Deborah Chasman
@debchasman.bsky.social
Editor at @bostonreview.bsky.social
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
“Anti-wokeism is about giving ideological cover to longstanding priorities on the right—dismantling the welfare state and ramping up the carceral state, especially in the form of immigrant deportation and detention.”
Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:
Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:
Building a Political Home - Boston Review
Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen on winning power in the midst of a “generational war.”
www.bostonreview.net
October 6, 2025 at 4:44 PM
“Anti-wokeism is about giving ideological cover to longstanding priorities on the right—dismantling the welfare state and ramping up the carceral state, especially in the form of immigrant deportation and detention.”
Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:
Activist and scholar Cathy J. Cohen:
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
As ICE agents terrorize Chicago neighborhoods and rough up my friends, patients, neighbors, and elected officials with total impunity, this essay I wrote for Boston Review last week on the myths surrounding "political violence" is as pressing as ever.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
What Is Political Violence? - Boston Review
Pundits and politicians conceal the truth: it’s all around us, perpetrated by our political system itself.
www.bostonreview.net
October 3, 2025 at 11:30 PM
As ICE agents terrorize Chicago neighborhoods and rough up my friends, patients, neighbors, and elected officials with total impunity, this essay I wrote for Boston Review last week on the myths surrounding "political violence" is as pressing as ever.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...
Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site
As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.
www.miamiherald.com
September 23, 2025 at 5:39 PM
More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...
Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply. @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
www.bostonreview.net
September 23, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply. @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
The widely accepted narrative that Trump "chickened out" on Chicago is completely incorrect. ICE's incursions are getting worse here every day.
Protesters were tear gassed, shot with pepper spray bullets and some detained by ICE officers outside of a facility in suburban Broadview Friday morning. blockclubchi.co/3VslkAr
September 19, 2025 at 2:34 PM
The widely accepted narrative that Trump "chickened out" on Chicago is completely incorrect. ICE's incursions are getting worse here every day.
Raj Patael: Both Mamdani and MAHA distrusts the food system's additives, pesticides, and profiteering. But links MAHA draws between food and racial hygiene have roots in 1930s Germany. Mamdani connects healthly eating to dignity and collective provision. www.bostonreview.net/articles/mah...
MAHA v. Mamdani - Boston Review
Our broken food system and the real roots of American unwellness.
www.bostonreview.net
September 19, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Raj Patael: Both Mamdani and MAHA distrusts the food system's additives, pesticides, and profiteering. But links MAHA draws between food and racial hygiene have roots in 1930s Germany. Mamdani connects healthly eating to dignity and collective provision. www.bostonreview.net/articles/mah...
Aaron Shakow: The campaign by one faction of the Jewish community over the past twenty-three months to systematically label political outrage as “antisemitism” is causing destruction at every level of civil society.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/let...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/let...
Letter to the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism - Boston Review
Your approach is toxic and threatens core democratic values. You must change course or cease to exist.
www.bostonreview.net
September 18, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Aaron Shakow: The campaign by one faction of the Jewish community over the past twenty-three months to systematically label political outrage as “antisemitism” is causing destruction at every level of civil society.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/let...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/let...
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
THE best thing I’ve read regarding American Jews and Palestine, protesting from experience — of the heart and mind — the harmful effects of adopting of IHRA definition of antisemitism. Read the open letter:
Letter to the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism - Boston Review
Your approach is toxic and threatens core democratic values. You must change course or cease to exist.
www.bostonreview.net
September 18, 2025 at 3:50 PM
THE best thing I’ve read regarding American Jews and Palestine, protesting from experience — of the heart and mind — the harmful effects of adopting of IHRA definition of antisemitism. Read the open letter:
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
A personal story, from a child's vantage point, about what it's like to live under never-ending state surveillance and persecution. Also to survive that through resistance and solidarity. From Joan Wallach Scott, who I was lucky to have as a colleague last year. www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...
A General Air of Anxiety - Boston Review
The Red Scare targeted my father. He taught me the meaning of resistance.
www.bostonreview.net
September 12, 2025 at 5:40 PM
A personal story, from a child's vantage point, about what it's like to live under never-ending state surveillance and persecution. Also to survive that through resistance and solidarity. From Joan Wallach Scott, who I was lucky to have as a colleague last year. www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...
Whatever power truth-telling might have had against fascism has been radically diminished. There is ample scholarship proving that immigrants do not take jobs and that war in Gaza doesn’t make Jews safe. Robin DG Kelley and others on what resistance requires:
www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...
www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...
