In the early ’90s, anarchists and other feminists defended clinics with our bodies and taught each other how to do abortion techniques such as menstrual extraction safely. As the Christian Right bombed hundreds of clinics, killed health care providers and patients, and mobilized its base to swarm clinics and shut them down, grassroots reproductive freedom […]
Launching Reproductive Freedom: A Series
Introduction to Reproductive Freedom: A Series A short while ago, Hard Crackers sent an invitation to people who we knew had been active in various reproductive freedom projects over the last fifty years to help us think through the issues and challenges involved in developing an effective radical strategy to secure unrestricted access to abortion […]
Nothing to Covet: Reflections on Growing Up Near a U.S. Military Base
In my hometown thirty miles northeast of Detroit, there is a stretch of road that runs along the border of Selfridge Air National Guard Base, one of nearly 500 military bases found in the United States. Just past the fence on the base side of the road is a landing strip, and if you drove […]
Rebellion, Routinized
When the Kenosha verdict dropped in November 2021, the 2020 uprising in my city was still limping along. The actions were led by the same thirty or so people and attended by the same hundredish. The call to protest the verdict was shared widely on social media but the animating rage of summer 2020 had […]
How a Terrifying Event Became a Commercial for the Police
During the morning rush hour on April 12th, an individual, after putting on a gas mask, set off one or two smoke canisters in a subway car on the Manhattan-bound N line just outside the 36th Street station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He then fired 33 shots from an automatic handgun at passengers. (According to one […]
Welcome to Chicago!
Last summer when I was planning my move to Chicago, a friend who grew up on the West Side of the city gave me some tips about avoiding car break-ins: always lock my car, avoid driving in certain neighborhoods, only park in well-lit areas, and don’t leave belongings out in the open. He also recommended […]