“There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.”
- William Makepeace Thackeray
“Words have power. When largely, though not exclusively, republicans use dog whistles, they know what they’re doing. Regardless of the specific term used, America’s sociopolitical discourse will always find a way to signal resistance to a more diverse and equitable future. Subtly stoking anti-Blackness within American voters has been a popular method for decades. As the dog whistles evolve, racial justice advocates would benefit from calling out this rhetoric directly and the underlying racism that inspires it.”
— Opinion – How anti-Black dog whistles evolve over time but never go away (ATLANTA COMMUNITY PRESS COLLECTIVE, sept 2024)
“A throughline for the increase in Republican voters of color can be summarized in one word: men. The 2024 election did not have as severe of a gender gap as anticipated, but men and women still demonstrated significantly different voting habits. Vice President Harris had a clear, at times double-digit lead amongst women voters throughout the campaign, and Trump had an advantage with men.”
— Opinion – Demographics are not destiny – Why People of Color turned towards Trump in record numbers (ATLANTA COMMUNITY PRESS COLLECTIVE, nov 2024)
“Young people’s well-being and extracurriculars also suffer when it’s too hot. Outdoor sports during the school year are now sometimes dangerous. Between 1997 and 2022, at least 50 high school football players died from heat stroke, the most for any school sport. Even outdoor activities that require less exertion put children at risk.”
— Are heat days the new snow days? (Prism, June 2024)
“Legalization of recreational cannabis is the epitome of a “win-win,” decreasing the overcriminalization of Black and Hispanic Georgians while adding to Georgia’s tax base.”
— Legalize for Legal Highs: How Georgia Can Address Racial Disparities in the Criminal Legal System by Legalizing Recreational Cannabis (Georgia Criminal law review, sept. 2023)
“An over-reliance on plea deals means the old adage of “innocent until proven guilty” has effectively been replaced with “innocent until pleading guilty.” In fact, innocent people regularly plead guilty—different studies have estimated that at least 11 percent of criminal exonerations since 1989 came from innocent people pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit.”
— OVER-RELIANCE ON PLEA DEALS IS DAMAGING THE CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM (The Appeal, Dec. 2022)
“The 1920s saw a flurry of crosswalk ordinances due to campaigning from the industry. Auto industry lobbyists popularized the term “jaywalking.” Since “jay” was an offensive synonym for “hick” at the time, the term implied that jaywalkers were ignorant of the societal and safety norms in cities. As cars grew in popularity, pedestrians lost their rights to the road, culminating in states today that do not give pedestrians the right of way.”
— HOW AMERICAN PUBLIC SPACES BECAME SO CRIMINALIZED—AND HOW WE CAN WIN THEM BACK (the appeal, sept. 2022)
“What increased funding to law enforcement does seem to reliably accomplish is an increase in misdemeanor arrests rather than improvements to crime rates or public safety. Worse yet, an increase in a city’s Black population is correlated with that city increasing its budget for law enforcement.”
— STACEY ABRAMS’ BOLD NEW IDEA IS TO TACK TO THE CENTER (The APpeal, July 2022)
“While further ratcheting up hate-crime laws may be a popular idea among establishment Democrats, an important point must be made: hate-crime laws do not appear to be working to stop white-supremacist violence, and instead, only appear to funnel money to police officers instead of the sorts of social services that could actually address the underlying reasons why people commit acts of mass violence.”
— MORE MONEY TO POLICE ‘HATE CRIMES’ WON’T STOP MASS SHOOTERS (The appeal, june 2022)
“Society’s insistence on viewing harms solely through a carceral lens limits our ability to pursue meaningful, harm-reduction interventions in young people’s lives. As a result, more than 30,000 children under the age of 10 were arrested between 2013 and 2018, according to FBI data.”
— FLORIDA COPS NEARLY SENT A FIVE-YEAR-OLD TO JAIL (The Appeal, April 2022)
“To claim [Northeastern and West Coast states] as superior to the South is an ironic exercise in white supremacy, placing almost exclusively white areas on a pedestal above areas with significantly more diversity. It is the same paternalism that makes spaces outside the South so hostile and unforgiving.”
— Reconsider This: The South (Askdiem, Nov. 2021)
“Keeping incarcerated people in a permanent state of heightened awareness, in addition to the overcrowding, solitary confinement, and lack of rehabilitative resources issues plaguing prisons, contributes to that individual’s inability to reintegrate with the general public upon release.”
— PRIVATE TECH SURVEILLANCE COMPANIES ARE TAKING OVER PRISONS (the appeal, mar. 2022)
“Elvis was not the first to steal from black musicians, and he most certainly was not the last. Rap and R&B, genres with undoubtedly black origins, have become saturated with white musicians who overshadow their black counterparts.”
— "Anaconda" Snub is Just the Tail End in a Long History of Racism in the Music Industry(Transverso, july 2015)
“[H]owever good the intentions, age verification laws nevertheless represent a litany of speech and privacy concerns for both content providers and viewers alike. They will not only restrict access to pornographic content: age verification laws are broad enough that they could easily be weaponized against the queer community and reproductive justice advocates.”
— Why you should worry about age verification laws (Xtra, Apr. 2024)
“While some activists are undeterred, the State’s repressive actions towards the Stop Cop City movement will undoubtedly scare some individuals away from exercising their constitutional right to protest. And by backdating the start of the alleged criminal enterprise to the date of George Floyd’s murder, nearly a year before the Stop Cop City movement began, it’s clear that any intersectional social justice movement could become the target of similar tactics.”
— RICO repercussions: how threats to Stop Cop City implicate reproductive justice (Atlanta community press collective, sept. 2023)
“The clear individualist ethos of this country makes abortion restrictions puzzling; they are, in theory and in practice, an infringement on the bodily autonomy of the pregnant person. If viewed in terms of the extensive history of subjugation and misogyny against marginalized genders, anti-abortion activism in fact reveals its true motivations as maintaining institutional control over the bodies of people with uteruses.”