Novel excerpt: my homage to Fred Hampton in A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE
On this date in 1969, the Chicago police murdered Fred Hampton. I write about the murder in my new novel, A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE, about a rookie FBI attorney going undercover to infiltrate an African American eco-racial justice organization that is part of both the...
Biden’s first test: NO IMMUNITY DEAL for Tr*mp
So it has been 20 days since the presidential election. Every major news outlet has called it for...
News Round Up, Friday November 20th
Are we gonna give up or get up? https://www.instagram.com/tv/CHyN000gE4w/?igshid=1ay22ww1pfm0e...
Willpower, Climate, and Karma
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrfsyxJvkj4WillpowerMy children, when they were younger, loved the Frog and Toad series. They still do. One of the funny themes, as I recall it now, was on willpower. Would one of them, either Frog or Toad, who were best friends,...
Green New Deal or Same Orange Shit?
Grieving RBG & Letting Our Wins in November Lift Her Legacy
The death of Ruth Bader Gisburg is blow. Especially right now, as we are attempting to wrestle this nation from the grip of misogynist white supremacy and stop the slide into authoritarian government. RBG represented a strong voice—although sometimes a lone voice—for...
News Round Up, Friday, Sept 18th
Nurse Accuses ICE of Forcing Hysterectomies on Unsuspecting Detainees: In a complaint filed on September 14, a nurse refers to one gynecologist working with a Georgia immigration detention center as “the uterus collector.” Democrats unveil new agenda for economic...
Prayer of Gratitude in spite of smoke, fire
"Everything this year is about who gets to breathe." -Elizabeth Stark As the 20th century African American poet Claude McKay said of lynchings, "if we must die," let us not die like penned hogs. let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be...
Fifty Years Ago–––and Now––Orange Skies II
End of March 1972: Rettakudi and Kunnam Villages, Thanjavur District, Tamil Nadu, southern India, India, Northern Hemisphere, Earth. Rettakudi was my father’s ancestral village. Kunnam was my mother’s. Most of the summer we were in Rettakudi, but sometimes we would go...
Semicolon: It could all come to a stop; let’s keep it going.
This is how it happened: I was listening to an interview Tim Ferris did with Maria Popova of Brainpickings.org, and in passing they referred to “the semi-colon” quote by Kurt Vonnegut, in the context of a conversation Tim Ferris had with a friend who has a semi-colon...
A literary win for the climate movement: SIDE CHICK NATION takes first place in International Latino Book Awards
Over the weekend, my whole family was locked inside as California blazed as an undeniable result of the climate crisis with unbreathable air. Which is how I was home and watching the online ceremony where my novel SIDE CHICK NATION won a prize. It was selected for...
Climate News Friday, September 11th
Today, we recall September 11th of 2001 and the attacks on the World Trade Center. However, back ini April, the deaths from coronavirus in New York City alone surpassed the number of people killed on 9/11/01. As of today, the city's death toll is nearly ten...
Fifty Years Ago and Now
September 7, 1970. New Delhi, India, Daily, early in the morning, just before sunrise, I hear the pipes surging noisily during the two hour rationed water time. I clamber off the bamboo mat on the floor, dash swiftly to the...
Black Women have not come to rescue you…
My latest collage... Clockwise from upper left: Harriet Tubman, Winnie Mandela, Shirley Chisholm, Angela Davis, Kamala Harris, The Combahee River Collective, Octavia Butler. Center: the three founders of Black Lives Matter, left to right: Patrice Cullors, Alicia...
Listen Now: Moved by Water, Circled by Fire
Diary Notes: August 25, 2020 A few early mornings ago in the middle of the night. White, lightning storms raged loudly against the midnight blue sky and clouds raced in and through them, as I had never witnessed before. These lines of thick, bursting, noisy light...
Happy Domestic Labor Day: Care Work is Low Carbon Work & Critical to the Green New Deal!
Ever since I got onto twitter, I have been wishing everyone a #HappyDomesticLaborDay on the first Monday in September. But this year, I want to highlight the climate implications of care labor. Caring for others and taking care of physical spaces by doing work of...
Climate News Friday, September 4th
To solve everything, solve climate: A conversation with Varshini Prakash, leader of the Sunrise Movement Everything Is Unprecedented. Welcome To Your Hotter Earth @hollyannecreative The Sunday Read: 'In Line of the Fire'. This was published a little over two years...
Call to Action! Writers, Artists, Photographers, Videographers, Thinkers, Activists, Environmentalists
The Daily Dose: Feminist Voices for the Green New Deal has a mission: we are going to post something every single weekday that will move the needle on social justice and climate crisis--on the Green New Deal. We began March 2, 2020 (check out our early posts!) have...
Fascism v. Centrism: Live to Fight Another Day!
Feeling torn about the election? Get some serious reassurance that the difference between fascism and centrism is a difference already equal to hundreds of thousands of lives this year. I watched this video this week thinking I’d just check out the beginning, and...
Dilemma/ Solution
“A dilemma is a problem that can’t be solved without creating another problem. At the heart of every story is a dilemma. If we’re not sure what our story is about, let’s consider this for a moment: Problems are solved while dilemmas are resolved through...
My video response to the RNC: “Tr*mp is NOT an A**h*le”
...because the a**h*le does its job.
News, Friday August 28th
America Is Being Pummeled by Disasters: Hurricane Laura, the strongest storm on record to strike Louisiana, is yet another calamity on top of wildfires, wind storms, and the pandemic. Wave of postponements as US sports join Jacob Blake protests Hurricanes Like Laura...
No New Normal! Why We Must Resist
You’ve probably heard the idea that a frog that gets dropped in a pot of boiling water will jump out immediately, while a frog that is placed in a pan of cool water heating on a stove will stay as the water continues to get hotter and hotter, gradually adjusting its...