Archive Author
Managing Editor, Anti-Racism Daily. Andrew Lee is a writer and organizer plotting a better world in Philadelphia. His work has previously appeared in Notes From Below, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Plan A Magazine, ROAR Magazine, and Teen Vogue.
Issues written by Andrew Lee for Anti-Racism Daily, newest first.
202 issues · 2021–2023
Conservatives decry “War on Christmas” every time someone says “Happy Holidays,” while ignoring actual acts of violence.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement uses economic pressure to support Palestinian rights.
In the U.S., we celebrate freedom fighters and revolutions like Nat Turner's Revolt when they fit our narrative and condemn them when it doesn’t.
Colonialism is often seen through a historical lens despite dispossession and exploitation being a present reality for many current and formerly colonized people.
The ARD spoke with Ray Coyne on the intersectional fight against oppression and holding space to mourn during resistance.
When the topic of immigration is discussed, the pros always center on what immigrants have to offer to white America.
Bonded by state oppression and violence, the fight for liberation and solidarity between Black-Palestinian people has been seen for decades.
We spoke with Nadya Tannous, a community organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, about Palestinian liberation.
Our understanding of genocide is so narrow that when one meets the criteria, it is rarely seen or accepted.
From police brutality to bombing for peace, state-sanctioned violence has been normalized as a necessary tool against "true" violent acts.
The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute raised questions about racial justice, “politicized” sports, and solidarity that still resonate today.
The stigma surrounding MSG is part of the broader anti-Asian sentiment that's been carefully cultivated in the U.S.
The fight for immigrant justice grows as the future of almost 600,000 people becomes uncertain with the recent DACA ruling.
Be it protests or youth-led movements, student activism has long been used to bring about social and political change.
The record number of banned book attempts is part of a long American tradition of library censorship.
The United States' Judeo-Christian values are said to keep military AI in check, but it hasn't prevented their war crimes.
Discussions on the lack of government transparency sparked following the Congressional hearing on UAPS and the possibility of aliens.
The five-day Attica prison uprising was a fight against inhumane conditions and racial and religious injustices, which still resonates today.
Though it portrays itself as a defender of democracy, the United States has intervened in foreign elections more than any other country.
Burning Man's communal and utopian vision conflicts with the reality that it follows a centuries-old imperialist concept.
The devastation of the Hawai'i wildfires is connected to a history of colonialism and U.S. capitalist exploitation.
In the wake of violence, the DOJ repeatedly fails to protect Black and other marginalized communities, often incriminating them instead.
When diversifying your friend group, it's important to ensure that stereotypes, biases, and assumptions don’t harm your ability to connect with others.
The white savior complex positions white people as rescuers and protectors, reducing people of color as incompetent and charity cases.
Prison sexual abuse isn’t limited to a single institution or a handful of “bad apples,” but a nationwide systemic issue.
Financial literacy education is often suggested as a remedy for poverty, ignoring how policy, not lack of knowledge, drives economic inequalities.
Following Trump's presidency, liberals have been plotting an exit strategy from red states, ignoring the limitations and consequences of such a move.
Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” faces backlash for glorifying vigilante violence and the legacy of sundown towns and lynchings.
From Indigenous appropriation to the exclusion of marginalized youths, the legacy of summer camp racism persists to the present day.
Climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately impact marginalized communities of color around the globe.
Georgia's expanded domestic terrorism statutes are being deployed to suppress anti-racist and anti-police brutality protests.
A report on the Minneapolis Police supports protesters' claims and calls for overhaul, but current police reform promises have fallen short.
Stop Cop City protesters and bail fund organizers accused of "terrorism" in the latest attempt to stifle discontent for the project.
Activists are mobilizing against Moms for Liberty, an organization that is one of the leading forces behind book bans and against LGBTQ+ inclusion and race curriculum.
Grace Lee Boggs stressed the role of grassroots organizing and cultural transformation in fostering revolutionary change.
Silencing criticism of Israel by claiming that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are identical is unacceptable. We can fight antisemitism while also supporting Palestinian rights and free speech.
Fights to defend community land are intensifying nationwide as organizers and neighbors build connections across differences and movements.
Hysteria about drag performers “grooming” children is part of a coordinated campaign to eliminate LGBTQ+ people in public life.
