexican cheese. For...
View ArticleMurmurations: A Dream for Trans Belonging
Here we are in 2025 navigating rising oligarchy. This last month, I kept trying to understand why thoughts were coming to my mind, like, “Why am I even here? Should I be here?” It felt jarring and...
View ArticleActivists Take Back the Climate
Since Donald Trump and his unelected billionaire advisor, Elon Musk, came to power in January, the pair have followed the old Silicon Valley tech motto to “move fast and break things.” That’s bad news...
View ArticleThe Humanizing Power of Critical Race Theory
What is Critical Race Theory? This resounding question is asked by U.S. senators at Supreme Court justice confirmation hearings, concerned parents at local school board meetings, and liberal and...
View ArticleThe Revolution Will Not Be Commercialized
Someone is going to read this and think I wrote it because I hate football. Another person will read this piece and think I have a deeply ingrained dislike for Black men and rap music. Others will see...
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Seed Banks Buffer Central American Farmers Against Climate Change
Growing up in the mountains of western Guatemala, Feliciano Perez Tomas cultivated the same type of native maize his family had for generations. The breed of corn was central to his Indigenous K’iche’...
View ArticleReckoning: No Bodily Autonomy Without Gender Liberation
On Sept. 14, 2024, two months before the U.S. presidential election, I helped organize nearly 2,000 people in the streets of Washington, D.C. This was the birth of the Gender Liberation Movement...
View ArticleBoycotting Chevron for Fueling Genocide
Every summer in Portland, Oregon, thousands of people participate in the city’s famous World Naked Bike Ride. In the two decades since its launch, the event has become something of a tourist...
View Article10 Organizing Principles for Defeating Trumpism 2.0
As soon as President Donald Trump began his shock-and-awe assault on the federal government in January 2025, lists began bouncing around the internet with titles like “How to Survive the Trump Years.”...
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The Makah Tribe is Calling Back the Whales
A single road provides access to the town of Neah Bay, Washington, on the Makah Reservation—a narrow ribbon of asphalt that skirts the lush cloak of evergreen skyscrapers called the Olympic...
View ArticleInside the Student Protests that Shook Columbia University
On Mar. 28, 2025, New York City’s Angelika Film Center filled quickly as person after person—many of whom wore a keffiyeh—claimed their seats for the opening-night sold-out screening of The...
View ArticleThe Trans Organizers Building Better Housing Solutions
When Renee Lau, a special projects coordinator at the trans-led housing and wellness center Baltimore Safe Haven, transitioned at the age of 63, she lost everything. “My marriage fell apart,” she...
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How Popular Resistance Constrained Trump in His First Term
Donald Trump’s first term as president saw some of the largest mass protests seen in the U.S. in more than 50 years, from the 2017 Women’s March to the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s murder....
View ArticleTrauma Prevention Is Crime Prevention
Politicians and pundits assert that our criminal justice system—from law enforcement to mass incarceration—are inevitable aspects of society and that there are no viable alternatives. But if we view...
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Resisting Repression: What’s Next for the Student Fight for Palestine?
On Dec. 12, 2023, SUNY Purchase College student Cesar Paul walked into an administrator’s office and headed straight for the window, where a pair of “We Stand With Israel” banners hung facing the...
View Article‘Patrice’ Captures the Fight for Marriage Equality for Disabled Couples
Since 2015, when the Supreme Court decided in Obergefell v. Hodges that LGBTQ people could legally wed, the United States has been touting its commitment to marriage equality. When conservative...
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The Fight to Preserve Medicaid for Disabled Children in California
Jessica Pequeño of Napa has been taking breaks from watching the news lately. But when she opens her social media feeds for the support groups she frequents for parents of children with disabilities,...
View ArticleWhy Sanders’ Call to “Fight Oligarchy” Resonates More Than Ever
When friends and co-workers Jennifer Lewis and Tina Siebold heard Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was bringing his Fighting Oligarchy tour to Tucson, Arizona, they quickly made plans to attend. In a...
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Rebuilding the World through Queer Video Games
We stand now in a historical moment when we desperately need the ability to build new worlds. This is a moment of immense concern for the future of the world as we know it today—threatened by climate...
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Safe Homes: India’s Mixed-Status Couples Navigate Caste and Faith
“We wanted to be together but are scared of our families, so coming here was the only safe option for us,” Imran, 21, says. He and his partner, Neha, 18, were escorted by a police constable to a...
View ArticleSelf-Determined: Foundations Must Match the Far Right’s Commitment to...
It’s common to hear statistics like the $40 billion it would take to end world hunger or the $30 billion to end homelessness in the United States. And yes, a billionaire like Jeff Bezos could...
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How Including People With Disabilities Benefits Everyone
Whether it’s declaring that blindness prevents government employees from doing their jobs or suggesting that hiring workers with intellectual disabilities contributed to Federal Aviation...
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