The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide - Boston Review
Speaking the truth and exposing lies is not enough.
www.bostonreview.net
September 4, 2025 at 12:51 AM
Whatever power truth-telling might have had against fascism has been radically diminished. There is ample scholarship proving that immigrants do not take jobs and that war in Gaza doesn’t make Jews safe. Robin DG Kelley and others on what resistance requires:
www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...
www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...
Robin Kelley: The possibilities that Chomsky saw in the power of truth-telling are vastly diminished today. But there was always something misformulated about Chomsky’s question, however forcefully it exposed the moral bankruptcy of the “value-free” experts. www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...
The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide - Boston Review
Speaking the truth and exposing lies is not enough.
www.bostonreview.net
September 3, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Robin Kelley: The possibilities that Chomsky saw in the power of truth-telling are vastly diminished today. But there was always something misformulated about Chomsky’s question, however forcefully it exposed the moral bankruptcy of the “value-free” experts. www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-re...
Vivian Gornick on Airless Spaces: The narrator thinks to herself she’s alone in the world, she’s got nothing and no one to go home to. That’s what’s waiting for each of us.We are all homeless, permanently homeless, irremediably homeless, homeless within ourselves www.bostonreview.net/articles/cre...
Creatures Apart - Boston Review
Shulamith Firestone’s portraits of madness reveal a condition afflicting us all.
www.bostonreview.net
August 21, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Vivian Gornick on Airless Spaces: The narrator thinks to herself she’s alone in the world, she’s got nothing and no one to go home to. That’s what’s waiting for each of us.We are all homeless, permanently homeless, irremediably homeless, homeless within ourselves www.bostonreview.net/articles/cre...
40 years ago--the first documented case I know that weaponized the charge of antisemitism to silence academics, made politicians and administrators complicit, and targeted people of color in particular. Mario Cuomo and Donald Blinken were both involved: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
The Silencing of Fred Dube - Boston Review
Forty years ago, the exiled South African activist dared to teach Zionism critically. A furious backlash ensued.
www.bostonreview.net
August 20, 2025 at 2:12 PM
40 years ago--the first documented case I know that weaponized the charge of antisemitism to silence academics, made politicians and administrators complicit, and targeted people of color in particular. Mario Cuomo and Donald Blinken were both involved: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
The always relevant argument from Joe Carens on the limits of the state's right to deport immigrants: Social membership does not depend upon official permission or legal status. www.bostonreview.net/articles/jos...
Who Gets the Right to Stay? - Boston Review
The moral right of states to apprehend and deport irregular migrants erodes with the passage of time.
www.bostonreview.net
August 19, 2025 at 6:04 PM
The always relevant argument from Joe Carens on the limits of the state's right to deport immigrants: Social membership does not depend upon official permission or legal status. www.bostonreview.net/articles/jos...
Robin D. G. Kelley: Racial regimes are fictions, fragile and unstable. They can be disassembled, though that is easier said than done. In the meantime, we need to be prepared to fight for our collective lives. www.bostonreview.net/articles/rob...
Births of a Nation - Boston Review
Surveying Trumpism with Cedric Robinson.
www.bostonreview.net
August 15, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Robin D. G. Kelley: Racial regimes are fictions, fragile and unstable. They can be disassembled, though that is easier said than done. In the meantime, we need to be prepared to fight for our collective lives. www.bostonreview.net/articles/rob...
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
This is a really rich synthesis across a few new texts and narratives and opens some essential big thinking on large scale, long form interventions and remedies in human-hydrosphere relations. Tuning in to the way water works its way through things, insistently.
Undamming the Klamath River: success came from both principled advocacy and commercial logic: it would have cost the dam operators more to re-license and upgrade the dams than they would have recouped in future years. Indigenous advocates recognized this. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
What Does It Take to Topple a Dam? - Boston Review
A new politics of rivers is emerging.
www.bostonreview.net
August 15, 2025 at 1:38 AM
This is a really rich synthesis across a few new texts and narratives and opens some essential big thinking on large scale, long form interventions and remedies in human-hydrosphere relations. Tuning in to the way water works its way through things, insistently.
On murdered Palestinian journalists: "When al-Sharif began crying that heartbreaking day in front of al-Shifa Hospital, you could hear the people around him comforting and encouraging him: 'Continue! Continue! You’re our voice.'" www.bostonreview.net/articles/isr...
Israel’s War on Journalists - Boston Review
Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated because he insisted on speaking the truth.
www.bostonreview.net
August 12, 2025 at 12:57 PM
On murdered Palestinian journalists: "When al-Sharif began crying that heartbreaking day in front of al-Shifa Hospital, you could hear the people around him comforting and encouraging him: 'Continue! Continue! You’re our voice.'" www.bostonreview.net/articles/isr...
