Bruce Dorsey
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profbrucedorsey.bsky.social
Bruce Dorsey
@profbrucedorsey.bsky.social
Historian, writer. Professor of History, Swarthmore College. Most recent: MURDER IN A MILL TOWN (Oxford UP). Rep'd by Mullane Literary Associates.
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Great thrill to be in conversation with Jen Manion @manionjen.bsky.social at the Charles River Museum @charlesrivermuseum.bsky.social for the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize celebration, awarded by the Massachusetts Historical Society @mhs1791.bsky.social
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
"Empty bolt holes and shadows are all that remains on the brick walls where explanatory panels were displayed . . . One woman cried silently at their absence. . . . A hand-lettered sign said 'Slavery was real.'" . . . It's all connected.
bit.ly/4q21GI9
Philadelphia sues Trump administration over removal of slavery exhibit from public park
Outraged critics accused President Donald Trump of “whitewashing history” on Friday after the National Park Service removed an exhibit on slavery at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Par...
bit.ly
January 25, 2026 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
How ICE targets white supremacists in its recruitment ads.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNh_...
How ICE is using far-right subculture to recruit
YouTube video by CBC News: The National
www.youtube.com
January 25, 2026 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
You can see pretti’s hands under the pile all the way up to where gray jacket guy takes the gun.

Pretti clearly never pulled it out.
January 24, 2026 at 9:30 PM
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The term martyr means “witness.” The man was murdered for bearing witness, literally bearing it, not arms but a camera. Murdered for seeing.
January 24, 2026 at 9:45 PM
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The pigeon toes. The earnest crossing guard hand. The way his other arm, holding the camera, is tucked into his side. The way he stands before the threat, looking over his shoulder at the wellbeing of another. The brown, the beige, the hat. One humble soul. Here is another Tiananmen Square.
We’re supposed to believe this is a domestic terrorist attacking ICE with a gun
January 24, 2026 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
This video is itself a historical document that shows the Trump administration's efforts to erase history. There are few more telling symbols of the intentional attempt to silence the past than the raw, empty spaces left behind after this removal of displays about the history of American slavery.
More than 400 years of history and a decade of advocacy were torn down Thursday afternoon when National Park Service employees removed every single display at the President’s House.

🔗 What's next? We explain: www.inquirer.com/politics/nat...
January 24, 2026 at 2:55 AM
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January 22, 2026 at 7:37 PM
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in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today
January 24, 2026 at 12:38 AM
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One day, if we are lucky, the erasure of American history will itself be remembered as a shameful chapter in American history
January 23, 2026 at 1:30 AM
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Bruce Springsteen: “ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
January 19, 2026 at 1:40 AM
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January 18, 2026 at 2:19 PM
A great, though haunting, essay by @nickmiroff.bsky.social.

“In creating DHS, we didn’t want to create the KGB or the FSB,” [Seth Stodder] said. ... “It makes me think that maybe DHS was a bad idea."
NEW: How the Department of Homeland Security, founded to prevent another 9/11 terrorist attack, has turned into the partisan political tool its critics always feared www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
From Stopping Osama bin Laden to Killing Renee Good
Two decades after its founding, the Department of Homeland Security has become exactly what its critics feared.
www.theatlantic.com
January 18, 2026 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
My parents, both principal Martha Graham dancers, would have been pleased.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/a...
Martha Graham Dance Company Won’t Celebrate Centennial at Kennedy Center
www.nytimes.com
January 18, 2026 at 1:56 AM
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January 18, 2026 at 1:32 AM
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So moved by the people of Minnesota who—drawing on LA, Portland, Chicago, DC etc—are writing a shining new chapter in the history of nonviolent resistance.

The rest of us need to be taking notes—and helping them!

www.standwithminnesota.com
Stand With Minnesota
A directory of places to give to as Minnesota defends itself from ICE occupation
www.standwithminnesota.com
January 17, 2026 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
Publishing the names of protesters and contacting their employers to have them fired for exercising their rights is a tactic straight out of the White Citizens Councils.
They're going to start using the Kirk witch hunt strategy.
January 16, 2026 at 3:27 PM
👇Hits all of the insanity of the past week ... month ... year
Testing our sanity
January 16, 2026 at 8:26 PM
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The scale and speed of state censorship of campus really is amazing.
More than half of America's college students attend institutions in states that have passed laws censoring higher education since 2021.
From @penamerica.bsky.social
pen.org/report/ameri...
January 15, 2026 at 8:31 PM
👇... this thread ... storied newsrooms (Murrow, Cronkite, Rather, Walters, Koppel ...)
1. It's been more than a day since 2 of America's most storied newsrooms, CBS and ABC, reported that killer ICE agent Jon Ross suffered "internal bleeding" based on unnamed sources

Since then

- No other news org has confirmed the story

- No evidence (photos, medical records) has been produced
January 16, 2026 at 12:52 AM
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Europe having to perform military exercises against their primary threat, the United States.
January 15, 2026 at 12:42 AM
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New in PN: Trump's plot to intimidate the Fed backfires bigly

"His thuggish DOJ may have actually made it harder for the White House to exert control over the central bank. Remember back in 2017 when Trump’s supporters said he was playing 10-dimensional chess?"
Trump's plot to intimidate the Fed backfires bigly
Jerome Powell's SOS summons the cavalry.
www.publicnotice.co
January 14, 2026 at 12:46 PM
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And here we are: the entire transatlantic alliance is now talking about Greenland, instead of talking about ending the war in Ukraine.
January 14, 2026 at 1:36 PM
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Minnesotans won’t honk at the person who sits at the green light too long, that’s just seems too aggressive. But we sure as shit will honk to warn about upcoming dangers like dangerous ICE.
January 13, 2026 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Bruce Dorsey
I'm at a coffee shop at the moment with a bunch of writer buds, and we just observed a large convoy of ICE vehicles pursued by a much larger convoy of volunteer observers honking their horns with wild abandon. If there's one thing Minnesotans do, it's show up for shit.
January 12, 2026 at 9:15 PM