Major U.S. corporations, lawmakers, and the Biden administration are actively exploiting child labor to secure votes and corporate profits.
Discussions of political or social issues commonly include loaded language that inhibits clear conversation.
The Asian dog meat trope has been used for years to disguise racism and bigotry by portraying Asian people as barbaric and inhumane.
Some schools are switching from the universally used Mercator projection, igniting discussions on how maps influence our worldview.
Dozens of anti-trans laws have been passed recently, with many banning gender-affirming care for youth.
The anniversary of the "Ain't I a Woman" speech and recent MLK Jr revelations are a reminder of why history must not only be preserved but corrected.
Amid recent bans, children's book authors face pressure to censor race and racism in culturally and historically sensitive books.
De facto residential segregation is increasing today, creating segregated hospitals, schools, and transportation systems—the very things permitted by Plessy v. Ferguson.
Therapy-speak is about using specific phrases from professional-class work environments or therapy as trump cards in everyday interactions.
Jordan Neely was killed for shouting the truth: that it is intolerable to slowly starve to death in public view in the wealthiest country.
The Asian wealth gap is also the highest of any racial category, with some Asian nationalities among the worst-paid in the country.
Neo-Nazism has a long history in the United States, but there is an equally long history of counter-organizing and community defense.
May 1893 was the beginning of an economic recession with strong parallels to the present day.
Despite ongoing inhumane treatment and policies, immigrant rights receive significantly less attention from the media, public, and legislators post-elections.
If you were designing a system that ensured those leaving prison returned, you’d end up with something similar to the current U.S. prisoner reentry landscape.
“In God We Trust” is a key example of U.S. civil religion: an ideology that has often cloaked abuses of power in the trappings of religious faith.
The problematic racist grandparent has become a trope for younger white people willing to excuse behaviors as “a product of their time.”
Recent discussions of the U.S. invading Mexico follow a history of the U.S. invading and meddling in Latin America, including the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Most people in pretrial detention in the U.S. are incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay their cash bail.
Congress is trying to greatly reduce U.S. residents' privacy rights through legislation banning TikTok, using rhetoric with anti-Asian tropes.
Discussions on what makes an organization or company anti-racist emerge as companies disassemble their DEI positions and initiatives after 2020 pledges.
Diabetes patients face difficulty filling prescriptions as Ozempic shortage and Insulin costs limit drug access.
With the current political and economic system, special measures to protect financial markets are seen as urgent over efforts to support the survival of everyday people.
The irony of National Farmworker Awareness Week is that it is celebrated in a country that denies agricultural workers the legal and human rights offered to every other worker.
Despite recognizing World Water Day, almost half the world's population lacks home plumbing with drinkable water, including in the U.S.
The RICO Act was initially passed to prosecute the Mafia but has since been used against protesters, doctors, and artists.
Though Irish people suffered from colonization, the “Irish were slaves first” story is used to attack the struggle for racial justice.
The murder of Breonna Taylor is a reminder that gentrification, white supremacy, and police violence are all tightly connected.
Walgreens receives backlash after agreeing to stop supplying abortion medication nationwide, including in states where the drug is legal.
As Cop City looms, discussions on the impacts of environmental racism and the ongoing struggle for environmental and social justice in Atlanta continue.
Immigrants in two for-profit detention centers in California are on a hunger strike against the "abhorrent" conditions in the facilities.
The “Dilbert” comic has been removed from newspapers after its creator advised white people to stay away from Black people, whom he characterized as a “hate group.”
An upcoming national week of action to Stop Cop City is underway, supporting one of the most crucial social justice fights in the U.S.
The world's largest carceral system oversees an aging prison population as incarcerated elders are condemned to a lifetime of confinement.
The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the U.S. invasion of Mexico, but the effects continue to impact Latine communities today.
Growing attacks on anti-racist education threaten Holocaust education and feed into antisemitism.
In a recent interview, singer Gwen Stefani responds to a question about her cultural appropriation past by claiming a fake ethnic identity.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling holding labor unions broadly responsible for the economic impacts of strikes.
Fred Hampton's message remains relevant today, with poor communities in Chicago and around the U.S. facing the same deprivations.
The 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island was aimed at decolonizing the island from the colonial government of the United States.
News of the BTS army draft is a reminder of the U.S. proxy war whose burden has fallen on Korean citizens on both sides of the border.
