somehow we're still here:

Between 2019 and 2021, 97 members of Congress or their family members invested in weapons contractor stocks, and 25 of them sat on committees directly responsible for shaping national security policy (!!!) while they traded and profited off those stocks. Just last year, U.S. lawmakers made 96 transactions in weapons stock, including 8 since October 7.

Rashida Tlaib recently introduced the Stop Politicians Profiting from War Act (read more here) to prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from having any financial interests in corporations that do business with the U.S. Department of Defense, including banning members from trading defense stocks.

They only have 3,000 signatures so far, so please click here to sign and share!

You don't need to be a US voter, the form allows you to select other countries. PLEASE sign now to show your support!

It takes LESS THAN A MINUTE--please don't scroll before you sign and share. If you're in the US, please also call or email your local representatives to ask them to publically support this act.

If you can't protest or donate, please do at least this.

(ii) So then when scholarship by South Asian scholars is evaluated through peer review by global north scholars, this is always pointed out as a lack or gap – when there are very real structural reasons why global south scholars can’t use particular sources (archives) and can’t use particular methods (historical).

(iii) If you don’t have a global north passport, then you spend a lot of time, energy, money on visa applications, including going to consulates or having to be in your country of origin to apply for specific visas. That’s time, energy, money that you can’t spend on research or teaching.

(iv) Citizenship rules govern which fellowships different scholars (including graduate students) are eligible for or not, and how many hours of you can work as, for example, a teaching assistant or research assistant.

(v) If you’re on a visa then you have a very specific time in that particular country which means that, for example, if you’re an anthropologist, you can’t do as extensive ethnographic work as scholars with global north passports.

(vi) If a scholar with an American passport wants to study a phenomenon in Pakistan, there is no structural issues of access – but if a scholar with a Pakistani passport wants to study a phenomenon in the France or Spain, that choice might not be possible. So your entire project of research might be determined by what passport you hold.

(vii) Global north universities very rarely offer visa sponsorship for global south scholars, and very rarely offer enough funding (like honoraria) to cover international flights. So if conferences aren’t hosted online or in a country global south scholars can visit, then they are effectively shut out of transnational scholarly dialogue and presentation.

If you are in a red state, your state either has an abortion ban in place or is rated by the Guttmacher Institute as likely to enact a ban. Your focus should be on protecting yourself and others who need abortions.

stop using electronic period tracking apps or software

educate yourself and others about pregnancy prevention and join groups that are making preventative birth control more accessible

learn the nearest and most accessible routes to states where you and your loved ones can access abortion

contribute to mutual aid funds to help transport people over state lines if they are in need of abortion

consider joining The Satanic Temple so you can claim protections under the Religious Abortion Ritual if you are prosecuted for obtaining an abortion

keep a stock of by-mail abortion pills for yourself and/or others who may need them (you may need to travel out of state to obtain them)

form community provider networks and see if you or someone you know can be trained to use manual vacuum aspiration kits or a Del-Em

all of the above should be done in complete secrecy using verbal communication, end-to-end encrypted apps such as Signal, or a VPN

If you are in a yellow state, you currently have constitutional abortion protections but they are in jeopardy. Get active in local political groups NOW to fight back against constitutional amendments to ban abortion. Your focus should be purely on political action.

If you are in Michigan, you currently have a ban in place which is being challenged, and your governor is working to add abortion protections into the Michigan state constitution. Your focus should be on supporting the work that is currently under way.

If you are in a green state, your state has constitutional protections for abortion that are unlikely to be challenged. Your focus should be on helping others to enter your state for abortion care.

connect with abortion access groups such as Aid Access, Abortion on Demand, the National Network of Abortion Funds, or Just The Pill

volunteer to help people enter your state for abortion care, either with transportation help or letting someone crash on your couch

if you live in a green state with no current or predicted primary routes from other states for abortion access, you can focus your efforts on supporting political action in other areas

1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself?

2. Who's already doing work around this injustice?

3. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support & help to them?

4. How can I be constructive?

But the question always was: how could enslaved Africans bring rice with them?? And researches and scientists didn’t even think to look at how in some places in west Africa and in maroon communities in South America, people still braid rice in their hair as a hands free way of transporting the grain. Video of a woman doing it here. The “discovery” was made a white woman who saw African rice growing in the wild in Suriname and she would go and connect back their cultural practices with practices in Equatorial Guinea.

The point of this is to say how much history, science, information is ignored destroyed overlooked because of how we conceive of science and knowledge is focused on white ways of thinking and knowing? Another example that sticks out is Aboriginal people passing down scientifically accurate stories of flood events and extinct animals from over 10,000 years ago. How much of that information could possibly be lost due to continued colonialism and cultural genocide? Or how an enslaved African introduced the concept of inoculation to western science. How many cultures and all they knew and could have taught us have been lost due to those same forces? How much is being lost now??