Can the GOP Identify an IUD?
  June 6, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, We’re approaching the most important event of the New York City social scene this weekend. I am obviously talking about the Puerto Rican Day parade. *horns blast in the background* *Marc Anthony begins to sing softly* For anyone wondering why a parade like this still matters, I remind you that it was once illegal to display the Puerto Rican flag in Puerto Rico, and to this day, the island exists under a smothering blanket of colonialism.  In today’s newsletter, Rebecca Carroll speaks with author Prentis Hemphill four years after the uprisings of summer 2020. Also: the new attacks on birth control, and your weekend reading list. Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONControlling birth control: Perhaps you were wondering why there was a 20-foot inflatable IUD in Washington, D.C. yesterday? It wasn’t feminist performance art (at least, not in the explicit sense); the IUD was erected by Americans for Contraception, a nonpartisan advocacy group, to bring attention to the Right to Contraception Act, which Democrats took to the Senate floor yesterday—and which Republicans blocked from consideration. (Sen. Chuck Schumer was the sole Democrat to vote no, but purely for procedure, so he can re-introduce the bill.) This was all part of the plan: Dems knew that Republicans would filibuster a bill that guarantees access to contraception and introduced it to make a point in an election year. (The House passed it in 2022.) As Sen. Maizie Hirono, one of the bill’s sponsors, put it after the vote: “Once again, Republicans have shown they’re more interested in controlling women’s bodies than protecting our freedoms.” Republicans have also shown that they love to lie, with Sen. Rick Scott and 21 of his extremist colleagues stating that the bill would force churches and elementary schools to hand out condoms. That’s absurd (it unequivocally doesn’t), but so is claiming that IUDs are a form of abortion—which is what Christina Francis, a Republican-affiliated, anti-abortion gynecologist, told Sen. Patty Murray on Wednesday in a hearing about the bans. (Asked point-blank whether she believes IUDs and the morning-after pill Plan B are abortifacients, Dr. Francis responded that she does. In truth, both work to prevent pregnancy.) This is all part of the right-wing agenda to demonize contraception overall, including the evangelical right’s ongoing disinformation campaign against The Pill. Meanwhile, Republican senators continue to insist that they really, truly, pinky-swear don’t want to touch the right to contraception: Josh “Jan. 6” Hawley scoffed at the bill, telling NBC, “Nobody’s going to overturn Griswold. No way”—a reference to the Supreme Court decision protecting contraceptive use. (He also went on to claim, erroneously, that the bill’s passage would make the abortion pill mifepristone “available in all 50 states no matter what the law is.”) But given the court’s current makeup, enshrining protections for the rights we most take for granted is crucial: “We are kidding ourselves,” Sen. Schumer said on the floor, “if we think the hard-right is satisfied with simply overturning Roe.” A vote on the IVF bill is next. AND:
 WE LIKE THIS NEWSLETTER, TOOFrom our friends at Capital B: “There’s more going on in Black communities than what usually makes the news. Capital B is your guide to fresh perspectives and a deeper understanding of the big issues impacting the culture from coast to coast. In our weekly national newsletter, delivered every Saturday, our reporters share insights into a major story, and help you stay up to date on the news you won’t find in Big Media. Sign up for the newsletter today!”  ABOUT THAT “RECKONING”“What We Do in the Streets Is a Way of Grieving”BY REBECCA CARROLL On the fourth anniversary of the Black Lives Matter uprisings, author Prentis Hemphill offers a new way of looking at things, and what’s next VIA PRENTISHEMPHILL.COM Four years after George Floyd’s murder, I realized that I simply do not have it in me to write another piece about Black pain, patterns and cycles of violent racism, and the endless trauma that continues to course through our bodies and bloodlines. I’ve literally written hundreds of them. I’m tired. And it feels like nothing ever changes. But years ago, I asked the late civil rights activist Julian Bond how he managed to stay hopeful in the face of what often feels like little progress. He said, “There are enough victories to keep hope alive, and that’s what activism is.” And so I keep looking for the victories, which lately has meant having conversations with folks, particularly younger folks, who are deep in the work with fresh eyes, bright minds, and open hearts. Prentis Hemphill is one of those folks, one who, right on time, has a new book out called What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. The author, therapist, and organizer spoke with me about the power of collective grief, finding the small openings of possibility, and the necessity of visual longing. Rebecca Carroll: Your book begins, “When Trayvon Martin was killed, I had just started working at a community mental health clinic in Los Angeles, one of three Black therapists on a staff of nearly fifty.” How do you hold the grace to write about the fact of yet another Black body being killed? Prentis Hemphill: The only way is by being in community that can feel, and grieve, and strategize, and celebrate. That’s the only thing that actually sustains me. I can only face things because I’m held, and because I’m also holding. Every time someone in our community is killed in this way, it reverberates. We have memories of people in our communities that were killed that way, people in our families that were killed that way. The ongoing violence against Black people, it reverberates through all of our grief and all of our pain. Even though we as a people have made it this far because we reach for each other, I think we also try to—and have to—shoulder more than is ours to bear. I was just having a conversation with a dear friend and organizer, Malkia Devich-Cyril, about how our grief has been criminalized and that part of what we do in the streets is a way of grieving. But because of what is projected onto us as Black people, our actions are never read as grief rituals; they are often labeled as violent, disruptive, inconvenient. By “what we do in the streets,” I take that to mean being collectively loud, actively creating movement culture, and just being Black—does it matter whether we know that we are simultaneously grieving?  BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTORS TAKING TO THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY, JUNE 2020. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) That’s a great question. Having been at a lot of protests and on the ground in so many different places over the last 15 years, I think a lot of people know that their grief is present. But there’s the connective piece—the collectivizing of the experience of “I feel this pain”—that we don’t talk about. We know it’s our grief, but we also narrow it, because that’s what we’ve had to do to get by. I am interested in starting to unlock how [our grief] can be bigger, because that’s the truth of what we’re holding.
 WEEKEND READING 📚On strange bedfellows: Would it surprise you to learn that Planned Parenthood’s cybersecurity is managed by Raytheon? Just like all relationships, it’s complicated. (Prism) On talking to the dead: AI is creeping its ways into all facets of everyday life. But a new AI company, Eternos, wants to make it part of death, too. (Fast Company) On bad takes: The good news? Everyone is talking about women’s basketball. The bad news? Everyone is talking about women’s basketball. (The Atlantic)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend?
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Rebecca Carroll is a writer, cultural critic, and podcast creator/host. Her writing has been published widely, and she is the author of several books, including her recent memoir, Surviving the White Gaze. Rebecca is Editor at Large for The Meteor.