The United States' role in global affairs has been instrumental in the creation of transracial and international adoption politics.
The 2022 Midterm Elections results will have consequences we can't yet predict, but it's important to keep fighting for a better society.
Thanks to anti-homeless legislation, U.S. cities are penalizing those who give food to unhoused people.
The inadequate size of airplane seats is one manifestation of fatphobia, the discrimination against and hatred of fat people.
Since its publication, the 1619 Project has been challenged by conservatives for attempting to fix the historical whitewashing of American slavery.
How the tenets of effective altruism and billionaire philanthropy often come at the expense of human exploitation.
An explainer on President Biden's marijuana pardon and its impact on drug incarceration and decriminalization efforts.
How a slogan, often used to derail calls for racial justice, originated from the imagined white victimhood and upholding of white supremacy.
How solely blaming working-class white people for racism is a way of disguising class prejudice, and ignores their contribution to movements.
Conspiracy theories, QAnon, can promote bigoted narratives and impede our ability to fight for social justice.
California farmworkers are fighting for the opportunity to safely and secretly vote to join a union against pushback from the governor.
West Philly residents from the People’s Townhomes are fighting to maintain accessible housing for families and seniors.
Bystander intervention is a tool to empower people to intervene when witnessing harassment against marginalized people.
The memorialization of social justices leaders and victims, as in the case of MLK boulevards, is meaningless without systemic change.
Nationwide, numerous U.S. cities are dealing with some form of water contamination, lack of drinkable water, and outdated infrastructure, similar to the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi.
Hostile architecture is an inhumane corporate and governmental response to the unhoused crisis that started in the 1980s.
Critical race theory bans and the efforts to censor conservations about race, sexuality, and gender in the U.S. education system
Vast disparities in public school funding make the educational system a catalyst for inequality, not a guaranteed out from a "cycle of poverty."
Estranging historical tragedies like slavery and genocide as relics of the past, unrelated to modern times, wrongly validates the hosting of plantation weddings and other cruelties in U.S history.
Cities throughout the country are tackling homelessness by issuing encampment sweeps, further displacing unhoused people.
The history of labor organizing has emphasized solidarity amongst exploited workers and collisions with police at the behest of employers.
Solidarity amongst marginalized groups requires education, organizing, and work but is essential in dismantling white supremacy.
Recent far-right panic over Drag Queen Storytime and false LGBTQ grooming concerns have been used to attack queer people for years.
An explainer on the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary's highest court, which has been instrumental in leveraging and stripping rights.
Subconscious biases present in daily life and institutions aid in criminalizing Black children for behavior deemed innocent in white youth.
Amid multiple movements and heightened social awareness, supporting youth activism is critical to transforming the future.
Learn how to reduce harm during protests by understanding and preparing for police riot control weapons.
For effective action in social movements, activists must apply strong protest tactics like economic or political pressure on decision-makers.
With Jim Crow-era origins, curfew laws fail to protect public safety; instead, they ensure marginalized young people are criminalized.
Demands for stricter red flag laws and mass surveillance won't stop gun violence but will disproportionately affect marginalized people.
Discussions of political or social issues commonly include loaded language that inhibits clear conversation.
The cash bail system works within a flawed structure that forces people, mainly Black and Brown, to pay for their freedom.
Being knowledgeable about safe drug use is vital, even if you don’t use drugs, since the stigmatization of substance use has deadly outcomes.
As abortion bans, inflation, and incidences of police brutality occur, the need to protest remains urgent. Here are a few tips for protesting safely this summer.
Sheryl Sandberg's departure from Facebook marks an end to girlboss feminism, which praised individual career success over dismantling inequitable systems.
Given the political landscape, protecting reproductive healthcare will require more than voting and liberal electoral feminism.
Ending mass incarceration in prisons must be accompanied by creating “mass integration” for those released.
The inaction of law enforcement during the Uvalde shooting and other tragedies reveal an ugly truth of American policing.
Activists are taking direct action to stop the development of a police training ground, Cop City, in Atlanta’s largest remaining green space.
Loitering laws date back to the Jim Crow era when laws were designed to trap Black people in the convict leasing system.
Commemorating the life and legacy of Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist who modeled solidarity and intersectionality.
May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, acts as a reminder of the strifes made by workers who challenged the exploitative labor practices of businesses.