A spokesperson for the Israeli military relentlessly attacked the journalist Anas al-Sharif for "crocodile tears." Then they killed him and four other Al-Jazeera journalists. www.bostonreview.net/articles/isr...
Israel’s War on Journalists - Boston Review
Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated because he insisted on speaking the truth.
www.bostonreview.net
August 11, 2025 at 3:35 PM
A spokesperson for the Israeli military relentlessly attacked the journalist Anas al-Sharif for "crocodile tears." Then they killed him and four other Al-Jazeera journalists. www.bostonreview.net/articles/isr...
Robin Kelley’s account of what really happened at UCLA last year: “The administration probably did not anticipate an unholy alliance of neo-Nazis and Zionists working together.” www.bostonreview.net/articles/ucl...
UCLA’s Unholy Alliance - Boston Review
House Republicans accuse student protesters of vicious anti-Semitism, but it is administrators who are courting violence.
www.bostonreview.net
August 8, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Robin Kelley’s account of what really happened at UCLA last year: “The administration probably did not anticipate an unholy alliance of neo-Nazis and Zionists working together.” www.bostonreview.net/articles/ucl...
Undamming the Klamath River: success came from both principled advocacy and commercial logic: it would have cost the dam operators more to re-license and upgrade the dams than they would have recouped in future years. Indigenous advocates recognized this. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
What Does It Take to Topple a Dam? - Boston Review
A new politics of rivers is emerging.
www.bostonreview.net
August 8, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Undamming the Klamath River: success came from both principled advocacy and commercial logic: it would have cost the dam operators more to re-license and upgrade the dams than they would have recouped in future years. Indigenous advocates recognized this. www.bostonreview.net/articles/wha...
Reposted by Deborah Chasman
This is Robing D.G. Kelley’s remarkable piece in @bostonreview.bsky.social of what actually happened at the encampment.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/ucl...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/ucl...
UCLA’s Unholy Alliance - Boston Review
House Republicans accuse student protesters of vicious anti-Semitism, but it is administrators who are courting violence.
www.bostonreview.net
August 3, 2025 at 10:45 AM
This is Robing D.G. Kelley’s remarkable piece in @bostonreview.bsky.social of what actually happened at the encampment.
www.bostonreview.net/articles/ucl...
www.bostonreview.net/articles/ucl...
Of course Israelis know that there are people in Gaza with pre-existing medical conditions that make them especially vulnerable to shortage of food and medicine—all children born during the last two years in Gaza face greater risk for ill health. Alex de Waal: www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
How to Hide a Famine - Boston Review
Israel’s deliberate campaign to obfuscate the hunger crisis in Gaza.
www.bostonreview.net
July 31, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Of course Israelis know that there are people in Gaza with pre-existing medical conditions that make them especially vulnerable to shortage of food and medicine—all children born during the last two years in Gaza face greater risk for ill health. Alex de Waal: www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
"Lula gave ordinary people, who see themselves in him, permission to be and to want without apology. That enraged the country’s elites, and it might be the most threatening thing about him." www.bostonreview.net/articles/lul...
Becoming Lula - Boston Review
How a metalworker became perhaps the most voted-for person on the planet—and a model for the future of the left.
www.bostonreview.net
July 31, 2025 at 2:30 PM
"Lula gave ordinary people, who see themselves in him, permission to be and to want without apology. That enraged the country’s elites, and it might be the most threatening thing about him." www.bostonreview.net/articles/lul...
By underwriting Israel’s genocidal onslaught so flagrantly, Western governments have hastened the final discrediting of the legal order the West itself developed after World War II. @joelleabirached.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/gaz...
Gaza and the End of History - Boston Review
The apocalyptic scale of death and destruction lays bare the contradictions at the heart of the liberal international order.
www.bostonreview.net
July 30, 2025 at 8:34 PM
By underwriting Israel’s genocidal onslaught so flagrantly, Western governments have hastened the final discrediting of the legal order the West itself developed after World War II. @joelleabirached.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/articles/gaz...
"When Republicans are in power, Democrats express outrage at immigration enforcement policies. When Democrats are in power, those same policies often remain in place or even expand." Thank you @austinkocher.com austinkocher.substack.com/p/the-immigr...
The Immigration Enforcement Ratchet: A 15-Year Perspective on Policy Continuity
Immigration enforcement systems persist across administrations through institutional momentum, creating a "ratchet effect" that transcends partisan politics and electoral cycles.
austinkocher.substack.com
July 29, 2025 at 6:21 PM
"When Republicans are in power, Democrats express outrage at immigration enforcement policies. When Democrats are in power, those same policies often remain in place or even expand." Thank you @austinkocher.com austinkocher.substack.com/p/the-immigr...