Weekly Feminist Cheat Sheet

It feels utterly bizarre to write this: this is our last cheat sheet of 2017. Here is what we’re reading before ringing in the new year.

This year, Maha Hilal writes, has “shaped a new era of overt Islamophobia in American politics.” Here are five ways the administration waged war at home and abroad.

If you’ve been following the discussion between Ta-Nehesi Coates and Cornel West like I have, this piece from Opal Tometi and Naomi Klein was a very welcome read: “Forget Coates vs. West,” they write, “we all have a duty to confront the full reach of U.S. empire.”

The Trump administration is blocking two more immigrant teenagers from seeking abortion care.

Seven Dreamers, including Bernie’s former press secretary, were arrested protesting for a clean DREAM Act in Senator Schumer’s office and had gone on hunger strike. Unfortunately, our electeds are cruel and Congress is going home this year — with the help of many Democrats — without doing anything to protect the thousands of undocumented youth at risk of deportation.

Do read this conversation between Lauren Chief Elk and Tina Vasquez about how the ‘dv as a precursor to mass shootings’ narratives facilitates victim blaming and minimizes gender violence.

Also, well worth the read: this op-ed from Rebecca Cokely on race and disability. Rebecca is a white little person, who is expecting a third child, married to a Black average height man with two children who are little people. More on pregnancy: here’s how stress of experiencing racism leads black babies to be over twice as likely as white babies to die in their first year of life. Also, pregnant women in Colorado with due dates in February have been told that, unless Children’s Health Insurance Program (or CHIP) funding is restored, their health coverage will expire before they give birth.

Before Alex Kozinski, before Harvey Weinstein, before Bill Clinton, there was Clarence Thomas.

An incredible win: a jury acquitted the first “J20 defendants” on all charges. Their arrest — along with over 200 others — in DC for protesting Trump’s Inauguration was a clear (AND ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING) attempt by the government to criminalize protest and threaten the First Amendment. Here’s how you can support the others awaiting trial.

Here’s to more wins in 2018 — and a stronger feminist movement that challenges each of the systems in the way of people surviving in and outside of this country.

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