In this interview with Brianna Lawrence, the Coalition on Urban Girls president, we talk about disinvestment in marginalized communities and the importance of providing care and resources to urban girls.
Discussions of political or social issues commonly include loaded language or politically charged terms charged that inhibit clear conversation.
Thousands of migrants have disappeared due to cruel U.S. immigration policies, causing their relatives to search for answers and their remains.
Miles de migrantes han desaparecido por crueles políticas migratorias, haciendo que sus familiares busquen respuestas y sus restos.
Despite laws prohibiting segregation, restrictive zoning practices push people of color into hazardous communities and away from affluent white neighborhoods.
Two years after being murdered by the police and the focus of protests, the fight to get justice for Breonna Taylor continues.
Discussions on the hazards of policing misrepresent reality yet are used to protect the police. A closer look into policing and the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. challenges the claim that police are "under attack."
News coverage of the war in Ukraine has revealed a trend of some racist media bias that perpetuates harmful notions of people based on their racial/ethnic identity, class, or country.
The current hustle culture mindset is rooted in toxic productivity and society's obsession with tying one's self-worth to their job title.
Imposing sanctions on countries is considered a peaceful way to advance human rights, but it often leads to mass suffering and death among the people we're told we're defending.
Seeking convictions for violence, while understandable, legitimizes a system that disproportionately harms communities of color.
More than 50 years since his death, W.E.B. Du Bois' biography and work prove to be treasure troves for those confronting racial capitalism and white supremacist violence today.
Malcolm X was a major figure of the Civil Rights Movement who promoted Black nationalism, self-defense, and liberation before his assassination in 1965. His life, legacy, and death are still remembered more than 50 years later.
A popular time management myth argues that the key to success is discipline and utilizing one's time wisely. However, this tip ignores how wealthy people free themselves from menial tasks by hiring other people to do them, often at poverty wages.
Like many leaders, Audre Lorde's work is often misappropriated and shared out of context. Here we offer a way to explore more of her perspective in full.
Many marginalized people can’t trace their ancestral roots due to forced relocation, enslavement, immigration, and premature death. While white people are at an advantage in both DNA testing and genealogy.
Despite a common border and more than two decades of partnership, the U.S.-Mexico relationship has been contentious.
The Nextdoor app's racist practices by users underscore the inherent problems of integrating unchecked stereotypes into technology.
The misconceptions about race, class, and wealth become evident after a professor's tweet about her Wharton class goes viral.
International adoption is the denaturalization and transfer of thousands of children, but the U.S. isn't winning a humanitarian award for its involvement. From U.S. militarism to the white savior complex, transracial adoptees risk racial isolation as they age in a "color-blind" system.
The recent affordable housing fires in Bronx and Philly are the result of underfunding and neglect from public housing.
While some people have lost their jobs after being canceled, "cancel culture" is far from being effective against individuals or institutions.
The rise and fall of former CNN host Chris Cuomo shows how media bias is an ongoing danger.
For many marginalized communities in America, being patriotic means ignoring a history of violence and oppression that continues to this day.
Discussions about privilege and oppression often leave out the world of work and wealth: who makes it, who keeps it, and who dies from its absence.
It's been over a year since one of the largest movements in U.S. history, yet the American justice system is far from being reformed.
As we enter a season of holidays created from migration, displacement, and shelter, there is no better time than now to recenter immigration justice.
Healthcare issues were a major topic in 2021, causing communities around the U.S. to demand action to fix these inequities in the healthcare system.
Actively pushing back against white supremacy culture in social, work, and educational settings is essential to ending racial disparities.
Vigilantes and law enforcement groups have long worked together to create and protect the racial order in the United States.
Critiquing problematic institutions, unquestioned beliefs, or racist words isn't language policing — it's a sign of a functioning society.
Many workers are now leaving inadequate jobs, driving wages up for everyone. Some are calling to Blackout Black Friday to win more benefits and respect for employees nationwide.
911 was created in part to thwart demands for racial justice. That’s why groups around the country are creating new infrastructure to deal with emergencies.
Without stopping utility shutoffs and supporting home weatherization, racism and inequality will keep everyone from staying warm this winter.
Participatory defense promotes the agency of the families and communities of people facing criminal charges.
Community land trusts like the SBCLT keep housing affordable and community-controlled by removing it from the private market.
