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By Andreas Petrossiants In June 2020, millions of people across the world took to the streets to protest the ongoing murder of people of color at the hands of police. The movement, led by Black youth and supported by a diversity of demonstrators, emanated from a rebellion in Minneapolis after police murdered George Floyd. This uprising brought the word “abolition” into mainstream discourse, and made it possible for more people to consider a world without police, prisons and state violence.

By Samantha Grasso The sun is out, my depression fog has cleared and I’m ready to start paring down the abundance of stuff that has taken over my apartment! But with all the news about textile waste and trashed donations, I know that hauling paper bags of used belongings to Goodwill will no longer cut it.

By Sharmila Venkatasubban For the past four years, a small group of Indigenous land defenders, who call themselves the Tiny House Warriors, have been fighting a massive pipeline expansion in Canada. And they’ve faced violence to do it. The Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from Alberta to just outside of Vancouver, will triple Canada’s ability to carry crude oil across the country by building a new line alongside the existing one.

By Harry Stopes For centuries, people of color around the world have been denied access to public lands, and been estranged from their own through colonialism and violence. Even now, simply going for a walk in the woods can be prohibitively expensive or involve overcoming obstacles like rural racism and bad infrastructure. In Britain, despite making up 13% of the population, POC make up only 1% of visitors to national parks.

By Samantha Grasso Last year, conservatives created a nationwide panic over “critical race theory,” leading many Republican-governed states to ban honest conversations about American history from public schools. This year, many of those same conservatives have moved on to something equally disturbing. In schools across the country, according to these moral crusaders, teachers are “grooming” students for sexual abuse by introducing discussions of gender and sexuality into the classroom.

By Samantha Grasso Would you starve yourself for justice? This was the question I asked myself last year when New York City taxi drivers undertook a hunger strike to fight for relief from overwhelming debt.

By Jessica Loudis The popularization of at-home genetic testing has, in many ways, been a boon. Millions of people have learned about their ancestries to a degree previously thought unimaginable. Long-lost relatives have been found. Decades’-old cold cases have been solved. New relationships have been forged. And then there are the discoveries nobody ever wants to make.

By Jessica Loudis If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, women will be forced to grapple with the state’s intrusion into their most private decisions. What many people haven’t considered, is how that intrusion could come through their phones, smart watches and computers. What will criminalized abortion look like in the age of digital surveillance? Should federal abortion protections fall, it would be up to each state to devise their own rules around the procedure.

By Samantha Grasso This interview is part of a three-part series about the pandemic’s impact on disabled and chronically ill people. Read our first interview with Tinu Abayomi-Paul here. In the past few months, leaders around the world have started dropping the pandemic requirements that have for more than two years defined our lives. Suddenly, people no longer have to worry about mask mandates, social distancing and fights over vaccines! That is, only some people.