In “Why We Can’t Stop Thinking About George Floyd’s Neck,” Soraya Nadia McDonald writes about the history of lynching, chokeholds, iron collars, and other state-sanctioned attacks on black Americans that target one of the body’s most vulnerable areas.
The May edition of Radical History Review, a special issue on “Policing, Justice, and the Radical Imagination,” is available online for free at the Duke University Press website.
Staffers from the New York Times are denouncing the paper’s decision to run “Send in the Troops,” an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the use of “overwhelming force” against protestors. The Times has since written an article recapping the controversy.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor—the author, most recently, of Race for Profit—speaks with Democracy Now! about the recent uprisings: “These are not just repeats of past events. These are the consequences of the failures of this government and the political establishment.”
And at Vox, historian Heather Ann Thompson—author of Blood in the Water—compares the latest wave of protests with protest movements of the past. After noting that the media language about the current protests is remarkably similar to news portrayals in the late 1960s—talk of “outside agitators” and “real” vs. “violent” demonstrators—Thompson points out one important change: “Trump’s America is different in that the media is also being attacked, much like in totalitarian nations where reporters can be arrested and locked up and jailed.”
Harriett’s Bookshop of Philadelphia is out on the streets giving away books. The store is taking donations via Venmo.
At Interview magazine, Michael Londres talks with Brandon Taylor about his novel Real Life, anxiety, and finishing new work under quarantine.