The gentrification of cities like Santa Ana displaces immigrant communities and culture—many of which were already uprooted by U.S. policies.
Vasudha Kumar is a resident of California’s Silicon Valley. After playing a leading role in a multi-year campaign to stop a new Google megacampus, Vasudha now studies the dynamics of economic displacement in cities around the U.S.
Noni Session is the Executive Director of the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative in Oakland, California. In a city with a deep Black radical history and some of the most pronounced modern-day displacement, EB PREC is building shared economic and community power by preserving land without landlords.
Conversations around police reforms sometimes highlight specific illegitimate acts by police officers. But law enforcement ignoring the law en masse raises deeper questions about the legitimacy of an institution with a long history of racism and brutality.
Infrastructure is necessary for creating more equitable communities. Learn how you can advocate for accessible public utilities.
Support organizations addressing community conflict, and minimizing state-sanctioned violence in the process.
Reflect on how to build solidarity for the long term, both as movements and individuals, in a struggle that spans decades and generations.
Pope Francis has joined Congressional Representatives Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II to encourage Missouri governor Michael Parson to halt the execution of Ernest Lee Johnson, a Black man with disabilities.
As the completion date of Line 3 nears, there's still much to be done to protect Indigenous activists and their land.
As the completion date of Line 3 nears, there's still much to be done to protect Indigenous activists and their land.
"Blue Bayou," authentic storytelling and the Adoptee Citizenship Act.
Many poor communities of color lack access to clean water and working sewage systems.
And abolish the brutality at our borders.
The controversy of the American flag and the need for a symbol that unites, not divides.
A recent decision at Harvard sets a new standard for investing in fossil fuels.
Hurricane Ida and the intersection of housing injustice and environmental threats.
Hurricane Ida demonstrates the intersection of housing justice and environmental racism. Learn how you can support.
The disparities between those forced to rely on a public defender and those who can afford a private lawyer.
White-led organizations are seeking federal and foundation grant money, jumping in line ahead of long-standing BIPOC-led groups.
People are taking action along the supply chain from the coffee fields to neighborhood coffee shops to make sure coffee can be suitable for all of us.
Mostly white hobbies like birding and knitting have experienced a reckoning after discussions on racism shed light on racial gatekeeping.
Our diverse, multilingual country still shames and disparages those that don't speak English.
We surveyed educators to learn how the critical race discourse is affecting their classrooms – and how you can help.
In his article “Return the National Parks to the Tribes” David Treuer reminds us that national parks are the result of Indigenous dispossession. Everglades National Park is Seminole land. Olympic National Park was created by a violation of a treaty with the Quinault tribe. The first white people to ever see what is now Yosemite National Park were members of a California militia, intent on slaughtering and driving Miwok people off the land and into reservations. “Native people need permanent, unencumbered access to our homelands,” wrote Treuer, an Ojibwe author and historian. “All 85 million acres of national-park sites should be turned over to a consortium of federally recognized tribes in the United States" (The Atlantic).
The borders of racial categories are malleable, contested, and change over time. But believing that demographic changes will inevitably cause the racial hierarchy to fade away ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary.
Interpreting the Founding Fathers’ wishes is a staple of American political discourse. Constitutional originalism is more of a conservative thing, but really, Founding Father mindreading cuts across the ideological spectrum. The Founding Fathers would have hated partisanship (History) or Trump (Foreign Policy) or gun control (History) or not having gun control (HuffPost). Obama informed us, helpfully, that the Founding Fathers didn’t want presidents to serve three year terms (ABC). The Atlantic told us the Founders would have been especially disgusted by Trump’s pardon of the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers (The Atlantic).
This San José flea market is threatened by the construction of a “transit village” around a new light-rail station.
The fun of this segment is based on disgust: we see our famous celebrities shriek, gag, and embarrass themselves confronted with revolting foods. Some of the items featured were clearly specially created to evoke just such revulsion: hot dog juice, hot sauce and olive jello, the aforementioned ant pickle.
Intelligence testing is rooted in racial bias and pseudoscience, which affects how Black football players were tested for brain injuries.
Citizen is a privately-owned “public safety” app that reports neighborhood crime to residents. It has 5 million active users, more App Store downloads than Twitter (Forbes), and is backed by venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, which is also investing in heavyweights like Cisco, Instagram, and YouTube (Sequoia). It’s a rebrand of an app called Vigilante, which actually encouraged users to go after suspected criminals (Tech Crunch). After the Pacific Palisades fire last month, Citizen sent the full name and photo of a suspected arsonist to 860,000 users. Citizen put a $30,000 bounty on this man, who was unhoused (Oaklandside), and, as in its days as Vigilante, encouraged its users to “get out there and bring this guy to justice” (Vox). As it turns out, he was innocent.
American vaccine “charity” comes too late for those who died because the U.S. blocked vaccine imports.
The insurrection at the Capitol hasn't deterred major corporations from contributing to individuals responsible.
The Freedom Georgia Initiative springs from a “desire to create generational wealth for our families” in a place where “restoration, recreation, and reformation” are possible. The ability to conserve family resources and enjoy ample rest and recreation has been denied to generations of Black families. As an explicitly pro-Black city in an anti-Black nation, Freedom, Georgia hopes to be a new start (Complex).
The U.S. positions itself as a just country with a superior legal system where people are always considered innocent until proven guilty and always granted the right to a trial before a jury of their peers. Except this isn’t true at all. Despite the promise of the Sixth Amendment, we do not have an effective right to trial because today, the overwhelming majority of cases will never see a judge.
But race is a social construct, and social constructs have social histories. Our modern understanding of race was created at a specific historical juncture in colonial Virginia. Prior to that, it did not exist.
Israeli settlers are trying to evict Palestinian families from homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. “Since 1967,” says Amnesty International, “it has been the policy of successive Israeli governments to promote the creation and expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” (Amnesty International).
Hate crime charges serve as a sentencing enhancement when someone acts with bias while committing a crime. This bias must be against members of a protected class – such as a specific race, religion, or sexual orientation – and it must be a motivating factor for the crime (Time). It seems reasonable that a crime is more odious if it occurs solely because the victim is a member of an oppressed community.
In April, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to make amends for a massive land grab rooted in white supremacy, though this remedy came almost a century too late (MSN). In the early twentieth century, Charles and Willa Bruce opened a Manhattan Beach resort that offered other Black families the opportunity to vacation under the Southern California sun. The white residents of Manhattan Beach were not pleased.
The US is the top military spender on the planet. What’s more, it spends more on its military than the next ten countries–China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil–combined. The gargantuan military budget sponsors 800 American overseas military bases spread across more than 70 countries (Politico). In 2016, U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed to an astounding 138 countries. Given that there are only 195 countries on Earth, this means more than 70% were visited by American commandos (Forbes).
The harm of centering allyship and its prominence in social discourse.
Just because we’re all affected by the pandemic doesn’t mean that we’ve all been affected equally. Women accounted for all 140,000 jobs cut last December. Black and Latina women in particular lost jobs, since employment for white women actually rose that month (CNN). The data is clear: Black and Latina women were the worst-impacted by layoffs, white men the least (Bloomberg).
As a former waiter in an Asian restaurant, I know very well how many people claim to be sensitive to monosodium glutamate or MSG. Customers would demand that their meal be MSG-free to avoid the headaches or nausea or weakness they swore they would suffer afterward (Mayo Clinic). Often, they informed me of their MSG-adverse status in the same way they might disclose a life-threatening allergy: not as a preference but as a serious, permanent condition with dire consequences. The MSG-avoidant are real and numerous and often quite militant. I have seen them and served them noodles.
On March 11th, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. Among its provisions was a $1400 stimulus which most of us have already received. This check was only the third direct federal payment to Americans since the beginning of the pandemic. With four in ten households reporting lost wages due to COVID (CBS) and millions of tenants thousands of dollars behind in rent (Time), those $1400 came not a moment too soon.
The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor this past summer sparked militant uprisings and massive protests nationwide. Combined with the ongoing pandemic and recession, the upheavals sparked tension and frayed nerves as the National Guard roamed American streets and police stations burned. None of this was helped by Trump’s hostility towards protestors, leaving many to look towards the incoming administration for a breath of fresh air. We once again have a Democrat in the White House, one who has said we must “root out systemic racism across our laws and institutions” (USA Today). Biden is proposing $300 million for “community policing”: buying body cameras, diversifying and retraining police departments. Reform seems to be coming. You might think all is well.